Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri

Filipovich.

Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Filipovich and joining me. He's my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man?

Not much, man. I'm excited to get into it today. As promised last time we spoke, we've got a film club covered today on the prolific Willie Mielander. You wrote about him from McKeon, did a deep dive yourself, got into the tape, the nitty gritty, and I thought it would be a

great opportunity for us to do so here as well. So looking forward to that, I think the main takeaway,

obviously, he's been a very productive player for a while now, but clearly has taken his game to

whole new night heights this season. And not only is a well-timed for this Leaves team that I

think needs it more than ever from him, but also clearly, individually for him as well in a contract

here where he is set to get paid very, very handsomely this offseason. Yeah, and I'm shocked. You know,

you talk about taking his game to the next level. There's just such a versatility around how he

went on that point streak. And we'll get into it, but I mean, from lowering his shoulder and

driving through the neutral zone on these crazy downhill runs to lurking

a little bit and losing himself in the fray and using some of like the standard excellent tactics

that top goal scores use to kind of get lost in the shuffle and unmark themselves from the defense

to just this extreme patience, Dimitri, that I think is like the ultimate example of how far he's

come. And that's not to say that he wasn't a patient player before, but, you know, in the chess

match of the hockey game, he's letting that clock run out. I mean, he is holding on to the puck.

It almost makes you as a viewer feel uncomfortable with how long he's making his run into the

scoring area. But he's waiting for his lane to open. And he's got linemates that aren't

afraid to go to the front of the net and clog up scoring areas and eat up bodies there. And

that space, you know, he finds it. he uses it. And I think the most intriguing thing

I watched is how far he will loop high in the offensive zone with possession to give himself

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