How Good Are the Sharks, Really? | EP 110 Goalie Guru Woodley on Askarov’s Improvement
Welcome to the San Jose Hockey Now podcast. Today we’re going to talk about how good are the Sharks? Are they any good? Is the winning sustainable? That’s what we’re going to talk about. Main topic, but also too, we’re going to bring on Kevin Woodley of ashow.com. He is their goalie guy. We had him on last year and he’s going to talk about Yuruslava Scaroff and Yurus Scaroff’s really wonderful November following a nightmarish October. But before we get into it, a quick note. This show, like always, is free. We make it because we love talking hockey and digging deep into the Sharks for the fans that bleed Teal. But it is also made possible thanks to the some awesome support from bringhockeyback.net. If you know Bring Hockey Back, you know they’ve been repping the Sharks for years with some really clever and funny t-shirts. Just a really good feel for what makes hockey culture and sharks culture special. They do beautiful custom jerseys for your beer league team as well. So hop on that if you need some custom jerseys. If you’re into hockey, you like this podcast, you want to see more of this podcast, and you like to have a fresh look at the rink, check them out at bringhockeyback.net. Use the promo code San Jose hockey now for 15% off all things at bringhockeyback.net. Boom. Let’s go. Good read. One take. One take this week. I like it. No Shankpang fuckups this week. Hey, hey, hey. I I just covered 9:00 a.m. flight from Seattle, right? So, I think I’m doing pretty good. To be fair, both of you have been on TV this week. I have not been on TV. So, you guys you guys have practice. That’s true. That is true. Pretty sure I saw Zubar on HBO After Dark. It was a little weird. Channels in the motel. You know what I mean? You got to do what you got to do. But I got a good slow thrust. real sip staff joke already. Exactly. So, uh yeah, I was uh I was playing beer league. I I got in I was in Minnesota, too, for for for other reasons. And me and Shane actually met up uh the night before the Sharks played. And um yeah, it was kind of funny. We’re like, let’s go out for a drink. Shane gets in at 12:00 and we end up uh going out for a drink and he bust out his laptop and starts working at midnight at the bar for like an hour. just talk about Shang’s work ethic here. Uh because I know Boilers loves that word, but uh yeah, he’s he’s a he’s a worker. He’s a grinder. That’s great. Um but yeah, I got back the next day after the game at a beer league game at 11:15, which I was on central time, so it’s like 1:15. And uh that’s that’s the team I played on that actually they brought up the Boilers hit because the first time Dan and I met actually I was playing on a threeon-ree tournament and uh Dan and Owen Nolan were there uh just to promote um there’s a pretty funny moment. We’ll get the clip up here uh afterwards, but yeah. You want to tell them what happened? You guys are So you’re going to load up the clip so people can put it together? Um, yeah. So, so the Sharks, you know, we have 10 alumni and, you know, I’m I always volunteer myself when it’s anything golf related or hockey related or botchi or something fun, you know, hey, I’m I’m the guy. So, uh, long story short, they needed a couple guys to go in because uh, SAP had been rented out for beer league hockey from 9:00 a.m. to like 9:00 p.m. this threeon-ree tournament. And I said, “Yeah, let’s [ __ ] I’ll go.” So, Owen and I are just supposed to just It’s the ice is split into two. So, there’s two games going on, half ice at the same time. We’re just supposed to coach. We’re just, and I said coach, just basically [ __ ] Just help out, mingle or whatever. And we’re representing the Sharks. So, uh, this one team’s just getting destroyed. Like, destroy. It’s three on three. I think there’s three of them. The other team’s got six or seven. They’re just getting killed. And I’m like, “Can I go out there?” They’re like, “Yeah, sure.” So, everyone’s on skates. I’m on my shoes, right? I got my shoes. I grab somebody’s [ __ ] stick and uh I go out there and there’s this and I’m saying he’s a kid and Zubar, you can you could say how old. He’s probably like mid20s or whatever, but yeah, he’s doing circles around everyone. I I never like that, you know. He was a no passer, too. He was not pass he was not dishing the puck. No. Anyway, so he goes and grabs a puck and he tries to tow drag me and I just like I I just thought I’ll just kind of lean into him, not thinking anything bad will happen. He went down pretty [ __ ] hard and he was not happy. Spoilers open ice a guy on a fun threeon-ree tournament where they weren’t keeping score. So I saw the video. So, if you look at the video, it doesn’t look that bad, but like in real time there and all these beer leaguers are like going, “Yeah.” So, the the funny thing is he had no idea who I was. I think he’s new to hockey. Uh has no clue who Dan Bole is. I don’t think he knew Owen was. So, when I knocked him down, he goes, “Fuck you, old man.” I’m like, “Oh, really?” He go and he said something, “You want elderly abuse? I’ll give you elderly abuse.” And and I’m representing the Sharks at this point. I’m like, “I’m sorry, man.” I like lift them up. I’m like, I’m sorry. You were super apologetic. I was so apolog I felt like [ __ ] because I’m there representing the Sharks. I’m not there representing myself. It’s like, you know, I’m there to be, you know. So, uh, anyway, so he was pissed. Uh, and then we go after, so fast forward to after. I still feel like [ __ ] We go to like middle area where you guys are gathering around the bar having a beer. All of a sudden, everyone starts buying me beers because they’re like, “Yeah, that guy always, you know, he’s like a level six coming to play with level tens, and he’s always like, so everyone was pumped that I put him down and and then he comes out 10 15 minutes later and he was all like, I didn’t know who you were. I’m sorry. That was great.” So, ended up being a positive story, but for about 10 15 minutes, I kind of felt like [ __ ] cuz I had I had rocked a kid down pretty good. Made him make made him look pretty bad. So, uh, yeah, that was the first time we met Zubar. Yeah, exactly. That was a fun That was a funny moment. Like, I mean, this guy was a bit of a hot dog, too. Like, he kind of had it total. Like, he had it coming. His response was Oh, yeah. You want [ __ ] elderly abuse? I’m like, that’s when I like the first one, [ __ ] you, old man. I was still representing the Sharks. Then he’s like, you want elderly abuse? And then at some point, I said something like, calm down. or so like I was kind of I kind of went from like being a nice guy representing the Sharks to like okay one more and I’m not that’s not gonna go well for you. Maybe in anywhere else in the world you could take me out, but on the ice that’s kind of my domain. So yeah, at least you didn’t drop the gloves. And I got Owen Nolan behind me and yeah, uh I’m pretty sure I was more sturdy on my feet than he was on his skates. So anyways, yeah, that was the funniest part. He’s tow dragging on skates and couldn’t get around you just standing still and then you just leaned into him. It was like such a good moment. And so this is where the barracuda place. So Keegan, have you been to the like the Barracuda? I said SAP. You’re right. It was uh Yeah, you have not, Keegan. No, not since they built text. Tech. Oh yeah. So it’s so great because they have a bar now behind the opposing team’s goalie. Um, so you could just grab a drink, bang on the glass behind me, lounge, the fireball lounge. And so we were all sitting there like they also had like matcha lattes like spiked that you could buy from Nirvana Coffee. We like I was like four deep. And so we’re all watching this and Boilers open ice him. We’re like we did not expect to see this. We’re just like pumped like let’s go. And there’s a clip of this. We can put this in the podcast. Yes. If you want to see the biggest hit by a shark since Reading Shimik, um, it is actually there’s a video clip of it I posted on San Jose Hockey Now. I think it happened in August or something like that, right? A couple months ago. Like I said, it the video doesn’t give it as it was a pretty good hit. Like from my angle, he went down pretty good. I was I felt like [ __ ] I felt like [ __ ] But yeah, he had no [ __ ] podcast now. Yeah. Yeah. We got one more subscriber or one less. I don’t know. Hey, for every If he dropped off, I know there’s a whole league of people that are like, “Yeah, [ __ ] a. Let’s go.” Subscribe. All right, so let’s uh let’s get into recent Sharks hockey. We had a couple of home wins with Winnipeg and Florida and then on the road with Minnesota, Calgary, and uh the Kraken last night. So, I mean the big question mark is uh you know about the Sharks and the entire road trip some good hockey, you know, they snuck away a win in Minnesota. Um but you know, some of these road games, the Calgary game in particular was really difficult to watch and you just they didn’t look very good. So, I guess the big question today to start off is like is this is the Sharks clip that we saw of them that two weeks doing great, is that sustainable? Are they are they going to get back to that at any point? and and sort of where are they where are they headed next? Sure they can as long as your Slavas scaroff post a 965 save percentage they’ll win a lot of games. Yeah. That’s his save percentage through the month of November and so no that’s not going to happen. Um, I think that the and I I don’t even look so much at the Calgary game and Dan can speak to this, but there’s just games that you’re just terrible, nothing goes right. And so I I don’t even count the Calgary game in all this, but if you look at the Florida game, they were outplayed and the Scaroff uh saved them. If you look at the Minnesota win, they were outplayed in the second period and Scaroff once again uh saved them. Um, the best game they actually played in the last four, uh, counting the Florida win was probably yesterday against Seattle. They probably deserved a better result. But if you have a scar off stealing a game for you, well, you’re going to lose a game then. Um, that’s that’s the rule that that maybe you deserve to win or you deserve a point in. So, I think the the biggest problem that I I see, I don’t know what you guys see, but it’s it’s really what we saw at the beginning of the season that it’s it’s the a lot of it is on the defense. I’m not talking specifically about a John Cleanberg or Nick Ley. Uh the Sharks have nine defenseman on their roster and one of them, Demetri Orof, in my opinion belongs in AHL top four. That’s not something that is a sustainable formula for success this year. Keegan, why don’t you give us your two cents, man? Yeah, the interesting thing is they keep changing out like every game it seems like there’s a different person coming in, right? And Dan, you can speak to this too. It’s hard to find that kind of rhythm as a team when like every night somebody else is is the defense pairings are changing. Also, the forwards too, but the pairings are changing so frequently. And you’re right, Orlav is like the steadiest, but because of injuries or because of just play. I don’t know. I feel like we haven’t really found who’s going to be the top six, right? It feels like we’re just kind of trying guys in and out. Dickinson, Muka Madulan, Lil Shagrin sits. De Har goes in. Like it just feels like a lot of switching. And I think it’s been improved, right? We’re not getting scored on nine to two anymore like we used to last year. You know, it’s like it’s improved this year, but I think we just missing some consistency and some rhythm on defense that um I don’t know if we have the personnel for it or if it’s just needs more time to gel kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, as a player, I never like sitting out. So, I know the coach is trying to like with Muk Mullan and uh Dickinson trying to give them breaks here and there, but that’s good for the coach. That’s good for, you know, but it’s not a fun way to play when you’re in and out of the lineup. So, eventually you’d like to go to a a top six on a regular basis. Once in a while, you know, you’re going to have an injury or whatever, but you’d like to identify that. So, it’s still early in the season. and they’re going to try to figure that out. Let’s be honest, I’m This is going to not like you said, there’s no Norris Trophy winner on that blue line. Uh there’s no Kale Mar. There’s no, you know, nobody’s going to take over a game on the back end. So, it’s going to have to be team defense. So, what I liked I did I did at the two games on TV I did were the Minnesota or sorry, the the Florida game and the Winnipeg game. I thought win the Winnipeg game uh was the best game that I had seen the Sharks play all year. And what I kept saying on the air and I did radio as well was like how well they played aggressively on the offense that defensively they didn’t have to play defense as much. And uh and then in the Florida game, the first period, same thing. They were all over Florida, played aggressive, guys were pinching, top high guy. And then as I was saying to Dan Rousnowski, who obviously knew he’s Hall of Famer, seen 3,000 games, I’m like I’m like, “This is going to change.” Because they went up two nothing, I believe. And I said, “This is going to change right now.” And I think Marawn scored them the very next shift. Um, so I did not see the Calgary game. That’s the one that I was told, don’t even bother watching, so I won’t. But I think with the personnel that you have on defense, and there’s some good players, they’re hardworking guys. you know, you got guys from other teams that are kind of lety and you’re, you know, uh, or, uh, I I think it’s a it’s more of a team defense. And I think that the way to remedy that, and this is just my opinion, guy who thinks that Dan Bole is preaching the gospel, he’s not. It’s my opinion. Um, I think if they can just play a little more aggressively offensively, if that makes sense, with a high guy, they’re going to spend less time in their Dzone and I think that will benefit them defensively. Okay, so that’s my opinion. That’s like a a team like a like a football defense. If you’re always backing up and you’re letting a quarterback, Josh Allen, whatever, read make the reads, that’s they’re just going to pick you apart. So, I would rather lose playing aggressively than playing defensively. And that’s what I think I saw when they were playing well. I felt they were playing very aggressive. D were pitching. Guys were backing each other up. Yeah, there’s going to be the odd mistake, the odd twoon-one, but I thought to me that’s the team that gives you a best chance of winning every night and then your goalie is going to have to make a few saves. And those guys have been playing well. So, they were I was hard on them at the beginning of the season, but um they’ve obviously, you know, rebounded, fixed their their issues and uh so that’s kind of where I’m at on the defense. But I think it starts as a team defense. You don’t have any Norrisc caliber guys back there. Play better as a team defense including the forwards. Be a little more aggressive and spend less time in your diesel. I think you make a good point there because when you look at the Sharks roster, the if there is a strength to it, it’s more closer to the forward side just because of how good Mlin is that step he’s taken. But also too, they have Willie Mlin who’s taken a step. Will Smith has been a good contributor. Even the I think a lot of the underrated growth of the Sharks this year is actually in their bottom six. Ty Deandrea has become a player again. Broccoli Gadro is showing that he’s still a player. Guys like that, right? And so when those forwards are able to establish for check and pressure, then that takes pressure off the the defense. And so when they can’t do that though, or when a team like Florida wakes up in the second period and they’re like, “What the [ __ ] No, we’re not going to let this happen anymore.” If they push back, the Sharks aren’t really capable of taking taking that that shot. Um, but Scaroff was able to do it, but not the rest of the team. And so that’s kind of their strength. But that’s what’s going to happen, though. There’s going to be some games where the forwards can dominate, like the Seattle, the first Seattle game, a 6-1 game. But there’s also going to be games where they just have have nothing like a Calgary game or they it’s kind of on and off like the Florida and Minnesota games. It’s still not a great horror group. It’s just a the strength is a little more concentrated up front than it is in the back end. Yeah. So, play to your strengths and like the the the Florida game, the second half, uh when you have your top guys on the ice and they’re defending all the time, they just every time they got the puck, they there’s nothing. They couldn’t do anything offensively because they were gassed. So, they were just dumping the puck in, changing, same thing over and over again. So, their strength is for sure on the offense. So, I would lean hard into that. Play a a responsible offensive oriented game and eliminate the time in your defensive zone as much as possible. little quicker on teams. Don’t give them as much time because they’re going to pick you apart. Seems like they um I mean like you said, they gave the blue liners like um like the go-ahad to start pinching more, right? We got like Clingberg pinching a ton noticed and doing really well at that times, right? But then last night, Muka Medullan makes that pinch that like phantom pinch, the pinch of the play just like the wrong. Yeah, there’s there’s a read. There’s a read and I’m sorry to just step in again, but there’s a read as a defenseman on pinching and it’s a quick I always talk about that Terminator 2 like quick analysis. If the three forwards are low, you can’t f you can’t pinch unless it’s like last minute of the game, goalie’s pulled, you got to take a chance. If the three guys are low, you can’t go. So your first read as a defenseman is where’s my third guy? And you can see it happening as it develops. Okay, where’s my third guy? Where’s my third guy? Where’s the puck coming? I’m going. And sometimes it’s not even you have to go. You’re already, if you can get up there already, which I think um number three has done a good job. Like you don’t have to make a 10-ft pinch. You have to make a 4ft pinch because you’re already there. Yeah. Yeah. He abandoned his F3 to to pinch on the wing and uh and got never went to the wall. Yeah. the puck never went to the wall and cuz he abandoned he abandoned his his outlet his center outlet pass and they hit that and Godette was it was too late for Godette to pick up on which was this is the Seattle game the Seattle the twoonone I forget who who put it in for Seattle but that’s where was that the one back door and Mlin was was kind of playing a No no that was the that was the first goal so I think the third one I think okay the one-time cross ice yeah the one time cross ice I remember the finish, but I don’t remember how they got there. But yeah, pinches that one. Yeah. Yeah. Two guys back and he he basically pinched to nowhere because the puck wasn’t going that direction, but he thought it was cuz there was a guy sitting in between him and the battery didn’t go there at all, which I I love Mugabu, but I think a part of that is he’s not playing all the time because he’s coming in and out of the lineup, so he’s not It’s not easy, man. I I’ve done it early in my career. I’ve done it late in my career. Uh I I hated it. I hate I remember getting taken out in New York. We’re gonna rest you just because I was older. I’m like, no. I mean, that’s that’s the worst thing that a player wants. A player wants to play. Yeah. You know, unless you’re hurt. If you’re hurt, I get it. But no, man. You’re if you’re playing well, you want to play. You don’t want to take time off because sometimes that can stop your momentum and your and hurt your confidence a little bit. Want to remind that first goal, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was going to say just talking about the reads on that first goal because we brought it up. You know, Clingberg again pinched on the high slot instead of moving backwards and protecting the ball. That’s what got Yeah, he he tends to chase the puck when I you just have to back up, use your stick, angle him to the outside and that pass isn’t back door to Mlin. But, you know, something else though. So, you know, to Dan’s point, I I think the Sharks are moving more to a more aggressive defense. But what happens also is, you know, you if you if your secondary scoring after Mlin dries up, you don’t stand a chance. And Kurichev hasn’t been scoring last games. That line has not been producing the last couple of games and all of a sudden you’re losing by one goal. Um, you know, you’re you’re in these games, but you need some secondary scoring, too. If you’re going to play that kind of a game, people got to finish. Y um and I and there hasn’t been a lot of secondary scoring in these losses. I wanted to mention though with the defense though that they have a lot of defenseman and that’s not necessarily a Ryan Warski thing, right? So he’s just trying to deal with what he has and he has a lot of people to kind of a lot of a lot of mouths to feed here. So he’s trying to kind of kind of move it around a little bit. Um I think the the other part of it too is that I speaking of Mukuma Madulan, right? Uh specifically we can start we’re going to talk about Kling too. I know a lot of people are unhappy with Clingberg and he hasn’t been great, but Mukmadulan the last couple of games, you know, and I I want to give Yeah, he’s not giving a chance to get into a rhythm. I get that. But like he hasn’t been good the last couple of games. I mean, the Minnesota game, like he got sad for a reason. If you watch that game, you look at Marcus Felinos surprise him twice on the for check. Like that’s not that’s just not like high-end NHL work by him. And then yesterday that phantom pinch and there’s another play I saw yesterday where he had the puck by himself and the Sharks changed lines and he didn’t move the puck to the the line change which was the top line and then the the the Seattle F1 got on him and he and he lost the puck like a really just kind of unforced errors there and so he doesn’t seem to be playing with a high amount of confidence and the question then you talk about then is that the coaching is Is that him? Is that both? Either way though, the in terms of should he be in the lineup every night? I I don’t see it. I can see why they pull him though, especially when you have seven other defenseman that have arguments for for being on the ice. I mean, if we go back to other lapses too, I mean, there is a egregious mistake by um Sam Dickinson as well. Um Sure. And and I think like there’s I think to your point, we don’t have a number one defenseman and we have this log jam of you know three four defenseman essentially and I mean that’s being kind. I don’t know if they’re three fours to be honest. Really only Orof and you can make an argument for Ferraro. Those are only two guys I see that should be in the lineup every night but that’s my opinion. Yeah. And well then I I do wonder the question about like these mistakes and and and how they’re being treated and dealt with on a managerial level to where is there a sense of like nervousness because you know you see that trepidation with with some of these youngsters like uh with at least from the eye test like Sam Dickinson looks like he’s afraid to make mistakes at times um and then he makes these mistakes and and I just don’t know how that’s being handled with um and if hopefully he’s he’s able to just be out there and be himself uh so that he can get the reps in to to become a better defenseman. And I’ve seen some stagnation the last couple of games in in his we saw some progress and now it’s kind of flattened out again. Um again, as a player, I know this all too well. Like when you early in my career, late in my career, I felt that if I made a mistake, I knew I wasn’t going to be a probably playing for the rest of the game and probably playing for the next one or two. So, you start to play uh trying not to make a mistake and uh I don’t I don’t think that’s the right way of playing. So, yes, I can see that some of those guys like Dickinson when he was told he was staying up thought he played well for a few games because it was like weight off of his shoulders, but since then in and out of the lineup maybe, you know, so yes, I think that’s where coaching is important. None of us are in the locker room. We don’t know how they’re being coached. So hopefully the head coach and most most of the time it’s the assistant coach um the D coach that’s going to be and then yeah Doug Huda and then going back to JD last week like I like hearing JD talk about me like gave me freaking goosebumps like it was so kind and so nice and I wasn’t thinking about that at that time. So, I’m hoping there’s guys in the locker room that are just kind of like, you know, and and and that, you know, what JD was talking about me saying, “Fuck them. [ __ ] him.” To some people, it might be like, “Well, that’s not nice. That’s not good team attitude.” It’s not it’s not anti-coach. It’s not like it’s a thing to say for somebody that needs to hear that in order to play their game. So, you know, I love Todd and I I I I love playing here, but at that time, I felt he needed to hear that in order to play his game. So hopefully, you know, the the the veterans that they brought in, some of the older guys are patting them on the whatever, hugging them, whatever, whatever those guys need, but just kind of helping out their confidence because coaches can only do so much. I think the veteran guys need to help out some of the young young guys and even older guys when they struggle with confidence. Just remind them what they’re there for. Remind them to play. Any of you guys know how to say uh uh [ __ ] you in Russian? Because that’s what Demetriov should be saying to Shakir. Yeah, right. I know. Ble means something, but I think it means [ __ ] you. Nicholan would always yell. [Laughter] Pretty sure there’s some Russians right now are like that’s not very nice. That’s Yeah, I don’t think it’s a nice word. But because Mario’s been on this team for a long time. He’s the one of the more tenure sharks at this point, right? Um he and he’s been through some really really really rough years, right? With lots and lots of goals against him. I wonder if he’s got a voice and I know he’s loud, but I wonder if he’s got that kind of mentorship in him with these young guys that he’s been on the other end, scored against every single night for years. Like he’s probably had to listen to some chewing out. Like I I wonder what his voice is like in the locker room cuz again I we don’t know cuz we’re not in there. Yeah, I’m curious. Yeah, and it’s important to know who No, I was sorry, real quick. I was important. Some guys, and it’s not like it doesn’t have to be in front of everyone. It’s one-on-one. Some guys like it depends who the player is. Like some players, I think even JD was saying like I want to be told where to go, what to do, you know? Guys want to be given direction. So that’s that’s those guys. I hated that. If you were like Dan, do this, do this, do that. I I hated it. I felt robotic. Um, it’s the same way I do my TV. I don’t prepare. I like being natural, but uh, no, I’m making a joke. But, uh, you got to know who you’re talking to and what they need to hear. Some guys need to be told, “Hey man, just do this, do this, do this.” Some guys need to be told, “Ah, [ __ ] that. Play your game.” Kind of more of a loose like in use your instincts. You’re here for a reason. And, uh, yeah, that was my thought. just kind of knowing what to say is important. Also, you can’t just give like vanilla, you know, [ __ ] if it doesn’t feel, you know, every player is different. Yeah. I was just going to say that the natural kind of um and I’m I’m in a room in a very public kind of way, like, you know, the players know I’m there, so it’s not like, you know, behind closed doors, but I see a lot of uh DRNA talking with Dickinson. uh they’ve formed sort of a looks like a very natural kind of friendship and I obviously with Shakir Dmitri Oraloth I think that’s been a natural one not to say that Mario isn’t involved in in any of this but um with with Mario though um I think too I wonder with Mario that his his contract status I I don’t you know he’s a guy that doesn’t know if he’s going to be here like really this time every year he’s in trade rumors but he’s got a contract at least or he is an RFA. The Sharks have his rights this year. Really don’t really really don’t know if Mario’s going to be here past past February, past March. And so I wonder if that can blunt a guy’s voice a little bit in the room if you just don’t know if you’re going to be around. And Mario’s still loud. Still hear him. But uh but just trying to answer your your question a little bit that with the uh the two young young defenseman the Sharks have now that those are sort of the the kind of mentors that that that I’ve I’ve kind of seen them around with a little bit more. And to your point, like where’s I would like to see Clingberg also maybe, you know, he has a lot of experience and has more offensive upside than Dear to maybe take Sam Dickinson under his wing a little bit more. Not to say he’s not, but I would hope that’s the case. Um because he has so much experience, you know, playing in the offensive side of the puck and how to walk the blue and things that Darnate probably can’t speak on as well as Clingberg. So, um let’s talk about Clingberg a little bit. Yeah. just because I know he’s the he’s sort of the the the voodoo doll for Sharks fans, the ones that they’re they’re they’re poking the most. Um yeah, I I I I don’t like I said, I don’t see this as a John Cleanberg problem. I just see this as an issue as the team not having enough good defenseman specifically with Jon. He’s here for a power play. And is it time for to maybe put Orth as PP1? Maybe. I think there is an argument for that. I guess let’s talk about that first. That’s one thing I wonder about. Uh what do you guys think about that? Um they’re very different kind of defenseman on the power play. Clingberg’s more of a puck mover. Orof is a clear he just shoots. I got I got Yeah, I got I got something to say here. I Yeah, there’s a lefty righty thing there, too. Or is the lefty and Clingberg the righty, but I go ahead. Yeah, I think I think you got to go back to Orlof. I think that’s that’s good coaching. I think you have an idea of what a line should be and the power play with Clingberg on it. What I see is a lot of perimeter hockey and they’re just moving the puck well but around the perimeter and they’re not creating chaos or breaking down uh the other team’s PK. Um, and with Orlaw, there’s a bit of like just throw it on net, create some chaos, and it statistically was working better. And I understand trying Clingberg some more and and why Warsovski went back to Clingberg when he was healthy. But if it’s not working and the other version is working and if you have as many power plays as you did last night, why not shake it up when that power play is not working? Um, and you had how they had so many chances last night. They had six. Yeah. And that’s one one goal which was a very pretty goal but yeah just one goal though. Yeah. Yeah. And and Yeah. So you know and I and there’s not a lot of netfront presence which is the other problem that I find on the power play. I think right now it just feels like hey what are your top offensive players? Let’s throw them all on together. And I think you I I like why not try Godette on there instead of uh even like this guy is great on the power play. He he’s proven he could score in the power play. Played on the power play in Ottawa. had the most power play goals on the team last year. Try got that out there. Shake things up a little bit. I would say that Daniel did do that though because Wenberg has has done a lot of net front for the Sharks and I think he’s capable of it even though he’s not like the most like he’s big but he’s not the most like physical guy but he’s big though and he knows kind of where to be take away eyes and that kind of stuff. So they did they they are kind of doing that but but they don’t have a natural netfront guy. I mean like a star netfront guy though for sure though. Yeah. Or you could put a big body there. But I I also and I love Ekkan, but Yeah. Right. Like just just put someone out there. Uh but I I don’t like Wenberg’s netfront presence has been good, but I what I do see a lot is uh and I love Ekkund. I don’t think Ekkan’s on your PP1. I think that’s where you swap it out with a with a better netfront guy. I highly agree with that one. But yeah, but well, no, cuz and the reason is because he was really good where Mlin is now on the power play and he’s not going to take Mlin’s role. Um, but you’ll see I I I don’t see him doing a great job on the power play because his role has changed with Mlin. Um, I think he’s great on the PP2 and I’m glad he made Keegan. Keegan just like uh Yeah, not PP1. I just disappeared for a moment. Don’t worry about that. Right. Is that the guinea pig? Headphones on. Keep talking. Yeah. No, that that’s that’s that’s my take. I think I think you could bring someone in there cuz I do like Wenberg. Wenberg’s good on the boards, too. Protects the puck. Well, they help win faceoffs, too. So, Yep. Yep. And I think you can move Ein down to PP2 and then bring up Godet. He’s got some finish. He’s got some hands on him. Um, and just let him let again this is that thing where let that let that work out for a while. Try that out for a while. let him get chemistry uh with that PP1. I I wanted to talk about forwards later, but Ekkan’s been so good this year. I much stepped step uh up from last year that I don’t know why you would put him on PP2. You want to put him on PP1 and he did a I thought he did a nice job yesterday on the on PP1 taking the other flank. He took Will Smith’s spot on other flank and that goal actually Mlin gets all the credit for it, but that goal actually is created with Eklan. Eklyn had a no look pass to Mlin. He drew Ekkan drew three three Kraken toward him. That’s what gave Mlin so much time to find Weenberg. So I think Ekan’s playing with so much confidence now that I want to see him actually they were kind of doing him a disservice maybe by putting him kind of in a net front bumper spot on the power play early this season because that maybe isn’t his his most natural fit. But I want to see him more because he’s usually played along the wall in the on on the power play. I think throughout his sort of when he’s been at his best in the NHL and the minor leagues and all that kind of stuff. And so I want to see a little bit more of that. See if that can kind of um continue. I would put I would put Will Smith down to PP2 uh ahead of um or yeah before I would drop uh um uh Eklan from it. I think um the that goal is like a good example of the Clingberg ran power play versus an Oran power play where Clingberg actually gets that pack gets the puck to Ekklund who then gets the cross ice who then gets the other they’re trying to make that perfect play, right? They’re just like passing around the perimeter looking for that cross ice seam play and that’s the whole power play. It feels like there’s not an actual big shooter on the on the power play. like celebrating. He’s got a great shot, but he um is more looking for that PL. He’s trying to be a distributor on the on the play most often. So, um I don’t know. I I think it would be interesting to try out Orlov again cuz I think they do need to just put the puck on it. That would be like you said, Super I think at some point this they’ve been trying they tried what five power plays in a row with that same exact approach and yes, they got one perfect goal, but they they they still need to be a little bit more aggressive. So, my my two cents is this. Um, yes. I think I talked I think I talked about a few podcasts ago. I think in Tampa for example, like there he tors would want one or two plays designed right away which are like which was one was like down low stuffing it to the net like and then another one be like one time your first time one time shot at the net. Maybe for that fivesome you say okay you guys I need this and this to start the power play a couple of set plays and then let them do their thing but the the thing that I I I agree with you guys if it’s not working you want to go to a shooting power play nothing wrong with starting the other five guys it’s going to piss off PP1 all right and it creates internal uh it it’s good though. Uh it creates, you know, so like PP1 gets pissed cuz they always [ __ ] start second and all of a sudden you get a little more intensity, a little more [ __ ] this and uh and all of a sudden PP1 gets some like one-time like banging crashing ugly goal instead of a back door, you know, nice play. So I agree. You got two defenseman that have two different tools and skill set. If you’re not getting enough shots, you want a guy that’s just going to start clapping it from back there. Having a shooting uh mentality and then teams adjust to that and then you go to your back door plays. So, uh I I think defensemen are replaceable. I think you know you or you put them on one or you put them on two either way. Or maybe you just start the second group with Godette. I like the idea of God in front. I’ve liked the way he’s played. Uh create some internal um battle between PP1, PP2. uh where you you you can fire up the guys a little bit. I think that’s that’s a good internal internal uh comp competition uh is is a good thing. That’s a place where I it does maybe make sense to put Ekllin down in PP2 because if you’re going to do a little bit more of that then you need a leader for PP2 and that would be that would be Ekkin then I think somebody carry that maybe I can see that a little bit more. Um, one thing I want to get to with with Dan because Kevin Woodley’s uh going to jump on in 10 minutes talk goalending and Dan’s going to jump off soon. Yeah. But there’s a lot of talk about, okay, you know, Clingberg and Orloff, we can see why, you know, with their experience, why they should be on a power play, but a lot of people are also like, hey, just put Mukuman on there, put Dickinson on there. And in my opinion, that’s I don’t see that at all. I mean, these are two very talented young defenseman, but they’re not ready for ANHL power time, power play time in in my opinion. We already talked about Madulan and his sort of uh recent struggles. And Dickinson is a player 19 years old who’s just learning to survive the NHL at five on five. So to give him, hey PP, here’s you’re now our PP1 quarterback with Macin Celebrity. Good luck. So, what I want to ask Dan is just how just overall just how hard is it to run a power play and how I don’t think it would be responsible to give the keys to either of these guys. Even PP2 I don’t think would be responsible. I think your best power play defenseman or still Orlof and Clingberg by a mile. I I we’re going to I’m Confidence is a word that in all sports and we’ve talked about on every podcast. I’m going to talk about it right now. Confidence is is so important in all facets of the game. Yeah. You don’t want to give a guy the keys, as you will, if he’s not 100% confident out there. If he’s nervous and not sure, that’s not who you want running your power play. The guy that’s running the power play is a guy that’s [ __ ] got some mojo. He’s got some calmness to him. He’s got some [ __ ] you to him. He’s he knows what he’s doing. It’s not always going to work, but he feels very confident in that position. And so, um, I agree. I don’t think it’s something you hand off early. Maybe, you know, you get those guys on the second power play every now and again. You give them 30 seconds, 45 seconds here and there. Um, but um certainly that’s something that needs to be earned and uh it takes a little time. It takes a little time. I don’t think either of those guys are there yet. Does anybody want to mention Mlin Celebrini so we can get it out of the way? We’re gonna get to M. We have a couple more defenseman topics. So good. Okay. So good. I mean just Okay, let’s talk Johnberg overall though. his play. I I still think on this team he is I mean again it’s not a strong defensive team. I think he’s still a top six defenseman for better or worse. So what do you guys think? He’s got his strengths. I mean he’s got a lot of strengths. I think um his strengths are offensively obviously. So he’s been the games that I saw uh where the team was playing well. He was pinching a lot. He was up in the ice a lot. uh his skating ability is is not um speed and and that kind of stuff is probably not his strength. So um with him again I I feel like an aggressive game fits his style because you want him in the offensive side and and playing aggressive and forwards coming back backing him up. So, um, versus playing D, making reads and having to to play defense defense, you know, which is probably not, um, his strength. And I’m being careful because I’m thinking about me where people like, oh, you know, [ __ ] I was I was a pretty decent defenseman. I just I wasn’t appreciated for it, but um, you know, I know I knew how to play defense, but uh, but my strength was playing the offensive zone. And with guys like, you know, with Clingberg, I think that’s where you you would want your game to be a little bit more offensive minded. Well, you can say that, uh, Dan, because John said it himself. This is actually one of the reasons why I like John. That’s not why I want to keep it in the lineup, but he it was a great talker. So, yesterday I asked him, “How can he be better?” And he was pretty pretty honest. He obviously said, “Yes, I can be better.” And he says that this was his quote, and I think it comes down to playing with the puck, being better on the breakouts. I think obviously my game is better in the Ozone than it is in the D zone. So I think if I can be a little better on the breakouts, a little bit more clean there, we’re going to play more with the puck. And what I like about this is this is a guy who knows himself. Like he’s just saying, look, like my impact is higher if if I can basically uh force the or or or add more offense so we defend less. He knows that. Sounds good. Yeah. And and I will say this too, he’s looked better in the offensive zone and a little bit more creative. And that’s just a timing thing and getting more reps. Like this guy hasn’t played a lot of hockey in the last three years. Obviously played postseason last season, but his timing is also off, but he’s he’s I can see him gaining a little confidence. Like he had some nice plays in the offensive zone last night. He did. Um and he was pinching shift where he just was rolling around. I think it was second period. Yeah, he was like behind our net set up. I was like that’s Dan Bole. Yeah, that’s what he talked about. Yeah, dude. Yeah, I think he set up Ty Landra for a really good chance on that one. That was actually a very good shift by him. Yeah, absolutely. I I think overall like he shows enough highend that he does generally belong in a lineup more than the younger defenseman. This is my opinion. Obviously, a lot of people disagree, but um just maybe the power play is a question mark and obviously he has made some mistakes. He’s thrown some pizzas the last few games. he will reach for the puck uh you know a couple times and when he shouldn’t where he should just kind of hang back and so those are citable offenses. I I I agree. Um I think it’s coming. I I I know they’ve had a lot of patience with them but I I don’t think it’s going to last forever either for him. I agree. Especially with nine defenseman, right? Like and he keeps changing. So I think he will get a sit at some point. Um, you just got to hope that one of the whoever replaces him in the lineup really kind of takes the job and keeps it. So, so Oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, I had one maybe kind of radical idea and I I checked in on this a little bit and I don’t know how much you guys have watched Barracuda, but there’s one guy down there who maybe can run maybe your PP2 and at least and his name is Luka Keni and I don’t know how much you guys have seen of him this year. I know that Barracuda have been playing a lot better recently. The one thing I checked in with Luca, I asked a couple of scouts recently and I don’t I I don’t check about the offense because we know he can do that at the AHL level. Not sure how that’ll translate to the NHL, but we know he can do that at the AHL, but his growth defensively and uh at the AHL level and I hear it’s there’s some growth this year, marginal, but some growth. Um but I don’t know if that’s maybe that is a kind of out there solution, though. All right, here’s my response. Oh, go ahead, Keegan. Yeah. Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. No, you sure. All right. I Well, it sounded like you were going to say something funny. I had some I had some to say, but go ahead. We want to hear from you. He looks thicker. He looks like a little bit more built this year. Not like totally built yet, so that’s a plus. I think he’s never been the most physical guy. Um I I just think there’s too many there’s we have nine defensive like it’s not I think it’s a numbers thing more than anything. I think his time is coming more in the the March, April time frame if he keeps it up. He has played better this year than last year. He looks more of a complete defenseman this year than Okay. All right. My two cents, that’s why I’ve seen him. My two cents are this. Uh if you are going to call him up and you expect him to run your power play or whatever, I’m worried about his play uh his the ice time he’s going to get in games only because I know I’ve been that guy. If you expect to play him 10, 12 minutes a night and expect him to run a power play, that’s not a fun place to be. And I don’t know this kid, maybe he can handle it. But, you know, guys that normally run the power plays are your guys normally, not in every case. I’m sure you can bring up, you know, multiple cases of guys that don’t, but normally the the Lane Hudson’s and Mars and guys like that. Um, there are guys that play significant minutes five on five as well. And so with him, I just worry if you do call him up and expect him to run your power play, how much are you going to play him the rest of the game? Because I think there’s a uh there’s a correspondence or a correlation, if you will, uh where you’re going to have to play him 20 minutes a night if you expect him to run your power play. You can’t expect them to run it playing 8 n 10 11 12 sheltered minutes. Okay, so that’s fair. It was just my That’s my That’s my concern. Are they going to if they’re going to call him up? I I I I would I would hope that they would be prepared to play him and play him quite a bit. That’s why I checked in on his defensive growth because that’s going to be what’s going to get him 15 17 minutes a night at least. If if he’s better defensively, if he hasn’t grown that way, then yeah, then he’s not going to get those even those minutes. Yeah. So, do we know why um Timothy Lillen got uh scratched? I I He didn’t play well. Everybody play like dog [ __ ] against but everyone did and I thought he’s been one of the most consistent defenseman pro maybe even the most consistent defenseman this season for the Sharks. He had some drop off though I think though before his first scratch though and yeah these are things where like maybe we missed some things but these are things where I’m sure they’re watching closely and they had some opinion that that he had some drop off. Okay. Or I was wondering like if it’s a minor injury or anything but they didn’t see any of that. So I was asking if you knew anything but No, not that I’ve heard at least. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, because you guys brought up Celine, maybe we get this quick uh before our guest, but um I want to know Dan’s thoughts on this, too. So, Shang, you got a great clip uh with Mlin um and asking him a little bit about, you know, being friends with Baddard and training with the offseason. I think the quote is we’re great friends, right? So I just was wondering this question in general and and Dan to you like so they’re friends now but let’s just fast forward Sharks hockey three years four years we’re in the playoffs Mlin versus Bard Hawks versus Sharks like what happens when you play hockey against a friend and is there any part of you that lets up or is it like what’s that personal feeling like? Well, Dan saw this. He saw this with Dowy and Couture. No. Yeah. No, you don’t. You don’t. No. I I uh I guess it depends on your genetic makeup, but uh if anything, I feel like it it it elevates you. And assuming you’re a competitive guy, which I would like to think if you’re in the NHL, you have a good amount of competitive uh you know uh degree to you. So, uh, no, I I say you want to be better than your buddy. If you’re playing head-to-head, you want to come out on top. Uh, you play him harder than you would anyone else, if anything. That’s how I feel anyways. But, don’t you guys remember when uh they pretended not to be friends, Dowy and Couture, for a couple of years? I I don’t remember that exactly. I knew they were buddies. They would say that in the press. Yeah. Yeah. They would say, “Oh, no, we’re not friends.” Yeah. I don’t remember that. But I basically grew up together cuz Oh, I remember I remember Yeah. I remember playing in the Olympics against paths, you know, like I remember going in the corner and I wasn’t like I was like [ __ ] Pavvelski, you know? I love Pavves. I love Pavves, but you get this like I’m a better golfer. No, no, he’s not. No, I am not. No, he’s a really He’s really not. Yeah. No, but it’s like I love Pavs and I I think he’s [ __ ] amazing. But um yeah, I wasn’t letting up on him. I mean, for sure. So, because there’s I remember this from Scott Stevens and he said um you know I don’t say hi to other teams players because I might have to hit them later which is like a Scott Stevens quote and sounds like something he would say right like you can’t like murder someone if you hung out with them. I don’t know it’s one of those like they talk a lot about the NBA too where like oh in the 80s the players hated each other but nowadays it’s just different. So I think that’s yeah they grow up together in the youth systems and all that stuff these days. So with fighting I’m saying that’s completely different. Uh like UFC blows my mind when like two teammates I watch UFC when two guys that train together will like or are friends they’ll fight for like a belt and I’m like that you’re trying to like kill someone like that is a whole other level that I don’t understand. Uh playing a hockey game when I say wanting to beat him being hard on them in the corners and stuff like that. That’s no problem. But but you’re not going to open up paths, right? He’s coming down the middle. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. I was being more specific on like being hard on him and like competing. But yeah, like in a fight like I’m not going to fight paths. I I see no world where him and I fight unless I completely lose my marbles and I don’t know where I am and I’m just like all of a sudden I’m in a fight with Paths, right? So, um, who would win a fight with you and Pav? Obviously in golf you’re not going to win, but who? I’m not winning in golf. I beat the [ __ ] out of Pavs. Hey, I’ve seen Pavs throw down. I’ve seen Pavs throw I love I love him. He’s the best. I love him, buddy. Um Yeah. I think that’s interesting because I think like there’s all these friendships now across the NHL and they’re developing. But I just wonder like right now the Sharks are, you know, the Hawks are picking up, Anaheim’s picking up, but what happens when we’re in the playoffs in a couple of years against these teams and it’ll be interesting to see that play out. Well, I can have to play each other in the NHL. You know, I if you have the first round pick and they’re both available, who are you picking? Mlin, obviously. Yeah, Mlin. I said this. You’re here’s a fan. Bard will see this because Bard’s a big fan. Baddard’s a big fan of the podcast and he’s a subscriber. Yeah. So, you know, next time they play the Hawks, he’s going to shove five goals in her in her net, but Well, we could do that, too. I mean, I mean, Bard may score more goals in end than Mlin, but Mlin’s a he’s he’s and I don’t watch Bard, so I’m saying that with respect. I don’t obviously he’s a good player. I don’t watch his games, but uh right now the way CBrini his work his work ethic to me is I saw a play, it was like five seconds left in the period on the Seattle game, and he didn’t [ __ ] give up. He like still like went in for the for check. He didn’t It was just It’s awesome to watch, man. He’s the most untradable player in the league. Like any GM has Mlin, you’re not getting rid of him because of age, timeline. Like that’s a great measure of just what he means to a franchise. No GM, if they had him, is trading him. You know, there’s a case for even trading Conor McDavid with the right package. Uh but you would not trade I know. Hi, Kevin. Kevin, I saw that eyebrow raising. Is Mlin coming back in that McDavid trade? Cuz Yeah, exactly. Well, exactly right. You would you would do that, but you would never get rid of that even for a Conor McDavid. And that’s kind of the point like but there is a case where in the right package I could see you getting rid of Connor in this next extension after this two years played out. Which Conor are we talking about? A lot of Connors Bard or McDavid. McDavid. McDavid. Mes how abusive. It just it’s just an age thing. So yeah. So yeah, it’s an age thing. It’s Yeah. Yeah. Uh Kevin, I want to say hi and bye. I have to go grab my daughter from uh her friend’s house. So I will watch later. Apparently you have great movie taste. You’re a huge fan of The Human Centipede 3. I heard versus one. So I want to hear about that. I will watch the podcast later uh when it’s all edited. So thank you for coming on. Unfortunately, I do have to say bye. I am uh I have to go take care of one of my daughters. So, thank you for coming on. My pleasure. And and I’m I’m hoping this has nothing I never I don’t think I ever asked a really offensive question of all the times you came through town here in Vancouver, and I was holding a mic in the media on the other side. So, I won’t take it personally, Dad. I’ve only had I’ve only had problems with two people in 18 years, so I think that’s a pretty good uh pretty good. Most of you guys are great. So, thank you. No one respects you. Still my favorite people. Um All right. So, Kevin Woodley, we didn’t ask him. He’s gone now. Damn it. Yeah. Covers the Canucks and goalies for A&HL.com. We had him on last year. He also writes for in Goal Magazine. Follow Kevin at Kevin is in goal on Twitter. And the reason why we’re having Kevin on is just like we had him on last year talk all about Yaruslav Vascara. So anyway, welcome on the show once again, Kevin. Yeah, nice nice to be here guys. Thanks for thanks for having me and I’m sorry to hop in early there. I was trying to figure out navigating Riverside and Yeah. So hopefully I didn’t interrupt anything. No, no, no, you didn’t. You need to work on having a waiting room. We don’t have a waiting room. I think you need a green room. Green room’s key. Green room is key. It is kind of fun though when you when you edit the podcast that people just kind of keep popping in and out. It’s pretty fun. But Right. Right. Right. Right. I also want to apologize, Kev, because I forgot your name on the last podcast. I mentioned that I really wanted you on this podcast again to talk about Yarlav Asgarov because we had you last year and I was like the guy the dude from InGole magazine what’s his name? So thank you for coming. That’s okay. Just the goalie idiot is how my friend referred to me. I just want to start off with kind of just a general question about about Yaro. It’s obviously been this season kind of a tale of two seasons for him. In October, he was arguably the worst starting goalie in NHL and in November he’s arguably the best starting goalie in NHL. Actually, according to goal save above expected, he is the best starting goalie in the month of November so far. So, anyway, how have you seen uh the season for for a scar off so far? I mean, tale of two halves describes it well. um did a little video work on the first half and the second half and you’re right like um you know his his goals saved in the since November 1st is like almost 10 um which is remarkable um so uh that does rank first and and sort of when I look at at at the say percentage as well like in terms of what the environment is on the season as a whole he’s just slightly above average and his environment is right around league average 889 n expected. So, it’s not like they’ve been terrible defensively, right? Like, I think a lot of people expected them to be bad defensively and lean heavily on goalending. Uh the numbers don’t indicate that’s the case. There are certainly some things under the hood in terms of certain types of chances where they’re better than others. Um but honestly, since November 1st, the only goalie with a better Justin say percentage than him, and it’s in a much smaller sample is Devin Culie, who you remember in San Jose as well, up in Calgary. So, a couple of starts up in Calgary. He’s been really good, too, but obviously not with near the same workload as Yoroslav has had in San Jose. And when I when I look at the film and when I look at the numbers, there are a couple things that jump out. And one is uh screens. Traffic is never been harder in the National Hockey League. I talked to goalies all around the league and that’s the one thing they all agree on is it’s not just the intensity and the amount of traffic, but it’s the purposeful nature of it. Like guys aren’t just going to the net anymore. At least the good ones. I mean, there are some teams that do. They just go to the net and throw pucks to the net, but so many more are being so specific and purposeful in how they do it. I mean, going into specific lanes, knowing what goalies and defenses want to leave open for the guy between the pipes, what lane that a flexing forward is supposed to be in, heading out to flank on a on a penalty kill, trying to make sure that they manipulate the goalie’s eyes in a way that forces them to move around and behind screens just as shots are released. I mean, it doesn’t matter. All these little nuances to how traffic is managed in the NHL, they’ve all been exceptionally difficult, gotten hard over the past couple years. And when you talk to the veterans, they tell you that. And when you talk to the new goalies coming into the league, they agree there’s nothing like it in the American League to prepare them for it. And so that learning curve is very steep. We saw it here in Vancouver with our tur Sheilovs who has all the, you know, kind of reminds me a little bit of a scaroff in terms of having all the physical tools down low, the fast legs, the length, the athleticism. When he got into a playoff situation against Edmonson and they kind of figured out he hadn’t learned to manage traffic, they went after it. Uh, it was two years ago. You guys probably wouldn’t, you know, obviously didn’t cover the series or or weren’t paying attention to what the who cares what the Conucks were doing in the playoffs two years ago, let’s be honest, right? Um, I mean, they’re gonna lose. But like four games in, like the Oilers were like one traffic shot a game, 1.2. And then for the final four games of the series, or for three games in, and then for the final four, they were like five and a half a game. And they lit him up on it. And then he comes into the next season, he still hasn’t figured it out. Calgary is the first opponent, and they just throw pucks from the net for with traffic all day long. Chase him from the fir I think they chase him from the first start, and basically his whole season went downhill from there. Like, learning this takes time. And if I look at the first month of the season, uh, Escarov is four on 24, which isn’t bad. It’s right around league expected. Since then, there’s none on 20. Like, so he is managing traffic better in the last month than he did. And I don’t know how much that What does that mean? Those those numbers, what does those those numbers mean? Basically, on 24 screenshots, he gave up four goals in the first three weeks. Okay. Okay. And since then, none on 20. And four and 24 is not even terrible cuz a lot of them were high quality, high danger screenshots. Yeah, but like that’s that’s a big one. Um, so the fact you can see that growth in his game in terms of learning how to understand and manage traffic, being in the right lanes, playing, it’s not just about the forwards, it’s about playing off your defenseman and the system in front of you. And he seems to be figuring that out pretty quickly. Um, when I look at one of the few areas statistically where he is still somewhat underwater even since November 1st is just kind of open looks, like open looks, slot area shots. Um, and again when I look at laterals and when I look at broken plays, like a lot of these numbers are really tipping positively in his favor. That’s sort of the last one. And when I look at his st I think this is a largely about just sort of learning when to be in what position. Um, and I don’t just mean depth. I mean in terms of your stance. And I think they’ve done a nice job. From what I can see, it looks like they’re trying to get him to be a little narrower to not sort of keep his feet under him. We know how good he is along the ice, right? Like we know that once he goes to his knees, he is up there with the elite in the league. This is all from before draft year. His ability to move from his knees is exceptional. But the game has reached a point where no matter how good you are at it, the goal is still not to be there as early or as often as as you used to be able to get away with. Like teams are trying to get you to your knees and then move the puck. And so one of the solutions, one of the ways that goalie coaches around the league are trying to help their goalies hold edges longer is to sort of keep their feet underneath them a little narrower in the stance. And you can see at times I think and again I’d love to have this discussion with them because it is hard for me to look at my couch and watch this video and be like this is what I think I’m seeing until you talk to the goalie you don’t know. That’s why we started pro reads at Engle magazine because we got tired of the internet warriors being like he should have done this he should have done that. So we wanted to go to NHL goalies and say why did you do this? Why did you do that? What were you reading? And so I I should be careful here. I I I don’t want to pretend like I’m speaking for him, but what it looks like from the outside is a goalie getting comfortable with when to be in what stance and getting comfortable having his feet a little narrower, a little more underneath him because as soon as you get wide and he’s got an exceptionally wide butterfly and to be honest, guys, he moves so well out of it, like it kind of makes me jealous. Like I’m going to be honest as as a as an aging beer league goalie with bad hips. Yeah, it kills me to watch that. I’m I’m super jealous. But but too wide, too low, too soon is a very real thing in today’s NHL that a lot of goalie coaches will preach. Doesn’t matter how good you are. And he’s nth degree good when he gets to his knees. If you’re there too early in today’s game, you are creating exposure in your own game. And so that from the outside, from the 30,000 foot view, watching highlights, going through different types of saves and different types of goals and watching the corresponding video, that’s what I see. You know, like I said, easy from my couch, but that’s what I see from a distance. And it looks like that process is paying off. Um, and it looks like he’s just getting more comfortable with it. The skill package has never been denied. Like, nobody’s ever denied the skill. Um the rebound numbers uh have improved as well. Um when I and I’m just looking down. This is probably bad. I’m not looking up at you guys, but got the I need to get one of those teleprompter things. So I I got to look down to look at my computer. I apologize. Um you know, rebound numbers again, you know, since the first three weeks of the season, four goals. Since then, only one. And when I break it down into the types, like um we’ve only got two weak mid- percentage rebound chances since November 1st. like he’s only and part of this can be team because a goalie can give up a weak rebound but if the team is there to cover the back door and make sure there’s no ensuing shot then you’re bailed out. Um but in terms of shots off rebounds, off weak rebounds, um again since November 1st, he’s not giving them up. Like he’s controlling more play, and this was always one of the questions I had with him. Didn’t activate the hands, and that included blocker and stick, tendency to kick a lot of pucks off the pads early in his career, when even before he was drafted, and those inevitably end up back in play. Your defenseman are turned towards you. They have to turn and find that puck. Like it’s a tough way for everyone to play when you’re kicking pucks back out into the middle of the ice rather than even if you give up a rebound, control it. Same side, keep it in front of you, ideally into a corner, perfect world, off the stick, off the glass, into the stands, and take a whistle. Uh I see at least statistically more pucks controlled, especially over the last three weeks compared to the first three. So Kevin, I have one question on the the I was I was live for the Minnesota game and on the glass and watching Asky really close and I saw some of the best play with the puck I’ve seen from all season. Every dump in he was behind the net stopping it making passes. There was a couple of like giveaways but he was back in place for him. They didn’t cost us. What are your thoughts on him playing the puck and what have you seen from him there? Have you seen improvement with him playing the puck? It looks more like Mike Smith out there lately. Okay. So, I I’ll be honest with you. I And this is one thing that you you guys will hear from me. Like when I looked at chances, um I didn’t look at handles. So, it’s not something that comes up automatically in the feed when I’m I’m analyzing saves and and and goals through clear sight unless he does make a mistake and then it becomes a goalie error and ends up on here. So good handles and handle percentages are not something I’d look at easily, but I would say trusting you what you’re seeing obviously and overarching sort of themes of goalending. The fact he hasn’t stopped going out to get it even after a couple of mistakes. I know one was a near miss, one was a spectacular sort of pokech check recovery. Yeah, that’s right. Um that’s a good thing. And Mike Smith would be the first one to tell you because Mike Smith was the first one to hear from Marty Turko. Like uh early in Mike Smith’s career in Dallas and he learned this all from Marty Turko who was I mean invented the Turo grip. Every time you see a goalie turn his hand over the bottom hand glove sort of over top of the stick that comes from Marty Turko at Michigan. He he invented that and he was one of the true pioneers of handling the the puck at at a level we see now. And Mike went out early in a game to handle it, made a mistake and stopped going out. And when he came to the bench in the next TV timeout, Turko was like, “What the hell are you doing?” Like, “Don’t stop.” And and it’s, you know, like this is the funny thing, and this this is maybe a lesson here for any minor hockey goalie coaches that are listening, cuz at every level, coaches want a goalie that can handle the puck like Yoslavis Scaroff is capable of. But if every time they make a mistake trying to do it, you neuter them by telling them to stop, they’re never going to develop the skill. And so the fact that he’s going back out there is important. I wish we still had Dan Bole on because I’m pretty I’m willing to bet that he would agree with me when I say the defenseman want him out there stopping ri puck handling is not it’s not like we think of Mike Smith and the break, you know, like the big ex like stretch passes from your goalie. I think of it more in terms of Carrie Price. Like, yes, it’s great to be able to do that, but what made Carrie so great at it was he got out and stopped everything and made short, simple passes that a prevented his defenseman from having to gather a puck at speed and pick it off the wall going the other way and worry about getting past it as they do it. Allow them to find a corner. All part of the system like Yaroslav’s got it. It’s if he’s not going to just leave it for me to wheel into, he’s going to make a play. Where do I go for that? And now we’re out and we’re going the other way. And and again, you know, again, don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but my my guess would be Dan would be like most defenseman. They want a goalie who’s gonna, if nothing else, get out there and stop the puck. Well, yeah, that actually reminds me of a of a story. I don’t know if I’ve told this one before, but I was talking with Mackenzie Blackwood about Yorslavarov’s puck handling. I’m like, he’s really good at it, huh? And McKenzie was like, yeah, yeah, he is. But McKenzie said just joking. He’s like, “I I can be pretty that that good at it, too, but I’m just afraid to do it.” Can you guys still hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. We can hear you. We can’t see you. Oh, you’re back. That’s weird. Okay, so I apologize. Also, I noticed that it’s been moving. I’ve got a new system here. It’s designed to make me look better than just the old FaceTime camera. We’re trying something new here at Engle. I apologize that you guys are the guinea pigs. Um, but I know it’s it’s moving. The Zoom is moving in and out, so I’m trying to stay still and I apologize. I don’t know what happened there. We’re learning to today you are not the guinea pig cuz fun fact Keegan has a guinea pig right behind me in this room. Just found that out today. There we go. There we go. So I apologize. I was so distracted trying to fix the camera. What was the question? Yeah, that’s the guinea pig. Yeah. No, you’re fine. That’s okay. So my my question actually is you mentioned that with Yarao that he is just kind of finding pucks uh better now. And so how like how does a goalie like I guess how like how can you see that from your vantage point that that a goalie is finding that that puck better through traffic? Like what’s what’s the goalie doing? What can like a average fan look to see that okay the goalie is doing a better job of of that particular area? Well simple terms is he creating sightelines for himself? Can he see it? Like if other teams aren’t doing a good enough job he doesn’t have to move. He’s just seeing it. Good. Great for him. But the reality is most time you have to find lanes. And so a lot of guys when there’s bodies in front and there are times today where there are so many bodies in front there’s just nothing you can do about it. But does he just retreat and back up to his goal line or is he looking for a new sight line? Is he picking the right time to stay short side which is what most looks are? Um, and if that screen decides to flash or move you and try and push you out of your net on the short side, is he choosing the right moment to switch sides back over to the other side to the middle in terms of, okay, if I keep following this guy through the short side, he’s going to pull me out of the net now. Now is the time, like I’m in a non-dangerous moment. The puck’s not being shot now. I’m going to switch sides and get over his inside shoulder and change the lane that I am in. Is he staying flatfooted or is he engaged in his edges and moving around behind screens? Uh Joseph Wall, who’s really good at talked to us about sort of like having two parts of your body like the upper body and the lower body and having the lower body set and controlled and into your edges and holding and and ready to sort of pounce, ready to shift, ready to move, but maintaining activeness with your upper body in terms of that being the part you find sight lines with. Sometimes you got to move both. Is he managing a tall narrow stance? Escarov is tall enough to look over a lot of traffic to certainly get himself here and look around guys heads from a tall stance. A lot of guys feel vulnerable in that. That’s part of the process knowing that where depending on where the puck is and who’s got it, I have time to get out of that high stance and still get to the ice. I’m still safe. A lot of guys will panic. They’ll feel vulnerable in a high stance and they’ll get into a mid stance. And now you’ve got to look around a hip or try and find a puck around, you know, usually a defenseman with a forward. You got to find it around multiple sets of hips as opposed to being up and tall. And again, like even even like say I’m a screening goalie and where my hand is right here, I’m looking over in this lane. Like we don’t want to be right by the ear. We want to be off the shoulder. like that’s where I want my nose to be as a goalender because now or even the outside of my left ear looking on this lane because now as I drop I can maintain vision on this side whereas if my head’s right here and I drop I’m dropping into the torso and losing it of the of the screening forward. So it’s little things like that. It’s a million little things that all have to be learned and then acted upon in a split second instinctually. And again, that usually takes time. And this is still a learning process, I imagine, for him. Results though appear like like the results are there and it looks like there’s less panic behind traffic. Not that there was pure panic before, but he’s just doing a good job right now of managing all those factors and finding a way to see the puck. for yourself when you’re watching this kind of stuff. Do you do you watch the goalie a lot when even when the puck’s not coming toward the goalie, you’re just watching the goalie as the plays around the perimeter and you’re just watching his head. You’re watching his movements. And that’s a lot of the the giveaways or the kind of the the the the way the way that you can evaluate if the goalie is kind of seeing the puck through traffic like even without the puck coming at him, but just you know well honestly like usually I can’t remember who who I learned this from years ago but like usually when a puck goes in when a goal goes in it’s not the shot you’re looking for. It’s usually one or two plays or passes or moments before that where the goalie’s made a mistake and put himself behind the play or made a decision on depth that’s not allowed him to recover on that next pass or has put him in either too passive or too aggressive a position like it’s usually rewinding on a goal where you find out where the mistake if there was one cuz sometimes you just got to tip your hat but if there is one you usually find it by rewinding it do I watch through that lens I would like to but the NHL quite often the puck goes to the point and the goalie disappears from my screen. If they would if they would just put a net behind like a camera behind the net, well, I know they have one. If if that was an option for me to view every game through that lens, one side and then the other as it went up and down the ice, my life would be so much easier and so would a lot of so would a lot of goalie staff. Um, so yeah, in in short terms, yes, you want to watch the way the goalie moves. That’s why I like watching live uh above all else. As a matter of fact, I almost I’m glad I didn’t because he didn’t play, but I almost went down to Seattle last night. If I hadn’t had some family things keeping me here, I thought, “Hey, I’m on with these guys today. It’s only 2 and 1/2 hours down there and I’d really like to watch them play.” But, um, family stuff kept me away. And a trip to Portland tomorrow morning also kept me away. So, um, yeah, it’s, uh, there’s no perfect way to watch it, especially on TV. Like it’s frustrating how often uh puck will go back to the point and we lose what the goalie is doing and that’s where the battle is actually happening on the play like and it’s not just the battle for screening position in front it’s the battle for sightelines and and like I said you know what are the Sharks doing systems wise uh are they all on the same page I remember having that conversation with Robin Lanner when he was in in New York he’s like it’s not about what the opponents are doing it’s about what they’re doing and what my defenseman are doing and being on the same page and knowing that I can trust So that if this is this the lane I’m supposed to see through, I know I can stay in that lane and and I’m not going to have a defenseman back into it or or a forward flex out into the lane and be in the wrong lane and now I’ve got to move and guess and switch or that forward is flexing out in the wrong lane but not blocking a shot and um now you’re creating a layered screen, you know, and and the reality is if a if a defenseman picks the corner from outside, what most people think a low danger shot. Like if they pick the corner on either side through a layered screen, more than one sighteline disruption between the shooter and the goalender, those go in more than a breakaway in the National Hockey League. They’re 40 plus% chance. So sometimes it’s just the way it is. But the better you can all be on the same page to allow your goalie to pick the right line, to pick the sight line, to hold the sight line, or at least know, hey, if I switch, it’s because a forwards doing something, not my own guy taking away my own eyes. It just makes life so much simpler. The game’s so dynamic. Um, there’s no My camera cut off. There’s no such thing as predictability, but the more predictable we can make it, the better chance the goalie has. I had a quick question. You mentioned earlier on in the season and still now it seems like he’s kind of getting beat on those clean looks up high. Um, or it appears as so. Um, are the Sharks limiting those chances more in the month of November and or is um Ascrov changing his stance? Like is he not going down as quickly? Is that what you’re saying? Um, so five on 24 total. I just want to make sure I’ve got the right numbers in front of me and there’s a lot of numbers in my head right now and it’s a pretty scary place most of the time anyways. I’ve taken too many pucks off the noggin. Um, yeah, five on 24 for the season on sort of slot area looks. And it’s funny because a lot of times we think of slaughter shots as being dangerous, but if they don’t have other elements to them, historically around the league, they’re low to mid- danger chances, right? So his numbers are underwater. That’s a couple more than he should have given up. Not the end of the world. Um I have seen in a couple of the goals I watch just that tendency to get a little low and wide rather than trust the patients in the feet and keep them underneath you. And and and what happens when you get low and wide, obviously you give up up upstairs coverage, but it’s also that locked in sensation. and you get a little sort of locked into your edges and now your tendency off a release is to have everything pulled back and now you’re trying to catch pucks back here rather than when you’re narrow and over top of it, you’re able to sort of reach out and catch pucks out in front of you cuz it I don’t how much you guys have have been exposed to the concepts of um box control um you know simply put like it simple like take fishing lines, tie them to the post and top corners out to the puck. And obviously just common sense geometry tells you the further out you are, it’s cutting down the angle essentially. The further out you are, the smaller that box is. And so understanding that if I’m trying to make a save back here, Mhm. I’ve opened up the box. If I make that same save down here, I’m making a save in a much smaller box. In other words, play the Connor Hobbuck would would label it, and he used to use small nets when he was a kid out in front of him to learn this. Play the small net in front of you, not the big net behind you. And I’m not saying he’s not. I just think sometimes when he gets a little locked in low and wide, it can create mechanics that naturally have you playing a bigger net behind you because you’re trying to make saves sort of back along the plane of your body rather than cutting pucks off. And you know, I I talked with Thomas Beers in the offseason briefly and um Sharks goalie coach and and I asked him about um Blackwood’s evolution with the Sharks and I was I just was like, “Hey, I’ve seen him, you know, similarly stay really low and now get upright and see and and again I test.” I was like, “He’s looking a lot better.” And I was like, “That goes credit to you.” This is right after he won gold, too. So, I was like congratulating on that. Then asked him that question. I was like, “What about Ascarov?” and and he said the same thing like hey we that’s something we need to work on. Um and and I’ve seen that evolution to your point Kevin over this season where he is now standing up and he catches himself fighting low and I’m just even playing hockey not goalie but when you’re in locked in with good shin angle like even as a skater you don’t want to leave that position when you’re in it. It’s hard to to to step up and get out of it. But you’re right I see that evolution in him slowly over the games of this season where he’s he is more upright in screens. Yeah, I know. And and like I said, that’s and this is not a snap your fingers process for him. Like it’s not easy. You probably saw it take a little time with McKenzie, too. When Mackenzie got traded to Colorado, like I talked to him a little bit about the evolution and that’s what he said like for him cuz it’ be tough. You go to a new goalie coach, right? And I think him and Thomas built a built a really good relationship. He’s like, “All I really want to focus on right now is like where are my feet? Am I is my stance, my width, am I getting too wide?” Like that becomes almost foundational for him. And every goal is different and there’s no right way to do this. But in general terms around the league, as it becomes so east, west and so dynamic, the reality is the lower and wider you are in your stance, the harder it is to move. Even for someone as gifted as Yaros Lavascara, like it’s just harder to move. You think about as soon as your feet are outside of your hips, like your edges are digging in more. All your weights transitioning down and forward. And just think about it like I almost got to stand back and demo it. But if you think about it, you get your edges locked in and now I want to move to my left. Well, in order to move move to my left, I need to disengage my left skate and push with my right. If I am wide and low, the act of disengaging my left skate requires a lot more sort of pulling back to get it underneath me again. And at the same time, the push, the power I have in my right skate to move left is diminished because I’m already extended. I don’t have much more range of motion. Whereas, if we keep our feet underneath us, we’ve got way more access to explosive power in that right push edge. And it’s so easy to disengage that left edge in terms of um whether it’s to do a T push so you have to open it or and we’re seeing way more of this around the league. Just make a shuffle like especially if you can get comfortable in a shuffle now you’re not having to open that lead leg and if the puck changes direction before you get to your next spot you got to close it, stop, set, and go the other way. In a shuffle we’re maintaining sort of edges up ice. We can stop in that shuffle. If I’m shuffling over and all a sudden the play goes to my right, it’s just bang, stop, go. As opposed to t push, stop, like big heel, stop, set, and now go the other way. So, it helps to reduce delays in movement. The challenge is, especially for a taller goalie, you get caught in that upright narrow stance. You can really feel I really don’t know. The hard part for a taller goalie is you can feel really vulnerable and it can take a while to get confident that hey on open looks. I can make reactive saves from a narrower stance. I don’t need to be low and wide because for a lot of guys you can grow up your whole life feeling like low and wide is active like you’re engaged like you’re you’re like a spring coil up ready to react. It’s a lot different sensation and sometimes it that’s to me what’s most impressive is we’re like two months into the season and he’s facing shots that are more difficult than he’s ever seen. This is the best league in the world and he seems to be getting like I said I I’m not sure but it looks to me like that process is playing out in real time and in a positive manner for yourself right now. Yeah. And and listen like there’s some people in the hockey world that weren’t convinced. They everyone loved the talent. They weren’t convinced it would translate um for a lot of different reasons. the rebounds, the active hands, it’s translating, right? And and he’s also showing I think when you look at the adjustments he’s making, you know that he’s not a guy that’s coming into this league and saying, “Hey, this like there are guys, I’m not going to name there are guys that come from Russia with success and say, this is how I played there. This is how I’m playing here.” There are guys that come from the American League that have had success and say, “This is how I it worked there. I don’t need to change anything.” And so this young man, despite all the skill, despite being told he has all this skill and talent, despite being the draft pick he was, appears to be willing to listen and learn and try new things and adapt his game. And that doesn’t just bode well for him getting his feet underneath him and having that traction in the league early on because there’s going to be dips inevitably. There will be ups and downs. Teams are going to start prescing him heavier. They will find little things that they can attack. Um, but I think it bodess well long term because the guys that have the brilliant like forever careers, the Langos, the the flurries, they always evolve. Like they never stop evolving cuz the the way the game is played in front of them never stops evolving. Especially right now the way teams attack. Low and wide locked in would have worked 5 years ago. It doesn’t anymore. And so to see him make those changes in his stance and his mechanics and and get comfortable with it this quick. Um, you know, I don’t want to overstate it. This isn’t they’re dramatic and yet they’re they’re probably subtle at the same time. Um, but they’re a lot harder than I think people recognize, especially for a goalie with his unique skill set. How impressed are you then by just the sort of the adjustment so kind of quickly in season like such a disastrous start and just to kind of turn it around like that. I mean that’s that’s just not a usual. This isn’t like okay he started off slow and he just built throughout the season and by the end of the season he found his game. No, this is like again nightmare October and then right now at least a brilliant November. And so that’s where I’d want to have conversations, right? like yeah, you know, like at the end of the day, it looks to me from the outside like like he’s like he’s evolving and and and like listen like let’s not I don’t want this to sound like he had to make all these huge drastic changes. He had no chance of succeeding otherwise like that like this is a young man who has a lot of talent, right? Like yeah, so we don’t want to paint that picture either. And sometimes, you know, I can get carried away and it’ll sound like hyperbole and and like this there was no talent then it’s been saved by this magical change and that’s not the case. It’s all subtle. We’re looking for one or two% a lot of the time on these things. Um, so I don’t know what the conversations were like behind the scenes. Like I don’t know if there was an element early on of try it your way and then when it doesn’t work we’re going to do it my way or if he was buying in the whole time and then you had to just get him to be patient and trust that it will work. You know, again, I think it’s important to have a goalie coach with enough experience um to be able to have those conversations in a way that encourage positive growth that you don’t lose the athlete when it’s not working. Um but I I’m, you know, again, I didn’t have a chance to check in with Thomas before we came on the air. I don’t know what those conversations with were like. At the end of the day, between the two of them, they’re it looks like they’re continuing to build and they’ve gotten to a really strong point. I think that’s a positive cuz I mean I’m biased uh on the goalie union. I’m always going to be biased towards the goalie people, but uh I think Thomas Spear’s a hell of a coach and have thought that since he was in Calgary’s minor league organization. So I’m not surprised. But it’s not just about technical and tactical, it’s about managing the athlete. And I don’t know Yaruslav well enough to know, you know, how he would have reacted to these changes, you know, in video sessions, what those sessions look like to get him through again what is a subtle but I believe important part of this evolution. And obviously he’s not going to keep up his he has a 965 save percentage in November. He’s not going to keep that up. But just how much of what you’re seeing though does appear that it’s sustainable that um maybe he has turned some kind of corner and obviously there will be ups and downs too like you said that it’s not going to be just you know uh smooth sailing from here but that this a lot of it does seem like this is him now. Oh, I mean like his adjusted save percentage for November is plus 6.1. Like the best in the league finish at plus two, plus two and a quarter. Plus three gets you a heart trophy, frankly. Or should have gotten sherken a heart trophy. Yeah. Hellabuk wasn’t at plus three last year, right? And so plus six isn’t sustainable because of course if if you do this over the course of a season we put you on hockeyy’s we put you on goalie Mount Rushmore next to Hashikqua Broader you know like that that’s how good this is. So we have to be cognizant for that. Um, and hey, listen, like let’s not lose, you know, I know that he had to leave the team for a little bit and last, you know, I don’t know if I didn’t have a chance to watch last night’s game, but like the other thing since November 1st. So, so some of this probably goes credit to the environment, too, because his expected save percentage since November 1st is 900, which is well above the league average, 14 points above league average. Um, Alexandovich’s expected say percentage, and I know it’s just a handful of starts since November 1st is 8.89, which is still above league average. Like they were both well below up until November 1st. So, the structure in front of them appears to have improved as well. Alex Nadulkovich’s adjusted say percentage since November 1st is also top 10 in the National Hockey League. harder to see because it’s a bit of a tougher environment. Like the the his floor is lower than what Yaraos has been in terms of environment in that small and and I shouldn’t even say small tiny sample since November 1st. We’re not even half a month. But he’s producing at a top 10 level. I know Ned pretty well. He thinks the game really well. He expresses the game from a goalending perspective really well. Don’t know what. And again, you guys are in the room, so you tell me what the dynamic is like, but if I was looking for guys to help a young goalie and be a mentor while still playing at a really high level and and and I know it hasn’t been the start that he wanted overall despite these numbers since no since November 1st, but like Ned was the Penguin’s best goalie statistically last year. Um, and so to have a guy that is able to play at that level, handles the puck as well as Ned does and can help with those lessons as a mentor is I can’t like guys around the league talk about the importance of having that guy. It doesn’t always have to be a future Hall of Famer. We’ve lost so many of the Langos and all that type in the last 10 years to retirement. There aren’t that many left, but I think he’s perfect for this. And so don’t don’t discount the role that he can play um you know along with Thomas Spear and sort of helping this along well still again you know tiny sample here but top 10 adjusted save percentage since November 1st and the starts he has gotten. I did want to ask you about Ned a little bit and I I didn’t know that you guys knew each other, but when the Sharks made that trade, it seemed like they gave up a lot for a guy who not the greatest save percentage. Of course, that’s not all on him. He wasn’t on the strongest of teams. But you look at on the surface, some people are like, “Oh, why are you giving a third round pick for this guy?” But, um, from what I heard about Ned when they acquired him, perfect room guy, always positive, a guy that can give you give the can be a backseat guy to Yarao if yo is playing well, but is also capable of taking over for a stretch too, which is what I think a guy like Yarl needed. And I thought that it was a great trade even back then. And it made me think of I thought that Escaroff and Blockwood got along great and that was the one kind of oh about that trade that I didn’t really like. Uh I understood that it was going to be as Scarov’s net and you wouldn’t want Blockwood to be kind of sitting there as a backup you know three four years. He wouldn’t want that either. Mackenzie wouldn’t want that either. And so, but though they had a great relationship and so it’s great to hear that and that’s that is what I’ve seen too that uh that they have a good relationship that they’re pulling for each other that and I think that’s that’s really really important for uh for a young goalie. Yeah. And I mean Ned uh Ned last season I’m just just pulled up the numbers for last season. I just think the environment in Pittsburgh was so bad like his expected was 14 points below the league average. So that’s how tough his defensive environment was. and his uh adjusted save percentage. Um if you filter it out, sort of get rid of the guys that only played a handful of games and let’s say let’s say minimum 200 chances. Nothing like scrolling through a database live on uh on radio here, but some music. Yeah. Just filter out for the filter out for the guys that just, you know, played a played a handful of games and Ned’s adjusted save percentage was top 20 in the National Hockey League last year. So I I don’t think a lot of people like you just can’t look at raw numbers anymore. right to Apple to oranges even on the same team like you know I Edmonton became the example for this last year Calvin Pickard had an expected save percentage of 904 was the second highest in the entire National Hockey League and uh Stuart Skinners was like 888 which is right around league average I mean that’s that’s you know that’s a 16 point swing between goalies on the same team so I always see people say oh like they’re on the same team you can compare them not necessarily depending on who you start against and in and in Cal’s play uh case, I just think a guy that works so damn hard in practice and teammates just will battle to the nth degree for him last year and that showed up in his numbers combined with maybe some picking some of their starts. This year he’s got the lowest expected save percentage in the league at 860 and we’re seeing what the results are, right? So, um yeah, never judge by the raw numbers. I know like it’s easy for me to say because I can look under the hood at Clearside Analytics and pull this stuff up, but Ned was a lot better last season than I think people realized or gave credit for. Um, and so I’m not surprised. Again, I know it’s been a tough start there. And it sure feels like since November 1st, maybe the team play defensively has picked up and both goalies numbers are better for it. Yeah, I want to give a a quick shout out to Clear Sight Analytics. They do do a great job and it is a reminder that kind of what is most publicly available for for myself and Dubar and Keegan you know we have gold slave above expected which is a good stat it’s better than safe percentage but that is again we don’t see what you see with clear side and and the Delovich because with the what we see publicly nevelic’s numbers are not strong weren’t strong last year but you have a little more kind of kind of depth into that so I just want to remind everybody that uh what we have gold save expected better than uh than uh than the just save percentage or obviously uh GAA but still limited in a way. Uh one more question I wanted to ask you Kevin is your time okay I don’t want to couple more minutes boys. Yeah. Okay. Especially because I keep cutting in and out. Got to give us back a couple minutes there I guess. Huh. Um, Escarov has credited kind of uh uh when I asked him and you know he doesn’t want to get too too much into the technical but he’s mentioned just for himself mentally that he’s done some breath work recently. He’s even taken to listening to classical music and that’s kind of helped him helped him relax and so you know how big of uh uh important is that for a goalie to kind of find the things that maybe work for him to kind of help him focus and relax? Oh, let’s see. Okay, another one. The great question to ask a goalie like Kevin. Um, what do you do to not be weird? And then he gets weird and disappears. Goalies are weird. Classic goalie here. Yeah, he’s gone gone. He’s going to have to um rejoin. There we go. There you go. That That one That was classic goalie move. That was really right there. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s ask the crazy goalie what it’s like to be a crazy goalie. Yep. Exactly. Um just leaves. Yeah. No, exactly. I’m out. I’m out. Um why do I Why do I keep passing out? Um honestly, again, like if that’s new to him, it surprises me a little bit. Um I say it was new. I just think he he just I just asked him, well, you know, sort of difference between November and October, and that’s what he kind of went with. So, I I would take that as maybe he’s doing it more or maybe he’s doing it more on like a regulated daily basis as opposed to maybe not as often before. I’m not sure. So, yeah, listen, like like there are mental experts for goalending. Uh we work with a bunch of them. Um, breath work is certainly one of the things like if you’re in a low shot game, you can use breath work to raise your intensity in and you know, we talk about how low shot games are different. There’s different types of breathing to calm you in high stress environments or actually get you up if you’re worried about being a little too subdued. There’s all kinds of different techniques. Um there’s different sort of focus techniques that different goalies use and quite often like I think a lot of this stuff is introduced to goalies at least now at a young age and I don’t know what he was exposed to overseas um and what he wasn’t and sometimes it can just be the tools are always there and you just access them at different points of your career and there might be different points in your career where the tool makes sense or is more needed and you find it and sometimes it’s an actual real thing and sometimes it’s just a placebo. It makes you feel good and it doesn’t matter. Like it really doesn’t matter if it if it’s there are things out there that goalies get taught that I swear I’m like is this really helping? Doesn’t who cares? It’s white gear, dark gear. Some goalies I won’t wear certain colors of gear. If in your own head you think it makes you better. That’s all that matters. But breath work is very much a real thing that can help you regulate emotion, can help you regulate heart rate, can help create calmness or create sort of a more invigorated state. Um, we’ve got a bunch bunch of different people that sort of teach you how to manage breath work and all the different things. And so, good. Again, another example of a guy who is not just coming through the end of October and being like, I don’t know what’s going on. Let me find a tool. let me access a tool that’s going to help me sort of become a part of my stable, become a part of my foundation, something I can refer to at whatever moment I need to refer to it to help sort of steady steady me in the crease. I mean, at the end of the day, we can’t look in between their ears. We see what they do between the pipes technically and tactically, and you can never look and sort of see the mental makeup, but you get clues along the way. And again, the growth mindset that he has, I think, is encouraging in all aspects. I got I got two quick questions unrelated to ASKY but just goalenders and goalending in general. Uh first one um so actually I uh my cousin has four boys and three of them are goalies and uh yeah I know and uh they actually were you know in youth hockey and uh Georgie Catalona is one of their coaches also youth hockey coach to Demco. So, I’m just wondering about Demco. You’re there. Like, is he when healthy the best goalie for the Knucks? And, uh, is he is the health thing a concern? Do you expect him back? And what are your thoughts on Demco? Um, yeah, you feel bad. Uh, he’s I mean, forget best goalie for the Canucks. Um, and although Kevin Lakin’s been great. Yeah. Especially since Thatcher went down early last season. Like, he’s he’s one of the best goalies in the league and I’ve got numbers to back it up. when he’s healthy, he’s in that top five on a consistent basis. And at his best, when he’s really rolling for like a month at a time, honestly, he might be the best goalie in the league. I mean, everybody goes through ups and downs, but he has he’s had stretches, you know, where you can make an argument that he should have been America’s goalie uh at the Olympics, but one of the greatest abilities for a goalie is availability, right? It’s a cliche now, but it’s for a reason, and that’s been a tough thing for him. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Uh it’s apparently they’re calling it lower body. Evidently it’s a groin. Um he missed some time the weekend before he was ultimately injured with another lower body thing that just sort of flared up and they were being precautious. Uh the injury he sustained two years ago was such an unprepedented unpredictable injury that you can’t help but wonder if if that’s part of the issue going forward in terms of actually having a solution to manage that long term. And at the end of the day, you just you feel terrible because I’ve seen and heard how hard he works to keep coming back. And if you’ve ever been around a professional athlete that runs into a run of injury luck, um it’s so hard. Like it’s so hard to keep that focus and motivation and keep going back to that grind when you ultimately just end up back in the gym again, you know, a short period of time later. And this is, you know, he had both hips done when he was in college or coming out of college. He’s had surgeries on both knees since then. Well, with the Canucks. Um, and that’s outside of the injury in the playoffs two years ago that didn’t require surgery. Uh, you just wonder like it’s all a chain. The lower body for him is has been a problem. And honestly, he could be back in two weeks and he could play the rest of the season. And I hope for his sake and for Vancouver’s sake and maybe even for the US Olympic team, although it feels to me like the unpredictability would be too much for them to take a guy all the way to Italy. But like you hope for all those sakes that he is is back. Um and we may forget about this a year from now cuz he’s had a couple straight years of health, but we’re now 5 years into his career as a number one and he’s yet to make it to the end of any of those seasons without a significant injury. No, thanks for that. And uh we’re rooting for him. That is really hard to come back time and time again after consistently being beat up mentally, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then the other one was there was this great um I just want to talk about Wedgewood a little bit because Scott Wedgwood had this great clip uh in NHL postgame uh with TNT where he talks about memorizing every player shooting hand so he knows the lanes and the angles of every player when they’re entering the zone. Is that like common? Is that like a Wedgewood thing? Is like how psycho is that? Yeah, you guys are just set you guys are setting me up for shameless plug here. Um, we had an article on that just a few weeks earlier. I did one on uh on NHL.com lets me run a goalie column every two weeks called unmasked and we touched on it there. And then we dug in into it even deeper. Like basically obviously NHL.com I don’t get to publish 2500 words, but if you know me, you know I could probably do 2500 words on those subjects. So, we do an extended version with the full interviews that that were done for that story over at Engle the following week where we just sort of flush it out even more. Um, the short answer is this kind of became a hot topic when Sam Montbo uh he was on an RDS French language uh podcast and he basically they were naming names of players and he’s like right shot black tape, left shot, white tape, like all like he knew them all. And when I saw that, it it sort of became like a party trick thing and people are like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this.” And at Engle, we do pro reads where we sit down and break down video with a goalie and they walk us through their save selection and why they chose a certain depth, why they chose a certain save, why they loaded a skate, anticipating what allowed them to know what was coming next. And a lot of the information is handedness. handedness is massive because if it’s a right shot on the left side receiving a pass, that’s a one-timer. So, I might need to slide across on my knees cuz I can’t beat that play on my feet and get set. And if he shoots it low, I’ve got the ice taken away as I’m moving. If that’s a left shot over there, two things change. One, I’ve got more time because he it’s a really hard play to one time across your body. So, I’ve probably got time to beat that on my skates. Two, the puck has to travel further. Obviously, a one-timer is going to cut it off shorter on its route, whereas the left shot, it’s got to come all the way across his body before he catches it. So, A, I’ve got more time, and B, I have to go further. My my my my destination where I’m pushing to changes. And so, that’s just one example of hundreds of why you need to know the handedness of everybody else on the ice. And why I think, and this is one thing I wish I I I want to watch next time I watch a scar off, you guys can watch this for me. How often does he look off the puck? Like if the puck’s in the corner, non-dead area, is he scanning the zone? Quick head turn, scan the zone, find out all that information. Cuz when I started asking around the league, so when when when Montbo did that, my first thought was every goalie in the league does this. This is not a secret. But then I started asking and certainly as guys come over the boards you like Wedgewood talked about you try and pick up that information because as I just described it’s so important. But secondly the second part of this is um that young guys don’t often know it right away. Like Jakob Dobish Sam Montbbo’s playing partner he knows certain things but he hasn’t picked up everything. And Jonathan Quick told me he doesn’t like he couldn’t even tell like the guys on his team and that shocked me. different guys rely on different pieces and different parts of information. Um there are other guys that to them being able to look at the blade and know who it is by the tape job and by the handedness gives because they know that some guys push to shoot, some guys pull to shoot, some guys are going to pass. And so that split second of not having to figure out who it is can be the difference between making a save or holding your edges for a pass or, you know, knowing what’s coming in terms of is he going to pull it? Cuz you think about it, guys with big wingspans, man, like they catch it and pull it into their feet, it’s like a three-foot angle change on the fly. So knowing that that’s his shooting tendency, as soon as you see his stickage and I think more often than not around the league, guys have that ability. And we outline all that in the story at Engle. Okay, awesome. That’s super Yeah, super plug. Honestly, not shameless at all. Shameless. Hey, I did my research. I knew I grew up. I like I like that. Well, when we Well, I got to be honest, when we saw Wedgewood talking about and he’s so good at that kind of thing, like we’re like we wondered if that was where the like cuz that story became kind of hot and and and the NHL.com one in particular, we wonder if that sort of became a source for qu like that’s a question I don’t think other people were asking. Frankly, because I assumed all goalies did it. I had stopped asking it and the Montbo stuff with RDS actually sparked me to be like, hey, maybe I need to ask a few guys this question and turn this into a story. So, you know, sometimes it’s forest for the trees. Get us our best stories. I think one of the most popular stories I ever wrote at NHL.com in unmasked was the idea of burning rubber and that, you know, you get hit in the mask as a goalie, if it’s got enough of the right type of spin on it, it feels like you were in a parking lot in the 70s in your backseat of your buddy’s Camaro doing burnouts. Like it’s just like fills your nose with this burning rubber smell. And I always had it sort of cast aside as something I always knew as a goalie and like ah one day when I’m short of calm I’m just going to pull this out. I’d had a few quotes on it and it just went crazy because people that didn’t play golf course didn’t even know that that was a thing that that’s something that we live with as goalies on a regular basis. So sometimes those are the best stories, the ones that you assume everybody knows and then you find out no they didn’t. That’s awesome. I didn’t know that. That’s great. Well, you hopefully your cousins as they get older or your nephews don’t learn it the hard way because it’s uh they sometimes that sometimes it’s harmless and it’s just a little like smelling salt. Sometimes it comes with the old bell being rung and uh a little bit of wooziness after. Oh jeez. Yeah, that’s wild. Well, Kevin, thank you so much uh for your time. Kevin Woodley, goalies for.com. Unmasked uh forl.com also covers the Conucks for them. also writes for Engal magazine and once again on Twitter. Kevin is in goal on Twitter. So thanks again Kevin. Thanks guys. Thanks Kevin. Next conversation. Let’s stay in touch. Bring your gear next time. We’ll get you in that in our beer league. Make sure your nephews are all subscribers of Ingole magazine. We’ll make them better. Done. Yeah. Absolutely. Give me a promo code. They got three of them. It’s expensive. Need a family code for that one. Yeah. Well, three three kids as goalies. You hit me up off the air. We might just help them out of out of sympathy. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Kevin. See you guys. Thank you, Kevin. That was awesome. So much great learning about the position and and such a great thing to talk about ASI because we needed that. Done like uh like like Kevin or somebody like as he was talking we could see it happening on the screen like what was going on. I know that’s uh that’s post-production. Green screen green screen behind Kevin. We got Yeah, we got quite a lot of editing on this one. We need graphics. Um but it is cool because you can just listen to him for hours talk about all the things that it’s demystifying a position that is very mystifying. It is very mystifying. Yes. Yeah. So it’s just great to see that he’s recognized the change and said, “Oh man, there’s there’s definitely something cooking there.” And I I really like that that Asgar is I mean the Sharks kind of put themselves into a corner, right? They they’re like Ned and Ascarov are guys and and no disrespect to Kerier and Scarak, but they’re not ready to be even backups in the NHL. Um so they kind of put themselves into this corner and they gave so much for Ascarov that like you have to keep playing him. But it’s really good that Dunkovich too. Yeah. And Ned, too. Yeah. But like yeah, they had to keep playing him. There’s not really another option. But um it’s good that he’s responded to that kind of confidence with he’s amazing November stats. So yeah. Yeah. Even in the average of them, right, if that’s his standard, he’s looking great. So right, even if he was just a regular, you just average it out. Yeah. Like a regression of the mean, you know, he’s kind of looking good. Yeah. This is the the effect of like we had Mackenzie Blackwood playing at a high level. The Sharks, they look like a team. They look like a real Sure. competitive unit as opposed to they can’t even get it going because they let in two goals by the end of the first five minutes. So, but Kevin did make a good point though that even though the couple games I mentioned, the Florida game, um the Minnesota game that the defense overall team defense doesn’t look as strong, but that doesn’t take away from the beginning of the month though where the Sharks did look like they had kind of found a level of play that we hadn’t seen in a long time. And we talk about the Seattle the 6-1 win the Winnipeg game which Dan Bole talked about is some of the best Sharks hockey that he’s seen in a long time. And so I do think that’s a part of it. So I want to give some credit to the overall team that even though they’ve struggled a little bit on this road trip that the the pieces are there for just uh a much better season. Going back to the original question, are they good? Are they going to make the playoffs? Probably not. I said this to some buddies in the locker room this week where I was like even if the Sharks and I don’t think they’re going to do that, but let’s say they go back to the last two seasons and play like that for the rest of this year. This is still progress. Significant progress I think to a large degree. Well, I would agree with that. You can’t you can’t go backwards now that that sharply. You need If you look at the whole season as a whole, well, yeah, I don’t think they will. You you can’t you can’t play your best hockey in November and pass out for the last five months and say that’s a that’s not a good thing. But but I but I but here’s where I do see progress. Mine’s better and and this is someone I wanted to talk about. So maybe we’ll transition to Will Smith. You want to talk about Mlin Celbrini? Really? What? Of course. All day every day. Shocking shocking shocking development at San Jose Hockey podcast. We want to talk about Mlin Celbrini. No, you have because look, you you said this earlier like a lot of the veterans like we need I think better quality veteran help uh at some point, but sure Ascarov looks better, Will Smith looks better, Ekkan looks better, Mlin looks better. Even if they’re not winning as many games, a lot of the responsibility is is not on these players anymore. And that’s overall development of the team. And if you you know I and I think that the Sharks have already done something in the last couple of weeks that we haven’t seen in five years. So so like that alone has given us a mark of like and the fans can feel it. We can all feel it like it was different. It was completely different the way we won games. We didn’t blow leads in the third period. Uh they’re clawing back. So you outplay teams. You outplayed teams. Yeah. Even ones you didn’t win. Um but yeah. So, if there’s nothing there, I wanted to jump into Smith. Will Smith because I feel like Oh, go ahead real quick before we get to that. It’s just also great from the other side. We’re not talking about Mlin. Well, well, we could talk about Smith, but watching like the Shark Tank actually be excited. You guys get to go and see, but watching like like a loud arena like you could hear it on the broadcast like it’s like, “Oh [ __ ] we can actually get some excitement back.” That’s the thing that we’ve been missing I think the most is is really excitement over this team. So yeah, that was impressive. Uh the I think it was the Florida game and Ascarov said that that’s the loudest heard SAP center and the I think the first goal uh they scored. I forgot who scored that one. And then the Alex Wberg empty net goal. Mhm. And that’s that arena was 15,000 um announce attendance too, not actual attendance. And so that’s not that’s not the tank full even close, right? And so that was and that’s that’s where we tell Asie and the boys, just wait till you hear us in the postseason. Just you wait. Get us there. You get us there and we will be Yeah. Yeah. Let’s blow that top off. Well, I did want to say this about Mlin, though, because I I I can’t believe that we could talk two hours about the Sharks and hardly bring up Mlin. um that I did think this was a very interesting road trip for him and I’m curious to see how he adjust this is part of the adjustment for the rest of the season and if this is the best mac we get all year then that’s I mean that’s not that it’s a concern but you you do want more and what I mean by that is so going into the road trip you know the Mlin celebr uh superstar train at at you know chugging along at at at 100 miles per hour 200 miles per power, but bullet train speed. But I thought this was a very mixed road trip for for Mlin. And what I saw was how hard teams checked him, which was already happening, but really saw it though. Calgary, Macy Black was on him like a blanket. In Minnesota, Joe Eriken E was on here on him like a blanket. And in both those games, he was he wasn’t doing a lot. And but what what I liked about Minnesota though was that the second they gave him a inch of space on the power play in overtime, he killed them. Two primaries. Yeah, he killed him. Yeah, that’s that’s what a that’s what a a star does. And didn’t like him against Calgary, but no one was good against Calgary. And um I did write a story about possibly they might want to put Eklan with him because Ekkan can can we talked about this a couple weeks ago uh can can help Mlin play off the puck a little bit. Ekkan carrying the load there can not as good as Mlin at that but very very good though at it though and that and that’s exactly what happened once they put Eklan with with Mlin that it gave Mlin some of his best chances of the game. But I also understand why the next game they didn’t do that because you’re actually the Sharks best puck transporters are Mlin number one and then Zachin. So you put both of them together, you’re weakening the rest of the lines really. And so that there’s a danger in doing that. And so Kurishv is a little bit of a compromise there where he’s pretty good carrying the puck blue line to blue line. But um but you can you can take him off of of Ekken’s line because you have Ekkan and Wenberg. Wenberg is the third best shark in ter according to stack leakletes in terms of puck uh puck transportation. Uh but also too Mlin too to finish the point he did have a strong game against Seattle and maybe Seattle doesn’t have a matchup center like Erikson Ek or Blin who are kind of selky worthy guys or in past years they have been but um but still nonetheless he did kind of punch through with a much better game against Seattle. But that’s why I want to watch though because um I I wonder with with Mlin is it just as simple as he has to fight through it. He has to fight through like you watch a Minnesota game and like basically every time he received the puck in the defensive zone and Jeff Petri talked about this too a Florida one. I I asked Jeff about this. He said we want to prevent him from building up speed in the defensive zone. Yeah. Of course. And that’s the same thing they talk about with McKinnon with C with uh with McDavid. Same kind of talk. Right. Second thing is you saw all those extra shots that Mlin was taking. Now Mlin may not have loved my question about Florida’s physicality, but that was a appropriate question for him because Florida was giving it to him and just extra shots that were uncalled, right? Erikson E was called for an extra shot on Mlin in the Minnesota game. But that’s what you do against the there’s nothing no reason to complain about it. You’re the you’re the you’re the future of the NHL. You’re the Sharks best player. You’re going to have to take that. And so I wonder for Mlin how he adjusts through it. Is it as just simple as he has to fight through it? And you know, we saw the Seattle game, he fought through it. We saw in the Minnesota game that he fought through it. And so that’s kind of something I I’m watching. So with uh Mlin Mlin, Mlin. No, I I I’m with you. I think I think to your point, he’s already to a degree proven he still has that bite. Like he’s an alpha. He keeps going. Like he does not He’s a dog. He doesn’t let up. Brad Marian said, he’s a dog. Yeah, he’s still he still he still goes and uh and I think that’s what you’re seeing. And and obviously he’s gonna learn a little bit more and also I think to a degree like they haven’t had a a a another winger with Mlin’s line that can keep up. I think Will Smith deserves to be there, but he deserves another winger. And and I think these are questions that the Sharks do need to start to think about is like, you know, who’s going to fill that role and and on the defensive side also, like he’s doing a lot of great things defensively, like yesterday’s goal that uh you know, he was coming back and tracking his guy and it was just an unlucky bounce. Uh but Clingberg made a mistake on that play and if you have more competent D, I think you’re going to get a better Mlin. And to your point, Sh has another winger. I think that’s a lot of it. But he’s already been going to the middle of the ice more. He he still battles. I did like Graph on that line in Minnesota for a little bit. I thought they played well together. Um but you know, he needs someone I I still believe he needs a big body. He needs like an eagle shirt or something like that. A halter or even a halter. Someone who could talk about that. Let’s talk about that in a little bit. But I wonder though, I’m thinking more like um I don’t know Eer’s numbers for this, but I know the Sharks were interested in Eers in the offseason. Of course, Eers doesn’t want to sign. didn’t want to sign here for obvious reasons, but um a guy like that like an eklland type to take the puck carrying loads. I’m not thinking so much about size. I don’t know. Maybe size is the answer, but that’s different solutions. Yeah, I think I think they definitely need a Matthew N. even a Yeah, I think they need a a guy who’s going to take pucks off the wall, a guy who’s going to get to the front of the net, a guy that’s going to um transition two guys like uh Celebrate. I think that’s what they need. Defi fills in that role, but he’s just he’s got he’s lost a little bit of speed, I think it looks like, but it’s hard to say. Talk about Yeah, about maybe we can skip I was gonna talk about Equinex next, but yeah, we can talk about tofully after this, but go ahead though. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I think this Tavi is just the the benefit of him is he is a secondary shooting option and he’s so smart. Like he’s just a very smart hockey player. So he can he can keep up mentally with with Smith and and Celabbrini and and transition well. But yeah, you’re right. Like the actual speed at which they attack, they could use a faster guy, I think, on their on their wing. So um I don’t know. We’ll talk about Eager Shernov later cuz I I watched him this week. Um I he’s not there yet. I just want to preface that. But I think that’s an interesting I want to hear that. Yeah, because there’s a lot of talk about them calling a stop over a guys flashier guys. But yeah, let’s talk about that in a second. But um in terms of let’s just skip to to Foley then. So um actually thought Tofoley was actually very good against Seattle and what I watched. Yeah. On the third line. Yeah. Uh what I what I watched for with Tofolei and Tofo was was good with with Smith and Cellrini before the road trip. He was actually he was on a little bit of a run with points but like you mentioned Keegan that like Tofoi I’m not sure if he’s slow it’s hard to tell because I’ve never watched his skating that much. He’s never been a a great skater. Even back to when he was, you know, coming coming out of uh of the Ottawa 67s and when the Kings drafted him, that’s always been the knock against him. But um when his puck movement though is precise, he thinks the game fast enough like you said, and then when he makes that connecting pass to let’s say Mlin to to Foley to Smith or vice versa. and he was doing that before when the Sharks were playing some of their best hockey before the the the road trip. And so anyway, I I don’t know. I do I’m not sure if he’s slow that’s something I got to I got to ask. Has he slowed down a bit, which is obviously a concern because he’s he’s here for three more years. Um he does have upper body injury that Warsoski says he’s playing through and so I wonder because his shot doesn’t seem to have the same kind of This is just like kind of visual. there’s not a, you know, uh, it just kind of eye tests without too much backup, but his shot doesn’t seem to have the same vinegar as maybe maybe we’re used to. So maybe that’s where it’s kind of affecting him. He had a really good chance yesterday, I think, uh, coming off uh maybe it was a power play chance, but he was on a second unit, so he jumped off uh he jumped on on the ice just as the first unit was finishing, but he got a nice pass and he just it didn’t quite maybe didn’t look like he got got as much of it as as you’re used to with him. So maybe that’s that’s an issue with with Tofoley. So I don’t know. I think it’s uh I’m not sure what exactly is going on with him. He’s not quite as strong as he is last year, but there are extenduating circumstances, too. Yeah, I think we’d have to ask around to see if other people it it seems like maybe he’s just a half a step slower, but it’s really tough to say. um you’re right with injuries and and everything and these kind of things like later on the season fast guy anyway. Yeah, maybe he um he he kind of gets into more of a groove and looks a little bit faster. And I think you could say like the Sharks attack has also just gotten faster and there’s a lot of rush playing. So it’s not necessarily that he’s gotten slower, but also just that differential of the way that the Sharks attack these days. there’s a lot more movement off the puck when they’re doing when they’re doing it right. 212. Yep. Exactly. And that just I don’t think favors his style or, you know, his getting older very well. So, I think it’s some of that, too. I think the Sharks attack has changed and, you know, you have different leadership. He’s gotten removed off the PP1, uh, which I think is fair and and justified. Um, so I think he’s g, you know, he’s in this third third line position now and I think he he does have to re-evaluate because, you know, we need secondary scoring on this team right now and and he’s he needs he needs to he needs to put some pucks behind the net. And you’re right, I didn’t know he was injured, so obviously that’s that’s that you have to put that into account, but I would like to see him find his place on the third line. And I agree with you, Shang, that I saw him find a role on that third line last night. Uh and uh and so hopefully it could result in some pucks in the net. Yeah. But I guess overall when we talk about this team though, we talk about oh how sustainable their winning was. I mean they don’t have a lot of solutions beyond Mlin and and Ekkan. I guess it was a good guy to bring up in terms of like these guys are bonafideed have become pretty bonafideed all around NHL forwards. And a lot of credit to Eklyn for that. Just how good he’s seemed how good he’s been this year. You’re not even missing this. Okay. No. Will Will Will as And Will’s just 20. And so I want to super stress that like a lot of people expect him to be like, “Oh, he’s slow. Oh, he’s this and that.” He’s 20 years old. He’s putting up since uh the midpoint of last year. He’s a point per game player as a 1920 year old in this league. He is a remarkable talent. He is I wrote this in a story yesterday. He’s a human highlight reel, but he is in terms of just his normal growth as a player. Um, he’s not he’s not a complete player by any sense yet, and that’s okay. You know, William at this rate. No, I mean I will. Yeah, because he’s had some good plays where he wins some battles, but he is not on a nightto-ight basis there yet. And maybe he will get there sooner than expected, but um so I don’t think he I I think right now it’s it’s clear that the Shark second last year you would have said, okay, Mlin was probably the best forward. Uh even though he’s just his rookie year, maybe Tofoley was a second best forward. Maybe Macy Grelin when he was here was right there. You can argue for Wedenberg just his completeness and then Ekkan might be like your fifth or sixth best forward last year, but I think Ekkan’s jump has been at least so far this year consistent enough where he to me is the clear second best and he’s a he’s a fairly complete player, whereas Will Smith is still finding that. Again, that’s totally okay. So, if you look at I strong disagree. I strong disagree. Let’s talk about Yeah. So, I think I think Will Smith is playing great hockey right now. Um, I think he’s just a he he he’s playing his role. Um, he’s got two game-winning goals uh this season. One of them was that sweet pass from uh Kurushev from behind the net. Every other player on the Sharks except for Mlin is probably shooting that puck and you don’t win that game. I think that was against Winnipeg. No. Who was that against? the the pass from behind the net and then Will Smith passes across Kurishv to Will Smith in front of that. He passes across to Mlin. Mlin shoots it. Will Smith buries it. What game was that? Oh, that was uh Will Smith was just in front of the net, right? That might have been Winnipeg. I think it was Winnipeg. Oh, yeah. But I Okay. So, so the point the point is that that level of playmaking I no one else or even on that power play goal against Minnesota where he sets up back door on that entry which Ekkan was a part of. So was Tofoley. So was Mlin. He has a hockey IQ that I think validates him even being more impactful and more important than Ekkund on this team. Um and he if you look at his point look at it he’s a plus seven. Ecklund’s a five. Will Smith’s hockey IQ is so high. that stat. Come on. Okay. Well, well, don’t don’t throw the plus minus at me there. Sure. Sure. Overall, yeah, look at matchups against, you know, with Wenberg against Will Smith’s playing first line. Will Smith’s playing first line. Yeah, but he’s not matched up against the best offensive players on the other side. Typically, though, he’s usually seeing Erikson act, which is a tough match up, too. Obviously, in a different kind of way. If you’re an offensive Well, look, I then then we’re defining different roles. If Ekkan’s like a shutdown forward and a defensive forward and that’s his role, then we could talk about this separately. But in terms of look, and and Keegan, you know this as well because you’ve been following Will Smith for a long time. So have I. He’s always been known to be clutch. Um in big games, he shows up like that’s what, you know, he had that around him. uh even in Boston and in the NCAA and even before that, he shows up big in big moments and he’s continued to do that. So, you know, and and I think, you know, even in a in in a 500 team to I know plus minus again, I’m not taking it as like the ultimate stat, but it is a stat that is one data point that tells you a little bit of something. It’s pretty impressive that he’s a plus seven, even though people criticize his defensive side of the game. Um, sometimes I’m seeing less of that and I’ve actually seen really good growth in Will Smith this season and I think he goes under the radar because he plays with Mlin and Mlin’s Mlin and he’s flying on the ice. But a lot of the movement off the puck and a lot of the Will Smith game that I’ve been seeing, I’m really happy with him and I I could I can definitely convince myself in him being the number two forward on the team right now after Mlin. Well, I I do want to say that like again, I’m not trying to denigrate Smith at all. I think that what he’s doing is amazing. And when I say human highlight reel, I mean that in like the best sense of the word. He is literally a human highlight reel out there. Um he makes plays that Mlin can’t make. He absolutely he absolutely does do that. And so I’m not taking away from that. And I do know that yeah, historically he is a clutch player, too. But Will Smith that I I I find that in games he can kind of not be there for a little while and he makes this amazing play. Yeah. And that’s great. That’s No, I mean that’s that’s a quality, right? But like in terms of winning hockey, he’s not a li he’s less of a liability too. I didn’t call him did I call him liability? I did not. Okay. So in terms of winning hockey though, like you want consistency and reliability. That’s why when Warski, I know people don’t like this, but when he yo-yos lines around, you don’t see Ekkan being moved down to the third line because Ekkan is both highly skilled, but highly has a has a reliable motor. has a even when Ekkan isn’t scoring, he’s helping you still, right? And Mlin is the same way too. When Mlin is not scoring, he can still help you. Will Smith hasn’t found that yet. That’s why when we talk about USA hockey, I bet you Will Smith is not seriously in that conversation yet because he hasn’t reached that point yet where US can say like, “Okay, we can’t put Will Smith in our top six. He’s not quite there yet. If we bring him and put him on the fourth line, can he help us?” probably not. Okay, he’s not coming. Whereas with Mlin, you can consider I’ve made this argument that team Canada can identify Mlin as okay, if Mlin is not our one or two center and we give that to McKinnon McDavid, can Mlin help us as a fourthline winger or any role on the team? Absolutely Mlin can do that. Is team Sweden taking Ecklund is the bigger question. I think Ekkan in that sense has shown enough that there’s at least some argument that if you put him on a third fourth line energy role on a team Sweden that he can do that now which you couldn’t say two years ago. Yeah, I kind of I’m going to I’m going to shoot the middle of both your arguments. Okay, because it’s it’s the good thing to do. Um I I think what I do agree is a way more complete player than Smith, but I don’t think that Smith is ever going to actually be a complete complete player. I think that I mean maybe he’s gonna be better for sure, but I think what you’re what you’re looking for Smith is what you’re going to get. It’s just going to be more human highlight reels. It’s going to be more of that high octane offensive style of play. Yes, he’s going to disappear. No, he does not have the two of game, the backicking prowess, the anything that that Ekkan does or whatever. So, you kind of have to choose what player you want as like the second best player on the team. I think skill-wise it’s Will Smith. I think it’s um sure playing hockey. I think you’re right, Ch. I think it’s Ecklund right now. But like Smith and Celebrity, that’s the that’s the beauty is like they are like that it was a like yes, Will Smith wanted to be center and we talked about him playing center, but having him be a winger. He has he still needs to learn a little bit more of like board play I think is something that he’s got to get better at and using the body and everything. But him and him and Celbrine just make such a match that like this is this is the Taves and Kane going forward. This is your you know pick a center, pick a winger that are matched up with each other forever. So I I really I think that’s coming true in the last couple of weeks for sure. We thought it might be that but it’s really coming true. Um so excited about that. But I’m not going to I’m going to call the both 2.5s. Well, to to to to go to go off your point of Kane and Taves, like I’m shooting the middle. Oh, let me ask you this. So, like on a Kane and Taves comp maybe like on that Blackhawks team going to be better than Taves. That’s the point. But for sure, but like let So then obviously Smith is your Caners, right? Also one of his favorite players all time growing up, I think. And then your Patrick Sharp is Ecklund, right? essentially in that com and and my point is my point though is who is who is untradable in that who is like your anchor it’s Will Smith and Will Smith’s been playing really good hockey but Patrick Kane becomes that later though. Right now though right now so I’m not suggesting that Will Smith ever needs to be a Selki candidate or whatever. Right. It’s saying that, okay, let’s just use like general numbers. Like Will Smith is like a 80 offense right now out of 100 and maybe his defense, his overall game might be a 30, right? Now, Patrick Kane might be a 100 offense and like a 50 his defense and whatever. Right? That’s all Will Smith needs to get to. No one’s saying Will Smith needs to be a 8080 player, 80 offense, 80 defensive player. You know, Ekkan might end up being like a 80 offense, a 60 defense. Nice well-rounded player there. So right now, Will Mcklin is the Shark second. That’s OB is right now. It’s again no no it’s no swipe on Will Smith like like Will Smith, you know, if Wilson can get his defense overall and his compete, right, which he showed yesterday against Seattle, which I wrote about. Yeah. And that’s got to be every night thing, though. I don’t know why that is controversial or even a question mark. If you want to win hockey, uh, if you want to play winning hockey, you’re all your best players need to have that every night. It can’t be a turn on, turn off thing. That was a William Ecklan problem early on. Not that he intentionally turned it on and off, but just sometimes he could he could disappear in in in in hightra games and physical games just because he was young probably and he wasn’t confident in his body. It’s probably the same thing with Will Smith. Well, I saw some of that from Eklan last night. He disappeared at parts till yesterday’s game. Uh well I don’t know if I think consistently though William has shown uh that that has not happened a lot this year. If you want to pick certain shifts after the injury after he got back from injury he he definitely is not him full self. You know that’s wrong. That first game back he was amazing. I Minnesota he was the best Minnesota for sure. Yeah he was the best on the ice. Everyone disappeared against Calgary. Yeah that’s true. Calgary you can’t Yeah. That’s the whole team. Yeah that’s fair. Well then then we have Seattle. So we’re talking about three games here. one game where everybody disappeared and actually in that game against Calgary, William Mlin was one of the few players that had like kind of a pulse that game. He wasn’t good, but he was I think better than a lot of players. Anyway, that’s that’s neither here nor there. But um the the point is is is just that that no one is saying that that Will Smith is needs to be needs to be needs to be Mlin needs to be Willie Mlin. But there are there are things for him to be better at like on a daytoday minuteto minute shiftbyshift NHL level that I think William Aklin seems to and William again William’s a 2021 pick. Yeah. Versus Right. Right. And that’s the point I’m making. I’m not I’m not I’m not attacking I love Will Smith and like I said Will Smith what he can do out there like I said he can make plays again I don’t say this about anybody he can make plays that Macklin can’t make and we see that all the time we could see a game where he you know 10 minutes of his ice time doesn’t do a lot and he just does something like holy [ __ ] what did he just do I’ve called willp vision the singular best skill of any sharks forward like that is like let’s again we’ve this celebrininess is like it is his celebriness, but his vision is Yeah. like grading it out of a hundred scale. It’s in the 90s. So, it’s Yeah. But yeah, I I don’t but I don’t think Will Smith right now is like a like on a better team is necessarily like said a winning hockey player again. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that because again, second year, he’s getting 20 years old. I think he’s getting there. Yeah, he is. Lots of progress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Compare him the beginning of this year versus even the end of last year when he was on his hot streak point-wise. On the defensive side of the puck, he’s much better. And I agree with you. Yesterday taking a thing away from him. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, I don’t know what the ar argument is then. Yeah. I just we just we’re just agreeing in an argumentative tone. Yeah. The best way to do this. We need a we need a uh we need a timer at the top for because I you know I Yeah. And I love Ekkan. I love Ekkan’s game. Yeah. No, it’s all good stuff all around. I I I just wanted to talk about him because I thought he’s been playing very well, Will Smith in particular, lately and his clutchness is right there. Like every time there’s a big goal, he’s he’s he’s he’s either a primary or getting the goal. Yeah. Yeah. He has that clutch in the veins. Yeah, he does. He does. He does. I think if you’re planning a team out, you have now looked at your number one C, your number one right wing, your number two left winger. I think um you’re still kind of question marks of what Dickson and Muka Madulan are going to be for your where they slot. Are they is Dickson a number four guy or is he a number two guy? Is Muka Madan a number six guy or a number four guy? Those are the the big questions for defense. But you finally have started to solidify those like forward spots and Colin Graph is like just going to be your bottom six versus DK or Yeah. Yeah. He’s going to be your Swiss Army knife guy in the future. So, we’re getting some of it and we have Ascarov who’s going to be our starting goal there hopefully. Knock on wood. Um, but uh yeah, you’re you’re getting these these pieces that are solidified in the future that that Mike Ger’s been planning out. We just got to fill in the gaps more than anything, right? So, let’s get into our Keegan to that point. Let’s get into our prospect of the week. Oh, are we done with No, no, no. We got a couple more things so we can get to it. So, okay. I was like, that’s a good transition to long. Well, I do want to say I do agree with you, Zubar, that with Smith, that the long term that he you want him to be your number two player. I don’t think he’s there yet, but the team is better for it. You know, I love Willie Mlin doesn’t have Will Smith silly, you know, so they can recognize that, too. But, uh, wanted to add though, okay, so Jeff Skinner got hurt and we’re not sure how long he’s going to be out. Looked like a really, really bad injury. But, it is worth noting though that he did not go immediately back to San Jose. he stayed with the team. So, the Sharks were hopeful as of yesterday that it wouldn’t be too serious. Maybe that was kind it’s going to be a false hope, but they had a day off today, flying back today. But anyway, that led to the Sharks calling up Otopchuk over Musty and and uh and Chernishoff and Ethan Cardwell. And so, we are going to talk about Churnishoff in a second, but um wanted your guys’ thoughts on that because I didn’t find this strange at all. A lot of fans found this, I guess, very strange, but um anyway, what what do you guys think of that? Well, I I like a stop Chuck. You guys know you guys know that about me. And uh I like him getting the opportunity. I think he’s been doing well playing fourthline center on the Cuda lately. Um and I liked him on that line. Uh yeah, he was good yesterday, I thought. I thought he looked good. Good for check. He was good off the puck. 100%. Absolutely. Again, positive development offense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think some of those those things where people are like, well, why not shave? It’s like, well, these are different roles. Yeah. Okay. You could generally be like, they’re all forwards, but you know, there’s there’s different roles depending on where you’re slotted on what line, what opportunities there are. And uh there wasn’t a lot of opportunity as a a top two winger. those guys have not outplayed Kurichev or you know the you know someone who would maybe take that spot or Eklund like with Sherneshave or Halunin or whoever you might consider. So I I thought it it was the obvious move. I didn’t understand like you Shang why there would be any debate about it. Um I think he he did a good job in the role and and you want to see him develop because we want to figure out those uh three four centers in the for the future and and I think he’s still one of those options long term. Yeah. I um surprisingly I’m not gonna I I think it was a perfectly fine move. I had no problem with it because stop Chuck is this is the role he’s going to fill and this is what they felt like they needed for the team and I I think it would be honestly a mistake. You could reward something like Musty and Chernop’s good play by being like oh you should come up and play but I honestly think that neither of them had like a very great start to the the year. I mean, like Musty had a good training camp and stuff like that, but neither of them were were lighting it up in the AHL and then over the last like five, six games, both of them are really starting to show their offense. It’ be kind of a mistake to just be like, “Okay, here’s the NHL.” In my opinion, it would be like good point. You’re just starting to get it. Both of these guys are are are not the the the caliber prospect of Smith and and Eklund and Celbrini, but you want them to turn into something, and they’re going to be offensive pieces. They need to learn more in the AHL than they do playing and making mistakes. Unless you like certain players can just make that jump and like you ride the hot streak and they’re fine. U but certain players will like fizzle out and guys like Cardwell and um Stapuck, they’re going to fit roles that are way different than musty and churnish are going to fit in the future. So I think it’s easier to call them up, give them some time and Carwell looked fine in his games. I think there were some like Cardwell’s always been this like he has a game where you’re like that’s even Cardwell and then you don’t notice him for four games and you’re like okay where where’s the Cardwell that like is pushing play and his ball of energy you know it’s not always the most consistent thing. So I think they just wanted to give a new guy a chance. I think if we’re looking at another one in the future it might even be like depending on how Beastat does he needs to um push play a little bit more. Maybe Beastat gets a call up to see what he looks like in the fourth line. Yeah, there’s a there’s a pecking order, right? And unless Sherneshave has got a hat-tick every night, he’s not coming up for right now. Yeah, I you know, um when you look at how they constructed the lines yesterday, the the spot that Turner or Musty or Cam L, let’s not forget him. He’s having a good start the season. Like, they would have to take a top nine role to justify calling him up, right? And they’re not playing fourthline center. And you’re not, look, Reeves and and Gdro aren’t leaving the fourth line and they play pretty well, too. So, they’re not leaving the fourth line anytime soon. So, anyway, so so they got to fill that role and a top nine winger role. And for that, the Sharks put up Graph and Godette. Yeah. And Graph and Godet, I think, have earned looks at a top nine winger role. And they are better NHL players right now than Musty and Chernoff. And I would say, oh, stopchuck is a better NHL player. I’m not saying he’s a more skilled player, but he’s a Osopek is a better NHL player right now than than Musty and Chernish. And so yeah, for a role for that 4C role, to just add to that, Shank, too. I think when you say better NHL player and and and this is something that I I just want to add to is like who’s going to be a larger egregious defensive liability and someone like Mustility possibility of it. Yeah. Right. Say it’s going to happen. Sure. and even Cardwell, right? Like you you kind of know what you’re going to get in the defensive zone and and you want that trust to be brought into an NHL game. You don’t want to have like what happened with Dickinson a couple days ago because it’s a onegoal game and and those mistakes are far greater than the potential of an offensive upside. And that’s a lot of times what what these people are considering uh management’s considering when they call someone up or not. And to your point, NHL readiness, stop, check toe just with his games played in the NHL deserves that. Right. Right. Right. Right. And that the risk part is a big part of it is okay like you could just move God down to 4C and then you can call up one of these these wingers. Um but then there’s the the risk the risk part of it. You give let’s say Turner Shop his first AHL game. You put him on a third line and yeah maybe he scores a goal for you. Yeah. Sure. Or maybe something else happens right that’s not not so good. And so, and like Keegan mentioned that it’s not like these guys have been, you know, I I I watched the Barracuda a couple weeks ago. That was some awful hockey I watched. I think it was like a 5-1 loss to Ontario and those guys were not good that game. It’s not just on them. The whole team was terrible. But it’s not like they’ve put together a stretch of of great play um uh you know um uh starting this season. But anyway though, uh, anyway. Okay. So, if we’re done with that thought, I think this leads us to our Have we figured out Keegan’s Corner? We don’t have a name for this yet. We need We need music, too. We need some like rookie music or something like that. Prospect. That was Keegan. Keegan. That was very subliminal. Let’s go, Kegan. We need a I think an AI could do this, right? We could just plug that in and a song generated AI. I’m going to play that ridiculous AI song that was like the shark’s goal song for us. Oh yeah, just as a We got to play that just to be hilarious. Spoiler’s going to be pissed. It’s going to be great. So I think every week we’re going to try and do one 2026 NHL draft eligible and one Sharks guy with the focus mostly being on the the Sharks prospect. But and you’re doing Chernov today? I’m doing Sherneshov and then I’m doing Okay. Ethan Belchetts. Okay. And I chose last week I chose two um two defenders and I think it made sense this week to choose two power forwards or or powerish forward guys. Uh you guys want to do with the with Belchess first or Sherna? What do we want to do? Let’s go with Belchess and let’s end up with the smart guy. Yeah. Yeah. So Ethan Belchhatz, he’s um generally slotted in like the top fiveish of the next draft consolidated ranking of of five according to elite prospects. They like rank a bunch of different uh sources together. He is a 6’4 6’5 left winger um very much a winger uh who is built. He has excellent hands and he also has the um what do you call it? the the NHL readiness that uh Shang Pang would love. Uh he is got a he just has a nose for for for battling in the corners. He has a great ability to pick um pickpocket other players. He gets to the net like that like he is immediately get the puck, get to someone else get to the net. That is like So we So we found our first line player that we want with Mlin and uh Will. I know watching him you you get like you get visions of like okay this guy you watch him and you’re like is he he looks like an NHLer he just he he has that look of an NHL player and it’s very easy to see he’s going to be the coaches like okay he’s going to come in and he’s going to play for us it’s not difficult to see he’s big he’s fast he’s got great hands for a guy his size um I think you want to see more playmaking obviously like that’s the you want that high-end And if you’re going to spend a top five pick on him, you want the ceiling not to be a third line great player. It’s a topline player. So that’s what I worry about in his development is like he’s coaches candy, right? Like you could just teach him to battle along the boards and get to the net and and that’s how he’s going to earn his money. But if you kind of foster that that creativity in him, he has a lot of playmaking. He’s got a ton of skill in his hands that like he could be special rather than just good. Um it’s just you need to foster a certain certain aspect of him and not just tell him to go bang bodies cuz he can do it. He’s good at it, but there is something else there that that really puts him in a top five discussion. And if he was fully rounded out, he’s a special player rather than just a good player. So that’s my spiel on Ethan Belch. super excited to watch him in the end of the year because I think right now it’s just kind of him bullying around. He uses his body like he knows that he is bigger and stronger and and can completely bully junior competition, but I want to see if it turns the corner into that special player kind of like what we saw from Shernes last year where he was just lights out way better than everybody in the OHL even. So that’s what I want to see from Belchetts. I think he’s going top five, top 10 no matter what, even if he’s a winger. And regardless, where is he playing? Can we see more of them? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, he’s playing for the Windsor versus Smithsires in the OHL. Um, so you can watch it on Flow Hockey, which we don’t have a sponsorship with, but we should get one. I don’t know why they don’t. I know a great now that they combine so many services. It’s I know what we know them. They could get on the We could get a sponsorship from FL. You could combine like a OHL um Q. Favorite fact about Ethan Belchettz is he is from Oakville, Ontario, which is where uh very famous Sharks Prospect is from. Uh anyone have a guess? Current Sharks Prospect, Michael Misa. Misa. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Also, also Ryan Mkeley too, but we don’t say we don’t say that his name on podcast anymore. So, yeah, I was looking at Evan Buchard, Ryan Mkeley, Michael Misa are the most uh most viewed from Oakville, Ontario on Elite Prospects. So, nice. Um, all right. But yeah, exciting game. If the Sharks didn’t need D so badly, I would say this might be a guy to look out for. and they might still be looking out for him, but I think um there’s just a lot of D that we’re going to cover in the next couple weeks that they might choose one of them instead. But Igor Sherneshop is is is um he’s not the opposite of Belchetts by any stretch of the imagination. He’s not like a soft perimeter winger who’s just big because he’s big. He actually has some physicality and some bite to him. Um and he has a lot of defensive um instincts, I’d like to call it. like he he gets back. He um he’s got a nose for stealing pucks and and kind of transitioning from um from the high slot by taking pucks away. And that’s like um something that if you were a coach, you really really want him to get better at. I think he still, this is just my opinion, because I know that Micros says he skates like the wind and I’ve heard people say that he he is very fast and I think at top speed he is hard to stop and he’s fast, but I think he still has needs a little bit more work on acceleration and that quick step thing. I think that’s still something that just watching him, it seems like there’s a little bit of a a hitch like just getting off of the first couple steps, but it’s not so it’s not like it’s world ending or anything like that. added that he just needs more time with his skating. Um cuz he’s powerful. Um what I love about Trinaw the most is he’s a very quick thinker. He like Tofoley in the NHL or any players that can think the game super fast, he can transition the puck and knows where the play is going and knows where to be after he gets the puck to somebody else so he can move to a spot to get into a scoring area. He’s very smart. um it’s not always um he’s not always again able to get to the puck to affect play and that and use his smarts as well. Um that’s why I think he needs more time in the AHL. He’s got to work on getting the puck back and getting more touches and that’s uh something that’s just going to take more time. But he’s super smart and he also his shot placement is very smart. The way that he um shoots around players and shoots through screens and picks corners. He’s just a very smart shooter as well. So, I like a lot of elements of Sherneshave, even more so than a guy like Musty, even though I think Musty’s a better um uh puck carrier, better transition forward. Sure. Always has been. Yeah. Yeah. Always has been. But I think those are the flashy things. You’re like, “Oh, he’s carrying the puck and there’s a drone and he can beat this defender.” But Sherneshoff has just a lot more well-roundedness, a lot more smart, um, and then just smart shooting, good playmaking, uh, to to round it out. I think he needs more time to really again get that special element that’s going to keep him in the NHL, but I I I did like um the two games I watched of him this week, but I’m not um I’m not clamoring saying like he needs to call up now. But I do think that there is a possibility that he’s a top six forward in the future. It’s um he’s in the past like five, six games, he’s got seven points. He had that hattick the other night. He looked dominant and that’s what you need. He needs to like really feed on that and be a consistent dominant force. But I I like Eigor Shernop a lot. I think he’s got huge upside for the Sharks. What did you see early in the season where maybe he struggled a little? That that same thing. He can’t like um getting to the puck and getting the puck off of other players. The other thing that he he um struggles with is he has a tendency to go one-on-one and kind of just as he’s attacking a defender, chip the puck past them and try to get through them or around them, which is cool and it works in the OHL and it works in juniors and but it’s not working on in a lot of games in the OHL or sorry in the AHL. It looks like he is just kind of unforced erroring, giving up the puck in that way as opposed to just chipping it or stalling, waiting for someone to come up um and support him. I think he’s just trying to do a little bit too much carrying the puck. That that wasn’t working. Um it’s never been like his strongest suit. He’s more of that quick playmaking uh guy or on the power play, he does hold on to the puck really well and can kind of um set up the next pass. But I think carrying is still kind of struggles with one-on-one. So, but it’s improved and uh I I think it’s a um really cool like I want to keep those guys together. I want Misa or sorry, Musty, I want Chernov, Kenyon to really form like, okay, we’ve beaten this level of competition. We can we are ready before we put them up. Unless Shernes again is dominating every night, then call him up because I want to see what he does in the NHL. But not there yet. One thing I always noticed with Shernov that he does well even in the OHL when he played with Misa, like he gets to the high danger areas very well and he moves the puck into the higher danger areas either through shots, passes through like the crease or he’ll just put his body in there and he times his his entry into those high danger areas really well. Even the hattick the other night, like those are three different times types of goals. He’s not like a very one-dimensional forward. He has the size. He has a little bit of skill. And that’s where I don’t necessarily This is where I see him cracking the Sharks lineup before Musty or Halton. It’s also because I can see him playing uh third line wing. He’s not like a like a Mussy. Kind of has to play top four wing in many ways that I see just by his style of game where Shernop has a little bit more uh a larger skill set uh that is more translatable to the NHL and and Yep. You know what I mean? So, and I and again I love the way he gets to those high danger areas where again some that’s a hard thing to do and he has the size and the creativity to time it to get into those areas. So, absolutely. Um, like you said, gets the puck into a higher danger area, gets himself into a high danger area, knows where the play is going to go, and that’s 90% of of hockey is knowing where to be and where to go. And he he does that very well. He’s just I think the acceleration needs to improve a little physicality and and getting um knocking players off of pucks and then maybe a little less one-on-one stuff when he tries to to go up the middle because it’s not doesn’t really work. Um, and it probably won’t work at the next level. My comp for him has always been, and this has always been too lofty of a comp, is Mark Stone, who’s like a just a that’s like my like I think I said a lot. Comp is different. Comp is different. Like comp is different than Celid, right? Comp is like who I he reminds me of when I see him play at his best, right? Like he has a He has a better stride than Stone, but like that kind of similar maybe there’s some heaviness, but he does have power and he can get to a top speed. Um, but just super smart, knows where to be, great shooter, and that’s like the guy that I see. Obviously, Markstone is like a defensive wizard that is like if you can foster that in Shernov, I think there’s elements of it, but it needs a lot more work to even be close to a markstone level, but offensively, he reminds me of a markstone. Another another thing about Shernaw that we didn’t talk about is like he has a really good vision. Um uh he he’s really he’s really he’s cheeky with his passes. Like you see him deceive with his passing a lot. Um you saw that a lot when he was with Misa. Um they would just have these plays where he’s looking off the puck kind of like Mlin and then just like short pass to Misa or into those high danger areas. He’s really good at that and and that’s something another unique skill or attribute that he has at I mean must even has a little bit of that actually. He’s a very sneaky passer. Um but Shernov does it in in where Mussy does it in more in like the high slot area point area. You see Shernov do that down low and get pucks through the crease and those high deners. Really sneaky deceptive passing skill. It’s a um he’s a good playmaking winger as well as like got a power forward build. So super excited about him overall. Um, yeah, but needs more time. And obviously, again, don’t yell at me that I called him the Sharks Mark Stone. Like, he’s got a lot of ways to go. Take it. Recame that. It’s like douche. Yeah. Chef guess. Awesome. Awesome. But I think there’s there’s obviously Mark Stone’s like a, you know, he’s an all-star. He’s a great great player. It’s not like there’s not like compwise, you know. I guess that’s the way to put it. uh of the young wingers there then uh this is I think the last one for me but Musty Chernishoff Lun and Htonin who from what you’ve seen is would you say right now is the most likely to to get called like who just has the most kind of you know combination of well-rounded but also some offensive promise there too that might translate to this level might be Cam Lund maybe uh it might be Cam Lund um I’m not as excited about watch like when I watch Cam Lund like I don’t get all jazzed I’m like get like that little that feeling of that’s really nice that’s really good but yeah like I think if you’re looking for and and I don’t know if Camelan would do this is I don’t know cuz I might just eat my words he gets called up and has like a hat-tick in his first game or something but I don’t know if there would be that much plus or minus that Camlin would do on the ice um in the NHL just yet. But I think if you’re looking for just like kind of evening the minutes that you give to the the prospect, I think Camelind would be the the one to maybe do it. So like he hasn’t been bad. He’s been good and he he’s just he’s smart. He um he’s not as I won’t like say bad defensively, but not as like disengaged as I remember him being in college defensively. He seems to get it a little bit more now um than he did before. Um, I’m just not super excited. I don’t know. That’s the Yeah. Yeah. Maybe his selling isn’t as high as a churn or or a musty or my words. He’s gonna be he’s going to be great. One of them will likely turn into something for the Sharks. At least one. So, um, more time though. And Camlin’s older too than in either of them. Yeah, he played last year too. So, it’s not the fairest comp, but just because they’re the similar profile of players, all all four of them. So, yeah, it might be him. I think they would. I think they’re gonna get Beast at a call up at some point just to see what he does in the NHL. I don’t know if he’s like um I don’t know. I think we’ve been waiting. I would just say that we could do a spotlight on on on him next week or something. Um it’s just my thoughts as they might give him a a game or two to try. Just he’s kind of in that next line of age related uh persons to go. Although Cam Lund was from the same draft. So, but yeah, we talked about in the top 10 prospect show we did a couple months ago that I was hearing a lot of good stuff about Lon Y that that we were underrating him a little bit. So, yeah. And he’s been good. He’s got 10 points I think in 10 games. He’s been good. And I think I just I my own bias is I’m never always excited. And he’s going to watch this podcast and be like, “Kegan, you [ __ ] asshole.” I don’t know. There are moments and in college he uh he had some great moments as well. Um still a smart player, great playmaker as well. So um Musty also I think we should give a shout out that he hasn’t like done the you know I’m just a junior hockey player who can’t translate my offense or my skill. He’s actually doing it. He’s doing the thing which is you he has to the thing that got him there, right? Like he has to carry the puck and make creative offensive plays. Um, and he’s doing it right now. Not all the time, but there are moments and you watched it in that game with Shernop having that hattick that must there uh driving a lot of that play. So, yeah, little Keegan’s prospect corner. If anybody’s still listening, I get the last five minutes, the best five minutes of the podcast. I mean, I love hearing about it. There’s so much great prospect stuff to to talk about. I mean, yeah, in many ways the the deeper level of the San Jose Sharks future is all on the Cuda right now. Really, like majority of them. So, it’s really exciting times to go to to watch the Cuda right now. We uh got spoiled by having a bunch of really good players make the NHL right away. Um that yeah, we basically have everybody else in the Cuda. There are some prospects that are still playing around the juniors and and and in college and stuff, but most of our good players are in San Jose, right? Well, well, let’s let’s end on this last one. So, Misa, right, if he’s not back, right, can he get two weeks in a conditioning stint in the HL? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, so that would be really fun to watch. That would be Yeah. Right. Like Misa down there being he’s probably on Shernov and because Shernov and Musty are playing together, right? So he’d be he’d center that line and uh and then we get to see like because it’s a hard step in the NHL and you know that little in between it’d be fun to see Misa and then obviously that chemistry with Chernob in the AHL. So it’s kind of something come right to Royal Juniors too. So it all kind of lines up. I did want to tease too actually in Seattle. I talked with Shane Wright and I talked with Shane Wright all about his 2022 23 season when he bounced from Seattle to Coachella Valley to the World Juniors to back to the OHL and so that was a good conversation with with Shane. I don’t know if that’s going to happen with Michael Misa but it’s possible. So that’s why I wanted to talk with Shane Wright about it. So yeah, wanted to mention that. Yeah, it’s an interesting thing that we got to depending on how long Beast is out for injury-wise. We don’t really have an idea just yet, but could be or if he lights it up at both the AHL and World Juniors, he just joins Back to the Sharks. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Awesome. Great episode, guys. Um, any closing thoughts? Uh, topped out. We’re at 2 245, so I I need to take a nap. Yeah, I got to something. Yes. All right, guys. Great episode. Really enjoyed the chat with Kevin as well. And um all right, we’ll see you guys next week. [Music]
San Jose Sharks legend Dan Boyle, insider Sheng Peng, prospects guru Keegan McNally, and rink rat Zubair Jeewanjee talk about the resurgent Sharks.
How good are the San Jose Sharks though, really?
We discuss their much-maligned defense, from John Klingberg to Shakir Mukhamadullin.
Kevin Woodley, NHL.com and InGoal Magazine goalie guru, jumps on to discuss Yaroslav Askarov’s improved play. He shares his thoughts about the specifics of why the young San Jose Sharks goalie has been so good in November. He also talks about the underrated Alex Nedeljkovic.
We also debate who’s the San Jose Sharks’ second-best forward, William Eklund or Will Smith. Also, why did the Sharks call up Zack Ostapchuk over the likes of Quentin Musty, Igor Chernyshov, and company?
Speaking of Chernyshov, Keegan focuses on the Russian’s strengths and weaknesses in his prospects focus. He also discusses perhaps the top 2026 Draft power forward, Ethan Belchetz, who has a cool Michael Misa connection.
Sponsored by Bring Hockey Back. Custom jerseys, hockey gear & tees for every fan. Use promo code: SANJOSEHOCKEYNOW for 15% off.
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(00:10:07) What’s up with the San Jose Sharks’ defense? A lot of John Klingberg, Dmitry Orlov, and Shakir Mukhamadullin talk
(00:52:52) Kevin Woodley jumps on to break down why Yaroslav Askarov has improved so much this year
(01:50:02) Who’s the San Jose Sharks’ second-best forward? Why call up Zack Ostapchuk?
(02:24:28) Keegan discusses Igor Chernyshov’s improving game, and where he still has to get better
19 comments
Sheng you’re the man, but Smiths goal was not a kicking motion. The sad thing is a few days later you see someone from the islanders totally kick direct it in and it was called a good goal. That rule fuckin blows
hell yeaaaa
Radim Simek!!! Forgot all about him. Simek the Radimer. Loved his story; shame about the knee injuries.
That guy Boyle put down dropped really fast, even faster at 1.5x
Dan's description of a PP1 sort at 38:50 is a really good description of … Eric Pohlkamp
SJHN ASMR episode
2 hours and 44 minutes? C'mon Sheng! We love you but can't you condense this into 40 minutes?
Re Keegan's description of Lund — excellence and excitement aren't the same thing. Ostapchuk was a solid call-up, but he's not really NHL ready yet. Not sure I saw the same game that Sheng, et al saw from him. He's got time, getting more NHL games in the sort of role he'll fit longer term makes sense. If it was about making the Sharks better right now, then it'd have ben Giles they called up.
I'm all-in on a line, centered by Will Smith, with Cheryshov and Musty, for maybe 6-8 games or so this season.
I also enjoyed 4 guys, all wearing glass, talking goalies. Maybe that's just me …
I don't regret drafting Smith but I wonder what the Grier and the front office saw when they said they projected him as a center. Everywhere I read it seemed Smith was seen as a playmaking specialist with weaknesses in areas you'd expect. I was looking forward to seeing him get some reps in this season at center to ascertain his value, since it seems like the thorough thing to do even if you have Misa. But Smith suddenly says that now he's 'mostly' playing wing in preseason iirc. Don't get me wrong, I think Misa has more tools to work with than Smith to succeed at center, but clearly they saw enough before drafting Smith for Grier to say they project him as a center before the Misa draft, but now they have Misa all that research goes out the window cause you're that certain Misa is already so much better at center that Misa gets the instant look at center straight from junior and Smith doesn't in his 2nd season?
A team is only as strong as it's weakest link. There are some particular players that the sharks have never won a game with when those players have been in the lineup. The question is not how good are the sharks it's how good are the sharks that are being played that night.
Love these episodes with Woodley getting us some expert goalie info. Sharks definitely playing better defense like he said and I think he’s right that Askarov is standing narrower and taller more recently. Feel like we have seen him staying out of his butterfly at times where he typically would have been in it in the past.
Excellent insight from Kevin
Sooka blyat- lmfao Boyler- that means fucking bitch, or suck it bitch 😅😂 so funny!!! Pisda means pussy 🐱 lol … on the road last week, your episode was fantastic & enlightening
I would pay money to get open iced by Boyler in a 3 on 3 tournament.
Kevin’s a smart dude. A lot of what he’s saying is 100% true. So many hours of my coach putting strings to the posts and going from side to side and at different depths, letting me understand different advantages to different layers of where you stand in the triangle.
Like he said there’s a million different things your reading from there team, your team. Layers of players. Location of puck and if anyone has sprung open to anticipate.
He speaks goalie very well. He’s a good guest to get at least a few times through the year for updates on the goalies.
Great find on a guest guys. That was awesome.
Hey Sheng, I’m with you on the complete game of eklund and smith talk right now.
I get what you’re saying and agree. On most levels of play, eklund is the more complete player. No knock on smith. All like your saying. Eklunds more consistent with the difference through the game. Smith is younger and time to work and round out like eklund has. The only caveat I can think of is possibly level of competition on average.
Keegan, great point on ostabchuk to musty, Igor take. Let those guys really gain confidence and correctly build up to there roles. The role available has been more for ostabchuks lane.
They hopefully are all apart of the future. Try and set them up for the best Chance to succeed.
Completely disagree with Zubair's take on Smith being a better player than Eklund right now. He is probably a more "important" player for the future of the Sharks. But currently a lot of his success is because he is playing with Macklin Celebrini. If you let Eklund cook with Celebrini imagine the points he puts up. Eklund is arguably playing with 2 players that do not belong in a top 6, meanwhile Smith is playing with arguably a top 10 player in the world. I believe Smith will become a better player than Eklund but he is not there yet. He is showing improvements in the compete/effort which is nice to see but he still has a ways to go.
Hey @shengpeng , have you checked in with Becher on when they will release more detailed plans on the arena upgrades?