Elijah Ford: Karlsson and Lekkerimäki heading in different directions? And the benefits of Malhotra's familiarity with the players

0:00This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANJURE. Click Granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the Enterprise AI platform for HR, Finance, and IT. With AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right, it's a new workday. Elijah Ford is a writer with DFO van Cooper. If you're not familiar, that is the new name for what you previously knew as Kanox Army. He has been most prolific of late.

1:01And yesterday we were talking about, we identified 16 van Cooper Kanox, neatly eight veterans, eight younger players who have room for improvements. It could be reasonably expected to make such improvements. And Elijah has identified two of them. One that he thinks will make improvement. One that he thinks won't. And he joins us now from his home in Langley. How are you? Just phenomenal. I mean, first of all, I got to say, I've been made fun of on many online platforms for not looking like I'm of drinking age. But if I was, I would be going to the latest liquor store to buy that wine. No one quite does adries like my friend Blake Price does. Goodness gracious me. That was impressive. He is of drinking age books. We can vouch for that. It is true. Has he reached his Ed at Mondo Malbec years though? Is the question is he refined as a pallet kid like this probably puts it on ice?

2:02We might guess. Why not? I agree. I'm more. I like a sangria for sure. Yeah, who doesn't? Let's start with Lena's Carlson. Because it was a very nice season for Lena's Carlson last year. He got the contract extension. We've loved watching his progress. It's a late bloomer who came up and of course, starred for Coach Mani at the HL level and that called her cup run. And then last year he breaks through. He becomes at every day regular 79 games, 15 goals, 35 points. And now you want to double that goal total, Alisha. You're saying 30 goals for Lena's. That's just not room for improvement. I mean, that's transformative. That's bad math. Talk to me. How do you get to 30 goals? For Lena's Carlson? Well, the way you do it is being the best five on five score on the conucks last year to start off with is just a base point.

3:02I mean, he did not get power play time on the first line really at all last season. So with his new head coach, a mani-mail holster coming in, I would expect some added opportunity for the power play too in general, which gets into Jonathan Lecker, Mackey later. Perhaps he can get some time on that unit as well. But just in general, his scoring has developed every single season of his pro career. And he had 13, five on five goals last year, like I said, most on the team. And the beauty of Carlson is that he'll never be a particularly flashy player, particularly flashy score. But he's just really, really smart at getting into areas where the most goals are scored. Soft spots around the net, banging home rebounds, tipping and pox, which he's really, really good at. And he was in the 86% tile of high danger shots on goal last year with the limited ice time that he had. It's just a really, really impressive season for the guy. And speaking of the added opportunity that I think he's going to have,

4:02I would imagine, and we kind of talked about this last hit I was here, I think he's going to get some time on PD's wing on the first line with Jake DeBrusque on the left. And what is something that PD still does really well, even in the last two seasons where he's played his worst talk of his career, he still generates rebounds at a very, very high rate. And he had passed us to the slot more than any conuck on the team by a pretty decent margin. There is no one better in Abbott's firt under manny than Carlson at banging home, those kind of opportunities. Obviously, I understand a lot of it next year will have to do with set opportunity. If he's in the bottom six with a max ass in our fill appeal, getting to 30 and doubling his goal total will definitely seem like a bit of a reach. But with manny having the proper line mates in mind, like I think he does with the confidence that I think Carlson will play with this year, like he played a very simple brand of hockey when I went back and watched his tape for this project. He wasn't really doing anything extra with the puck. There was no extra move, no deakes in the middle, really.

5:05It was just very simple, pox and corners, pox to the point, get in front, bang home. I think if he takes an extra second, reads the ice with added confidence, I really do think not the sky is the limit for this guy, but I think 30 goals is the limit for this guy this year. And if he does it, man, what a win that is for just the entire conucks organization. Because like you were saying to set this up last season, it was a genuine question mark whether he would be on the team full time. Now he has the chance in my opinion to have a real breakout. It's been a really, really cool story to watch. I think it's eight or nine, depending on how you want to count it, straight seasons were the goal total per game's played improves. Like that is pretty astonishing, right? Like to improve your goal scoring in eight to nine consecutive years, going back to his first toe dip in the Swedish top position. And you know, the fact that he's got 23 and 32 under many in 2024, 2025. And then added 14 more in 24 playoff games.

6:07You know, engulfed there's that holy always just play well on that par five that you just you can shape the team for Matt. It's the par three with no bunkers. Just you could nothing. He's just. Yeah, I mean, I tear up that Queen A pitch and putt. Yeah, let me tell you that 74 yarder with no bunkers around the green. Matt that Matt steps up there. He knows he's going to play well. Plot green as well. But the the mindset for lean as Carlson might be a little bit of him being in his comfort zone with the guy that he knows he excelled under. I don't think that can be at least to start to you. Like that can be just a really good launching point for Carlson to have a good start. Yeah, 100% and also add on to the fact that it looks like Max Sassen is going to be moving to the wing. If you put a guy like Filipino with an extra layer of speed or even like an hot to rot. It doesn't matter. Those two have already chemistry built in that called their cup run. In my opinion was mostly defined by Sassen Carlson and R.C.

7:07Baines just ripping through on the four check on that first line relentless pressure all the time. Talk about familiarity and just having that golf hole that you just always find a way to hit the fairway on. Max Sassen is that Callaway ball that always just seems to find the short grass. Yeah, like Elijah had number 12 on Belmont. Okay, so. Answer by Callaway. It's the name brand drop. Yeah, do I know it and get in the news recently and not necessarily for great things. Oh, good point. Yeah, no exactly. Mind your references, young man. So I'm thinking of the audience and their love and they're like, I love this kid. Phenomenal enthusiasm if I can borrow a phrase. I love the take on Linus Carlson for 30 goals. And now you're going to cut their legs out for under them and talk to me about Jonathan Lackermack. He because you're not as bullish on him. Why not? I mean, it's hard to say that a player is going to break instead of make, but the realistic element of it is when there's players who rise.

8:14They're naturally players who stagnate and don't. And if I were a betting man and I just don't quite see the development for Lackermack. He coming this year for me, like I understand that his shot is elite. Flatly, it's awesome. And chicks dig the long ball and fans dig snipers. I understand why he's a fan favorite. He can score from anywhere. He has really good hands and tight. He can get a shot through defenders and sticks that most people wouldn't be able to. The issue for Lackermack is that scoring is inherently streaky. And the fact that scoring in the NHL has a whole lot less to do with your shot and more getting to areas as we talked about with Linus Carlson, where the goals are scored. When he's not tucking the puck home, he just doesn't bring a whole lot else to the roster at this point in time. He struggles, told on to possession in the corners against NHL defenders.

9:14His defensive game remains a work in progress. Also, and this is the really concerning part for me. Last year, he was the single slowest canucks forward in terms of max skating speed according to NHL Edge, which is typically the trait that the best scores use to create space to use that shot. That's just, it's concerning to me. Again, the thing with Manny coming in should give him a boost in terms of his spot in the lineup. I anticipate him getting chances early. But his lack of a change-up pitch puts him in this awkward middle ground where when he's in the top six where his skill set points to him being, he really struggles to hold up in those minutes. He was the worst canucks forward in terms of course he 4% of last year of anyone who played at least 10 games. But in the bottom six, you kind of want checkers and penalty killers and defensive specialists. And all the guys who do the little nuance things that make a team successful, Lecker Mackie just doesn't have that pitch in his arsenal right now.

10:21So I could see later in the season with guys like Max Sassen, Ilya Sampanov, Arsteec Baines, who we talked about Matthew Steinberg, they're not currently in daily face offs projected roster for the canucks to start the season. If Lecker Mackie isn't making his presence felt night tonight on the margins of the game when his shot isn't going in, they might decide that his NHL minutes are better used to evaluate another developing player. Obviously if he scores 20 plus goals, keep them in the lineup awesome, but I just don't see the rest of his game filling out the way I would hope it would have considering where he is in his development. Yeah, and the other issue they have is that he's going to play in the bottom six. He'd prefer to have a creative playmaker getting him the puck to unleash that shot and they don't have a lot of creative playmakers. But that is quite bold because you would think after the trade deadline, there will be opportunity for young players and Elijah is just out here, name checking guys who might actually be able to steal some minutes and get their NHL e-vow.

11:24Able to really start for Lecker Mackie at the start, but especially coming off the surgery. The good news is regarding his skating, you know, he was an upper body injury. I would hope that he was still able to work on his skating, whether that's on a mill or actually on the ice while he was recovering from the shoulder injury, but I mean, it's not a bulletin to anybody that his skating was not great. I would have to get better. I would think the skating, like, but these kids don't have their head in the sand. Like, I hope that the people around Jonathan Lecker Mackie, and I'm not picking on him, but people like Jonathan Lecker, as well, there's more than just him who say, I really need to work on this. I'm only 21, 22. I'm not a finished product. I'm going to get on my horse and try to be that guy, that old dog learning new tricks. I hope he did. Exactly. Because I mean, as Elijah points out, you can't survive in the NHL. I'm just to shot alone and the skating has to get better and the strength has to get better. And then, you know, maybe you start playing the best is thinking that this off season.

12:24My skating needs to get better. Yeah. And then, let me just drop this on you since we're talking prospects before we move on to Manny and the other story you penned. Braden Coots, if I told you over under 42 NHL games, exactly half the schedule. Where are you going on that? I think I've taken the over the fact that he made the team straight out of camp last year is just a signal of how NHL ready the conucks truly think that he is. Now you have a whole lot less concern with using up a year of his ELC. And like you just said, Matt, after the trade deadline, I fully anticipate this roster having some more open spots. Why not throw the kid into the fire? See if he can carve out a niche for himself on the third second line. Like you have nothing to lose this season. If you win a couple of games, awesome. Hopefully the prospects are developing the way you want them to. If you lose a couple of games and suck great, you have a better chance at getting one of these studs that that is coming up in next year's draft class, which I'm told is one of the best in recent memories.

13:32So yeah, absolutely. I would probably take the over on 42 games. Many Melhotra, the new head coach familiarity. You've touched on this already with some of the guys who of course he coached to an NHL championship a couple of seasons back. But you write that the familiarity will matter to this new head coach and the players explain. Yeah, I mean, it kind of became like a generality over at DFO Vancouver when we were writing goals and expectations for certain players. Like you said, the sassons, the Carlson's oh, having their former head coach will be good for them. But I always pause at those accepted notions and wonder why exactly that would be the case and does history point till he being true. And I look back at a bunch of other examples and the best one was Sheldon Keith because many was an assistant coach under Keith for a couple of years in Toronto. Keith was the head coach of a Canadian organizations, A H L team for multiple years before being promoted to the NHL.

14:34Mani has talked about how much Keith is influenced him. So I thought that was a good place to start. And he came in to the Leafs job and immediately William Neil and her who we coached in with the Marley's I guess in Toronto, the both in Toronto doesn't matter. His points for gain did increase to point 9, 3 under Keith from point 7, 4 under Babcock. But Neil and her was already a pretty premier prospect entering his early prime. So it's tough to kind of determine how much coaching had to do with that and how much just this awesome prospect got better at hockey. So I looked at some other forwards who are kind of more on the margins, more akin to a Mac Sassan or a Jonathan Lecker Macier, some of these guys. And the most prominent name in that group was by far Zach Hyman, like people forget Zach Hyman was a fifth round pick in the 2010 draft coming out of a tier two Ontario junior hockey league four years of college hockey. He like not a lot about this guy said that he was going to be one of the better goal scores in the NHL on the fringe of making team Canada's Olympic roster.

15:35But Keith really, really quickly recognized a niche that Hyman could carve out for himself in the professional game because of his experience with him with the Marley's. He said they started calling him Shaq Hyman. He got to the paint better than anybody did. So they played Hyman net front on the power play put him on a line with guys like Neeland who get the puck to the middle of the ice and Zach Hyman turned into Zach Hyman. And then we saw that as well with Pierre Ingval when he was on the Leafs where Ingval was a seventh round pick. He spent a couple of years with Keith down with the Marley's and he saw immediately that Ingval was a penalty killing specialist. And even though this is a funny story that came up in my research, Ingval actually made his NHL debut Mike Babcock's final game behind the Leafs bench. But the next game Keith came in his first game under him. Ingval scored his first NHL goal shorthand and eventually made his way up the line up scored six goals in his first 21 NHL games.

16:36So I'll add on top of that Jay Woodcroft with the guy like Evan Bouchard and you can see that familiarity especially early on in their 10 years as coaches matters a lot because training camp as a fresh coach has less to do with actually training these players and getting them in shape. They're all kind of expected to do that themselves. It has to do with understanding like we've said in the set so a bit the nuances of their game. What they're good at from shift to shift where they're most comfortable on the ice where they want to shoot from all of that little stuff that adds up to big stuff and the familiarity allows those coaches to have a huge head start on that. So I anticipate guys like Carlson and Sassin if they get into the lineup early having great starts because their coach already knows what they're good at. The golf analogies continue a Mulligan for Quinn Hughes explain this piece if people missed it from a few days back. I love his turn of phrase here the Quinn Hughes appeasement cycle.

17:41Yeah so I went back and the original premise was five year Mulligan for the connox but I thought three years was more interesting considering that's the time frame they went from one game from the western conference finals to dead last by considerable margin in this league so what went wrong was my question that this led me to and when I looked back at all of the moves that brought the connox to the spot where they are by the way. The start of the rebuild it all came back to what I and we at DFO Vancouver have now dubbed the Quinn Hughes appeasement cycle like to go back a little bit during the 2023 24 season connox went all in traded for lend home trade for Zodoro even though they were on expiring contracts but that made sense they look like legitimate Stanley Cup contenders they were top of their division you got to go for it and take big swings as we've seen with teams like the Panthers. You got to go so understood what came next was a lot harder a lot harder to justify both of those guys left to some feared they might and the connox right out of the gates as you guys can remember just were not the same team as the year before they hovered around 500 for most of the year while the alias peterson JT Miller dynamic became frost year then the outside of a slurpee cup and that eventually boiled over into the rest of the last time.

19:08So the rest of the locker room where it seemed like nobody really wanted to go to dinner with everything's just was starting to deteriorate very very quickly Miller took his leave of absence and then was eventually traded in January which brought them to a very interesting crossroads in that trade they received a center replacement in Filipino a prospect and Victor Mancini who I'm very high on we've already talked about that and a first round pick in that deal. So with Miller gone and they were already outside of the playoff picture conventional wisdom would probably say either stay put run the course take the first round pick and or blow up the team that would take a whole lot more goonies but those would probably be the two ways of going but with you still on the roster being maybe the best defenseman in the entire world. A full on rebuild was really tough to envision an almost sacrilegious for some conucks fans so how long did the conucks take to evaluate their options on this dynamic crossroads.

20:15A total of 24 hours when they flip that first round pick and other assets for Marcus peterson and drove corner and just hours after that they gave Marcus peterson a six year extension followed a couple weeks later by a five year extension for veteran gold tender Kevin Lincoln and. That was the start of it that was the start of the Quinn Hughes appeasement cycle the conucks were nowhere near good enough to contend but they were unwilling to fully commit to a rebuild because they still had Hughes on that roster and instead of accepting the reality that their team simply wasn't good enough to win the cup anymore they continue to just dig a hole and the next off season really felt like it was the off season of Hughes they hired Adam foot because he was friends with Quinn Hughes. They extended Brock Bessert that your Demko Conor Garland all because they were friends with Hughes like by the way that's not what's even that you know I know real quick Jim Rutherford said this and I quote it's one of the reasons we signed the guys the Garlands the Bessers the Demko's that had that relationship with Hughes hoping for a little bit of a chance right down to the end that he would stay it just doesn't they signed 112 million dollars worth of actual Canadian money in Pond track.

21:31And it was a latched ditch effort to keep this guy in Vancouver and in the same press conference he went on to say we knew that he was leaving before the season started so which one was it none of it makes any sense it put them behind the eight ball in terms of the fact they had to trade Hughes when he had less years left on his deal they could have avoided a van der Kaine and Adam foot 10 years entirely probably could have traded their veterans when their deals were more digestible just the whole thing was a joke of a process and terrible foresight. And just everything in the last three years that put the canox behind the eight ball the new regime all of it has to do in my opinion with the Quen Hughes appeasement cycle and imagine our imagine if they had just called a spade a spade at the end of that attempted playoff run with Lynn to them et cetera and just said okay but now we're in a bit of a pickle here let's rebuild now and in three years time we'll show Quen Hughes that we're ready to win a Stanley Cup. Of course he's just saying that you need to ownership's approval right if you're going to tear it down first of all his show his show his show yeah yeah you know secondly

22:38uh easonose they didn't marinate for 24 hours my dude they marinated for like 90 minutes before making the Marcus Patterson it was later that freaking night that the Marcus Patterson trade was announced but you're right and then he's like showed up to Vancouver like you barely even you know uh received his key card at the hotel and was signing a long term extension it was just now we be made I make it all make sense before we let him go letting him go the chicks dig the long ball Nike ad was from 1999 what you were you were 2005 six years prior well between Callaway and chicks dig the long ball like he's not the most politically correct young man now is he that's true but he can be a part of the night Nike and Callaway both just in his back pocket yeah interesting stuff just comes out yeah phenomenal uh thank you for the time uh I anticipate that you'll be busy on DFO you've got anything in the hopper you want to preview right now or uh

23:45the big reveal next time we have you back on uh all say is I think drill Connor is going to have a pretty big spot on the connox this okay good I got time to talk to you see I got time to talk to you see and we got time to talk to Elijah Ford a DFO Vancouver thank you for this he's gonna be sitting in with Jeff on a ringquide coming up yeah so looking forward to that as well thanks buddy you guys are the best thank you very much I'm Jake Stauke co-founder and CEO of Serval we built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down onboarding password resets access to applications my laptop stopped working while employees wait for help their real work is put on hold IT desperately wants to automate this work and that's why they need Serval you just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English and it's built no drag and drop workflows no expensive consultants employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters with Serval IT becomes

24:50the AI engine powering the entire company this is a new way to run IT we guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four week pilot go to Serval.com slash tickets that's s-e-r-v-a-l.com slash tickets Hi, but Van Max here Barry's here too hello and now the Premier League is back Barry Mini will be providing incredibly astute analysis three times a week wherever you get your podcasts Barry with the remaining 10 seconds of this advert can you provide some astute analysis I think our solar going to win the Premier League and there you are for more hot takes like that watch or listen to football weekly wherever you get your podcasts hi this is Brooke Tavard from naked beauty I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals and the colder smart toilet is proof that design changes everything it's the stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom it totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated

25:52with customizable cleansing and touch screen controls it's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional a modern home deserves a modern toilet experience the difference of cooler smart toilets find more at coller dot com Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation too much inventory cost climb too little production slows Grangers two billion dollars and on hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it so you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving call 1-800-Granjer click ranger dot com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done