Evolving Hockey Podcast

Josh is sick (but still talking), so we anticipated a shorter episode. We didn't do a shorter episode. We spent our entire lovely time talking about the ongoing NHL first round, surprises, ranges of quality, our favorite series, and Weather Report.

Yes we're a few days late, but we're sticking to our schedule - we've never missed a week or recorded on another day. Our First Round Preview is up on the site, and we spent the entire episode covering all eight series with no interjections. This was all business, like always. 

We published our awards article yesterday, and even though we talked about the Awards at length last week, we couldn't help but spend a chunk talking about them again. To be fair, it was mainly The Twins yelling about the Selke. Later we chatted about playoff positions and *weird* results (The Kings). 

We're back after a week break (because of Shawn it wasn't our fault). We spent the first segment discussing the ongoing insanity of *this* season, playoff races, statistical oddities, and the Hell In a Cell match. Later we previewed our awards picks and the inverse of that. 

With only a few weeks of the NHL season left, we felt the need to talk about professional bowling and who owns the hockey pucks. In all seriousness, we spent most of this episode analyzing the current playoff race, team strengths, disappointing western teams, and actors who might play current NHL coaches.

As we approach the end of the season, it's important to focus on what matters [see title]. Shawn spent the weekend scouting the Habs, so we made him share his thoughts on the team. Later, we talked about our die-hard Wild fandom, Hogs, and the odd era of 2000s popular rock music.

The 2026 Trade Deadline is over, and we're here wondering whether it happened at all. We spent the entire episode evaluating all the trades and drama, picking winners and losers, talking Sabres, recommitting to the Minnesota Wild, and contemplating cassette tape collecting. 

We've quickly transitioned from one of the greatest spectacles on the planet (the Olympics) to one of the greatest sources of drama in the NHL (the trade deadline). We spent the entire episode discussing the deadline, our annual trade-target article, and Werner Herzog's thoughts on chickens. 

Unfortunately, the Olympics are over. The Twins spent the last week binge-watching Olympic sports while Shawn just watched the hockey. We spent the majority of the episode discussing the hockey medal rounds, USA vs. CAN, curling, jingles, and all-nighters. 

We're a big Olympics podcast now. We know all the sports and have great opinions about all of them. We spent the first half discussing everything that's happened, but really we just talked about curling. Later, we chatted about (disappointing USA men's) hockey. The Olympics f**king rock.

Alright - the title might be a bit misleading. After (another) week break we're back to discuss bad arenas, Olympic problems, classic "bad" hockey players, and brain health. There's definitely some NHL discussion in here - I promise.

We're back after a week break due to some [things]. We spent the first half discussing a few recent trades, bad teams in the West, and a surprise Goalie Fight. Later we chatted about favorite colors, The Twins being right about the Peterka trade, and shows we haven't watched yet.

Various countries announced their Olympic Rosters this past week before we could get to talking about our predictions, however, we still have a lot of thoughts. Before we dug into them, we first chatted extensively about Expected Goals and modeling problems.

We're back after an unplanned Holiday break, and we all really felt like talking. We spent the first half discussing The Holidays, geography, and The Red Wings. Later we discussed the Blue Jackets and Zach Werenski, ancient YouTube videos, and standardized tests for some reason. 

One of the biggest mid-season trades in recent memory just occurred, and it happened to involve our favorite team: The Minnesota Wild. We spent the first half discussing all things Hughes. Later we analyzed the Sabres' recent GM change and the Skinner/Jarry Equation.

It's December, and the Avalanche are still destroying everyone. We spent the first half discussing the Avs in relation to the modern "greats" and moved on to hypothetical Russian basement dwellers. Later we chatted about hockey rink dimensions and "circle math". 

Just like everyone else, we're trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the NHL this season... in general just overall. We spent the first half doing exactly that (it's figured out now). Later we discussed incredible pump-up songs, Scott Stapp, a more "optimal" league environment, and TRL.

The Atlantic Division has been all over the place for 20 games, so we took the opportunity to investigate each division relative to our preseason expectations. We discussed the odd Canadiens, bad Leafs, interesting Kraken, and the Canucks. Later we hinted at some early Awards picks and tried to get Shawn to watch a movie. 

We're well into the NHL season at this point, which means it's time for us to meander. We spent the entire episode discussing the surprising teams AND the unfortunate teams, young people and old players, our updated fantasy tools, and McDavid's astrology info. This was a blast. 

It's Halloween, and Shawn wants nothing to do with it. We spent the first half discussing spooky teams, standout goalies, and teammate combos. Later we chatted about scary movies, superstitions, injuries, and early awards picks.

GAR, xGAR, and RAPM data is now up on the site for the '25-26 season! We spent the first half talking about statistical models and jerseys that are actually awesome. In the second half we discussed surprising teams, road maps, and feeling very old. 

Week 2 of the '25-26 NHL season is on record and it's way too early to glean anything from 5 games - we're doing it anyway. We spent the first half discussing the Ducks and early-season relative-to-teammate stars, and later we talked about traded players on new teams and tried to convince Shawn to watch Point Break.

The Sabres are 0-3, Josh is 0-1 in fantasy, and Shawn is in Florida; we embraced all of these issues and powered through it all. We did actually have numerous technical issues, but we rolled with the punches. Week 1 is in the books, and we spent the whole episode talking about it. 

The '25-26 NHL season begins today, which means our team projections are out! We released our initial preseason projections on Sunday (there's an article on the site for those interested), and we spent the entire episode discussing the projections and our thoughts on each division. 

The '25-26 NHL season starts in two weeks and (not) surprisingly, there's still nothing happening. We spent the entire episode trying to evaluate teams based on our general feelings before the EH projections are finished. It went about as well as you would expect. It was a great time though!

We're getting back into the swing of things, even if there's only one of those things going on right now (see: title). We spent the first half rambling about our respective other favorite sports (bowling and golf, obviously). Later, we analyzed the Kaprizov "situation".

As we continue to get back into the swing of things this summer, our Fantasy Projections came out last week. We spent the first half chatting about the MN State Fair and burning yards before moving on to the topic at hand. Later we covered our under-covered (our fault) GAR projections and good defensemen. 

Marco Rossi signed a contract and nothing else happened this month. It's been a few weeks since our last episode, and after a (much needed) break from hockey this summer, we're back to chat about essentially everything but that. This was a bit shorter, but we had a blast just vibing.

We, without much thought to it, ended up taking a long break this July. But now that we have all contracts tracked, we can evaluate our projection model and discuss the market. We spent the whole episode doing just that, and talking bowling. It's fun to be back.

We got right down to business with this one. Despite a weak free agency class, myriad contracts signed before July 1st, and an excess of money still in team's hands, over 200 contracts have been signed in the last week. We spent the entire episode talking about the interesting ones.

That's it. That's the episode. We spent the first half covering the exceptionally active last week and the second half discussing our preview of things to come. And also talking about the draft, schedule changes, data annoyances, and bowling. 

Upfront: we had some technical issues with this one, but we were all quite happy with our discussion(s) so we decided to upload this anyway. Apologies. The Panthers are your 2025 Stanley Cup Champions! We spent the first half covering the final, discussing team strength, and talking about portable CD players. Later we covered the surprising number of trades and signings over the last two weeks. 

In the second half, I (Josh) proposed a potential framework for a ranking system to order sports based on how great they are. Shawn and Luke were both less than pleased with my (amazing) system. Earlier, we also discussed the ongoing Final(s), contract impacts from playoff performance, and bowling.  

[Boyz II Men voices] although we've come to the end of the road, we're not going to skip the Selke voting results. In the first half, we chatted about the Conference Finals series and previewed the Cup Final. Later, we spent 30 minutes yelling about the Selke Trophy. 

It's that time of year - it feels like we've done this episode before, but this time we got to talk about terrifying children's movies and our love for Moneyball while doing it. We spent the whole episode covering the contract model, and it was a blast, as always.

Oh, what a treat the first round was. Really something to cherish. We move on to the second round, and once again, we've got you covered with a new preview on the site. We spent the first half haphazardly moving through our first round impressions, and moved on to our second round preview in the second half.

We're one week into the NHL playoffs, and the twins were dodging tornadoes today. We spent the whole episode discussing terrifying Habs fans, Hellebuyck, the unlikely Wild, the Leafs over-performing worst players, and amazing forkballs. This year's playoffs are shaping up to be a real treat. 

We released our 2025 NHL playoffs preview on the site for the first round a few days ago - check it out! First, we had to get some irritations with the current NHL remote viewing experience off our chests. After that we spent the entire episode discussing every round 1 matchup! These episodes are always a blast.

The episode Josh and Luke have been waiting for all season. We spent the vast majority discussing our Awards picks for the '24-25 NHL season (accompanying the recent article on the site). In between we chatted golf, The Truman Show, and advertising. 

Since our week off, we've become a sports talk show. In the first half we chatted about Ovechkin's record (and differing levels of interest around it) while discussing other interesting records. Later, we covered the overlooked (by us) Habs and wondered why more people don't utilize the 10-key portion of their keyboard.

We're making our way to the regular season finish line, and we're vibing. In the first half we chat about the draft, exercise habits, old tweets, and the dismal Canucks and Rangers. Later the twins rant about Twisters, discuss Ovechkin, and cover a few horrendous defensive skaters. 

It's possibly the most boring time of the season - everyone is waiting for six teams to figure out which two will take the last wild card spots. That didn't stop us from getting chaotic. We spent the first half discussing the recent Athletic ownership survey. Later we reined things in w/ the playoff race and explained Rush to Shawn.

Just like that, the 2025 NHL trade deadline came and went! We spent the entire episode recapping last week/the actual deadline. Along the way we discussed handling team changes re: modeling, Buffalo and Seattle, life hacks, and skunk cabbage. 

After a long night, Luke and I finished and released our Trade Deadline Targets article on the site (check it out)! We spent the entire episode discussing the article, the current trade market, philosophical ways of evaluating trade targets, our favorites, and a couple movie recommendations in between. 

We took a week off to fully enjoy the 4 Nations Face-Off, and now it's time to evaluate. We spent the first half doing just that (to varying levels of success). Later we dove into some deep model talk, quizzed Shawn on decade-old draft orders, and pondered Classical Music. 

We've officially entered the 4 Nations break, with the tournament only a few days away. In the first half we attempted to cover all the Nations while rambling about file systems and technology. Later we analyzed the evolution of dump and chase vs. zone entry systems and bad skateboarding. 

In the last week, three (well really four) major trades occurred. We spent the entire episode breaking down each one. In between we rambled about fast food, faceoff specialists, haters, and why aren't there ambidextrous hockey players? 

The biggest trade in years happened last Friday. We spent the first half discussing the transaction, our analysis, and home improvement stores for some reason. In the second half, Josh was accused of questioning Bedard's value, so we talked bad teams, #1 overall picks, and vibes. 

After a week off due to another Vikings playoff loss and a physical move by Shawn, we're back to cover the current playoff landscape. Fair warning: we did our classic poor job of staying on topic, but we tried. In the mix: Blue Jackets, Bruins, Canadiens, and Connecticut? 

We're, once again, back at our regularly scheduled time. We've never been late. In the first half we discuss the current social media landscape re: hockey, Frank Vatrano's interesting new contract, and tax evasion. Later we chat about Canucks drama and Classic Rock.