Evolving Hockey Podcast

We're midway through the first round of the NHL playoffs (at this point we know the Avalanche swept the Predators, but we didn't know this at the time of recording). We chat about every series, debate team names, talk about the "new" penalty environment, and follow a few rabbit holes like normal. 

Our full preview of the first round is live on the site  (check it out here: https://evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolving-hockey-2022-playoff-preview-round-1/), and we spent the whole episode covering each series. It was a little scatterbrained, but it's been a bit since we've had a "thing" to talk about. Just like the first round will be, this one was fun. 

There's not much to talk about given the playoffs start in a week, but we somehow managed to fill an hour with riveting discussion. We chat about the Golden Knights' struggles, names in general, robotic refs, good defensemen, and some recent additions to all-time hockey tweets.

One of our favorite people in hockey, Charlie O'Connor, joined us for another guest spot. We talked about Charlie's start in hockey stats and writing, covered hockey twitter history, discussed the unfortunate '21-22 Philadelphia Flyers, and saved a little time at the end for some musical debate. 

Just like last week, we're waiting for the playoffs to start. We needed some content, so we asked for your suggestions. On the way, we covered irritating statistical terms, preseason projection misses, Winnipeg's lack of an airport, a Quiz Show around unique defensive performances, and thrash metal.

We're in the dog days of the '21-22 NHL season. The playoff teams are almost all set with only a few teams vying for the remaining spots. With that in mind, we discussed pronunciations, hockey names, fighting, Patrice Bergeron, and jumped into an overview of the foundations of hockey stats. 

We spent the first part of the show bouncing around from one topic to another covering allergies, Gold drafting, playoff implications, and draft lottery ping pong ball conspiracies. The second half is devoted entirely to mailbag questions (with an early sidetrack  to Creed and early 2000s hard rock). 

The 2022 NHL trade deadline happened a few days ago, and we tried to cover every trade that we could fit in. Like this year's deadline, this episode is all over the place, chaotic, and of course fun. 

Josh Manson was traded just before we recorded, so we used this as a jumping off point. We chat about the trade, utility in position-switching, absurd rate statistics due to single-game seasons, bizarre minor league teams, and the Ristolainen signing among a host of other topics. 

In part 3 of our Glossary series, we dive headfirst into RAPM (Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus) and its use in hockey skater evaluation. When we say headfirst, we really do mean it. This part in the series has a lot packed into it. It's not required, but listening to parts 1 & 2 ahead of time will make things a bit smoother. Let's go.