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

Welcome to the HockeyedioCast. My name is Ditra Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy,

Shana Goldman. Shana, what's going on?

Hey, thanks for having me today.

I'm excited to have you on. We're into the Final Four. We got As Golden Knights, Game

1 on Wednesday night, Habs Hurricanes is starting on Thursday. And I want to have you on because I know you've been very busy at the athletic recently, writing about some of these young players who are breaking out and having glowups in the postseason and then what it's going to look like for their next contracts and then the trickle down effect that's going to have on their teams in terms of how they approach other personnel moves this summer. And so I thought

you and I could kind of go through some of those names, some of the young players, even if they're

not necessarily up for new deals that have broken out or have just gotten more appreciation nationally

and league-wide because they're playing on this biggest stage. All of a sudden now in the postseason,

I kind of talk our way

through all that good stuff. So I gave you a little bit of homework in terms of putting

together a list of guys that hit the bill here. I've got my own list. I'm sure there's going to be

a ton of overlap, especially at the top with some mutual personal favorites of ours. But I'll give you the floor here as a guest to start us off. All right. I think I'm going for the one we probably have top of the list. The player everyone has been talking about, and that's Zach Benson. If you didn't watch the Sabres before the playoffs, you probably fell in love with them pretty quickly. He's the kind of guy you don't want to play against. He's the guy everybody wants on their team.

And he was fantastic. And it's super impressive because, you know, here's someone that turned 21 years old during ground too. This is someone that, you know, do it in the regular season is one thing. To do it in the playoffs is another. And to do it while maintaining an element of discipline, right? because this is the kind of player.

He's fearless.

He's gutsy.

He's pesky.

He pisses everyone off he plays with. And to do it while maintaining an element of discipline, right? Because this is the kind of player.

He's fearless.

He's gutsy.

He's pesks everyone off he plays with. He's always talking. He's in that nephron area. He's staring it up. But he does a very good job of drawing penalties instead of taking as many. And that's really important. But it's everything else he does. That's so important, too. like obviously we see him after whistles but it's everything he does between him that makes him so special right this is the kind of guy who

is just a menace on the ice he's always hounding the puck if he doesn't have it he's getting it back

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