The Hockey PDOcast - Why Aliaksei Protas Is One of the Best Developing Stories in the NHL This Year

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by John Matisz to talk about Aliaksei Protas' development this year, and how it fits into the theme of the Washington Capitals hitting on every bet they make recently. They also talk about the wave of 6'6" players the NHL is seeing, and the next one that could be joining the mix in Washington. Then they get into updates regarding Four Nations roster changes, and mailbag questions about the Sharks rebuild. 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 PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dmitri Filipovich. And joining me as my good buddy, John Mattis, John. What's going on, man? Not a whole lot. Honestly, still in a slight shock over Dmitri Kulikov hitting 1,000 games last night. And that's supposed to be a compliment to the guy, but it's like so random that he is part of that club now.

And it's cool that he did it with the Panthers, right? because he started there and now he's, you know, hitting 1K there. It's a pretty cool journey for him. Yeah. Another momentous achievement for the Dimitri Club. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, honestly, I tuned into that broadcast to watch Panthers Kings on Wednesday night. And they were talking about it and they obviously honored him at the start.

And then I was just like, I was just almost, I don't want to say I was in shambles because it's a cool accomplishment for him. But for me, it's just like I remember when he was like a young defenseman, but also the fact that he's kind of hung around for this long, bounced around so many teams, came back to Florida, as you said, won a cup with them last year. Now he's in year,

one of a four year extension with them. I was just like doing all this like mental math in my head in terms of like where the time's gone, how old that makes me now. There was a lot going on. I wasn't expecting it to hit me so hard. The Dmitra Kulikov played a thousand games, but it was incredibly random.

Here's a plan for today. We've got some fun topics we're going to get into. We were going to start off with some Four Nations updates, and we got some questions in the listener mailbag about that, and we will get to it eventually. But I'm going to audible here on the fly, because it's my show. And what I really want to talk about is this particular story that you and I were texting about yesterday in preparation for the today's show,

bouncing around ideas. I asked you if you'd indulge me, and you said, happily, it ties in nicely as a little tease or organic plug for a story you're working on down the road at the score as well. And so we're going to get into it all. But I would argue that, and maybe not on these parts, because people who've listened to the show this year have heard me talk a lot about the Washington Capitals, have heard me specifically talk with glowing praise about

Alexei Pradesh and everything he's done and how fun he's been to watch. But in watching hockey this week and I was watching that game on Tuesday evening in Calgary between the flames and the Capitals, I was just thinking like how, this probably is developing into one of the most underreported or I guess underappreciated stories this season, just this absurd development we've seen from one year to the next, from not only the Washington Capitals organization as a whole, of course, but I think Alexi's protists specifically and then how that functions within his own development. We're going to talk about his brother as well and that coming on the way. And putting all of that together, I'm just kind of blown away by this.

So I wanted to really get into what we've seen from Proto this year, I guess how that ties into the capitals as a whole, and then maybe the story you're working on as well. I think it's something that I really want to invest a lot of time on today's show into because it's something that I find incredibly interesting. Well, let me set the stage then a little bit. So why this story is of interest to me and why I'm sort of in the middle of it versus done it is, well, I just keep getting distracted by other things.

But I was originally drawn to this idea. of six foot six or taller guys becoming a trend, like as far as the amount of them and the type of impact they're having at the NHL level. It came on my radar before the last draft because Dean Latterno went 25th, and he kind of wants to be the next stage Thompson. You've got Anton Salive.

He went 10th to New Jersey. He's 6'7. And then so I look back on the 2024 draft, and there were 12, 6'4-6 or taller guys picked. And so that accounts for 5.1. 3% of the class. And I went and looked at every single draft class in the history of the NHL. And that's the highest by like a massive margin.

So is that like just a one-off where it's like, oh, okay, this, for whatever reason, this birth year has a ton of tall guys who got in the hockey, maybe. But then you look at the skaters in the NHL this season. I updated my numbers this morning. There's been 841 total skaters in 2024-25. 33 of them are 6'6 or taller. And again, this is defensemen and forwards. We exclude goalies.

We know they're tall. So that's a 3.9% of the entire NHL are 6'4-6 or taller in terms of the skaters. That is also an NHL record. And the next closest is 3.3% in 21-22. So it's not like this 3.9 is blowing like the other years out of the water, but it's still notable because it ties in with that latest draft class. So this has been kind of on my mind. And in the way that, you know, okay, it's one thing to be six foot six, six foot seven, six foot eight.

And, you know, scouts drooling over you and your physical traits. But like how do you go from point A, which is that being scouted as this raw package to, you know, point B, which is making the NHL and becoming a full-time NHL or because there's some hurdles there. It's great to have all this, I guess, raw, to have this raw package. package to be tall to be, you know, a guy who can fill out his frame and people start projecting you certain ways. But like you got to actually make steps towards that finished product. So I've been digging in a little bit on that angle. And I don't know if you want to step in here and talk about what you think of protis, but he's one of those guys that when I talked to him briefly, he was talking about how he felt so uncoordinated when he was 15 to 21 years

old because he just kept growing. He couldn't keep up with, oh, he grew two inches this summer, three inches that summer. And he felt like his development as a hockey player was being stunted a little bit. Obviously, he was still making steps towards becoming an NHLer, but he wasn't taking off in the way that he would have liked. But since 21, he's basically leveled out in terms of his height. And so it's been a lot easier for him to work on his lower body strength, which also relates to skating and work on his core, again, relates to skating,

especially with these tall guys where you need that strong base, right? You can't just be Bambi legs because then your coordination is just going sideways. So, yeah, Protis is just like an absolute revelation. Calling him a unicorn might be a little strong, but he's like in that unicorn sphere, if you will. Well, I think the jump to the NHL for guys once you get into that stratosphere of height is incredibly difficult for a variety of reasons, right? One, I think the tools advantage you have at lower levels coming up, whether it's a major junior or like whatever a European minor league,

you can get away with so much if you're just either faster or stronger than everyone else, right? Like it's just like, there's just less competition and less obstacles in your way. So you could generally a lot of like straight line skating, not a lot of problem solving needed. And when you see in the NHL, there's just so much less space in general to work with.

And so if you're incredibly tall and lanky and feeling like a bit less, whether your core strength is not there or a lower body stability, as you said, or just the coordination in tight. You have to make a lot of plays in very limited windows to work with. And so all of a sudden, you get contested in that way. And I think you have to adjust. And I think that's probably why you see to go along with just like figuring out your own body and then being able to start working on it more. I think that's probably why you see this phenomenon of taller play.

players like this or kind of the quote unquote power forwards sometimes theoretically taking more time to develop at the NHL and kind of figure out how to actually leverage their skills functionally than someone who's kind of been that same size and played the same style for years already before they ever come to NHL. Yeah. And like, so take a guy like Elmer Soderblon who's just like kind of freakishly tall, having he's six foot eight like 240 or something. He's basically chara as a forward.

You know, he's put a lot of work in at the age. level in terms of one, figuring out how to be physical but in a functional way. Like it's one thing to just be crushing guys in open ice hits, but it's another to be fending them off or, you know, pinning them against the boards and just using your size in a more, I guess, offensively focused way. And one thing that in Grand Rapids in the HL that he's tried to figure out is, okay, you know, I'm great at protecting the puck because I have massive reach and good luck, you know, getting around my body

because it's so massive. Well, what do you do with the puck when you have it? Like he's been a good puck protector, but he's had to learn like, okay, what are the actual plays that you make once you have the puck and once you're in that advantageous position?

And again, it kind of comes back to growing into your body, understanding how you can, I guess, leverage your physical traits and also how you can weave in, quote unquote, smaller player, I guess, skills

into a bigger player's body. The thing with Dean Luterno is that what's fascinating about him and it relates to Tage Thompson is like these guys, their skill level is so off the charts and their hands are so silky that they're kind of already that smaller guy in a bigger player's body.

So then it becomes, okay, like how do you figure out your skating? How do you become maybe a little more mean? How do you, in Tage's instance, he had to figure out his stick? Okay, what was the right stick for him? He really shortened it. He gave it this lie that was really upright so he could stick handle near his feet.

And I mean, his game is so much now based on how he manipulates defenders one-on-one and fires a puck near his feet where he's using his reach because the defenseman is backing off because he's this massive guy that can take him one-on-one, but then pulling the puck to his body and using his stick to fire the puck

through the defenseman's leg. And so it's just fascinating in terms of like, a lot of these guys that we're talking about are forwards, right? Traditionally, the tall guy, six foot five are up. They were put on defense, you know, stay at home guys, the how gills and does it know charres. Now we're, yeah, now we're seeing a fair amount of forwards. And then also if that you are a defenseman who's of that size, like you have to be not necessarily an elite skater, but you have to be like a plus skater. Simon Edvinson, Owen Power, Alex Vlasic, like those types of guys where you can't be just big as a defenseman now in terms of that being the only thing you bring to the table because you're just going to be burned constantly.

Okay, back to Protis for a second here because I got a few notes that I want to get on as it ties in this conversation. So in his age 23 campaign last year, he finishes with six goals and 29 points in 78 games. At pretty much exactly this point of the season, kind of mid-January, the captain, the captain, the captain. Capitals give him a five-year 3.375 million per extension, which kicks in this year. This season, in year one of that deal already, he's tied for eighth in five-on-five points with Jack Eichel and David Pasternak. 20 of his 21 goals have come at even strength, which is tied for fifth most with Nikita Kuturov. And not only has he become just instantly in year one of this five-year extension, one of the best non-ELC values in the entire league. league from a bang for your buck perspective. But he's also for me become on the short list of coolest, most unique fun players in the league to watch. I mean, even his nickname, the Zeus from Belarus absolutely rocks. I mean, every single thing about this guy is just incredible. And I wanted to shout out. You mentioned the work you put in off the ice in terms

of the development to kind of figure out your body and how to actually get the most out of those physical traits. His skating is in the 93rd percentile in terms of speed this year, according to NHL Edge. He's breathtaking in the open ice. You look at that breakaway goal that made me want to have this conversation that he scored in Calgary on Tuesday. And essentially in one stride from his blue line, he's able to create like two steps of separation from any defenseman. I keep just harketing back to it reminds you that DK Metcalf meme of him chasing down the smaller cornerback after an interception where he's like almost just stalking his prey

and covering just a freakish amount of ground and the guy behind him is like looking and it's like oh my God this object is is just approaching me at a rapid speed and so I just think like no one that large should move that quickly so that from that angle it's incredibly fun to watch him in open space his shooting has improved so much as well

he shot just 5.7% in his first three years now I'm not going to sit here and say that all of a sudden he's become a true talent 20 plus percent finisher the way he is this year. I'm sure there's a bit of good fortune involved there. But you watch his shots and how he's scoring his goals. And he's doing a lot of the stuff that elite goal scorers do from like purposefully attacking goalies in that little window above their pads below either the blocker or the glove where there's just like the smallest amount of room that they can't get to. And if you're able to hit that spot, you're going to score more often than not on them.

He's constantly exploiting that and like purposefully trying to do that with his shots. And I just love all that. I mean, the coolest wrinkle to his game to lump into that is just what a dog he is in terms of utilizing the wingspan and the reach, right? You watch him knock away puck's bad stuff down, cause turnovers, immediately flip it into plays. He's so fun to watch doing that as well off puck. And it's notable to me, because you mentioned the Tage example, right? And kind of what unlocked him to go along with all the stuff you already mentioned was the move to center where it got him off the boards.

It got him into the middle of the ice. And it gave him just more room to kind of navigate and be a bit less awkward, having to make plays in tight with people right around him. That hasn't really affected POTUS at all. Like he's so good already along the boards, protecting the puck, making plays, kind of controlling it in these tight windows. And so he hasn't even really needed that either. He's actually very natural at that all ready to begin with.

So you put all that stuff together. And I think Unicorn is fair because he's just, if you're not watching this guy play on a nightly basis, I think you're really missing out. Yeah, he rules. And another thing just to circle back on this whole discussion and the big guys and taking you from raw package to develop NHL. or one thing that I heard from one of Nick Hags coaches is like a big point of emphasis when he was in junior was trying to figure out to sort of fix his pivoting.

So, you know, he would be skating backwards, a forward is attacking him at the blue line and the forward dumps it in. And that sort of that pivot towards going to get that loose puck would just take forever. And it makes sense, right? Like if you think of like a transport truck versus a Ferrari, you know, it takes forever for a transport truck to turn. And yes, I know there's different engines involved there. But still, it's like the bigger you are, kind of the more difficult it is to be agile and to be quick and to be, I guess, just moving in very efficient ways. So Hague went to work on that. And he's become a lot better skater.

And that allowed him to make the NHL a lot quicker than some other guys. Like, I think he was in the NHL like 20 or 21. And when you're a guy that big and don't have that standout trait, like, I don't know. Like Zadorov was always a really good skater. Like Hague had to work to get to some standard where he's good enough on those pivots and doesn't lose that puck battle because he's taking forever to go from, you know, staring at the guys skating backwards to chasing the puck down skating forwards.

Well, and you know what? When you're carrying around that much mass in general, I think it's really easy to wear yourself out pretty quickly because you take a couple bursts and all of a sudden it's like that's just a lot of a lot of men to be moving around the ice and I was watching the game on Saturday night the Hockey Night the Hockey Night the Hockey

Canada game when Washington was here in Vancouver and I think it was Ray Ferraro who was talking about this and the impact that Spencer Carberry's already had on this player in terms of the development and he had this cool anecdote about how Carberry was telling him that essentially like in their

go away meetings or whatever after year of one working with him his main message to Protis was like he really wanted him to emphasize improving his cardio and stamina so that he could actually do what he does in the first five to ten seconds of every shift for the full 35, 40 seconds you need to to actually continue dominating and sustaining a lot of these plays and not just having an initial effort and then completely gassing yourself. And you've seen that as well. And obviously his usage has bumped up accordingly where now he's playing whatever 16 and a half minutes or so per game for them playing a pivotal top six role. And I thought that was cool. I've got a

couple other notes on Carberry. I know you spoke to him as well as part of one of your pieces. And we're going to talk about the power play and kind of the stuff he said there because I thought it was interesting. And I think he's done such an incredible job individually with this player, but also with the team as a whole. But I just wanted to shout out that anecdote because I just, when I think of a player like this, I mean, it's impossible not to examine, I guess, the development in terms of how they got themselves on the timeline that they're on like this and the trajectory he's on. Well, it's interesting you bring up the stamina because I talked to Michael McCarran of the Predators about his journey. And his has been a little more like roller coaster, a lot of

HL time. He's kind of settled in as like a fourth line center. He's not the sexiest player that we're talking about here. But nevertheless, so he had to grow into his, his own body, like most of these guys, it took him a while to pack on muscle. And then he mentioned the stamina thing. He said like early in his NHL tenure, he would be gassed after 25, 30 seconds, and he's managed to get that closer to a full 60 second sprint. So interesting that Protis is one of the guys that's also tackled that challenge. And at the end of the games, you're seeing,

I was thinking of the game they played in Edmonton during that road trip, where Carberry leans on him, Pierre-Luc Dubois, and Tom Wilson as like a primary shutdown checking line to hold on to the late one-goal lead and just watching it. it's like with their size and their range, you could pretty much just stack them up side by side in the defensive zone and you're pretty much eliminating every single possible lane to kind of probe through an attack in the interior. And what an incredible luxury that is and how despite that size, like he never takes penalties.

He never really hits either, which I'm sure would probably drive some people crazy, but that's just like a misunderstanding of, I guess, how he attacks and how he creates disruptions and turnovers and stuff. And the reason why I shout out Pierluq Dubois there, and this ties into the caps conversation as a whole, is there's just the two of them in different ways, right? They acquired Duat via trade and take on the risk of the contract that it comes with. In Protis's case, they make that bet in terms of giving the extension before his production has really merited it. Both are just a perfect encapsulations of this organizational heater.

The caps are on where every single bet they make recently, pretty much instantly turns into gold. gold. And we shout out their pro scouting staff and the work they do there and identifying players that are going to fit for them and then getting the most out of them in their system. That's certainly part of this. Eventually, no matter how good of a job you do, eventually you're going to have some misses along the way as well, and I'm sure that's coming for them. But right now, pretty much everything turns into gold. Like, they're just, every single bet they make is absolutely the right one. Yeah, Dylan Strom, Conor McMichael, you go up and down the list, Jacob Chikrin.

And I mean, Logan Thompson, Rasmus Sandin, like everyone they've acquired. Spencer Carberry too, right? Like he's part of that too, the organizational heater. They tapped him and it's gone quite well. It has. You spoke to him,

you kind of one of your regular feature articles, you do a couple tidbits on certain things and you're making the note of your conversation with him about, I guess, power play is and the tactical advantage they have in today's game. And I thought he made a really, daily in point there in terms of obviously beyond the inherited advantage of having one extra skater on the ice and generally spending a lot of your time in the offensive zone.

There's like a deeper reason I think in terms of why I think we're seeing power plays be more lethal or more difficult to defend than ever before. Yeah. Last I checked it was this, the power play percentage was on track to be the best since 85, 86. So this is like, and this is a continuation. It's not like a blip on the radar, right? It's continuation of a longer trend. but I just asked him like a very open-ended question,

what do you make of the modern power play? Like what are the kind of key ingredients there? And he went on a bit of a rant. And one of the, I'll pick out three things that he mentioned. And one was, and I hadn't thought about this, but he says that power plays are so dialed into penalty kills

on a tactical level these days where you go into a power play meeting. And since penalty kills are essentially either like aggressive or conservative, you're able to really attack their weaknesses. So say they're aggressive, oh, okay, it's this guy that's particularly aggressive. Let's target him or they're conservative. Oh, we got to target this side of the ice. And it just becomes one of those things where power plays are so much more advanced.

They're so much more, I guess, complicated that you can, on a tactical level, just break down the penalty kill pretty easy. And then another thing he mentioned was that net presence is back in full force. And he, you know, he obviously hedges this saying it never left. It's not like PowerPlay's didn't have a net presence five years ago. But he said even when he's on the bench, he's hearing the opposing coaches yell net presence, net presence, net presence. It's become way more of just a point of emphasis. And I think it ties into, you know, how well players screen now with kind of the flash screen versus back in the day it was stand in front of the goalie and cause havoc and try to tip the puck.

like it's way more sophisticated now in terms of how guys screen and the timing of it and the type of guys that are screening. And then you've got a real, I guess, emergence of goal line playmaking. And that adds to the net presence where maybe the guy who is, you know, going for the tips is also playmaking, making a cross-crease pass, which is obviously a high percentage play. So that was another thing he mentioned. And then the third one was, and this is less, I guess, groundbreaking, if you will, but he mentioned the interchangeability of power plays in 2025 where not only is there constant puck movement, which we've seen for years now, but constant player movement where, you know, the guy who's quote unquote the point man ends up in front of the net or

the flank guy ends up on the goal line. And it's just, it's hard to keep track of each player. It's hard to, if you're a penalty kill, kind of understand what's actually happening in the moment and next thing you know the puck's in the back of your net and that again relates to both the puck moving around constantly and the power play player is kind of picking and choosing where they want to go on the ice and rotating and just causing havoc and making sure that the puck is is going east to west as much as possible in the top five teams in power play efficiency this year are the jets at an outrageous nearly 13 goals scored per hour and then Vegas, New Jersey, Detroit and Tampa Bay rounding out the top five. And I think they do it in

different ways, but all of them are so good at just, like, methodically and precisely picking you apart. And so I love that anecdote about how penalty kills in a way have become so predictable or vanilla because you essentially just, depending on your personnel, maybe your preference of the coach, steer in one direction, either very conservative or very aggressive, challenging everything, as you said. And you can just plan for that accordingly. And because you, you have all these different weapons in that interchangeability. You can just work around that and model your approach in terms of how you're going to pick them apart to that, whereas the alternative isn't really happening where your PK isn't like,

all right, well, this is how this power play is going to attack us. So all of a sudden now we're going to completely fundamentally change our approach. You certainly look for, if you're playing against Kuturov, you know he presents a certain set of challenges as opposed to someone who's more shot heavy. But ultimately, the guys are all going to kind of do the same thing. And so I love that dynamic. I mean, I think Spencer Carberry is quickly reaching the point for me where if he's speaking, I want to be listening because I feel like he's always providing really interesting insights

into the way they operate. One final note on this. And I think this is why this story pushed me over the top in terms of like piquing my interest level. This past summer of the Capitals drafted Alexi Proto's younger brother, Ilya, 75th overall. And you'll never believe it. but he is also a 6'5 demon. Now we need to get him into that 6'5 range, hopefully here. He's still a teenager.

Maybe he'll still get there just to crack your list. But he's got 32 goals and 74 points in 41 games playing for the Windsor Spitfires. And I saw this highlight the other day of him just putting this poor defender on an absolute poster with this like through the legs move and then wrapping it around the goalie. And just the idea that a couple years from now, I mean, you see with Protis right, he's 24 now coming in his into a zone so it's probably years down the road but just the idea of this one team having two just absolute giants that are just roaming the ice and wrecking havoc and also happen to be brothers is just such a tantalizing story for me i really hope that that i mean that alexi certainly

continues down this track and keeps getting better and improving but also that his brother joins them just so that we actually see that realized on the ice i think that would be an incredible site. Could you imagine if secretly they have a sedene-like connection on the ice and we're just we just don't even know what's coming in terms of the protis brothers taking over the NHL? That'd be incredible. And yeah, in terms of the 6.6 thing, the reason why I sort of pinpointed that as the start of this sort of super tall tier is that actually when it comes to sticks, you can get an exemption for a longer stick than is in the, the rulebook, like than the maximum height if you're six foot six or taller.

So it's like the NHL is identifying six foot six as like when you're like outrageously tall. So yes, you're right. I'llia. Prodis needs to get that extra inch. See, now I need the full deep, like the full investigative story of the procedural aspect of that in terms of how much of it is in case you do have a sudden growth spurt to reach that threshold. How much of it is like an official measurement that's happening? before the season and then how quickly we can get those sticks turned around as opposed to whether

it's more of a dating app sort of thing where it's like, oh, trust me, I'm this certain height. Don't check it. I think all of that is really interesting. By the way, the Proto's brothers, I think they're going to officially be called the ProDai. So I think just to get ahead of that. All right, John, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we will jump right back into it. We're going to talk about some of the Four Nations updates we've gotten this week looking ahead

to roster changes there. you're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right. We're back here in the Hockey P.D.O.cast joined by John Mattis. John. We went along on Alexi Protois and the big, tall players in the league. And I'm happy with it because I think that was a very interesting story. Also, I think a unique one. And that's what we try to do here in the PDO cast. We're going to talk about the Four Nations now. And some of the updates we got this week, we have to do it with you specifically because you're going to be our official boots on the ground. correspondent for this event representing, of course, the score of your employer. So I think the Hockey P.D.O. cast, and we're going to have you on from on site once the game start as well. We're less than two weeks out now from the opener. That's going to be Canada versus Sweden on Wednesday, February 12. And we've got roster news for both. So let's start with the Team Canada part of this, with Alex Petrangelo earlier this week, withdrawing his name from the

mix now. He's not hurt necessarily because he went on to play 24, 22, and 2309. in the two Golden Knights game since then. But he did just turn 35. He's played a ton of hockey, including a bunch of postseason mileage as well in recent years. And so I think it's totally reasonable that he's prioritizing, taking two weeks off to get his body ready for the playoff push. I think that's fine.

We've seen guys like Montour, Weiger, Tanev, less so, Evan Bouchard, but those names kind of mentioned as potential replacements to take his plays on this team. We also did fittingly see Drew Dowell. make his return on Wednesday night. And of course, after missing 47 games with a broken ankle, he steps in. It immediately leads the Kings and Ice Time at 2351 against the Panthers. Now, it didn't go really well for him in terms of the results. But I think considering the circumstances, it's understandable, not only the time off and the rust, but against that four check in particular,

Jim Hiller deciding to keep that pair of Gavrokov and Mikey Anderson together and instead using Dowdy with Mover R.A. and with Joel Edminson. Also happened to run into this Mackie Sammaskevich Buzzsaw that I keep talking about here on the PDO cast. We saw him now playing with Bennett and Kachuk and was just absolutely on fire all over the ice, just challenging with his speed, creating chances and cross-ice passes and everything. I just think he hasn't started scoring yet, so no one cares about it. And the Panthers have so many bigger names. But like, I guarantee you, if he keeps playing in this role and keeps playing like he has,

The points are, the goals are going to start coming, and people are going to be like, wow, this came out and over. And it's like, he's been playing very well for a while now, so just keep an eye on that. But on the team Canada part of this, what's your take on this in terms of Petrangelo's withdrawal, whether we're going to see more of that. The league's stance of obviously not treating this like the All-Star event, where when players withdraw, they wind up being punished by the league for doing so. The league is taking a different approach here. I'm curious if there's going to be, not sanctions, but how it's going to be treated by the respective countries, because we've heard that a lot of this event's purpose is preparation or laying the groundwork for the upcoming Olympics and who's going to be involved there. And so I think a lot of these players generally want to make a good impression here or make themselves available so that they will be given that spot to represent their country on the bigger stage.

Now Petrangelo is so established and so well regarded that he probably. doesn't. It's not as big of an issue for him. But do you have any takes on that in terms of his withdrawal, replacements, or any other kind of trickle-down things to come? I'd say the only thing is that I'm surprised that Vegas and Petro Angelo announced this like the day of a game and then he goes out and plays 24 minutes. I feel like unless they're worried about a leak or something,

like I feel like they could have waited and time this sort of maybe when Vegas had a few days off and then he, you know, when he comes back to his next game, not so on the top of mind. I don't, you know, it's his decision. You know, will it affect him with the Olympics? You mentioned, like, his reputation. Probably not. Like, if this was a younger guy, potentially.

But, hey, and, like, we shouldn't rule out that, like, he might actually have, like, a small procedure, right, during the Four Nations tournament. Like, sure, maybe he can play through whatever he's going through right now. But they're being so vague about it. They're being so sort of unspecific about. about it, that maybe he is sort of gearing up for some time to deal with some sort of procedure, and that's totally me just speculating.

But so anyways, I'm like ultimately fine with that. And like, honestly, the Canadians have a ton of options on the right side. So it's not going to be this massive loss. And my whole thing since this news came down has been, if Dowdy is, let's say, 90% of his usual self, you take him. He would have already, he would have been on this team if he wasn't injured. and you know with sort of the caveat that you've got weger sitting there who I think is a great replacement like he can play both sides left or right

he's well rounded plays all situations he's got some size but there's something about dowdy in terms of his two-way ability and the fact that he's represented Canada a ton of times and just has I guess you know he's in a bit of a higher tier I would argue than weager in terms of impact on a game and he can slide into that second pair as sort of the shutdown guy on Canada a little better than Weger. And I watched the Kings and

Panthers game last night as well. And I mean, yeah, maybe Doughty looked a little rusty. I looked at actually his NHL Edge speeds. And, you know, his shot was down a little bit. His top speed was down a little bit. But I think that's to be expected. I didn't see anything that was too

concerning. He laid this big hit on Sasha Barkov at the end of the game, and he was involved in some scrums. And, hey, ultimately, he had an ankle injury. It wasn't a back injury, a head injury. So I think, and he took his time coming back, I think it's fine. So my prediction would be that Doughty gets the nod, assuming that he keeps kind of climbing and starts looking better and better as he gets a few games under himself. But after that, I think Wigger is a perfectly fine guy to tap.

Yeah, I don't want to re-litigate this entirely because you and I, along with her pal, Sean Schabero, did a two-hour breakdown of the rosters. we got into this at that time. So if you haven't listened to that yet, for whatever a reason, you can go and listen to it. A lot of my thoughts still remain. But since then, we did see obviously a different circumstance and different tournament, but the World Junior team picking certain types of players to fit roles and then losing, falling short, not really having enough offensive juice.

And especially once you size up these rosters and how good team USA's is going to be in terms of two-way ability and all of that, I still think you could use more offensive juice from the back end if you're at this team, Canada team, especially with the way you constructed your forwards. So we'll see. But I'd be intrigued by a guy like Montour because of his skating ability and just how good he's been yet again for Seattle this year in a different environment. We've seen him play on a star-studded team before and thrive in that setting. So I'd be more interested there. But I mean, it's pretty clear that Canada's wanted or like had a spot kind of on hold for Drew Dowdy ever since the injury, right? And so this kind of worked

out in terms of the timing of Petrangelo withdrawing and Dowdy making his return. And they still got a couple weeks here for him to get some more reps in. So we'll see. The other big news is for Team Sweden, Jacob Marks from suffered his knee injury that's going to keep him out four to six weeks. Linus Elmark sounds like he's going to be back this weekend probably, but he hasn't played since December 22nd and considering the nature of his injury, which is described as a lingering back issue. I can't imagine that the senators would be too thrilled with seeing him playing a lot out there. So I imagine the result is going to be a ton of Philip Gustafson. Samerson got promoted. Sam Morrison and his 890, save percentage got the call up.

I thought that an interesting takeaway from all this is like it were seemingly one or two more injuries away from Jonas Johansson playing an outsized role in this tournament, which would be theater. I don't know. Do you have any takes on this from the team Sweden angle or from the goalies or from Marks from specifically? I mean, I would just say that it's like I'm a little worried for Sweden because you add up what's going on with the goalies. where basically, let's just say Allmark is maybe the starter, maybe the backup, Gustafson, maybe the start, maybe the backup. Like, that's not ideal because Markstrom is the best out of the three. And then you've got William Carlson is weekday week right now. He hasn't been ruled out, but hey, week to week.

I mean, we're getting close to the tournament, so he'll probably be ruled out. And then Jonas Brodine is TBD. And then, you know, the top replacement on defense, Hampus Linholm is not back yet. So there's just a lot going on there. And a lot of it relates to team defense, right? And when I look at Sweden, their forwards don't excite me too much. Like, obviously it's a good forward group. But what I got excited about with Sweden's roster reveal was tremendous blue line and good goaltending.

And that was kind of like, okay, if they win the tournament, it'll be through the blue line with some good goaltending. Well, both of those positions seem to be taking a hit with Carlson being important because he's such a good defensive forward. it. So it's a bit awkward in that sense because I feel like if an offensive player went down, it's like, okay, you got William Eklund to throw in there. There's a couple of other options that are sort of more offensively focused, but they're getting dinged a lot on the team defense side of things. They are. And the one final injury update is Mero Heskin, and after his injury entries in night, has been deemed week to week. Still hasn't been ruled out of the tournament, although based on how it looked, I'd have a hard time believing that the stars would want

him playing even if he was miraculously able to come back on time so we'll see there but in that two-hour breakdown we spent probably a disproportionate amount of time talking about Henry oki harry and uh Jake walman making jokes about how considering he doesn't have any official listing whether he could apply for for Finnish citizenship um so yeah that's obviously a massive storyline in development and for what was going to be the underdog anyways, I think essentially eliminates pretty much any sort of feisty chance they had there. All right, let's get to some mailbag questions here from our loyal listeners. And we've got one that kind of relates to their Four Nations.

It's from Nicole. And I wanted to specifically pick this one first off because, I mean, it's a good question. And it ties into the Four Nations conversation. But also I did a show last Friday, a mailbag with Pete Blackburn. And I pointed out how one of our listeners had made an astute. observation about how looking at Elias Pedersen's contract. He has no trade restrictions

right now, July 1st, a full new move kicks in, and so that creates an interesting timeline for them to make some sort of decision until then, in terms of how they want to proceed. I, in haste, I didn't remember who brought it up. It was Nicole. And so I wanted to give Nicole a shout out

one of the top contributors, even though Pixies is the only one with the top contributor label there. Nicole is right up there in terms of all the banter and contributions to the Pidiogast Discord. Nicole asks, who should Alex Petrangelo themselves out of the Four Nations tournament? Now, we've only seen the one so far withdrawal. There's two weeks left.

As we get closer to it, I imagine the countries will become less enthused about any withdrawals because it obviously restricts them in terms of pivoting on the fly and accommodating it. But I wouldn't be surprised at all to see, especially considering some of the the veterans involved, if there's a nagging injury or something comes up over the next couple games, if we see some sort of similar news, do you have anyone off the top of your head that comes to mind in terms of someone you would just like either like to see naturally replaced in terms of the fit for their team or someone who you're like, oh, I'm going to kind of monitor this. You mentioned William Carlson there, obviously, with his nagging injury and his status right now,

but any others? I mean, Chris Kreider jumps off the page, and it relates to Tage Thompson, which I believe Tage was the biggest snub out of the original announcement back in December. And so this would allow Team USA to sort of write a wrong if Crider, in fact, withdraws. I think Tage is fully deserving. And I don't know if you saw Crider a couple of days ago. He whiffs on this back door open net. And he's, and, you know, he talks to the reporters after the game.

and he's like really hard on himself. And it just seemed to sort of encapsulate the whole year where he's been healthy scratched. He's been part of these rumors. It's just been like a disaster of a year. For him personally and obviously the Rangers, even though they've improved recently if they've underperformed. So I mean, is this one of those things where Chris Kreider,

who has dealt with injuries, prefers to sit on a beach and clear his head? Or, you know, you could also spin it in a way that's like, okay, Criter has a chance to maybe play with different players get his confidence back and he actually is elated to go play at the four nations so that's interesting but like you know personally the tage thing is is really percolating because he's tied with Kyle Connor and Austin Matthews for first among Americans and goals per game he's up to 25 and 44 and he just had this disgusting that trip was the other day against Boston yeah the third goal where

he shot through Zedorov's legs and just launched a puck top corner, like in a way that pretty much only Tage Thompson can do, given his size and how he manipulates defenders and whatnot. So like Tage is firing on all cylinders and he has him himself, he's, you know, he's been dealing with some sort of injury throughout the season. I don't know where it's at at this point, but it hasn't really kept them out of too many games. And he's the type of guy that I'm sure would be thrilled to play for his country as a former national team development player and also a guy

who hasn't played many playoff games. So yeah, that's where my mind goes in terms of replacements. Yeah. I mean, Crider was the obvious choice, the player referenced there against the hurricanes. It was a really tough look because it had like big time old man vibes of like he got this pass and then just like had time to stop it and corral it and then like fumbled it and just shot it out the wrong side essentially. It was really, really bleak.

And he clearly has, I believe it's a back injury as well that's bothered him. And so I think that explains a lot of what's going on there. So I think that would be a very obvious resolution. Page would clearly be a fascinating pick. I love the point you make there in particular of not really getting to see him on some of these bigger stages yet at this point of his career and seeing what he could do in that element. I'd even go further though, like whether it's Caulfield or Keller

or even Jason Robertson, who at the time, of the announcements wasn't really an omission in my opinion because he just wasn't producing and didn't really look up to it physically. All of those guys in the past whatever six, seven weeks since the announcement have been on fire offensively and producing a bunch. And so all of them would be incredibly warranted choices. But yeah, the T.H one just in terms of what he can do physically and seeing him with other skilled players. That hat-trick he scored against the Bruins. I mean, pretty much every goal the Sabres scored in that game was highly real worthy, including the Patyrka ones as well.

And it was like, man, where has this been all season? Because this was the team that I fell in love with two years ago, and we've seen it very rarely since then. All right, let's close out with this question from Adam. There's been plenty of discussion about San Jose's quote-unquote perfect tank this season. What should their next moves be between now and the start of next season? Should they stay the course and tank again next year? Or should they try to add quality pieces again?

in the off season in an effort to move up the standings. I think it's time to stop the tank, like, because things can get really out of hand. You know, you mentioned Buffalo and how long they've been, you know, stuck in in the bottom of the standings and, you know, Detroit's had a long way to come back up. Chicago's really fighting it right now. And I feel like San Jose with Celebrini,

perhaps being better than people expected, have this window to make some noises the wrong way to put it. but to improve to make it advancements up the standings sooner than later. And if you look at what's going on with their cap sheet, I mean, Vlasic is only one year away, so he still has 25, 26. He only has one year away of becoming UFA and presumably leaving the squad. You've got other guys on the back end that are expiring soon. Cody Cici's off the books this summer.

Michael Granlin's off the books. Maybe you want to retain him. But when I look at their cap sheet, I don't see. a real problem. I actually see a ton of space. And, you know, whether that's through free agency that they add or it's through the trade market, I think that there's a path here to not necessarily like making the playoffs next year, but like to starting to move in the right direction and not keep, you know, I guess purposely fielding teams that are are poor.

Like I think they can start trying to move that arrow in the right direction. and because they're still going to get a high pick this year, right? It's like how many high picks do you need? And I think Will Smith's going to look better as he gets more time under him. So yeah, I'm on team like, let's stop the tank in the shark tank. I think it can be both though. And I might not necessarily be described as a tank, but in terms of their results,

I think they could very smartly yet again add useful players and still be really bad next year because you look. And so last season they had a minus 146 goal differential, right? And then they add Celebrini and Will Smith and Jake Wallman and Timothy Lilligrin and Tafoli and Wenberg and Ascarov. And they add a bunch of pieces that have all contributed in various ways. And they're still 32nd in the league in point percentage and they're on pace for a minus 82 goal differential.

So even if you added another handful of quality pieces and young players developed, there's still room for them to be picking again in the top three to five next year. Now, I think that's perfectly fine. There has been an interesting development in the league the past however many years where organizations have really, really struggled with kind of going from being young and bad to young and competitive, right? Like taking that. next hurdle, it's very easy to tear everything down and completely go full rebuild and tank. And then even if you get top picks, a lot of these teams that recurringly have been bad at the bottom of the standings have been kind of stuck in this organizational rut. And it's been really difficult to get out of that for whatever reason. So it's easier said than done. I think to the spirit of this question, though, it has been the perfect tank for the sharks because not only are they, as I said, 30 second in point percentage, and if they finish bottom two,

they guarantee themselves a top four pick in a draft that looks like it's very top four heavy in terms of the tier of player available. But they've done it in a way that encourages you to think that it's not all bleak and doom and gloom, right? Not only has obviously celebrated you come in and just blown everyone away in terms of his ability right away and what he could be very soon,

but you look at how they've lost a lot of these games, and like 26 of their 53 games have been decided by one goal. 73% of their game time this year has been played within one goal either way. They have a league high, 10 third period blown leads. They have games obviously when Ascarov's in net and they're winning pretty much 50% of them. And then they have games in Georgia is in net and they're probably going to give up anywhere from four to six goals and lose because of that. And so they're doing it in a way where they're ensuring that they are going to have a top four. prospect come into their system, while also theoretically being able to improve quite significantly

next year if a couple of these things get ironed out. Now, you don't want to take it for granted because, as I said, teams like the senators, the ducks, the blue jackets, I guess, before this year, you go on down the line, the sabres, of course, for a couple GMs and coaches and roster turnovers have struggled to get over that next step. But the sharks do seem to to be on the right track here, especially with a lot of the shrewd additions and leveraging of assets that Mike Rear has done along the way. Now, they've used up all three of their retention slots. One of them will get cleared after Ben Burns goes off the books this summer so they can use that next year and that'll open up a bit of flexibility in terms of adding more assets. But you mentioned

the contracts. And I think the time to strike for them will be 26, 27, because that's going to be the final year of celebrating at Will Smith, CLC. Right now, not counting Logan Couture's final year, because we'll see if he's ever going to play again. If not, though, they have less than $20 million in cap commitments

and like four or five of them on players who aren't even on the team anymore. Like, they have no one pretty much making money other than I believe, like Tyler DeFoli, essentially at that point. So that's going to be 70, $5 million worth of cap space, if not more.

And if there's signs next year, all of a sudden not saying, oh, become a cap ceiling team and really make an incredibly strong push. But I think a lot of avenues open up for becoming competitive. So I'd say another year of kind of stacking the foundation is ahead. And they probably will once again be quite bad in terms of standings next year. But I think continuing what they've done this year is probably the way. way to go as opposed to like any sort of extreme directional change. All right.

That's all the time we have for today, John. We got to get out here. I'm going to let you plug some stuff. We, we hinted at the piece you did over at the score talking to Spencer Carberry. We tease the piece you're working on about six foot six players. Any other stuff you want to let the listeners know about how they can check you out, where they can check that stuff out.

Give them the good word about everything. Yeah, sure. And thanks for having me on, Dimitri. So your best bet is probably just to find me. on Twitter, follow me, and I tweeted out links to all my stories. It's M-A-T-I-S-Z, J-O-H-N, my last name, my first name,

no space or underscore or anything. And I'd say the one story to plug is recently I dropped a pretty big deep dive on the modern hockey stick and just all the customization certain players do and why they do them and how when you marry the customization aspect

with shooting mechanics, I think that's been a contributor to goal rates going up. So really dug into that. And yeah, you can find it on my feet on Twitter. That's probably the best bet. And yeah, always happy to come on. All right, buddy.

Well, this is a blast. Thank you for indulging me, as I said, off the top about our wide-ranging Alexi Protis conversation. That's all for today from us. If you want to help us out, go smash that five-star button. Leave us a nice little review wherever you listen to the show. Join us in the P. We took a couple questions from our loyal listeners here today.

We'll continue to do so moving forward so. so you can join the community there. And that's all for today. We've got a couple more shows here to close out the week. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the SportsNab Radio Network.