Halfway through the first period of the Everett Silvertips’ game against the Tri-City Americans on Wednesday, Olen Zellweger walked the offensive blue line, dragging the puck with him. With power play traffic gathered in front of Tri’s goal crease, he snapped a low shot that found its way through the mass of humanity and made netminder Talyn Boyko reach to his right. Boyko was out of position after the first save and never stood a chance on the rebound, as Jacob Wright tapped it home for the first goal of the game and the eventual game winner.
Walking the line and getting the puck through traffic is an artform, and one at which Zellweger excels. If you watch him closely, you will get a sense that almost every time he puts the puck toward the net, some level of chaos ensues shortly after.
Zellweger, a shifty 17-year-old draft-eligible defenseman who hails from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, is off to a great start offensively with a goal and four assists in five games on Everett’s blue line this season. He has picked up nicely after a solid 16-year-old campaign, in which he registered two goals and 10 assists in 58 games.
Zellweger has been playing with Gianni Fairbrother, a veteran in the WHL and a 2019 draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens. Zellweger credits his defensive partner with “making it easy” on him by really talking on the ice. The two are building chemistry as the season goes along, and Zellweger fits naturally alongside the older, more developed Fairbrother.
Playing on the top pairing, on the power play, and even occasionally on the penalty kill as a 17-year-old shows the level of trust that the Silvertips coaching staff has in Zellweger. He’s even playing the right side, despite being a left-shot defenseman. Zellweger doesn’t think it’s a big deal to play the offside, noting, “There’s pros and cons, but there’s pros and cons to playing on your strongside too.”
Silvertips head coach Dennis Williams put a little more thought into playing Zellweger on the right, though. “This is what we think of Olen as a player is we move him to his offside, which is not easy for a defenseman to do, especially in the Western League at that age.” The Silvertips have a glut of left-shot defensemen in Fairbrother, Zellweger, Ronan Seeley, and Aidan Sutter. “On the right side we needed to move one of those guys over, and we thought Olen, with his feet and his hockey sense and his ability to retrieve pucks and escape pressure because of his skating that he would be the best, so we were able to put him with a guy like Gianni Fairbrother and use them as shutdown D as well.”
Olen Zellweger makes a pass against the Tri-City Americans. (Chris Mast, Everett Silvertips)
For a young player like Zellweger to accept such a huge role—particularly playing the right side—and to shine is a credit to his abilities and his drive as a player. “It’s been working so far, I think he’s done a really good job with [Fairbrother], but again, it’s not easy,” Williams says. “Our forwards sometimes will fling a puck up the wall and forget he’s on his offhand. That’s tough to collect on your backhand as a guy’s coming out at you on the point, you know, to not bobble it, try to get it back deep. But, he’s done a really good job of trying to get his feet around it, have composure, absorb a hit, and get it back behind the goaltender.”
While his ability to create offense from the blue line is apparent, Zellweger’s skating is undoubtedly his greatest strength. He’s slick and deceptive and appears to move effortlessly on the ice. Despite being on the small side at 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, Zellweger never seems to get squared up for big hits. Instead, he lets his feet deliver him out of trouble in his own end, often spinning away from attacking forwards and even jumping up to lead the rush offensively.
He’s the true modern-day defenseman, who Williams calls a “relentless worker” who “lives and breathes the game of hockey.”
“There’s nobody on our team that works harder than Zell,” Williams adds. “And if you were to ask all 25 guys, they’d all give you the same answer. He wants to do everything in his power to be a hockey player and he gives himself the best opportunity, whether it’s eating properly, resting properly, his preparation for practice and games. He’s just a pleasure to coach, and to see him from last year to this year, you know, the strides… He’s definitely going to have an opportunity, I believe, to be a pro hockey player and an opportunity to be drafted in the upcoming draft.”
Williams is not the only one who believes that Zellweger will hear his name called by an NHL franchise in July. In fact, Zellweger landed on NHL Central Scouting’s “Players to Watch” list with a ‘C’ rating, making him likely to be selected in the fourth through sixth rounds. “It was pretty cool to be named to that list,” Zellweger says. “Obviously, I want to move up to whatever I can, so I think I just gotta go up from here.”
Zellweger isn’t embarking on this journey alone, though. “We have quite a few signed players on our team so they kind of know what it takes and they know what you gotta do. You gotta be focused and be prepared every day to play because somebody’s always watching.”
The Everett Silvertips are in the early stages of a shortened 24-game WHL season. There has been plenty of concern expressed around the hockey world for how young players could continue their development, especially when play was halted due to the pandemic. Zellweger took everything in stride, though, and saw it as a chance to augment his already impressive skillset. “It’s unfortunate that we don’t get the full season, but this will be a good opportunity for us, and I look at the shortened season and extra training time as a really good opportunity to improve upon weaknesses and stuff like that. So for me, it was good time and used well, so I think it was good for me.”
That extra training time shows, as Zellweger looks like the real deal. If he keeps scoring, he could hear his name called at the NHL Draft a lot earlier than his ‘C’ rating suggests.
Olen Zellweger and the Everett Silvertips are a perfect 5-0-0 this season and lead the U.S. Division with 10 points.
Featured image taken by Chris Mast, courtesy of the Everett Silvertips.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
We are still six months away from the Seattle Kraken’s inaugural season, but that time is going to fly by. Those of you who are lucky enough to have season tickets will soon need to start planning your calendars for the 2021-22 NHL season.
To help you plan, I look how a typical NHL schedule would shake out for the Seattle Kraken.
NHL schedule basics
Let us start off with some basic information about a traditional (non-COVID impacted) NHL schedule. A typical schedule will have six preseason and 82 regular-season games that are split evenly with home and away games. The preseason starts in mid-September, regular season kicks off about a week into October, and the regular season ends in the second week of April. That gives us a typical home schedule of three preseason games and 41 regular-season games that runs from mid-September to early April.
NHL schedule by month
If you spread the schedule out by month, NHL teams have about 6 home games a month. Here is a look at that seasonality.
NHL schedule by weekday
As we slowly return to normal, you are likely to start re-committing to beer league hockey, book club, date nights, pick-up hockey, trivia night, hockey tournaments, etc. You might want to avoid conflicts in your schedule by looking at the most common NHL nights of the week.
You might want to avoid scheduling activities on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
NHL schedule wild cards
This data is based on the NHL schedules over the last four fully completed seasons (2015-16 through 2018-19). This does not mean it will stay consistent over the next season. There are few things that could factor into the schedule format next year.
Media partners
ESPN might have plans that could alter the schedule a bit. The ESPN deal has 25 regular-season games on the ESPN TV network (75 on ESPN+). All you mathematicians out there probably estimated that 25 games work out to be about one game a week. It is a best practice to establish a cadence for the games so people do not have to check their local listings every week to determine when hockey will be on ESPN. An example of this is how NBCSN branded Wednesday night as “Rivalry Night” on their network to create some buzz and awareness about their NHL nationally televised games. This has an interesting impact on the rest of the schedule where the league tries to clear out certain days to turn the focus onto the nationally televised game.
Back to backs
The league has made it perfectly clear that they will be returning to our normally scheduled divisions once we get through this 2020-21 temporary alignment. One thing that may stick around is the two-game series scenario. For those unfamiliar with this 2020-21 phenomenon, the NHL strategically scheduled several teams with back-to-back games in the same city to limit travel and potential COVID-19 exposure. Based on some reports, this back-to-back scenario might have some legs for sticking around and could impact the distribution of games in a week. For example, instead of a Thursday in one city, and Saturday in another, teams might play Thursday and Friday in the same city.
I hope this gives you some insight into a typical NHL schedule and what we might expect for the 2021-22 season. There has been no announcement on when that 2021-22 NHL schedule will be released, but we at SOH anticipate its release sometime in August.
Last week, the NHL and ESPN announced a seven-year television, streaming, and media rights deal that kicks off at the beginning of the 2021-22 season and runs through the 2027-28 season. Here are the main bullet points:
25 exclusive national regular-season games on ABC or ESPN.
75 national regular-season games per season produced by ESPN that will stream exclusively on both ESPN+ and Hulu.
Half of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on ABC and ESPN each season.
Exclusive coverage of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for four out of the seven seasons.
NHL’s out-of-market streaming package, currently known as NHL.tv, will be available exclusively through the ESPN+ subscription.
Most people in the industry see this as a huge win for ESPN, the NHL, and most importantly the fans. Here is a list of 10 reasons why this NHL/ESPN partnership is a big deal for hockey fans:
1. Streaming focus. The Walt Disney company, the owner of ESPN, reached a tipping point for their direct-to-consumer streaming distribution with their big launch of Disney+. The 75 national regular-season games that are slated for ESPN+ are a clear signal that Disney is planning a big push for direct-to-consumer sports products without the burden of a complete cable package that consumers have been forced to purchase for years to access ESPN content.
2. Change agent for ROOT sports. The biggest complaint we heard from fans after the Root Sports/Kraken announcement was the lack of streaming options that came with that deal. With Disney taking an aggressive approach and making a huge investment in the NHL with streaming rights on ESPN+, this could influence regional sports networks, like Root Sports, to create streaming options sooner rather than later. I do not anticipate changes any time soon, but this will put pressure on the RSN’s.
3. Multi-network. There will be an additional TV partner here. NBC is still in the running, as is Fox Sports. So if you do not want to splurge on the $5 a month to get ESPN+ and the additional 75 games, you will be able to get more nationally televised games on the additional network. Having exposure on both networks creates more visibility for the NHL and will add to the growth opportunities of the sport.
4. Network competition. Between ESPN and the other eventual NHL network partner, there will be a healthy rivalry to outdo each other in coverage and innovation. Expect both networks to push each other for better coverage and content that will ultimately benefit the networks themselves as well as the fans.
5. NHL headed back to the worldwide leader in sports. It has been 17 years since the NHL last appeared on ESPN, and hockey fans have been bitter about the lack of coverage on the network since it left. I have fallen in that trap as well, but as the great Linda Cohn implied on our podcast, the network is not going to heavily promote a sport for which they do not own the television rights. This all changes that. We have already seen Steven A. Smith hyping the Kraken. Haters are going to hate, but having ESPN personalities talking about hockey is great for the sport.
Aaawwwwwww Sugar Crackers! Your Boy’s about to get into Hockey. Yes! HOCKEY!!! Check me out! pic.twitter.com/8Sr4ERzTjS
6. Shoulder content. There have been no commitments around additional programming, but one should expect something like NHL 2Night to go back to ESPN on game nights or move NHL In the Crease onto one of the ESPN linear channels, meaning ESPN or ESPN2. This will draw in more eyeballs from a broad group of sports fans that have ESPN on by default.
Yes, hockey fans, the iconic ESPN @NHL theme music will be back!
Composer Bob Christianson shares more on the musical piece first introduced to viewers in 1992, that still resonates with hockey fans after nearly 30 yearshttps://t.co/PvcI2nDuHupic.twitter.com/hOdPaXAeXg
7. ESPN.com. I have appreciated NBC Sports’ coverage over the years, but rarely have I felt the need to go to NBCsports.com for hockey content. I do like Sean Leahy, but I feel NBC never prioritizes its .com coverage. I find myself going to tsn.ca, sportsnet.ca, or ESPN.com instead. With the media partnership and platform of ESPN.com, I expect coverage should grow and landing on espn.com/nhl will become part of my regular routine. I should call out that friends of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast, Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan have done a great job with their coverage over the last few years. If you have not checked out their content, you should, as it is consistently fresh and innovative.
8. Getting the gang back together. I know I am not alone here, but I became a fan of hockey watching the NHL on ESPN. There is already some excitement building for the return of the gang on ESPN, and I am on board. Gary Thorne has already commented on his interest in rejoining ESPN. The fans are clamoring for Steve Levy and the elevated presence of hockey with Linda Cohn and Barry Melrose. I also hope the US hockey market can get more exposure to the great Ray Ferraro and Gord Miller from time to time.
9. NHL out-of-market streaming package just got cheaper. It did not get any headlines, but by moving the NHL.tv subscription over to ESPN+, the package apparently just got cheaper. There could be some price changes coming up for ESPN+, but the NHL.tv subscription usually costs about $159 per season and ESPN+ costs $5 per month, or $50 for a full year.
10. ESPN commercials. I still love these. It should be fun to see Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, and Mathew Barzal involved in some ESPN commercials of their own.
The old “This is SportsCenter” hockey commercials are great 🤣
The NHL on ESPN will be great for hockey. The exposure and innovation this deal will have on hockey will be incredible and I cannot wait for Seattle to be along for this ride.
From the hottest of scoops to the coldest of beers, Sound Of Hockey has all the latest news from the Seattle Kraken and beyond in this edition of Weekly One-Timers.
It’s been another week of somewhat significant stories around the hockey world, so sit back, relax, crack open a cold one if you can (it is Friday after all), and let’s get you caught up on what’s happening on and off the ice.
Seattle Kraken final NHL payment update
Sound Of Hockey has confirmed via email from a team representative that the Seattle Kraken have not yet made their final payment to the NHL.
In 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights signed their first free agent, Reid Duke, on March 6. This means that they would have submitted their final payment on or before that date. Astute readers would notice that we are now past that date, so the Kraken are behind the Vegas timeline.
Seattle can make no such signings until that final payment is made. This is notable because college and some European league seasons are ending. When the NCAA season concludes, there is always a clamoring by NHL teams to sign the best players that slipped through undrafted, so unless the Kraken complete that last transaction soon, there is a chance they could miss out on some of those prospects.
The team also cannot vote on issues brought to the league’s Board of Governors, such as whether or not to move the NHL Entry Draft, which has been discussed at length recently.
The payment will of course get made in due time, and it really is nothing to worry about for Kraken fans. As the team confirmed this is on schedule, though exactly where final payment falls on that schedule was not disclosed.
That last payment is the final milestone for the team to hit before real hockey transactions can begin.
Silver Bullets in Seattle
In my college days, I drank a lot of light beers. Miller Light, Bud Light, Busch Light, Michelob Golden Light, Milwaukee’s Best Light, Natural Light, something called Beer 30 Light… You know, good stuff!
For whatever reason, though, I was just never a huge fan of Coors Light.
My beer palate has become quite refined as I’ve aged, but my general dissatisfaction after a Coors Light—regardless of the blueness of the can’s mountains—remains in tact. So, you can imagine my dismay when the Seattle Kraken announced that they had come to an agreement with Molson Coors to make Coors Light the official domestic beer partner for both the team and Climate Pledge Arena.
Thankfully for hopheads like myself, there will be other options available at Kraken games, as Hop Valley Brewing—also a Molson Coors entity—will provide craftier options. Phew!
Read all about the deal and what it means for the gameday experience here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall take a break to enjoy a refreshing and completely flavorless Natural Light, or as I like to call it, a naughty water.
Mainstream Kraken
Ok, now that I’ve been refreshed with an ice-cold naughty water, I’m ready to watch Steven A. Smith talk about the Kraken.
Aaawwwwwww Sugar Crackers! Your Boy’s about to get into Hockey. Yes! HOCKEY!!! Check me out! pic.twitter.com/8Sr4ERzTjS
In a peculiar way, this man shouting at us is why the NHL going back to ESPN is so important for the league. ESPN still has the ears and eyes of the sports fan, and the network has been doing its damnedest to make hockey disappear from the sports lexicon since the league took its talents to something called the Outdoor Life Network in 2005.
But ESPN, ABC, and the NHL announced a new seven-year deal this week. The agreement will bring 25 regular-season games back to those networks starting just in time for the Kraken’s inaugural puck drop, plus playoff games and NHL All-Star Games. Additionally, the out-of-market content we now stream from NHL.tv will be moved to ESPN+.
In all, the deal is reportedly worth $2.8 billion.
It still is not all that easy to find anything about the NHL on ESPN.com, though, so here’s hoping that changes as the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports” re-embraces the game we love so dearly.
Now, give me Gary Thorne calling hockey, or give me death.
NWHL to award Isobel Cup after all
The NWHL’s Lake Placid bubble burst at the beginning of February, abruptly curbing the momentum that was building for the league. When that happened, most in the hockey world assumed that was the last we would see of the league and its players this season.
It was a good try, and the tournament gave the NWHL a nice moment in the sun, but the pandemic had won. It was time to head home and just wait it out until this COVID thing subsides, and then we can start fresh next season.
Wrong!
The league announced this week that it will still award the Isobel Cup to a champion, after four qualifying teams—the Toronto Six, Boston Pride, Minnesota Whitecaps, and Connecticut Whale—battle it out March 26 and 27 at Warrior Ice Arena in Brighton, Mass.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the bubble (or “Whubble” as it became more commonly called) bursting was that the NWHL was on the verge of having games nationally televised for the first time ever when it was forced to shut down.
These newly announced games will be carried on NBC Sports, though, giving the league and women’s hockey another opportunity to shine on a national stage. It’s fantastic news all around.
You Don’t See That Every Day
Former Tri-City Americans defenseman, Dylan Coghlan, entered Wednesday night’s game for the Golden Knights with zero career NHL goals. He left with three.
Artemi Panarin returned to the New York Rangers after a leave of absence that began on Feb. 22. The superstar forward stepped away from the team after he was accused of assaulting a young woman in 2011 during his time playing in the KHL. The unsubstantiated allegations came on the heels of Panarin expressing support for Alexei Navalny, the leader of the opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Justin Bieber wrote a “love letter” to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Please don’t tell any of my colleagues here at Sound Of Hockey, but I kind of love it.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
It’s a super fun episode this week, as the Sound Of Hockey Podcast welcomes Seattle Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge.
With Bil, the guys discuss his journey to become a WHL GM. They also talk about what he looks for when scouting players, being that he has to focus on kids that are so early in their development, and what we should expect from the T-Birds in this shortened season. It’s a fun interview that is well worth a listen.
Also in this episode, the guys talk women’s hockey – specifically the return of the NWHL and the PWHPA’s Dream Gap games – and the hiring of Darryl Sutter (again) in Calgary. And of course, oodles of general NHL talk, which you will surely enjoy.
Segments include Get Off My Lawn, Bad Boys, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
There are plenty of good laughs to be had in this one.
The NHL’s condensed schedule will prove challenging for teams down the stretch, especially those impacted by COVID and play stoppages. For this week’s Data Dump Saturday, I look at just how the condensed schedule is impacting outcomes around the NHL.
Average rest days
To evaluate how the condensed schedules impact team performance, we will look at rest days between games. Rest days will be defined as the number of days a team does not play. For example, if a team plays on Thursday, then Saturday, then that team plays Saturday’s game with one rest day. Back-to-back games means zero rest days.
Here is a look at the average rest days between games by team (as of Friday’s games).
Teams hit by COVID outbreaks that resulted in play stoppages are the teams with the highest average rest days between games.
Of course, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Here is how the remainder of the season looks as teams that were sidelined earlier in the campaign will make up those games in the second half.
Back-to-backs in the condensed NHL schedule
Obviously one way to condense a season is to play more back-to-back games. The original schedule had several back-to-backs littered through every team’s schedule with the goal of fitting 56 games for all teams without moving the end date of the regular season. Once the season began, however, the teams that were shut down temporarily due to COVID outbreaks subsequently required even more back-to-back games. Buffalo, Dallas, and Philadelphia are a couple of the teams with extended shutdowns.
Here is a look at how many back-to-back games have been played this season so far and how many remain on the second half of the schedule.
Conventional wisdom would have one believe that teams playing back-to-back games would be at a disadvantage when playing a team with at least one rest day due to energy levels of players. I looked at the data through Friday’s games to confirm this.
Conventional wisdom is correct. Teams on a back-to-back playing a team with at least one rest day since their last game have a slightly lower point percentage at .531. There are only 16 games where this scenario played out, so the sample size is a bit small to make any hard conclusions.
To wrap up, here is a bit of a heat map of the rest days by team by week. Blue indicates more rest days while red indicates fewer rest days.
It will be interesting to see if teams with fewer rest days will prove to underperform against teams with more rest days in the second half of the season. The other thing to keep an eye on is the impact of rest days heading into the Stanley Cup Playoffs and into the opening rounds.
