Slafkovsky’s Development as a Player, the Sharks New Look Top Line, Celebrini’s Role on Team Canada, and Tampa Bay’s Defensive Results

(upbeat music) - Regressing to the mean since 2015. It's the hockey epidemiocast with your host, Demetri Philip Ovech. - Welcome to the hockey epidemiocast. My name's Demetri Philip Ovech and joining me is my good buddy, Jack Con. Jack, what's going on, man? - Happy New Year. We're, we're into 2026. Happy New Year, indeed. Wishing all of our listeners a very happy New Year. Hope to play that a nice celebration the other day. We're gonna start 2026 with a really fun show. We got a loaded list of topics that we want to get through today. A lot of them kind of stemming around player development and skill sets and kind of getting the most, especially at a young players. And we're gonna go through the league and cover some interesting names that have popped up recently. I wanted to start with your Isofkovsky, I have a limit of the Habs in general because they're coming off this or they're still on a road trip. But it's been very impressive today. They had a 62 win in Boston in the final game before the holiday break. Then they come out of that break. They take five out of six possible points at Tampa Bay, Florida. Caroline, I'm most recently coming back with a couple monster. Third period, Serge is throughout, throughout the sixth in the league. In points percentage, just one point back of Tampa Bay and Atlantic through 40 games. And I think the most encouraging development to me this year for the Habs, beyond obviously the stats, I just cited about where they are in the standings to date, is the development of your Isofkovsky. And in particular, his play as kind of an on-pock creator in his fourth NHL season, his work as a facilitator and distributor. In my opinion, is one of the largest individual improvements I've seen on tape this year across the entire league. And I wanted to get into that with you because obviously he's a player playing with the Habs that you're very familiar with. And I feel like this is right up your alley in terms of this type of individual skill set improvement this year. So what are you seeing from him and kind of what we can attribute that to and what we can take away from it as it's going on right now? - So first off, props for the Habs, for basically taking another step at end. Doing justice to what I said about them earlier this season. I remember in our first episode together this season, I said that models are undervaluing the Habs. And then we had some pushback, but it's played out so far. And one of the main reasons is because the core of this team are at an age where we're going to see year to year improvement. Like when you have NHL players, especially high end players who are in their early 20s, they could sort of drastically outperformed their previous season and it wouldn't be highly unusual. Like if you look at an NHL players, aging curve, Sloughkovsky is in a place right now where, yeah, like we should expect big year to year improvement from 18th to 19, 1920, 2021, et cetera, right? But that's not to say that what we're seeing with him is like what is going to happen naturally because as we know, an aging curve is an average or a composite of every single outcome that we've observed, right? It's not like you leave a player to fend for himself and then from 20 to 22, he's naturally going to improve at a certain rate. It's like, you know, if you leave a six-year-old in the forest for two years, he's not going to come back as a normally functioning eight-year-old. You're going to have like a mowgli jungle book situation, right? So anyway, so going back to Sloughkovsky, like ever since he was drafted first overall, you know, and I would go seem whether it's a training camp, whether it's a development camp or in practice or on TV during games, I'd be like, this guy is just guessing out there, right? Like you would see him try to make a pass into the middle of the ice like there's no teammates there. So he thinks that he's doing something and he's just sort of taking a guess and it doesn't connect. Whereas this year, the biggest difference is actually, he's way more in tune with his environment. So whether it is the pressure that's being put on him, whether it's the location of his teammates, whether it's his own location on the ice. And like we're seeing a player who is functioning much more like, you know, a high-end NHL playmaker, which is you have an athlete who's highly attuned and highly sensitive to his environment. And I think that's the biggest difference. It's not that he got faster or stronger or his hands improved or is shot improved. It's just now, you know, if he's taking a test, he's reading the question better. That's the biggest difference. - Yeah, it was clear in his first three seasons, I mean, after going first over all the physical tools that were so tantalizing, but then the question of the functionality of it, right? And I think early on his career, he'd kind of been relegated to playing a very simple third wheel style of game alongside Suzuki and Colfield where he'd kind of just hang around the net or in the slot and wait for the puck to come to him and now watching on this here, it feels like he's flourishing in like a significantly more nuanced or diverse way, especially initiating some of these offensive sequences. And that's what I was gonna ask, you know, and you hit on it a little bit there, but whether it's improved field skill development, just more confidence at this stage of his career, opportunity kind of playing and existing within a different context now that he's playing on a separate line and maybe getting the chance to just play with the puck a little bit more and do some of that more offensive creation early on in this sequence because just watching on tape, the combination of passes, he's both attempting and executing with increased frequency has just unlocked a whole new level for me in watching them play, especially recently, and it's the variety of it, right? You could see in Carolina setting up that initial goal where it's the drop pass kind of following an entry, getting into space and then allowing them it up to do the rest, some backdoor, shot passes, east, west, see him action, using his frame in particular, downloada, protect the puck, but then spin off a check and as the defender's attention is on him, hitting an open man with a chance to do something with it after that. It's been so fun to watch and it's just an entirely different, it's night and day compared to what it was the first couple of years for me in watching him play specifically. - Yeah, and I would actually point to the goal that he scored, it's the one where he snuck the puck short side against Busy. - Yeah, it's in the third beard against Carolina. - Yeah, exactly, so that one is good to look at because there exists some replay angles where you actually see him like look up and take a snapshot of the net and then he realizes that Busy is a little bit loose off his post and he's just like, I'm gonna try this 'cause I think I can sneak this in. Whereas in years past, either it would be a totally blind shot where he would just hit the goal in the chest or maybe he doesn't see that opportunity because again, he doesn't look. So the thing with him is, I work with Adam Nicholas who is in charge of, I would say, the Habs skill development and the player development side. We were colleagues for a number of years and he is big into something called the Constraint Lead Approach CLA. So it's a relatively new skill development sort of mentality where basically again it's like, the idea is you wanna develop athletes who are attuned to their environment. So you're not necessarily forcing them to replicate a certain movement pattern or a certain skill or you're more sort of developing athletes who are able to operate in a sandbox and find solutions as they emerge, right? So basically you're looking to develop players to know how to improvise, who have the necessary toolkit to be able to identify the situation that they're in and then find the best possible solution in that situation. And again, you know, at 18, Slavkovsky was a player who depended on his linemates, hockey IQ or problem solvability to produce, right? Like I unearthed this quote from Thomas Tatar from a few years ago where they played together on the Slovak senior team during Slavkovsky's draft year and he was saying how Slavkovsky obviously is a great player but he's a kind of player who does really well when he's reading off his linemates and leveraging his linemates hockey IQ. And you know, so Thomas Tatar may wind up be one of the more underrated habs, you know, of the past decade but also I think he's really underrated in terms of how he reads the game and that's totally right. So, you know, maybe last year we saw Slavkovsky being able to read off of Suzuki and Coffield and starting to produce but now he's also able to create for his linemates as well now with Demandov and Capitan. And so that was gonna be the logical next step and I think it's a long time coming with, you know, Adams, you know, sort of approach the skill development which I think is really promising and we're already seeing some nice dividends but yeah, like, you know, for maybe there's another couple of years that he's gonna lock in due time but the direction that he's trending in is really encouraging both for him personally but also for the habs and also for this sort of the CLA approach to skill development in hockey. - Yeah, you're certainly seeing that the feel for an understanding of where guys are and I wanna talk about him and Demandov but just the last known as Slavkovsky 12 primary points already in 40, or primary assistant, 40 games, he had 16 all of last year and the last 18 games, he's got eight goals and 12 assists since the end of November. So him and Demandov together and I think this is obviously for the rest of this, he's an important where the habs are but I think for the long term as well in establishing a second wave of offense and not being as reliant on essentially Suzuki, Coffield and Hudson as a trio last year where they did so much of the heavy lifting offensively and they were kind of a one line team in that regard. Him and Demandov so far 189 by one five minutes together they're generating about 4.1 goals per hour in that time and it coincides with Demandov, I think, I kind of on a show earlier this week great and it's taken the training wheels off a little bit in his first one HL season where start of the year in October, he's playing 1347 per game, November they bump it up to 1446. In December we've seen it go up to 1650 and I think there's another couple layers to keep expanding beyond that. And in the process of that, as he's played more I think Demandov's also started to lean on his shot a little bit more and look for it and not necessarily just be trying to set up everyone all the time and we've seen some scores on cool goals but I think just attempt a lot more and that's gonna unlock stuff for him as well and that's kind of scary to think about considering the fact that he's already second on this team in 5.5 points behind just Lane Hudson despite the fact that he's seventh among habs forwards in actual 5.5 usage and so I think this is all really exciting. I mean the habs have been playing some fun games. It was particularly I'm using watching the game against the Panthers earlier this week 'cause TSN had the Jets broadcast team calling it with Mike Johnson doing the world juniors and they were just audibly taking a back throughout that game, watching like how quickly they were moving the puck as a team and creating scoring chances and I think part of that is they've been subjected to watching the Winnipeg Jets play hockey all year so they were comparing it to that but it was pretty fun to listen to nonetheless and yeah it's really fun hockey right now. - Yeah so first of that point like would it be nice to have just out of market teams work these games once in a while just so that they don't always watch the same teams or the same players, the same styles 'cause I think a lot of broadcast get a bad rep about whether they're homers or they're hit on the same players or maybe they have certain blind spots and maybe having some sort of out of market coverage or some sort of cross checking would be really cool from a broadcasting point of view. Again, this was a very particular situation where you had the world juniors who got a schedule issue but as you said maybe we also would gain from watching out of market teams once in a while. The second thing is you mentioned sort of the point totals or the goal creation for Slavkovsky and Demidov and certainly that's encouraging and it's a sign of a duel with real sort of high-end potential. The play driving hasn't been there yet and right now the feeling in Montreal is like everybody's a little bit down on Suzuki and Coffield because on the goal side it's not as strong even though on the play driving side they're still in sort of that 52, 53% expected goals that are which is very healthy whereas for Demidov and Slavkovsky they're like down in the 40s which is about to regress but I think the Habs, again they're on a really nice trajectory I think they're gonna overperform even the most optimistic pre-season projections with the addition of the no that's really solidifying the team. There's still a team that has like five pop six forwards for six spots so we'll see what happens down the road with maybe Mike Cohade or maybe Alexander Zorowski who's having a really good KHL season but again this is a team on the rise and I feel really lucky now to be able to watch them on a day-to-day basis. - Yeah I think part of that on the play driving thing is that they are playing with a 22 year old center who's essentially playing his first full NHL season as well and so I think that context is important in terms of maybe some of the details. A couple other things Slavkovsky that I had in my notes one is I feel like watching them play he's utilizing his reach so well. Now to like poke and prod at 50/50 pucks and either retreat possession for himself or get it to a teammate and that's led to a number of these goals where amidst that chaos the opponent if they lose possession of the puck are on the wrong side of it and it creates an opportunity there. I think the next step for him in terms of skill development is gonna be tightening up some of the stick handling in traffic 'cause it feels like he's still somewhat a little clunky when he's kind of fumbling pucks in those situations and that's why that play that you talked about when he snuck it short side by bus he was encouraging because that was kind of this end to end rush where he had to weave around a couple defenders and protect the puck in tight and then eventually led to that shot opportunity and there's certain instances where he especially like receiving a pass on the move where I think it's gonna come with time for a player with his reach who's still kind of trying to figure out some of these little details but considering the leap we've seen this year I imagine that's gonna be the next step that Adam Nicholas and the Habs are gonna be working on with him in future off seasons. - Yeah, I mean, you know, if he did everything perfect he'd be a top 10 player playing the league where obviously he's not there yet. My favorable comparable for him a few years ago was Nishushkin and I think certainly he's trending in that direction now so we'll see how that develops. - He has Nishushkin especially at this stage where his career is so much more straight line though. I find and maybe at times you'd want it's gonna be a little bit more in terms of using the frame to get to the net but I think the East West stuff we've seen from him as a playmaker this year has been far more nuanced than a lot of what you see in terms of the way Nishushkin plays. Okay, let's get to Mac on Celebrity. And in particular, I learned to get into him and the dynamic that's kind of building here over the past couple of weeks with him and Igor Chernashov. We're up to 90 minutes and 31 seconds of 5-1-5 I stand between the two, the sharks have generated 12 goals in that time, hiding your chances are 33 to 17. For San Jose and I'm very proud of myself 'cause I force you in preparing for the show to get into Chernashov's tape in particular and you had some interesting notes from seeing that and so I wanted to break that all that down with you and what we're seeing from the two of them and then get into maybe a bigger picture celebrating a conversation after that. - So Chernashov is a guy who I basically had no idea existed until a few weeks ago and who I never seen on tape before last night. So I went and I grabbed not only his NHL games but some of his last NHL games and like, man, like this guy's good. Like all the things that I just talked about was Slavkowski. Like, Slavkowski, he's 21 and a half years old right now and Chernashov turned 20 not too long ago and in terms of like his awareness of pressure and his ability to play in contact in terms of his ability to find the best play available in terms of his ability to, you know, react quickly to turnovers on both sides of the puck. He's like a year and a half ahead of Slavkowski and we just talked about how good Slavkowski is. Like this guy, like I don't know how he slipped the 33 'cause, you know, he's a six foot three winger who played in the pro league. Well, I mean, he didn't play a time in the KHL during his draft year but he played some, he's a right hand guy, can shoot the puck as sort of all the tools that you look for. And, you know, he's not, he hasn't been one of the more heralded San Jose Sharks prospects because they've had a lot right with Michael Misa and Sam Dickinson. But I think this guy can be a game changer for them in terms of being sort of that third guy. Sorry. On a celebrating Eichland line, like those three together, I find there's just a perfect match of skill sets in terms of, you know, physical attributes in terms of play styles. Like I just love that line right now. You know why he fell on the draft? Because he, if you recall, and the pre-draft showcase in Florida in his draft year, got a severe sunburn and wound up missing, I think like a part of the drills in terms of teams were evaluating and looking at, but also meeting with some of the teams as well. And I think he's gonna be a late first round pick that year and then he wound up falling to the first pick of the second round. But yeah, remarkable story. And he's been awesome to watch. I mean, getting this opportunity to come up and play with Celebrini after Will Smith got her, I think kind of as a, as a reward for how well he'd been playing as a 20 year old in the AHL this year, where he was about a point per game and seven games so far only. So it is a small sample, but three goals, four primary assists, eight points, 14 high danger chances already. And on a permanent basis, if I won five, he's already in that territory of some of the best kind of big body grinder and that front guys, like Andrews Lee, Zach Hyben, archery Leckon and so you can certainly see the vision there. And I think the playmaking is underrated as well, because what's been really noticeable and particularly fun to watch so far between the two of these guys has been Celebrini all of a sudden having access to kind of this big, bodied, battering ram that can take on defenders and win battles down low and create chaos and then have the skill to find him is Celebrini all of a sudden now is afforded some of these extra opportunities to just find soft ice in the offensive zone and then get catch and shot, catch and shoot looks off of it. And he's so just devastatingly lethal on those shots in particular. And it's amazing that he had already scored as many goals as he did at the NHL level as a teenager, despite the fact that he had to do so much on puck creation where he has to do all the heavy lifting just to get in shooting opportunities and the entire defense is keying on him. And now all of a sudden, he's getting a little bit extra space and I think it's gonna lead to even more goals in the future. And so I think that's an important thing to think about as we think about the context of what Celebrini could do for Team Canada at the Olympics. And maybe that's the next good segue for us to talk about here. - Yeah, so just one last thing about that strikes line. Like I just, they remind me a little bit of the McDeavid, Nugent Hopkins, Hyman trio. Just in terms of like how Hyman is good along the boards and goes to the front of the net and does a lot of the defensive heavy lifting. Like I think Sherna Shove is already showing that at 20 years old. So obviously his ceiling is gonna be higher. And I think all of a sudden, I think the sharks have a legit top line now. - So Celebrini goes from, you know, he makes Team Canada this week as a 19 year old and it's a great story. And I think heading into the year, I've viewed it as already being a possibility. But if he had made the team, it would kind of be, with the ability to bring 14 forwards for the Olympics as, you know, an extra guy providing a valuable experience to not only have him as a breaking, in case of emergency option, but also just as the next wave of leaders for Team Canada at the Olympics. And now the way he's played, and in particular how he looks most recently, I think he sort of worked his way into a realistic conversation for us to have, regarding his role as like a potential core piece on this team. And I've given this a lot of thought in terms of how the lines are gonna stack out over the past couple days. Now that we know who's gonna be there. And I'm growing, or the idea's growing on me that they should seriously consider playing in with McDavid, because I think some of the skills that he just cited there, I think are gonna play really well where getting lost in coverage, kind of making you pay off with some of those catch and shoot opportunities. He's already top five in the league and chances off of 4 checks. So I think you'll be able to grind out extra opportunities and possessions with him out there. And he's not gonna, he doesn't move it at the pace McDavid does, no one does. But he's certainly able to play at that pace in terms of decision making and kind of recognizing where to go. And then thriving within that chaos. So I don't know what you think about that fit, but I think it would be a pretty tantalizing one. - So I would actually go a step further and say that if Canada ever gets in trouble and needs a goal or needs to push offensively, I think their top four combination is celebrating down the middle with McDavid and McKinnon on the wings. Because a lot of the things that we see celebrate need to be in terms of being high event with the puck and high event at forcing turnovers is gonna benefit McDavid and McKinnon. And also it's gonna force the opposing team to not overcover any of them in particular. 'Cause I would anticipate all three of them to start to determine on different lines. And if all goes well, then great, right? 'Cause you can roll the lines, you have depth. But I think we're gonna get into a situation if Canada's in a tight spot, then Celabini is gonna be the guy who's being underplayed and deserves to move up the lineup to create something different. Like let's say that again, during the finals against USA and Jacob Slaven is shutting down the McDavid line, whatever that looks like. Well, if you put McDavid, McKinnon and Celabini on the same line, that's gonna overwhelm Slaven and whoever's partner is for sure. And maybe that's also gonna open up some opportunities for you elsewhere in the lineup. - I mean, that'd be really interesting. I do wonder about a not overlapping skill sets 'cause they're obviously so good in so many different areas that I think they'd eventually make a work if they were given enough reps together, but kind of too many cooks. Situation with McDavid and McKinnon in terms of especially in transition, like needing to kind of be on pop a little bit more and do the carrying as opposed to elsewhere, but maybe they could make it work. I don't know, do you have any qualms about that or do you think it's overthinking it and they're so good and so dynamic that they make a work even if they're not necessarily doing what they do on their current NHL clubs? - Yeah, I mean, I would certainly not start determined that way. I would give all the Maruna on their own lines and see how that develops, but again, if you're in a situation against either a very strong opponent or a very defensive opponent where you're not getting much going as it is, then that would be sort of my last resort sort of your all hands on deck sort of situation. All right, Jack, let's take our break here. And then we come back, we're gonna jump right back into it and keep the conversation going. You're listening to the hockey PDO cast streaming on the Sports and Radio Network. (upbeat music) All right, we're back to the hockey PDO cast around by Jack Han, starting 2026 with a fun show. We talked celebrating before the break and I think that's a good segue for it here for us to talk about a player who didn't make team Canada in Conor Bernard, and then in particular, his head coach Jeff Blaschel's response to that and some of the quotes, they came out kind of citing defensive metrics and maybe some of his skepticism surrounding their ability to properly capture impact at that end of the ice. And listen, it's obviously a coach who's advocating for a star player as he should. And I think ultimately he's not necessarily wrong in the grand scheme of things in terms of the nuance that it goes into measuring defensive ability and how using just pure on ice metrics to as a proxy for measuring it is gonna be flawed in a number of ways, but I know that you thought it was an interesting kind of angle and maybe we can get into that as it relates to not only Bidar, but also Celebrini who we just talked about 'cause I think it almost applies to him maybe even more directly right now. - So let me just pull up the quote 'cause I think it's important. So the part that I think a lot of people have keyed in on is quote, I've read some things about defensive metrics and things like that. I would tell you, I've studied these things tons and I've never seen defensive metrics that I trust to say to me whether a guy, whether or not a guy is a good defensive player. I don't think they judge what they're supposed to judge yet. We're all trying to get there, we're not there. That's as cool and you could take issues because there are some actually a variety of stats that do tell you certain things about defensive play, but ultimately I would agree with this larger point that defense is hard to capture than offense and how I would explain this is offense converges. If you wanna score a goal, you're gonna do it within 10 to 30 feet of the net and sort of in the middle of the ice, more or less. Maybe you would go back post or maybe you could go a little bit farther from the net, but that's essentially where offense in terms of goal scoring happens. So whether if we look at goals and assists, whether we look at expected goals, whether if we look at passes into the slot or quick release shots or shots off the catch, they're basically capturing something that some things that are similar, which is we're trying to get to that area of the ice. So offense converges, whereas defense diverges. If you look at the best defensive players in the league, whether we have Slaven, whether you name it, right? You can defend in so many ways because basically the goal of what you're trying to do is you're trying to prevent somebody else from getting into that area and then getting the puck with space to operate. So is it by having the puck, right? Like we talk about tons of players with really great shots of pressure metrics who don't play a lick of defense because they always have the puck. That's fine, that's one way to do it. Is it by four checking up ice and forcing turnovers, you know, their stats for that? Is it by preventing the opponents from exiting their zone? There's a staff for that. Is it preventing them from entering your zone? Is it preventing them from getting into the slot via passing? Is it by blocking tons of shots if you have to as a last resort? Is it by, you know, being physical and winning battles? So it's such a divergent activity that I think I would tend to agree with Blaschall that like depending on what metric or combination of metrics you're looking at, you're gonna come to different conclusions about a player's defensive ability. Certainly, I mean, it's obviously fundamentally more challenging to put a number to just because the working definition of good defense is technically just the absence of offense against, right? And so as you noted, there's a couple different ways to do it, whether it's playing with a puck in the offensive zone, whether it's some of these low event wingers in particular that always come through with glowing defensive metrics because they just kind of keep the puck pinned along the wall or in the neutral zone and nothing is really happening. And so the belt volume is incredibly low or kind of some of these elite either absorbed defenders low in their zone or guys like Slaven who are just an eraser in terms of high danger opportunities breaking that kind of last chain in the sequence of it and eliminating high danger chances. The thing that's tricky here is, you know, especially that's why I said it applies maybe more to celebrating because I think he already has a reputation and why he was considered more of a favorite to making Canada even before Bidard's injury and before the way the season has progressed as a two way force already because he's got some of these micro stats where, you know, last year was the puck battle winds. This year it's stick checks kind of these like isolated individual defensive events that we can quantify and then the eye test in terms of how it looks when he's doing so. And then comparing it to the actual on ice results where the sharks are still giving up a ton of shots, chances, goals, expected goals when he's on the ice. And I think a lot of that doesn't really have anything to do with him in some sense it does because of playing style. I think David St. Louis, our panel, wrote a great piece on elite prospects a couple of weeks ago about this in terms of risk profile where I got like Selbrain he has to do so much offensive creation for his team and they rely on him to do so that sometimes he's not making safe choices in terms of puck management and he's trying to make a high danger play and if it leads to a turnover, it's gonna wind up burning them the other way but that's kind of a requirement for him right now and that's partly because of not only who he plays with and you look at the specifically the defenseman like his most common linemates in that regard are Demetri or Love and John Klingberg and you can watch their most recent game against the wild as an example of this where along the wall or a lot of makes an ill-advised pitch gets on the wrong side of the puck. It's going back to on one the other way and Tara Sanko berries it and it winds up being a a high danger chance and a goal against for Selbraini and then the quality of the team as well I think is an important thing here and doesn't necessarily get discussed as much and it's not necessarily that they're gonna be a bad team so they're gonna struggle but how it relates to the impact, the trickle down impact it has on a guy like Selbraini where you're not evaluating his shifts isolating them for what it is necessarily because when he steps on the ice chances are it's kind of a negative game script already where they might not have possession because the players who were on the ice previously weren't very good or he's gonna be in his own zone or any number of things in terms of the situation he's stepping into in terms of environment and so you're already playing from a disadvantage to the ages point and so I think putting all that together is like an important part of this conversation about evaluating defense and who's good at it and who's not and especially for young players like a Selbraini and obviously a badard as Blaschle talked about. - Yeah, and I would say Selbraini for me, like he's in a spot right now where Crosby was around 2006, 2007 where he was putting up points, the penguins are getting better. Obviously Crosby was sort of a very high profile Olympic snub back in '06 where kinda underachieved but Crosby never had really top, top sort of shot suppression metrics even in his peak, right? He was always like a 99th percentile offensive creator and maybe a somewhat above average shot suppressor which for his game style is fine. And I think for Selbraini as well in terms of how involved he is at creating battles, creating stick checks, turning pucks over, we don't really need him to be a 99th percentile shot suppress on top of that. If he's able to play a high event game, then ultimately that's gonna benefit his team. - Wait a question while we're just on, we're talking about Olympics with Selbraini, we had a question from the discord about it and in particular in a short term event, like the Olympics with limited practice time, limited reps with the players you're playing with if you're not on the same NHL team. Kinda like how much prep work goes into it but I think especially in first things like the power play for example where we know that the best units in the league generally NHL are ones who have the continuity over years together in terms of getting those reps and chemistry down so that they can execute with precision and pick you apart very meticulously. That's gonna be a tougher thing to replicate in a tournament like this where you're just essentially putting together and all start team of guys who might have played it for nations together or at orientation camp or in previous stops but aren't necessarily playing with each other on a day-to-day basis and figuring out each other's strengths and weaknesses but also particular quirks in terms of where they like the puck, where they're gonna be, how they're gonna react to a certain situation that the team does defensively. You got any thoughts on kinda how that plays out for some of these teams at the Olympics in terms of nailing all that stuff down and trying to do it all in the fly in a very deficient manner. - So there's a few different mechanisms going on here. So the first one is that every player that gets picked for Team Canada or Team USA or Sweden or Finland, they're all students of the game. They know their own games really well. They know the games of their prospective teammates with a certain extent, especially those that they see on a regular basis in the NHL. So there's gonna be some sort of back and forth in terms of just communicating before the fact, right? The second thing is if we look at Canada and US specifically, the tactical playbook that they use really doesn't change very much. It's a very sort of stock standard where they're gonna play a 1-2-2 for check and open play. They may go to 2-1-2 off a face-off loss. These aren't garbage, it's gonna be very standard. They may, it's gonna be a five tight downloads, it's gonna be either a zone or a man-a-man up top. So it's very NHL standard stuff. You're not gonna see Team Canada or Team USA head coach come out and start playing a 1-3-1 neutral zone for check or something weird and wacky that nobody's ever seen before. That's not the point. The point is you have a predictable familiar structure and then the players can operate inside that and obviously sort of add their own twist. So that kind of negates the need for a lot of practice time. You're certainly gonna do some video, you're gonna refer back to some of the things that happen for nations in terms of player combinations, in terms of clips of situations that came up. But on that side, in a short term tournament, there's not really a need to innovate tactically, which is conversely why, once in a while, if you look at again, like the World Juniors or the World Championships, teams like Latvia or Czechia or Slovakia, they can overperform because they can actually really take the time and mold something that fits their team because there's such underdogs that they have to do it tactically. But for USA and Canada and to a certain extent, Sweden, there is no need to change their tactics, which is why again, Sweden is in a tough spot because they're gonna have to innovate to beat Canada or USA. But that also introduces lots of variables that make them vulnerable to lesser teams. - You wanna, I got a couple teams I wanna run through here. We got about 15 minutes or so left. I had the lightning devils and oilers that I wanted to talk about, which one's most interesting to you? - We'll do the devils really quick. Folks online are concerned about the devils lack of scoring and I would tell you that if you look at their devs forwards, their job is not to score and in fact, they haven't scored at all and a lot of the shortfall can be there. Obviously the top guys in terms of the Hisha line and the Hamilton and Ziegenthaler pairing have struggled by I think. First, I would try to figure out the fringes and then maybe figure out whether I need to move on from Hamilton, Ziegenthaler, or et cetera, because I don't think the core is the problem. It's really, you can rebuild around that core. - Certainly. I mean, I think people are understandably worried. You look in their 31st and 515 goals per hour this year under two of them per 60 minutes. Only Seattle generates less. They're 31st and 515 goals shares are resolved. Only St. Louis is worse than they're 44%. Their rest chances are down from seven and a half, a couple years ago when they were at top of the league to around six now. And part of that is because Jack Hughes has missed a significant portion of time over the past two seasons. But this has been going on for a while now and there's a good conversation I have between personnel and coaching here in terms of how much it is deliberate. I think the two kind of go hand in hand and you're a Sheldon Keefe's Albicia coach you're very familiar with. Because I imagine part of this roster construction over the past couple years has been done with the coaches say in terms of preference of players and that depth in particular, you mentioned some of the guys, whether it's certainly the bottom with Glen Denning and Lamiko, but I'd add Carter and Nason and 515 as well. They're just generating nothing with them. It doesn't help that his shares production has dried up at 515 and just for Brad's finishing as well, which has been alarming. The note on the defenseman is interesting though because in particular with Seagunthaler and the drain it's had on Dougie Hamilton's offense where he has three, five on five points this season in about 620 minutes. He's been on the ice for just 16 devil's goals in that time, which has essentially cut his usual norm on a per 60 basis in half this year. And out of necessity partly because of all the absences they've had, but they're still running with it now. I don't think it makes a lot of sense, especially at this stage of his career to be using Dougie Hamilton this way where he's got a 47% offensive zone start rate and he's playing with a guy with Seagunthaler's skill set and it's clearly eating away at his own individual production. And so you put all that stuff together and that's why they're at. So I'm very curious to see how this goes. There's a huge bounce back performance for them on New Year's Eve against Columbus in that third period, especially after the embarrassing effort in Toronto. They very desperately needed it. But I still think I have a lot of questions in terms of what this roster is going to look like between now and the trade deadline and how serious they are about turning this thing around. - I mean, I don't think I'm Ryan, maybe wrong, but I don't think 2017 Sheldon Keefe would ever have Luke Lendening a U-Olamico on his roster ever. - Yeah, well, time comes for us all. The lightning. So the polar opposite in terms of what I wanted to focus on where you look in defensively, fourth fewest goals against per 60. First, a corner sport logic in expected goals again. Second, in terms of fewest offensive zone opportunities given to opponents fifth best penalty kill. And as a result, they're first in the Atlantic, fifth and points percentage. And they've done all that despite the fact that their top four defensemen in totalized time this season are JJ Moser, Darren Raddish, Charles Edward, Dusty, and Emil Lillaburg. Max Crozier has played more five on five minutes and but done our headman, Declan Carlisle, has played more games than either of those two. They've used 11 different defensemen so far. We joked about their AHL core last time we spoke about them. One of the 11 they've used was Maxime Grosjeb, who was a winger up until last year. And they changed his interest in the blue line in Syracuse and got a game out of him as well. I'm curious for your take on how they're doing this with the players they've had in terms of the infrastructure and the results they've created out of it. And in particular, the interplay between forwards and defensemen and the role the guys up front have played in this operation because obviously I think the two go hand in hand and lightning are probably the best example of that. Yeah, so first off, historically, TAP has been a really good team in terms of developing players. And a lot of times we think of developing players as you draft a high, you draft a guy top 10 and then he makes the team and he scores a point in game. But in terms of TAP, they've been really good at finding guys who may be fringe NHL as their best and then getting them to Syracuse and getting them good enough so that they're at least not actively hurting the team. Like you mentioned a lot of these defensemen. Das2 was playing in Liga a few years ago and then he went to Sweden. And then a lot of these defensemen who have this career trajectory, they sort of get stuck in the age all when they get back because they're just not good enough defensively and also without being elite offensive creators. But Das2, especially the times I've seen him, he looks fine. He looks like you're sort of run the mill, average size, third pair guy who can move the puck some, skate well, defend some. They've got lots of guys like that who can sort of just play their position. And I think that the big secret of what's going on here is the forwards are working a lot harder defensively to cover up for the defenseman's limitations. J.J. Moser has had a career season because he's maybe the only one in that entire D-Clore right now with high-end skating and high-end playmaking ability in transition. And because the forwards are being so responsible, he can pretty much play Roman Yosey and Go whenever he wants. And that forward group, again, they're working really hard. They're playing really well defensively. We see Kutra off cheating for offense once in a while. And it tends to work out for him more often than not. But aside from him, it's just a lot of honest defensive play. It is. And I think the forwards in particular, whether it's Hagle, Gensel, point now that he's back in playing better, they have some of these guys who can not only come back and help defensively, but I think do a lot of the heavy lifting to initiate transition as well and get them moving in the right direction. And then they've got the guys up front to capitalize off that once they're moving in the right direction. So yeah, it's really fun kind of watching the interplay between the two and how they gel at it and how they make it work. And they do a really good job of all these guys have at least one identifiable plus skill. And then they highlight that and focus on that and cater their game to that. And don't worry about the stuff that they aren't necessarily that good at and make it work. And so it's led to a remarkable results. And it's one of the coolest stories. In the league, you got any notes on the oilers? Because we have a discord question kind of asking about the coaching in particular and figuring out how to sort of deal with the bottom six and make sure those players can succeed when you have a top heavy line up the way the oilers do. We did a pretty long form conversation about them the last time we spoke, I believe. And certainly, McDavid going completely nuclear offensively and then getting healthier and reuniting that top line with him has helped stabilize the results somewhat since that conversation. But they're coming off a pretty ugly showing against the Bruins on New Year's Eve. And I think in terms of the championship trajectory and their spot as a contender in the West, I think it's a fair question to ask in terms of rounding it out and kind of getting the most out of all the players. And I think what a difficult spot it is, in particular, for some of those guys, because it seems like whenever the game starts to go sideways, they're so quick to kind of press the emergency button in terms of either loading up the top line or just phasing out certain players out of their usual ice time. And so I imagine that lack of sort of continuity and worth the ability in terms of opportunities and minutes only makes it more difficult for players who are necessarily that equipped to succeed anyways. So I think there's some of what's going on in New Jersey happening to the oilers, which is if you look around the fringes, they're just not very good. Their bottom six doesn't excite me at all. Waman hasn't been healthy, and he hasn't played great when he has been healthy. So it's basically, you know, they've got two good defensemen and then Darnell Nurse and then everybody else. And then-- but the other thing tactically, which I find really interesting is I was looking at on hockey viz, the score effect right now, of how the team plays when it's tied versus up by one versus down by one, and the oilers are showing a really odd pattern here, which is, first of all, when they're tied, they're very sort of poor offensively, which is unusual for this team, which points to the personnel issues, I think. But when they're up by one, they actually drive play really well. They get tons of looks in the high danger area. And then when they're down by one, when they should be pushing for offense, it's actually the opposite. Instead of being able to drive volume and create danger, they're actually allowing the time, which this tells me that there's something off with this team's risk profile. And, you know, I'd-- sorry, when they're tied, it's maybe it's more of a personnel issue. But when they're up by one, and they play more of a counter attacking patient, you know, reading off the opponent's style of play, it's working well for them. Even though they're probably more rolling their line instead of relying the top guys. And then when they're down by one and pushing, maybe they're riding the same horses too hard, and they're trying too much to stretch the ice, and makes something happen quickly. So maybe it's, first of all, they should probably look to upgrade around the fringes. But also, maybe if they just sort of backed off a little bit of their aggression, they would actually get better results. Yeah, that's fair. I think there's certainly bottom six questions. As we've seen, I think they're going to be able to paper over it, but I think one thing they can't get around is that they desperately need Jake Wallman back. I don't know how many more games of Ragula and Nurse. I can watch, and that's been a big issue, certainly. All right, Jack, actually, let's end with one more question. Just as a thought exercise, the question asks about why front offices still seem to value large physical defensemen that lack puck skill, and whether there's certain elements fans just aren't taken into consideration that the GMs acquiring these teams or the coaches leaning on them and utilizing them are valuing-- do you have any thoughts on this? Especially from a lineup construction perspective, because we know coaches typically like to try to insulate a young puck mover with a more traditional older stay-at-home defenseman that's going to be a bit safer. Do you think that that is the right approach from maximizing a skill perspective and that it's too risky to have two guys with very similar skill sets that are going to leave you exposed defensively, or how do you view this? So I'm going to go a little bit off the board here, and I think as a whole, the league has gotten smarter in terms of identifying who's actually good and who's not. I think that a large difference comes down to how you consume the game. Are you watching it on TV, or even are you watching it from the spreadsheets versus are you watching it in person? Because I do a fair amount of both. And when you watch things in person, first of all, you can pick a vantage point. But second, you have a much higher definition look at who's basically who's soft and who's not. Which guys are shy away from contact, which guys are getting rid of the puck as they're scared. Whereas on TV, either the camera pans away or you're more focused on the puck and how it's traveling through space. So it's just a matter of the definition, the vantage point. I think if you're obviously, if you're a coach or if you're a manager, you're watching all these games in person and you know exactly who's scared bitless to go in the corner. And maybe that weighs more heavily on your evaluation than what happens to the puck before and after a player touches it. All right, buddy. Good stuff. This was a lot of fun. Great way to start 2026. I want to let you promote something on the way I'll let the listeners know where they can check you out, whether there's any updates for the Hockey Tactics 2026 edition, all that good stuff. So yeah, so I'm working on the Hockey Tactics 2026 eBook. One big addition this year is, you know, in the past, I've shown you all the structures of the 32 NHL teams, but this year there's going to be more space for discussion in terms of how players like Sylfkovsky and Shernishov get better and control the game. And I'll even share some drills where if you're a high school hockey coach or minor hockey coach or hockey parent, you can use with your own players to get them to play smarter. So excited for that. It'll come out. I would say around February, maybe Olympics time, maybe a little bit after, but look for it that. All right, buddy, we're looking forward to it. Enjoyed 2025 as always. So this is going to be great addition to our reading material. And when you put it out there, we'll have you back on and we'll break some of it down and plug it then. If you join today's show, subscribe to the PDO cast Patreon for extra episodes. We did a bunch of abs content last week and how could you not consider any of the way they're playing and running through the league. And we clearly got a fan from that because Samalinsky's dad subscribed to the PDO cast Patreon, which is great. It's all the cool people you're doing. And so join us there. Give us a five star review wherever you listen. That's all for this week. We're going to be back Sunday night with your hands for our usual Sunday special. The plan is to break down the Canadian and American Olympic rosters now that they've been made official. Then hope everyone has a great weekend. And thank you for listening to the hockey PDO cast streaming on the Sports and Radio Network.