Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich.

Welcome to the Hockey PEDYO cast. My name's Dimitri Filipovich, me. He's my good buddy, Emily Caput. And Emily, what's going on? Not much, Dimitri. I love this. I don't know. Is this like a quarterly tradition, biannual tradition? Whatever it is. Anytime we get a talk shop, I love chatting with you. Well, listen, you're very busy. I'd love for it to be a more frequent tradition, but we're certainly long overdue for our first catch-up of the season. I got a long list of topics I want to get through here with you. And I want to start with Connor Bernard and the progress he's made this year. He's fourth in the league in points with 31 and 22 games. Only McKinnon celebrating and McDavid at Moore. 27 of those 31 have been primary, just four secondary assists. That's tied for the league

lead with McKinnon and Celebrini. And entering year three, I think a big topic of conversation

has been the offseason work he put into his trading to get stronger, faster, more

functional in terms of competing against the best

players in the league, kind of rounding out his game as he continues to develop. I think a lot of

this certainly would have just happened organically for a 20-year-old. It makes sense that he would

get stronger and faster as he gets used to the league and enters his physical prime. But it was a

big year for him because it felt like Macklin Celebrity certainly took a lot

of the shine away from him last year with the debut he had into the league.

We talked a lot about the divergent vibes for the Blackhawks and Sharks organizations

in terms of the sharks, despite finishing bottom in the standings.

Everyone feeling so good about what they were building with him

and will smith and how they were riffing and the future for that team and then everyone was like oh we were

expecting the black hawks to take a bit of a step forward butard certainly to produce more than he did

as a rookie and that didn't really pan out so it was a big year for this guy entering the final year of his

elc and both him and the

Blackhawks have obviously been off to a great start. And I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about that work he put in in the off season and then the dividends it's paying on the ice to start the season. For sure. Well, I think when we look back on this, this might turn out to be one of the all-time bet-on-yourself moments in the NHL because

he was due for an extension this summer and we were all expecting it to get done. And I talked to the

GM Kyle Davidson and he said that there was no formal number or offer ever put on the table this

summer, but we would have all expected it to be around eight years times 10 million and been

like, okay, that's fair. The way that Connor has played to literally look and produce like a top

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