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

Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name is Demetri Filipovich, And joining me is my good buddy, Shana Goldman. Shana, what's going on?

Hey, thanks for having me today. So we're going to get into the spirit of it being American Thanksgiving later this week. And so I thought a fun exercise for would be to make a list of what teams are thankful for at this point of the season. Now we can

also expand it to things we are thankful for as it relates to those teams just to give ourselves

more runway. But we're going to go back and forth and see how many teams we can get through today

over the next 50 minutes or so. You're the guest. I'll give you the floor. Who's first in your

list? Okay. This is something we are thankful for. It is the exciting starts from that like next wave of NHL stars. And I think it's big that it's more than just, okay, Macklin Celebrini popping off his rookie. It's Celebrini is amazing now in his second season. Baddard is his stride. We're seeing Schaefer and Demandolph, but I think

I think Bedard is the key to this whole like next wave because I think we group, we group players against each other. It's just like always natural, right? It's Crosby versus Ovechkin. It's McDon and all of those players. They're always going to be put together. So now we actually have what feels like Bedard versus Celebrini a bit.

And I think we knew Celebrini was on that path to start him and it feels like Badard's getting there. I mean, you look at his game last night against McKinnon, right? And they played, you know, up against each other a lot of five on five. And the Blackhawks actually had the edge and shot attempts with, you know, 15 to 3. They had 79% of the expected goal share. and while it was scoreless, you saw those more dangerous looks for the Blackhawks. And I think that is a huge stepping stone because the defense hasn't always been perfect, right? And his weapon, his shot hasn't always been there. The speeds there. So I think we're all thankful for like this new wave of NHL stars. I think it makes the game so much more fun and exciting. Yeah, I just had Emily Kaplan on.

We spent some time right off the top talking about Boudard and the offseason regimen that he did

this year and how he's stronger and faster and all the stats behind that. And you can certainly

see it. I think, you know, early on he was scoring a bunch. Certainly the Blackhawks were winning

games, but a lot of the stuff under the hood the underlying metrics of 5-1-5 suggested that they still had a long ways to go and I think it's been getting better as the year it goes along and that was a nice little feather in his cap on Sunday despite the loss especially in that first period I thought he was creating so much and certainly looked apart in that matchup role so that's really exciting I, the list is so long, right? I think because of points, we're going to look at Celebrity and Bedard, Leo Carlson, certainly Matthew Schaefer, of course. I also wanted to shout out, you know, when we talk about what Leo Carlson and Conradar are doing. I think it's very easy to kind of leave Adam Fantilli out of the shuffle, but he kind of quietly here has seven goals and 12 points in, uh, in 12 games in November, I believe playing on that top line that he had success with last season after Monaghan got hurt. And he had an explosion the other day in Toronto against his hometown team. And it feels like whenever he plays the Leafs, he's one of the best players I've ever watched. So that's incredibly exciting. And it's cool to see him just flying around and being very productive as well. So yeah, I think that's a great way to start us. That's something I think we're all certainly thankful for. First on my list, the Colorado Avalanche. And I'm thankful just for how good they are because it gives us one team that's truly separating

itself from the rest of the league and kind of differentiating itself from the mess that the

standings in the NHL are at this point otherwise everything is so condensed and it's causing a

lot of issues I think because the trade market is so stagnant, partly because teams just can't really accurately

diagnose where they stand. Everyone is kind of in it for the most part. 20 of the 32 teams as

we record are stuck between 24 and 28 points right now. And the league uses it as a promotional

tool as further proof of the parity that you get in the NHL and how it's so open and anyone can succeed. Another way to look at it for me, though, is that there's kind of this air of mediocrity as well. Part of it is because we've had so many injuries, but everyone is kind of jam-packed right now in the middle, and loser points are just being handed out in bunches on a nightly basis. And then you have the Colorado Avalanche on this island by themselves. They're undeniably great. They're in a league of their own. It feels like they're not even really competing against anyone else right now. They're kind of competing against some all-time, like great historical starts just to see how high they can take this thing. And we're only 22 games in. I'm sure there's going to be a lull at some point in the season, but right now I'm just enjoying it to see how high they can take this thing. And we're only 22 games in. I'm sure there's gonna be a lull at some point in the season. But right now I'm just enjoying it to see how long they can go with having just one regulation loss of their name. I wanna tack on to that. I had the Aves goaltending specifically listed because it feels so different from last year, right? Like they came into last year with a really unsteady goaltending crease and I don't think they got enough credit for being able to turn over their entire

goldening situation by December. Like to me, that's just absolutely wild. We really don't see you get done. And there's so much turnover on the roster the whole year that I think that got overshadowed by all of the second half storylines, the return of Landisg and all of that more. But I think that, know, Scott Wedgwood was someone I was a little lower on at the time of the trade because I was a little concerned about that last year in Dallas. But like he has been there rock this year. He's like 11 quality starts in 17 games. Blackwood now is three for four. And I just feel like it's an area that they need to be sound.

And I think that allows them to play with their strength. So I really like that for the abs. Yeah, it was interesting because over the weekend, just to expand on that, I thought they certainly didn't have their best efforts relative to the standards. They were on the road in a back-to-back. They went into Nashville. They went to Chicago the next day. And they still came out of it

with four points in the back of shutouts from Blackwood and Wedgwood. And the first one, the Predators came out firing, getting a ton of scoring chances. And Blackwood was awesome. And it was only his fourth game of the season. But I think getting him going is huge for them to kind of even out that split given Wedgwood's age and track record. And it's just fun watching them. Like they can turn it on for a stretch like they did in that second period against the Blackhawks. And it's more than enough for them to win on any given night. And then we've seen them in games against the ducks or the oilers, kind of where they view it as a measuring stick game, bring their very best fastball. So certainly thankful for the Abstar.

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