The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Andrew Brewer

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Andrew Brewer joins Jeff Marek on The Sheet to discuss being a video coach, winning the first-ever challenge in the NHL, and some ideas he has on how to approach the game...Shout out to our sponsors!����🏼Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/Reach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Flames_Nation🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoff Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We'll see what Andrew Brewer thinks about this one. Noted video coach. We're going to talk about video review, but first we're going to talk about nachos, because that seems to be the cheesy, delicious topic of the day. Andrew Brewer joins us here on the sheet, the maiden voyage. I've wanted to talk to Andrew for quite some time here, and he joins me now. Andrew, how are you today, my friend? Glad to have you aboard.

I want to open up by, I'm not sure if you saw the video from last night, or the viz from last night, with Corey Perry skating through nacho cheese before one-timing a puck past a very stunned Logan Thompson. Washington still won the game, but nonetheless, you have to laugh about it I suppose, but at the same time, encourage people not to throw things on the ice. Thank you very much. Your thoughts on this one. I did.

I love your story too about throwing eggs on the ice for delay of game. Roger. And taking it back to, I have a theory that coaches ruin everything. They've ruined three on three over time with taking the puck back. That's why you have to always be willing to change the rules. The coaches were just game plan around it. But, uh, I take it back to the Vancouver issue with, uh, Connor Garland and Connor McDavid may as well keep that in the news.

No one else is talking about it these days. Oh yeah. It's pretty quiet. But to me, the biggest issue is, uh, Hey, is that the plan now is that your last 20 seconds of a game, do you just completely goon, completely mug the best player on the other team? And bear hug them, do whatever you have to do

to interfere with them? So again, I'll circle it back. There's a lot there. I'm glad you got us there really quickly. Again, I'll go back to Roger Nilsen. Roger Nilsen was a guy with under two minutes left. If his team was killing off a five on three, as soon as the puck would drop,

he'd throw someone over the boards. And they'd be like, okay, well, there's another minor penalty. Well, okay, it's still gonna be a five on three. And that's why that rule was changed, was because of Roger Nilsson. Roger Nilsson initiated a number of rule changes. My favorite one was the penalty shot,

where he would put, when he was coaching Peterborough, Ron Stackhouse, who later went on to star on the Pittsburgh Penguins blue line. He put Ron Stackhouse in net for penalty shots. And the forward would grab the puck at center ice and Stackhouse would charge out, meet the forward the blue line, quick little poke and the penalty shot is over. That's why in every rule book now you have to have a goalie in net for penalty shots and that's because of Roger Nielsen and Ron stack I think stack house went seven for seven one year with the Peterborough Pete's if I'm if I'm not mistaken But back to your point coaches ruin

Everything they find ways around all of it Okay, but I'm not here to talk about nachos with you I want to talk about video review and first of all before we talk about where video review is at right now, take us back to 2015. And it's Plakanets and Berenier and it's goalie interference. And you're the video coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Mike Babcock is behind the bench. Take us through that entire scenario.

And Zach, if you had the the vids if you can roll it sort of behind here as Andrew talks through it that would be great. Take us through the the very first because you're responsible for it, Coach's Challenge for Goalie Interference. In some ways that may have been the easiest challenge in history because there was no precedent at that point. So I got hired in 2015 to be the Toronto Maple Leafs alongside Mike Babcock. So as this play is going on, this is game one of the season, Wednesday night, you know, Hockey Night in Canada on Sportsnet.

It's the big game, the start of the NHL season. This is, I believe it's early in the second period. And as you can see, like we're on the bench. We have no idea what's happening because we're not used to having a challenge. But I'm in the video room. Hey, everything you're looking at, one of the angles is the above net angle. And on the above net angle, you can see right now,

Bernier gets hit in the head. So, you know, one of the things that video coaches have learned is you look at the body language of the goalie, you have a goalie that's upset. You can see I'm speaking to Jim Hiller right now. He's telling Mike Babcock, let's challenge it. And you know, no one's ever done that before. So we were just kind of going through the motions and then, hey, that ended up being the first goal

that was ever called back in NHL history. What was the nature of the conversation? Like when we see you there, you can see, you know, Hiller's got his earpiece in and he's obviously having a conversation with you. What was the nature of the conversation? Like when we see you there, you can see, you know, Hiller's got his earpiece in and he's obviously having a conversation with you. What was the conversation? Like did you have to talk him into it? Because as you mentioned,

this is Virgin territory, made in voyage. We've never seen this before and he's talking to Mike Babcock. Do you remember? And there's now some cadre going like, are we really doing this? Are we really doing this? Can you remember the exact conversation?

I don't remember the exact conversation, but I'll give, uh, uh, Michael a lot of even that's other people do their own thing. And he said, Hey, a brew, you're in charge of this and don't make me look like an idiot. Um, and yeah, I'm sure I did make him look like a few times. Um, and again, that's another thing that coaches ruined by challenging all the time. And that's why we had too many challenges. They'd put the penalty. That's a whole nother conversation, but. Yeah. No, it's gotta be as clear as possible.

I mean, you get 20,000 people yelling. There's a lot of noise. You only had, you know, back then they were really strict about 30, 40 seconds to decide if you were going to challenge or not. So it's a quick decision. Hey, do you want to challenge? Yes or no?

Hey, let's challenge this. It was goalie interference. He hit him in the head. And yeah, this is before there were monitors on the bench as well so back then remember when we first started they didn't have the screens on all the benches. Yep. You know I would imagine too those the moments when the challenge has been issued between when the challenge is issued and the verdict. For a video coach that must be incredibly stressful knowing that in some cases like I think about you know the the Kale McCargoll against the Edmonton Oilers. We could be talking

about hundreds of thousands of dollars hinging on your belief that this goal should either count or not count. Like how much, how much stress do video coaches, because it's gonna be the head coach that wears it because it's the head coach that says we challenge, but you guys know this isn't the coach's decision, this is the video coach's decision. How much stress is there for these video coaches? Including yourself. It's huge. I go back to actually my last game I coached in the NHL. We had two challenges in game four of the playoffs,

second round against Tampa when I was with the Florida Panthers. And one of them was a puck over glass. And I basically challenged it based off of the body language of Andre Pallat. And with that, I didn't have a definitive angle saying, saying hey this is definitely a penalty or this is definitely puck over glass this is definitely no goal let's call this so basically if we get it wrong they're going the power play hey Kuturov is pretty good in that situation they

got Stamkos on the other side probably not gonna be a good situation so actually you know I wear an Apple watch and my heart rate was up to 140 I'm sitting in a coach's room in the bowels of Emily Arena my 140 beats per minute. So it's an incredible amount of stress and this is where I've done presentations and the past where video coaches are really the most underpaid position in the NHL in the sense of the value of the decisions that they made are so incredible. If you look at game six last year and the decisions that the video coach has made for the Edmonton Oilers to challenge the goal that forced game seven and the amount of money I go back to the year before when Florida went to the Stanley Cup

finals when they lost to Vegas, Miles feed John Congemi had a challenge in game at six, I think in Boston hand pass and no one on the bench saw the only people saw it were Miles and John and because they saw that they changed the momentum in the game they got the goal back do they go to the Stanley Cup finals without Miles and John you know calling that goal back so yeah that's the most valuable position and it's most underpaid position for the value and the cost to a franchise if you get that wrong there's no and we all know how many home gates make in the playoffs you're three million dollars home gate and easy million dollars so you're looking at millions and millions of dollars on the line for these decisions so they are massively under

paid I'll stick up for the video coach union on this one it should be you know one of the highest paid coaching positions in the sport let me throw out a range then I I've been led to believe that the range for video coaches for salary is between 75 to 150. Am I too light? Am I too heavy or am I right on the money there? You're right on the money. Hey, you, you always have outliers, a few above, a few below, um, you know, different markets, different situations, but you're right on the money. Hey, you, you always have outliers, a few above, a few below, um, you know, different markets, different situations, but you're so going back to when I used to start in the league in 2015 or 2014, um, Hey, that's a fair range.

That was before, uh, goal interference challenges before all the challenges. But when you look at, I always go back to, yeah, Hey, you know, it's 150. That seems like a lot of money. But when you look at what the retail go back to, yeah, hey, you know, it's 150. That seems like a lot of money. But when you look at what the retail manager of Lululemon at, you know, the mall in Toronto and Oakville is making, um, it's not that much money for the amount of decisions or the amount of, um, financial decisions that are on the line with every decision that video coach makes. So we've got a question in the chat here.

Uh, we have a few actually, um, John Bankhart asks, have you ever felt like you made the wrong choice on a call? How many times you doubted yourself Andrew Brewer? I made a mistake before. I'll take full credit. Game one of the playoffs our first time against Boston, not the 2013 series but would have been have been, I think, 2018. Game one in Boston, there was an offside on the first goal of the game about four minutes in. We didn't have the angle on the coach's room. They showed it on the NESN broadcast.

On the Hawkeye, I was capturing the game on the Sportsnet feed on the NESN broadcast, which was on the Hawkeye machine. We didn't see it on the replay because we were Luline cameras, so we didn't see the replay on the Sportsnet feed until after the puck was dropped and we didn't have enough time to make the decision. So I had a missed call in the playoffs and you know a little bit is hey there's frustration with the league from a technical standpoint that they weren't providing. We didn't feel they were providing what we needed to make the best decision in A little bit is, hey, there's frustration with the league from a technical standpoint that they weren't providing.

We didn't feel that they were providing what we needed to make the best decision in the 35 seconds. But at the end of the day, hey, I made a mistake that cost us a goal in the playoffs. So, yeah, for every glory moment you have, like the one that, you know, my first game in Toronto where you help win a game, you have another moment like that where you fail, so that's part of the journey.

Do you hear it from the head coach when that happens? I'm sure you've heard stories about it too. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, hey, it's everything goal interference. No coach is gonna give the video guy a time for it. If you guys can't figure out, you make your best decision on goal interference. Stuff like offside though, that's kind of your job to understand and make sure that you're making the right decision

on that. So yeah, you definitely hear it from the coach to a certain extent. You know, I've been lucky enough to work with a million different coaches. So each has their own way of handling in each of their own kind of ways. But in general, it's a team sport and even people, you know, you may not see eye to eye with their they're so supportive of it because they know how challenging the rule is and how challenging the whole process is. Do you, um, Oh, you know what? Here's one. I asked it, the, um, I mentioned it reference a couple of seconds ago, the McCarr situation

with the Edmonton Oilers from a couple of years ago. Did you know that was on side? Yeah, I did know that was onside. Yeah, I did know that was onside. Again, it's almost like you have to be a lawyer in the sense that you have to know all the precedents because not only is there the rule book, they also for plays like offside, they have past precedents and past examples that they've had that show it. So in that situation, yeah, I was like, oh oh geez, that one is, you know, it's on side. That's the right call. It's the right situation. Hey, you know, goalie interference,

I don't know any better than anybody else. I don't have, you know, a better insight than probably the average fan in that situation. I did. But that's, you know, why the video coaches have to work so hard. You really, every day you're downloading all the goalie interference calls that are turned over and all the calls around the league that are overturned just so you kind of know all the nuances. There's been situations where players have left the ice. Remember that there's always been rule changes that have come every year. Remember how the plane of the blue line changed in the past few years as well. So you always have to try to stay up with the role

and you try to have to study and kind of know all the precedents and know all the different roles that have been set around different situations in the league. Okay, I want to tell you the concept of a show that I used to always pitch at the old company and it never went anywhere. Hopefully I can do it here. So, and you would be the perfect person to do it with. Have you ever gone back to look at some of the most famous

goals in hockey history? Henderson 72, Crosby Vancouver, Gretzky LeMieux in 87, Nystrom in 1980. Like think of like the most famous goals we've ever seen. To go back and check the zone entry to see if it was on side. Essentially taking modern technology or modern thought and taking it backwards and asking yourself how Brett Hull foot in the crease 99 maybe we shouldn't be

focusing on the foot in the crease we should be focusing on the offside go back and look at all the goal famous goals in history try to figure out which ones based on today's standard would have been called back well I mean you mentioned goal interference that's what mean, you mentioned goal interference. If you take goal interference and even penalty standards, the amount of penalties and obstruction that would be done on the zone entry. But yeah, 100%. I'm sure there's situations where there's massive goals that have counted that would

have never counted. I've talked with Joel Quindle. He'll talk about in the past, oh, you win this cup because in this situation you got, you know, you're playing in game seven, they screw up a call, it was a high stick and you see after the game that it wasn't a high stick and they score on the power play, so you win game seven, then you go on to the next series and the goalie's hurt. There's so much in hockey, it's such an even coin flip sport that the smallest things, the smallest margins that hey if you go back

like and not only had it for offside but hey you know they're on the power play in that situation because you know they called it a high stick and they gave him a four for drawing blood well you know his own teammates stick that you know caused the you know causing to draw blood and it wouldn't even be a penalty in today's day and age like how much of the game is influenced by that so absolutely it would the sport is so fast, it's so close, the players are so good, anything can happen.

How much do video coaches thank Matt Duchesne for guaranteeing them employment for going offside against Nashville? Like I think there was actually, it wasn't just Matt Duchesne, I think Alec Martinez, there was another incident with I think there was actually, it wasn't just Matthew Shane, I think Alec Martinez. There was another incident with I think with Martinez in Los Angeles. I think it was the two of them that sort of got the ball rolling on offside reviews, etc. But how much of video coaches, Andrew, look at Matthew Shane and say, let's make sure he gets a Christmas card every year?

Well, I mean, was that Philly? I feel like it was your room in Philadelphia. It was something along the same lines there that like, it was just so egregious. And it feels like every year to there's a new situation that something happens. There was the was it a hand pass in Vegas and the Vegas San Jose series that leads to them adding more rules and Oh, Timo Meyer. Yes, Timo Meyer. You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right in front of the net. Yes. Yes, you're right.

And then they added hand passes. So correct. Yeah, I think to a certain extent, Matt Duchesne is going to check the mail, but half of it might be gifts and half of it might be exploding. So there's some guys that are frustrating with situations like that. And life was easier back when we didn't have to worry about these things, but I understand it. At the end of the day, there's a lot of opportunities for people in the sport now because of it. Okay, you know what I think about a lot, not a lot,

but you know what I think about occasionally? How much time in a game doesn't count? Like I'll look at a game, any game, and we can do this tonight. It's four games on the go around the NHL. How many times as a video coach have you flagged that was an illegal entry but nothing happened? And essentially let's say that 35 seconds in the offensive zone doesn't really count because if a goal was scored, it would have come back. So essentially that is like 35 seconds of empty calorie hockey because no matter what happened, a goal, it wasn't really going to count. A penalty would count, certainly,

but as far as anything in the offensive is all culminating in a goal, wouldn't have counted. Now, player doesn't score, puck comes back out, the game continues, but I always think about that 35 seconds that wasn't going to count. Like I just wonder, how much empty calorie hockey, I don't know if you've ever done this, how much empty calorie hockey have you seen in a game

where an entire sequence wouldn't count because they didn't score a goal, but the entry was bad so it wouldn't count anyway. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I never like officially looked at it, but to be honest, I gotta give refs credit, or more specifically, linesmen. It's incredible for how fast

and how hard it is to call it right, how often they get it right. So I'd say on average, there's my understanding, you know, just from the games that I've done is maybe two to three times a game where they they missed the offside, where every play is reviewed, every entry is reviewed. One guy's coding the game in like a huddle sports code. The other guy's going to be going and running the Hawkeye, reviewing every single entry, basically keeping an eye on every situation. But it's really only two or three situations per game. Now the question I had kind of on that point though,

I used to disagree with Jim Hiller in the sense of, okay, last two minutes of the game, we have an illegal entry. My opinion was, you two minutes of the game, we have an illegal entry. My opinion was, you know, six on five, we should come back. If we know we're offside, we should regroup, come out of the zone, regroup for no reason, basically, and then re-attack because, hey, to your point, count it. His opinion was you should not, you should still try to score. And then they would reset the clock to, because they'll reset the clock to whatever it was going to get set to.

So that was like, you know, just a coaching thing. Hey, do you try to still score and try to get the goal or do you, because they're going to reset the clock to the time of the offside or do you regroup and just try to play legally? That I had never thought about that before. That would be wild to watch. A coach pulling his team out of the offensive zone, knowing that the zone entry was bad and they wanted to keep possession to attack again. That is one thing I had never considered.

How deep of a discussion did that go? And who else on the bench weighed in on that one? That's interesting. Well, I mean, those are the discussions. The best saying and the worst thing about being an NHL coach is you're in a 10 by 10 room with these guys for 18 hours a day and you just talk about everything.

And you have these big discussions and big fights and big, you know, you talk about absolutely everything and every kind of concept and every silly idea you've ever had. And I tend to be someone with probably a few more silly ideas than others. You know, from killing changes, I, you know, I'm very much a change the sport kind of guy. But that for me, that was thing is you know I just you know I think that you should get off the ice when you have a broken stick in most situations you know. So you'll I remember fighting with DJ Smith for hours and hours over you know whether you should leave the ice because broken stick. You know I used to play with Brendan Shanahan about you know the

push on the back of the pants from the stick of the players, you know, the, the speed boost, is that a useful thing? So, um, those are kind of the joy arguments that you get into with a coaching staff. Take us through your, uh, your logic. I mean, you're pretty much making yourself, um, a pile on out there when you, when you lose your stick and right away, the other team just starts to attack your position cause he can do essentially nothing with it. Uh, how is that conversation about if you lose your stick, you should go to the bench.

That's the wiser thing than being out there and maybe trying to lie down and block a shot. Yeah. And I don't have a any math to this clear answer. It just, how many times have you been watching the game and you've see, okay, well there's a broken stick. And then the other team just exploits it for the next 47 seconds and they just keep on attacking that one individual player.

And you're like, well, in four seconds, you could have skated to the bench, got a new stick and reskated into the play. And yeah, you would have been down say five on four in those seven seconds that it took you to get to the bench, but it's better than essentially being down, you know, 5 versus 4.25 for 40 seconds. So, sometimes I feel like, hey, we try to stay in and we block shots and we see all these ones where it works out and it's, you know, sexy guys are blocking three, four shots with no stick. But I think there's a ton of situations where we just kind of don't realize it. Hey, they attack the guy with no stick and they score a goal.

And while we just write it off because the guy had no stick. Okay. Let me ask you, um, every year I sort of have one thing that I try to force on the game, try to force on everybody that'll, that'll listen and you're a creative thinker, what do you think about this one? I don't see any reason outside of face-offs after goals or face-offs to start the period. Although with the power play, I would change that. Why you should have neutral zone face-offs.

Puck's too far away from the net. You're trying to encourage more offense. How about this for an idea, video coach Andrew Brewer. You go offside, Puck comes back into your zone for a face-off. No neutral zone face-offs. Your thoughts? 100%. So there's roughly 61 and a half face-offs in a game. About 20 of those take place in the neutral zone. And after specifically you eliminate offensive blue face-offs. Those are the worst face-offs in hockey because if you're on the offensive blue line, if you win that,

your only real situation is to dump the puck and it's almost impossible to get a controlled entry right after a neutral zone offensive blue face-off. After a neutral zone defensive blue face-off, same idea. You're trying to basically go, you've got nine guys or 10 guys in the neutral zone. It always leads to a dumb puck. Dumped puck leads to less offense and possession entries. After every offensive zone face off, one or about 20% of after Ozone face-offs is going to be a scoring chance. So any team in the league, no matter whether they're good, bad, 20%

of the time when they win a face-off they get a scoring chance. So if you take those 20 face-offs that you're doing in the neutral zone, which are from awful hockey from dumped pucks in or people that are dumping pucks in, you put them in the offensive zone or defensive zone, that's going to lead to more offense. 100% no-brainer. It wouldn't affect anything in the game. There's no history of the game. People forget that they used to drop the puck like a foot inside the blue line back in the 1990s. Yeah. They used to have face-offs all over the ice in the most ridiculous places. It's the one of the stupidest things that we do within the sport and it's the worst

hockey and it's one of the easiest ways to create offense. Let's create more offense without hurting anything. This is a 100% no brainer. Do it right after the four nations. I just want some silence right there, Andrew, because that's where Zach is going to cut it. And whenever I have this discussion and anyone challenges me on it,

I'm just going to play your response. I'm going to keep this on my phone. And anytime I have this discussion with anyone, I'm just going to play your response. Listen, we got to do this one again. There's so many other things to get into with video coaching and video coaches. But before I let you go, 200 foot coaching,

200fthockey.com. Tell us about the website, tell us about the business. Yeah, so I'm lucky enough to, when I worked in the NHL, worked with 28 different NHL head coaches, including I think nine of the top 20 in wins. I'm lucky enough to learn from all the top voices in the games. I'm trying to help organizations so whether you're a youth hockey organization, whether you're a junior team, whether a pro team, anything you need. So consulting, skills, video, kind of you name it I do it. A 200 foot game means doing everything on the ice, 200 foot off the ice, 200 foot game means doing everything on the ice 200 foot off the ice

To different hockey is doing everything off the ice to help your organization have success So I do that I am the owner of 200 foot hockey and 200 foot coaching also work for a great company called fast model sport coach developments or coach software player development practice planning lots of great tools to help coaches teams be more efficient used by a third of the NHL. And I also, I love league prospects. So I have to, you started with Elmer's.

So I always talk all the time about league prospects. It is the fourth Elmer to play in the NHL. I'm on leagueprospects.com. Elmer Soderblom, Elmer Locke, L-A-C-H, Vasco, and Maracle. So, four Elmers have played in the NHL. Okay, so I missed out on one. Who was the one? I had Locke, I had Vasco, obviously Soderblom. Who was the one that I missed on? that I missed on? Miracle, Maracle played 11 games in the NHL. He's a big Detroit Pontiacs guy.

Played 11 games for the Rangers in the 30-31 season. You should know that, Jeff. Go to the box and feel ashamed, Merrick. That's embarrassing. Turn in your hockey historian card, Merrick. Andrew, you're the best path. Let's do this again real soon, OK? Thanks for having me.

["Dark Man"] I went to the dark man, he tried to give me a little medicine I'm like, nah man, that's fine I'm not against those methods but I knew It's me, myself and how this gon' be fixing my mind I do want the record I turned on the music I do want the record I turned on the music I do wanna break it up I turned on the music But you stand up there, battle, get you sometimes losing

Helping on the days that went wrong