What the f*ck. The first week of NHL Free Agency is always the most active, and 2026 gave us some absolute bangers. We spent the entire episode covering as much of it as we could fit in (or remember). www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Free agency starts tomorrow! Our full preview article is up on the site. It's time. We spent the entire episode covering all things free agency. That's it. That's why we get up in the morning. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Evolving Hockey Free Agency Preview Time! It's 2026. The free agency class sucks. Let's find some value! evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

## Announcement ## GAR Projections for the '26-27 NHL season are now updated for pro subscribers on the site. Check 'em out: evolving-hockey.com/stats/player...

It's officially the offseason, and the EH Podcast's transition was messy. We spent the first bit discussing (the twins') football ignorance while understanding football analytics. Later we analyzed all the trades and contracts your heart could desire. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

The Carolina Hurricanes are your 2026 Stanley Cup Champions! We spent the whole episode analyzing what went right for the Canes, Vegas, and the playoffs overall. Within that, we reminisced about hockey stats history and its evolution. This one was fun! www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

And with that our daily updates for the 25-26 NHL season are complete! We hope you've enjoyed the ride, and now on to free agency and (for us a lot of) off-season work!

ICYMI: here’s our 2026 Stanley Cup Finals preview!

Game 1 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals is here!

It's time. The 2026 Stanley Cup Final starts today, and we spent the first 10 minutes discussing the Jurassic Park franchise and sports movies. Once the important things were necessarily covered, we talked Hockey for the rest of the episode (I promise)! www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

The Haters Final Begins! Let's Hate. Or I guess cheer for one of the teams. Whatever you want to do. Our preview is up! evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

Colorado may get swept (they did, but we didn't know it at the time), and Carolina's quantity-domination's resulted in shaky outcomes. We spent the whole episode analyzing everything like only we can (talking about pickup kickball and the Staals). www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Honestly, it's getting kind of ridiculous at this point.

2026 NHL CONFERENCE FINALS It's time. The four teams we all expected. evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

We had some severe scheduling issues over the last three weeks, but we're finally back! We spent the first half discussing the second round and professional bowling. Later we dug into our contract model and the upcoming offseason. It's good to be back. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Beautiful

ICYMI: our contract projections for the 2026 NHL offseason are up on the site! Check ‘em out!

## Announcement ## Contract projections for the 2026 NHL offseason are now live on the site for Pro subscribers! We also wrote a little article about the updates this year. Have fun! Projections: evolving-hockey.com/stats/contra... Updates: evolving-hockey.com/blog/contrac...

Apologies again, but we had to delay the release of our contract projections. After some double-checking, we felt it necessary to ensure our understanding of the new CBA was correct (mainly, when the new max term limits go into effect). We're hoping to have them out tomorrow morning.

PSA: We’re planning to release our contract projections for the 2026 NHL offseason either Monday or Tuesday this coming week (May 11/12th). We’re working on finalizing them right now and should have a short article on the site (and a post here) when they’re up!

The Avs posted almost 0.5 more xG in the first period tonight than the Habs had in their entire game an hour ago. The Wild weren't actually that far off either. Hockey.

Not very often you see a team win any game (let alone game 7 on the road) with a single-digit shot total. The shot attempts were actually much closer (50-42 in TB's favor), but the xG differential here mirrors what the game looked like. The disparity in shot locations between each team is wild.

The second round of the NHL playoffs begins today (for some reason). Here is our "EMERGENCY PREVIEW" for the CAR/PHI series. That's all for now. We'll hopefully have COL/MIN and VGK/ANA up tomorrow morning. LETS GO (begrudgingly, but still quite excited)! evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

Regarding our second round projections: we’re currently not able to run the sim until the first round has finished… So, we’ll have the article out a day or two after the first round finishes. Shooting for a Monday release.

The Colorado Avalanche and Minnesota Wild are 1st and 2nd, respectively, in EV goal differential per 60 (score adjusted) through the first round of 25-26 playoffs - this very likely won't change. They'll meet in the second round and got there in wildly different ways.

Anaheim is moving on to the second round! Game 6 was somewhat close from a shot metrics standpoint, but Anaheim was the overall better team for the whole series.

It's 1AM central. Time to post some playoff charts on Blue Sky dot com for the first time in forever (Shawn's been doing it over on the other site, and we've been trying to get him to come over here). Anyway, Utah's been the better team through 4 periods. And now we enter *late night hockey*.

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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Data for the 25-26 NHL playoffs is now available on the site!

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, and we spent the entire episode covering every series with no interjections. This was all business, like always. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

## THE FIRST ROUND ## Our preview for the first round of the 2026 NHL playoffs is up. We did it. Let's go. evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

Our NHL Awards article is up! We selected the correct NHL Award winners with data and numbers and statistics. This is our time to shine. evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

We're finally getting a clearer view of the final 25-26 playoff picture in our team point projections... with ~2 games left for each team.

We're back after a week break (b/c 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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/

With only a few weeks of the NHL season left, we felt the need to first chat about professional bowling and who owns the hockey pucks. With that covered, we felt ready to move on to the current playoff race, various team strengths, and disappointing western teams. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

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. Later, we talked about our die-hard Wild fandom, Hogs, and the odd era of 2000s rock music. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

The 2026 Trade Deadline is over, and we're here wondering whether it happened at all. We spent the entire episode evaluating all the drama, picking winners and losers, talking Sabres, recommitting to the Wild, and contemplating cassette tape collecting. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

TRADE DEADLINE 2026! Our annual preview and objective-data-analysis-exercise for the NHL trade deadline is live. Check it out! evolving-hockey.com/blog/evolvin...

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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

We're a big Olympics podcast now. We know all the sports and have great opinions. 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 rock. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

We're back after a break due to [things]. We spent the first half discussing 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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

We're back after a quick break, and we all really felt like talking. We spent the first half discussing The Holidays, geography, and the Red Wings. Later we chatted about Columbus and Zach Werenski, ancient YouTube videos, and standardized tests for some reason. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

One of the biggest in-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. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

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". www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Just like everyone else, we're trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the NHL this season. We spent the first half doing that (it's figured out now). Later we discussed incredible pump-up songs, Scott Stapp, a more optimal league environment, and TRL. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...

Oh boy, here we go!

Due to some data issues with yesterday's games we were not able to update the site with Nov 17th's data (other than game projections for Nov 18th). This will hopefully be fixed for tonight's daily update. We apologize for any inconvenience.

The Atlantic has been all over the place, so we took the opportunity to investigate each division relative to our preseason expectations. Later we hinted at some early Awards picks and tried to get Shawn to watch a movie. www.buzzsprout.com/1836821/epis...