32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Apsveicam!

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

What a moment for Latvia! Jeff and Elliotte recap the IIHF World Championship (45:30) and discuss Latvia winning their first hockey medal at a world championship (50:45). But before that, they get into Kyle Dubas and Pittsburgh (2:00), Ottawa sale (5:20), GM search in Toronto (11:00), Matthew Tkachuk on NBA on TNT (37:30) and a full Game 5 recap between the Stars-Golden Knights (20:00).They also go around the league with the latest on coaching vacancies  — Rangers (31:20), Blue Jackets (31:45), Ducks (34:00), Flames (34:40), Predators (35:10) and Capitals (36:00).The guys also chat with David Proper, NHL Senior EVP of Media and International Strategy (59:20), about the Global Series in Stockholm, the pre-season game in Australia between the Kings and Coyotes, other locations the league has looked at to potentially host games, what goes into planning such events, how ball hockey could play a factor in growing the game, and much more.Email the podcast at [e-mail] or call The Thought Line at 1-833-311-3232 and leave us a voicemailOutro Music: Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers - What I WantListen to the full track hereThis podcast was produced and mixed by Amil Delic, and hosted by Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman.Audio Credits: IIHF, KKGK, KTCK-AM, TNT and Sportsnet.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates.

We got to make this quick, Jeff, because I have to get to the end of succession. Oh, my goodness. Okay, we'll try to fly through all of this. Here we go. Coming down in, and my dog is barking. That means he wants to hear some podcast. Here we go. Coming down.

It's very selfish. Coming down in three, two, and one. On a scale, Elliot, of zero to Robert Wadlow. Do you know who Robert Wadlow was? The tallest guy in the world's history? Is he the eight-foot guy? You're amazing. Eight-foot 11.

Look at you. Okay, on a scale of zero to Robert Wadlow. That's me patting myself on the back. Can you hear it on the microphone? That just blew my mind. How big a week is this going to be? Give me a quick bit of context before i do the opening to the podcast well i don't want to say it's the biggest week because we've seen bigger weeks but this could be shaquille o'neal like pretty large size and

since we're going to be talking about the tnt panel i feel i should do something that's relevant look at you elliot friedman putting cheese in the trap here we go 32 thoughts the podcast presented by the gmc canyon at4x merrick friedman and delitch along with you uh want to get to a few things we'll talk about latvia we'll talk about various coaching hunts and we'll talk about matthew kachuk on the nba on tnt but man oh man this is poised to be an absolutely enormous week, both on and off the ice in the NHL, because later on this week, maybe as early as when you're listening to this podcast, we'll know who's in the Stanley Cup final representing the Western Conference.

But this one's huge, whether it's the Pens, whether it's the Sens, whether it's the Dubas, this one's going to be a big one, Elliot. There will be some movement this week. You know, it might be an extra day because it's the Dubas. This one's going to be a big one, Elliot. There will be some movement this week. You know, it might be an extra day because it's the Memorial Day weekend in the United States, but I do think we are getting close to some decisions being made. So let's take a look at which ones we're talking about. First of all, Dubas-Pittsburgh.

I think that is a decision that Pittsburgh is going to want to know the answer to. Their ownership is coming back from the F1 in Monaco. There seems to be a feeling, from what I understand, through people who talk to those who work in Pittsburgh, that they think there's a very good chance that Dubas is going to take this job. Now, I think it's okay for them to feel that way, but I don't like making proclamations myself until I know.

And as of sunday night succession eastern time i guess we'll call it oh wow i don't know a hundred percent but there certainly is a feeling inside the organization from what i can tell that it's heading in that direction and it's obviously dubas's job if he wants it. Now, I think people are kind of wondering if he does take it, what could that mean? How will everything work? Who's going to stay in the organization? Is he bringing anybody with him?

But we know he was there. We know that Sidney Crosby came in to meet him. And a story that we should credit Taylor Haas, who was the reporter who broke that, a really good story. And a story that we should credit Taylor Haas, who was the reporter who broke that, a really good story. I get the sense from talking around that organization or talking to people who know people in that organization that they are bracing for that to come. If it's not Dubas, where are they going? Well, I've heard a couple of different names. I've heard Matthew Darsh.

Some people told me not to count out Steve Greeley. And on Sunday, someone saying that they heard it could be Jason Botterill if it's not Dubas. The one thing I do know is that I think some people were told, give us through the weekend and we'll have a better picture of where this is going. So the weekend is ending.

It's an extra day in the United States. I think we're going to know, but there certainly is a feeling, Jeff, that the organization is preparing as if Dubas is very, very interested in the job. I want to get to the Maple Leafs here in a couple of moments. But one person that I do wonder about, and I think we all do as well, if Kyle Dubas goes, does this person follow? And that's Jason Spezza. I also do wonder about Brandon Pridham and I wonder about Wes Clark and we'll get to the Leafs in a second here.

But is it a foregone conclusion that where goes Dubas, so goes Jason Spezza? The one thing about Spezza is I don't know if he's going to move. His family is pretty ensconced. That's a good word, ensconced in the Toronto area. So I think Spezza could move in terms of he goes with him from an organizational point of view. But I don't know that anyone's certain that he's actually going to physically pick up and move. You know, one other thing about Spezza, Jeff, the timing of his resignation in Toronto has people wondering if initially he was the plan, the organizational plan to take over as

interim general manager after Dubas left. I don't know if we'll ever get confirmation on that, but certainly that's one of the theories. The other burning issue, and some would say, and I've talked about this before, you have as well, that maybe Dubas is waiting on a decision with the Ottawa Senators before he makes his decision on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Must be nice to have choices in life, Elliot. Must be nice to have choices. But is there a latest on the Ottawa sale? I heard that the weekend was like phones down.

Everyone just kind of took the weekend off. Apparently it's been pretty crazy the last few days. And I don't know if the weekend extends into Monday there, because of course there are parties to this that are in the States, including the bank. And there are parties that are not, which includes the hockey team and the family. Someone said to me this is a book the senator's sale is a book and it'll be a good one you know he said it'll be a book that gets turned into a movie

based on the book and whoever writes the book is going to make millions so i'm i've already started to write. No, just kidding. Who plays Ryan Reynolds in the movie other than the obvious? Biexa. Biexa will play Ryan Reynolds. Very good. Very nice.

Charming. Dick Tracy, like good looks, square jaw, all of it, cleft chin. Yeah, it all works. Damn you, Biexa. Damn you. I think we're all waiting on this one with bated breath because like, as we've been talking about the past few weeks, there doesn't seem to be much by way of secrecy in a lot of this.

And when you consider the show business aspect of it, which wasn't just Ryan Reynolds and the Remington bid, but this was also, the Nico Sparks bid continues to add celebrities to the mix as well, making this a very intriguing and to your friend's point, a very watchable sale here, Elliot, something the NHL is not very accustomed to. It was a tough weekend for Sparks.

He went on Twitter and- Yeah, not great. Well, here's the thing i understand it i get it i i understand it but the only thing that i look at it because i normally i have no problem with that that's your opinion that's your perspective you want to defend yourself i got no problem with it the only thing that i think about is again i go back to the nhl and i go back to the commissioner and right now everything is under the umbrella of this is a performance in front of someone who you're trying to get to wave the magic wand over your bid in some sense, because the board of governors has to approve it. Yes.

Look, I don't disagree with you, Jeff. I don't disagree with you at all about that. Everyone here that's supposed to be in control of the process has lost control of it. And it's been this way for quite some time. I don't know if there's ever been another sale process like this that I can remember. Now there's been expansion and there's been things like that. And I broke in covering the NBA expansion when it came to Toronto. I broke in covering the NBA expansion when it came to Toronto. And I remember there was one time and the Bittos, who initially got the team, told this story.

They were initially told, when the NBA comes to Toronto, don't tell anyone about it. It's supposed to be secret and no one is supposed to be there. And I can't remember which bank it was, the bittles paraded um the nba executives through a bank where all their employees were yelling uh we want the nba or something like that i was there i was a young reporter and i was there and the nba loved it they thought it was fantastic and i if i remember correctly because they told me this story, I think that someone told them in the league, another team, said the NBA is going to tell you they want this to be quiet, but if you do something big for them that makes you look big, they will love it.

And that's why he did it, and it turned out to be right. But this one, I think initially the nhl really liked some of the ryan reynolds attention not but now it's completely gone off the rails and you know we talked on friday that i you know i think there's a lot of nastiness behind the scenes and sparks but was basically accused of chasing money at the last minute. And there were some reports that it was falling apart and his bid was a joke. And there were other reports that this is not anything unusual. Like I did have one other group tell me that they heard that there was a group, not Sparks, that was still looking to change its bid structure.

Now that might've been less debt, more equity as opposed to cash, but they said to me, it wasn't uncommon. Like, look, I'm a guy who gets a lot of good things said about me on the internet. And I'm a guy that gets a lot of bad things said about me on the internet. I try to ignore it. I don't think fighting with people on Twitter does anybody any good, especially myself. So I really try to avoid it. If I was Sparks, I would have just ignored it to the end. But I understand that not everyone can do that. And I think that just shows you how the nerves are fraying around that deal.

And there are people starting to say that they think whether it's the bank or it's the senators or it's the actions of some of the big groups, there are people starting to say that they think whether it's the bank or it's the senators or it's the actions of some of the big groups, there are people starting to accuse others of being unprofessional and unreasonable. And whoever doesn't get this, it could get really ugly. That is another chapter to all of this. Those that are not wanted on the voyage and what happens with them. And by the way, for all the criticism you receive on social media, take heart. Most of those are from my burner account.

I know they're all from you. I'll try to calm down the act, but I do get angry sometimes at you, Elliot. I do get angry. Okay, to the Toronto Maple Leafs then and their hunt for a general manager. Now, right now, the Maple Leafs draft meetings are going on in Kamloops.

Brendan Shanahan is not there. He's busy interviewing candidates for the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs. You've reported about Brad Treleving. You had a note with Ron McLean as well on Saturday night. What is the very latest on the Leafs' hunt? Well, I don't think I should be the only one taking credit for brad tree living i think everybody pretty much is you know he was in toronto last week and i think is as much as you could name someone a favorite uh just days into the process i think that he would

be one now i'm getting mixed intel on this uh someone else told me that there was another person who came in but i haven't been able to prove who it was i don't believe it was peter shirelli it certainly wasn't doug armstrong who was winning a gold medal on sunday congratulations you know mark bergevin was overseas too i heard he got interviewed by zoom or they talked to him by zoom as i mentioned i heard they talked to him by Zoom. As I mentioned, I heard they talked to Doug Wilson, but I don't think it was him. I don't think it was Mark Hunter. I undoubtedly think there's people there that the Leafs have talked to that we haven't figured out yet. There's no question about that. I don't believe it was Jason Botterill either.

So I think this is one of these things where Shanahan and Elise have basically reached out to a lot of people. I think this is one of those that when it's over, some other people will kind of names will trickle through and we'll hear. Because I do think they've made a lot of calls. I just think the question is who's actually getting interviewed. And the only person I can find so far who I know has been interviewed face-to-face is Tree Living. But there might have been others. I just don't know.

I'm curious about the timeline here. You know, the Maple Leafs say they want to do a thorough search. And I think on a level they do, I'm just not convinced they think they have a lot of time here. So that's my question is, how much runway do they really think they have? That's kind of why I framed it as the Maple Leafs draft meetings are going on right now in Kamloops. Like the draft is around the corner, free agency is around the corner. And I know that normally in a situation like this, well, normally Kyle Dubas or whomever the general manager is

would be there as well. But in charge right now, Brendan Shanahan has a lot of other business to take care of. But I think you're right. I don't think they have the luxury of a prolonged search here, Elliot. It doesn't feel that way to me at all. the sensitivities around this team and this market and the names involved and the contract status to say nothing of you know how emotional everybody seems to be around the maple leafs right now they can't afford to make a mistake here it's a tough spot you don't want to be rushed but you're up against the clock and it feels like around every corner is a ticking time bomb. I don't know if I would go that far.

I think things are going to stabilize a bit. You know, there's no question that the way this happened was stunning and surprising. And that's why everything kind of has unfolded the way it did for about a week. But eventually, I think you have to turn and start to move ahead you know the one thing i've heard uh from uh one of the people who i believe was talked to although he didn't confirm it a lot of the question is they've been asking i think the leafs what they really think about what's in matth head and Marner's head and Nylander's head. Apparently, from what I understand, Shanahan told Sheldon Keefe that while he likes him

and his body of work, he wants to leave it up to the new GM. And I believe Shanahan has told the core four that he prefers to have them all kept there, but the new GM is going to have a voice in all of this. So I think that's kind of where it is. And I think from what I've heard is a lot of the people who are interviewing, and to me this is a very obvious question, is they're trying to figure out from the Leafs,

like what's the honest opinion? Like everybody knows where Tavares heads at. He doesn't want to go anywhere. Matthews, I think the Leafs believe that he wants to stay but he's probably not going to be signed by July 1st so what's your approach you know Nylander he sounds like he wants to stay but like Matthews there's a big contract negotiation there Marner he sounds like he wants to stay, but there's another big contract negotiation coming a year from now. And I think the other thing too is because the contracts kind of are where they are, there's not a lot of room there. You have to figure out, you have to try to

get into these players' heads, not only in terms of where they want to be, but in terms of what they want their next deals to look like. And I've heard that those have been kind of a lot of the questions is, what do you think? You know, tell us honestly what we're getting into. Like a guy like Tree Living, for example, is one of the most fascinating candidates here because Calgary just went through this with Goudreau. And you heard what Conroy said at his media conference. I want people that want to be a part of the Calgary Flames and that want to be here. Not just coming here to get a contract and get the money. That doesn't interest me at all.

I want them to come to be a part of this and do something special here. You know, as far as, you know, Johnny leaving, I think a little bit, it was a learning thing for me. I was hoping Johnny was going to come back I was hoping Johnny was going to come back. I thought Johnny was going to come back, but I don't think I would let that happen again. And I told Don in the meeting, I truly thought John was going to come back. And when he didn't, it was disappointing. And it was right down to the last minute. But then when you think, uh-oh, you just lost an asset, one of your best players of all time, and you didn't get any forum. That was, that was a real eye-opener for me. I sat in my office for a while. I shut the door and thought, hmm, okay. That's a, you know, and then obviously with

Matthew was the next one to kind of the fall. So, you know what, I want to make a place where people want to play. I do think having the new arena. And you've seen what's happened with Kachok. To me, in a lot of ways, that could make Tree Living one of the best candidates because he's lived this and he can bring the lessons into it. How do they think they handled it right in Calgary? What mistakes do they think they made in Calgary? And if he gets the job, I'm really looking forward to hearing the answer to that question. But I think that's what everyone's trying to figure out here, Jeff,

to hearing the answer to that question. But I think that's what everyone's trying to figure out here, Jeff, is what is the intel from the Maple Leafs on where they think these players really are? And not, I'm trying to ask out someone to the prom when I'm 18 answer. She said maybe, so I might get to go with her. No, no, no, no, no. I want to know what she really thinks.

Interesting analogy. And with that, we, no, no. I want to know what she really thinks. Interesting analogy. And with that, we'll bracket the Maple Leafs conversation. Did I ever mention what happened to me at my prom when I was in grade 13, which now no longer exists? No. Who is your prom date? Who is your prom date? What was her name? I'm not going to mention her name.

It's not fair. It's not right. Like, that's the wrong thing to do. Oh, okay. her name it's not fair it's not right like that's the wrong thing to do okay so i didn't go because we broke up right before the prom and she went with someone else i was like i am not going you didn't want to go by yourself no i i was pretty immature 18 year old i was not going to handle that very well pretty immature 52 year-year-old for splitting hairs. I can tell you this.

I know I'm immature at 52, but I'm a lot more mature than I was then. Okay, let's break that conversation. That was a tough one, got to say. That was a tough memory. Okay, so Elliot, let's pause that conversation. Coming up in a couple of moments, we're going to talk about the IIHF World Hockey Championships.

What a wonderful day for Latvia specifically, the hockey team, the hockey fans, the country, all of it. We're going to get to talk about Latvia. I know I have some thoughts on Latvian hockey. I suspect you do as well. We'll talk about congratulating Team Canada. And there's one player specifically, Elliot, that I'm really happy for on that team. We'll get to that in a second. Coming up a little bit later on, David Proper from the NHL will talk to us about the Global Series and heading down under for games in Australia. The coaching situation around the NHL, whether it's your Capitals, whether it's your Rangers, whether it's your Predators, whether it's your Ducks. We're going to get to that in a couple of moments. But I would like to spend a little bit of time here talking about what we saw on Saturday night, namely Game 5, where Ty D'Alandrea scores the game winner. He runs over for D'Alandrea.

D'Alandrea shoots, scores! Ty D'Alandrea snaps it through the legs of Hill! And Dallas takes the 3-2 lead going ahead for the first time after all the gargantuan saves by aiden hill this is a rolling puck i think that just gets shot might have caught some stick the frustration whack of his pad by the goaltender hill i think petrangelo may have deflected it past his own netminder. He did. White block.

Broxton. Picked up by Tomey. Tries to center. They score. Ty Galandria. Second of the night. A minute and 27 seconds for the two goals for Ty DeLandria. And all of a sudden, the Stars have a two-goal edge.

7.58 to go in the third period. And the insurance marker as well. And let's not forget that the Dallas Stars have Ty DeLandria's chin to thank for their power play goal to send them into game five in the first place after getting high sticked by braden mcnabb your thoughts on a really exciting entertaining saturday night game five that was an awesome game ellie specifically the first two periods were fantastic barbachev scores glenn denning stevenson robertson and then it was a delandria show in the third the stars stay alive we will see a game six lots of thoughts number one probably the best game i've ever seen

max domi play uh he was excellent right from the pre-game interview when he blew off my question game three was it was a rough night for the entire team how did you guys as a group pull yourselves back together? And I assume it was simply more than Ric Flair and Mike Tyson. I mean, we're about 20, 25 minutes away from game five. So game three means shit now, I guess. But you know what? We're looking forward to a good one tonight.

Obviously a fun build in the play and great atmosphere. Which Ty liked later on Twitter. I just thought Domi was excellent. I was really impressed with him, and I wasn't surprised his line was that good with him being as strong as he was. You know, before that line scored the two goals in the third period, they also had a brilliant chance early. Kiviranta and Aiden Hill just robbed them.

So that line was going you know the thing that really stood out to me jeff was is that vegas scored first i was like dallas is doomed they're doomed and they came right back and scored then vegas scored to make it 2-1 you're like okay this is it and they scored again they came back and they did it so they had so many points in games four and five where they could have collapsed. They got scored on early in game four and they came back and found their way in one. So Dallas has shown a lot of resiliency. Chris Chapman, Fox Sports, Las Vegas, Bruce. Mark mentioned maybe not playing with some desperation at times. Given how game four went,

why would desperation not be something that the team played with on a night like tonight with an opportunity to close it out at all? It's a very good question. And there were times we did. The second period we got to our game, I thought we were the better team. First period, I think pockets of each team were good. They were probably better than us overall. But we got through that part. To me, the desperation was we had 24 giveaways.

I'm not sure you're beating the Arizona Coyotes in January with 24 giveaways. No disrespect to Arizona, but it's not the right way to play. 24 giveaways. I mean, we're trying to go to the Stanley Cup final against a desperate team. So to me, that's the whole game right there. So that falls under urgency obviously, right? You're not making the right decision with the puck or you're not supporting it well.

So it starts right there and that's the first thing we'll go to correct. I had someone who asked me a really interesting question. He asked me a couple of Jamie Benn questions. He says, first of all, do you think there's any chance that they don't play Benn in game six? Oh my goodness. You've got to be kidding me. Like, is that a real question?

And he laughed and he said, well, you know, hockey, they don't like to change their lineup after a win. I said, they'll change their lineup this time. He's going to play. But what he also said was, do you think there was that motivation of let's win it so he could come back and play? And I thought that was an interesting question like i don't know what was said between ben and the team but i've got to

think look people were unhappy with him after game three for not talking and i completely agree they should have put out some kind of statement it could have been handled a lot better then he had the press conference on the day off that didn't go very well and as far as i'm concerned he probably should have just waited to speak after the suspension got announced but i have no doubt at some point jeff he apologized to his teammates i would be shocked if he didn't at some point go in there and just apologize to them not only for the suspension but just everything putting his team in a bad spot and you've been around teams before it would not surprise me in the least if there was some motivation there to say let's win this to get him back in the series like when you're down three nothing you grab on to

everything you can and anything you can i thought that was a good question my friend asked i think that there's definitely something there that if we're going to lose this series we're going to do it together as a team and that means that jamie ben's on the ice i i i completely believe that and i think this is like a really impressive gut check moment for the Dallas Stars. Like, listen, this may all end on Monday. This may all end on Monday night and it's Vegas and Florida in the final away we go, but good on Dallas. I mean, they lose, you know, one of their top dogs in Jamie Benn, their captain, and they win two games in a row. And now Jamie Benn comes back. And you know what? All I can think about is if you're Jamie Benn,

how are you playing on Monday night? Are you not playing like the game of your life? Your team just gave you life and got you back in the conference final. I think Jamie Benn comes out and has a spectacular game on Monday, Elliot. You know, I would tend to agree. The only thing that concerns me is he's going to be so wired to play.

He's going to make a mistake. Like that's the one thing I completely agree with you. But in that situation is the biggest key for him is controlling his emotions. He lost control of them in the first two minutes of game three. He has to keep that control in game six. You know, someone asked me, do you think Aiden Hill's going to crack? I said, no. Nope.

I said, we're beyond that now. Now Ottinger is finding his way again. That's another major reason that Dallas is back in this series. I don't think there's any chance Aiden Hill cracks, but the one thing DeBoer said is now the pressure kind of shifts. And I do agree with that. So this is where all of Vegas is experience and all of Vegas is leadership has to make sure that they don't start to feel the weight of the moment.

I'm glad you mentioned Aiden Hill. One of my favorite shots on saturday was the shot of aiden hill skating to the bench to grab some water as nick haig is sitting there and there's the obvious why did you do that issue between the two of them at that at that moment and hill just chose to douse his face with some water and and have a sip i thought that was a really nice piece of work. And I want to point something out here, Elliot. For everyone who tweeted me after the first Vegas goal was scored and said

essentially, oh God, does this mean we have to listen to Merrick gush about Ivan Barbashev now on the next podcast? I see you and I see those tweets. So Elliot, instead of me gushing about Barbashev, why don't you do it for a little bit here? Oh, I just love the player. I think he's a great player.

There's not much more that needs to be said there. He's going to do very well this offseason. Very well. Listen to the 32 Thoughts podcast ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime all by and by but there are long we know all about it

how long we understand why Tear up my brothers All by and by Hey guys, Mike from San Diego. Just wanted to comment and say thank you to Elliot for talking about how this is good for small markets and for the game as a whole, having these small market teams. I'm a big Anaheim Ducks fan, pretty small market, and just wanted to say it's crazy what hockey has become here in Southern California

and how fun it is. And now with a player like Trevor Zegers, it's crazy going hockey has become here in Southern California and how fun it is. And now with a player like Trevor Zegers, it's crazy going to Duck games. We're the worst team in the league and still filling up arenas sometimes. And it gets loud in there. And that kid's just electric. And with Mason McTavish in there too.

And Jamie Drysdale. And not so much this year, sadly. Hopefully this upcoming year. But it's all the boys that are coming up too we're just so excited and it's just so good for the Ducks organization and I think for the game as a whole we want this game to get big we gotta invest in these smaller markets and it really shows with what's happened in Southern California over the last 30 years or more so just wanted to say thanks for touching on the small market. We appreciate it.

Let's go Ducks. Thank you for everything you guys do. Adios. Let's get back to some news off the ice and coaching hunts. We wonder about the Blue Jackets, the Ducks, the Predators, the Rangers, the Washington Capitals. We wonder about Spencer Carberry. We wonder about Jeff Halperin. We wonder about Patrick Waugh, who's currently in Kamloops at the Memorial Cup.

We wonder about Andrew Burnett. We wonder about Peter La the Memorial Cup. We wonder about Andrew Brunette. We wonder about Peter LaViolette. We wonder about a lot of names. I kind of had a Dr. Seuss element about it there a little bit. I don't know. I was freestyling. It's getting late on a Sunday night here, and I'm a little punchy. Your thoughts on what's happening amongst the coaching fraternity, Elliot?

After listening to that, too, the only thing I can really say is i do not like them in a house i do not like them with a mouse i do not like them here or there i do not like them anywhere i do not like green eggs and ham i do not like them sam i am i am ah beautiful bless dr seuss you know aside from the ones we already talked about with pittsburgh and toronto i think the ones that are at the forefront are uh the rangers and columbus i'll do them first i think if peter laviolette is the rangers guy and like i said on saturday night i am leaning in that direction i think we're going to know this week with With Columbus, I was reading Aaron Portzline on Sunday from The Athletic, and he said that Kekulainen's coming home, and they're going to decide it on Tuesday.

Now, I have to say to you, Jeff, I don't have a great read on this one because I think they spoke to Laviolette, but I'm leaning towards Laviolette with the Rangers. I think they spoke to Babcock, but I don't think that one's going to happen. I just don't get the sense that that's going to be where they go. They've interviewed Pascal Vincent, and I think he's got a shot. They've interviewed Kirk Muller and Muller. I think he's on Anaheim's list and he's on Calgary's list.

So that's an interesting one to me. I think they've interviewed Travis green. I think they've interviewed Andrew Burnett and I think they've talked to Patrick Wah. I don't know how to describe that one, but I think they've talked to patrick waugh i don't know how to describe that one but i think they've talked to him i don't have a great handle yet on where this is going i could be wrong these could blow up in my in my face like a grade 10 chemistry experiment but i don't think it's going to be laviolette and i don't think it's going to be babcock other than that if there's any other names i'm missing i'm

missing them but that I think is the group they're kind of looking at. If Peter Laviolette takes the New York Rangers job, then I will officially move to change his name from Laviolette to Metropolitan. Peter Metropolitan? Because then he would have coached the Capitals, the Hurricanes, the Islanders, the Flyers,

and then the New York Rangers. He's just going through the entire division, Elliot. He will no longer be Peter Laviolette. He'll be Peter Metropolitan to me. And by the way, I wanted to mention, and Porzellin mentioned this in his article, and we mentioned it on your show last week. I don't think Sergey Fedorov was interviewed there. I still think he's under contract.

You mentioned that one. Yeah. There was a report somewhere that Fedorov was a candidate and I was told that that wasn't the case. Okay. From the jackets to the quack, what are you hearing about the Anaheim Ducks? I still think they're the farthest away of the teams. Well, I shouldn't say that because we'll see where calgary goes here i heard that they were still going to have some interviews at the combine which is next week so i would say they're pretty

far away i think they've talked to carberry i think they've talked to muller i think they've talked to green i think they've talked to brunette i'm sure they've talked to other people like i've heard he's talked to a lot of people he's's still going to do more. I think right now, them or Calgary is right now the last ones. You want to talk about Calgary then? I think they've got a long list. I think there's the three internals, Huska, Muller, who as we mentioned

has got some other tension, and Mitch Love. But I've heard there are some other candidates here as well, some externals. You know, I think they asked Laviolette, I'm assuming the answer was no. You know my feelings on Tanguy that he might get a conversation in all of this.

Yep. The more I think about your guy, Marc Savard, the more I think about it. I got to think Burnett's in their mix too. It just makes sense, but I've heard it's a long list. Like we said before, Burnett makes sense from a lot of different perspectives, most notably the Jonathan Huberto perspective.

Nashville Predators, do we get some type of yay or nay out of Barry Trotz this week about John Hines? I said on Saturday night that people kind of want John Hines to get some clarity. That feeling is growing in the coaching fraternity. I don't think they like what's going on in Toronto with Keefe, but they kind of understand it

because there's been some upheaval in front of them. But I think they feel that Hines deserves an answer. And I think we will get it this week. I definitely think that Nashville has talked to other people. And so I figure we're getting there, but some of the coaches on other teams are starting to get kind of restless about this and say, let's be fair here and let's let John Hines know what his future is. What's the future for the Washington Capitals? We've mentioned Carberry, we've mentioned Halperin before. What's the latest here?

So I mentioned that Halperin was going in this week. I think he's already been there. I had a couple of people reach out to me and say, your timeline might be a little off on that one. I think Halperin's already been in there. Now, the only reason he might be going back is if there's a second interview, but I don't know that that's the case.

Carberry, I think, spoke to three or four teams last week. I think he spoke to the Rangers. I think he spoke to the Ducks. And I think he spoke to the Capitals, obviously. And there might have been another. And everybody kind of thinks that Washington is the team to beat here, that they're the ones who are the most eager to get them.

I think we'll see an answer to that pretty soon. You know, the other people they've interviewed, they've interviewed Halpern and they've interviewed Bradshaw. If they've interviewed others, we don't know, I don't know about them, but they've interviewed Bradshaw for sure. I would wonder if Bradshaw is going to get

any talk somewhere else. It would be, I mean, that's a guy I would love to see get a real shot somewhere. Like there's a lot of people out there who really like bradshaw and really respect him i would really like to see that someday todd nelson you know they're still in the playoffs right now so i don't know what's going on with that but definitely there's a feeling that carberry is is the favorite todd nelson by the way just so all of our listeners understand, coaches Hershey, the Bears. Yes.

Elliot, how cool was it to see Matthew Kachuk on set with the NBA on TNT guys on the weekend? It was fantastic. And we welcome to the set Matthew Kachuk. Thanks a lot for being here. We are looking forward to watching the Stanley Cup Finals on TNT. And we have enjoyed the show you have put on, man.

At the age of 25, this has just got to be storybook stuff. Yeah, it really has been incredible for me. I think back to like two or three months ago, nobody in the whole world thought we'd be in this position right now, let alone even make the playoffs. So the fact that I'm sitting here with you guys and getting ready to play in a Stanley Cup final at my first ever heat game here,

with them having a chance to make the finals, it's a storybook for South Florida. That's the best studio show I think ever is the NBA on TNT. And one of the major reasons I feel that Jeff is that those guys can say anything and they never get into trouble. I look at them and I'm like, if we said 25% of the stuff that they said, not only would we be fired, but when we would be sent somewhere where you would never see us again. Hold on a second though is that because of the nature of the that sport like the sport of basketball as opposed to the sport and culture of hockey i think to some degree yes i think that is part of it no question about

that i think it's also because barkley in particular like he is truly free like he doesn't care he's done so well financially and he just doesn't care that they need him more than he needs them and that doesn't happen a lot in our business and i give a lot of credit to tnt too they back their people you know it's like hey this is our show and i know there's been some times where the the NBA has gone after them and they've said, you know what? This is our show and this is what we do. And they self-police. I've heard that about them too.

Like it's a, it's a really good team and they deal with each other. And I, and I think that's really important. I think that's the truest embodiment of a team is when you can self-police you know what we don't need you to handle this we're going to sort this out and it works i i think that's that's a true team and i've i've heard they're very much like that and i think that their nhl show is really starting to develop that too when kachuk goes on in the pregame like that, it just adds such a level. And the thing I really liked about it is, first of all, Barkley obviously is a big hockey fan, but I actually really liked the way that O'Neal

and Kenny Smith were, because obviously they're not huge hockey fans. Shaq admits he doesn't watch it. Matthew, you're a great athlete. I don't have any questions. I don't really watch hockey. I just like to see you guys fight. So congratulations. I like the honor. I think my dad's more happy with you though than Chuck after Chuck gave over the title of the family to me already.

So the best good Chuck in the family. Hello sir, how are you? So I don't think he said it. The best good Chuck in the family. Hello, sir. How are you? No, and your dad. And Kenny Smith talked about how he liked, you know, the Islanders when he was a kid.

He's from Queens. I'm about three steps ahead of Shaq. I'm not much, but three steps. I grew up an Islanders Rangers fan, and then I kind of moved away from it. Phil Esposito, stop it. I was an Islanders fan. Get to the point. But my question is, you know, for when I always watch the game in hockey, I go, what is the biggest skill?

Is it the skating to get there or the stick to make it get there? But they did it in a way that wasn't patronizing or embarrassing. They did it in a way that was funny and interesting. Like Shaq pretending he was going to get up and fight Barkley. I would love to just knock the hell out of you and only get two minutes, Shaq. Because one time, they might give me a five-minute major, but I would love to just slap the hell out of you on the show one day

and they say, Chuck, you're not going to be on the air for two minutes. What you want me to do, teammate? You do it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, on, they weren't from the NHL. Let's put it that way. And I thought we were really condescending.

And I blamed myself for not speaking up more in the moment, because I think you have a duty when someone comes on your show and they're a guest on your show, unless it's a really sensitive or controversial topic that demands that you go after them, i think you should treat them respectfully and properly and this was not a situation that that deserved anything like that and it always bothered me when it was over that i didn't say more about this was years ago that i didn't say more about how we handled it and that was the thing about that i really liked is that shack was funny about it and And Smith asked a good question about it, even though they're clearly not big fans. Like that speaks to me the professionalism of the TNT group, Jeff, that they were like, you know what, this is our property.

And one of the things that TNT guys were telling me is they've never had the NBA final. This is the first time they've had a major league final. Like this is a huge deal to them. They're very excited to have the Stanley Cup final. And I thought that Shaq and Kenny Smith and Barkley and Ernie Johnson, none of them surprised, they showed real respect to the guest. And I thought Kachuk delivered as he would because that's just the way he's wired.

You know what I came away with from that piece with Kachuk delivered as he would, because that's just the way he's wired. You know what I came away with from that piece with Kachuk? What's that? This is a guy that has the potential to be bigger than the game, and I've never thought that about Matthew Kachuk until that moment. I've always thought, you know what? He's going to be hockey big, and everyone's going to know him and love him in hockey. I think he's got a personality that has the potential to be bigger than that.

It was seamless with him on that panel. Now, to your point, a lot of it was about that panel and how professional and gracious they are. But I came away from that saying, this guy has the potential to have a personality that's bigger than the game itself and go outside of hockey. And I've never thought about Kachuk like that until I saw him in that moment. I think there are guys who can do that. I think there's a lot of guys in this league who can do that. Matthew Kachuk is the right person at the right time. Sometimes in life, it's all about timing, Jeff.

This is the right person at the right time. Like some people are mocking the Stanley Cup final. It's either Vegas, Dallas, and Florida. Well, Matthew Kachuk is embracing the moment. It's so good. It's fantastic. Like the more I've thought about this, I think this has a chance to be,

and this could really blow up in my face in two weeks. So if you like to see things blow up in my face, this could go in ice cold takes or freezing hot takes. Old cold takes starring Elliott Friedman. And this all determines on the viewing numbers of the United States. If it gets great numbers, this could be a changing series in the NHL.

We've never had a Stanley Cup final final like this no never whether it's vegas or it's dallas against florida we've never had a final like this before so this is either gonna go boom or it's gonna go bust and if it goes boom it's gonna be a great thing for hockey and kachok is seizing the moment let's talk about something we've probably put off long enough here first of all congratulations to team canada for winning gold the iihf world hockey championships they beat germany by a final score of five to two so the germans grab the silver i'll tell you just really quickly before we get to latvia and i want to park some time on latvia i I'm really happy for Milan Lucic.

I'm really happy for Milan Lucic because he's heard a lot about his game and a lot about himself in the last few years, and he's heading into a summer of uncertainty about his career. And I know a lot of people raised an eyebrow, what's Milan Lucic doing on Team Canada, the World Championships? That pass, I know we're going to make a lot about the Adam Fantilli goal that we saw last week.

It was a gorgeous goal. That was a great pass by Milan Lucic. And afterwards, Fantilli talked about how he grew up watching him and what a thrill it was to get a pass from Lucic. Yeah, I think it was pretty special. I grew up watching Lucic my entire life. He gave me that special. I grew up watching Looch my entire life. He gave me that pass and I ended up going in,

but that was a pretty surreal feeling. You were asked why you wanted to come to this tournament, and you said you love learning from older guys. What have you learned in this tournament so far? It's hard to put into words. I mean, I've learned so much off the ice and in the locker room and how to fit in with guys of that age, guys of that skill level, and how they practice, their game habits.

I think everything's just elevated when you get to this kind of level, and they were able to teach me a lot in that sense. I'm happy for Team Canada. I'm happy for the coaches and the managers and everything, but I'm, Elliot, really happy for Milan Lucic in this one. I think that's a great point. I think when you look up and down that lineup, you know, you see a lot of players on teams that had really tough years.

You mentioned Lucic, Scott Lott in Philly, tough year. Yes. To Foley, although he always seems happy anyway. Sammy Blay. Yeah. Really tough year in New York, traded back to St. Louis. Wieger, really tough year. Tyler Myers.

Like that was the guy who really jumped out to me the most. So all these guys who had really hard seasons, you go away with a good feeling. You don't go into your summer bitter. You go into your summer feeling really good about yourself. And I like that. I'm happy for them as people. And then you mentioned Fantilli. And I think one of the real great subplots of the world

was Fantilli and Leo Carlson. And I got to tell you, Anaheim's got a real choice there. Big time. Like those were both players that really showed well. Fantilli, I thought, got stronger as the tournament went on. It looked more confident. And Carlson was their number one center. Verbeek's got a real tough call to make.

There's no question about that. So Michael Carcone was the leading scorer in the AHL this season with 85 points in 65 games. He got nine games in the NHL. You know, I heard he really wanted, as great a year as he was having in the NHL last, in the AHL last year, he wanted more of an NHL shot. Well, someone's going to look at that and they're going to say, hmm, I was happy for him montembeau the

goalie i think in particular he had you know he had a pretty good year in montreal but they were not even close to anything so he had such a spectacular way to end the season like i was just yeah jj peterka germany I thought Rocco Grimaldi. And that's a guy who's been trying to resuscitate his NHL career a bit. He had a big tournament. I know the biggest winners of all were probably Latvia. And I know you're going to talk about them in a second, but I just want to mention like some of those names,

people who didn't have easy years. Like there were people out there were complaining about the quality of this tournament on some level. I like that. These are the guys who are the big winners. I liked that people who had tough years now return home at the end of May and they feel really good about themselves.

I like that a lot. Yeah. I like that a lot too. And I know that, um, uh, USA went home without a medal and I want to get to, to a story that involves them here in a couple of moments. And that story involves Latvia. Latvia goes home with the bronze. And you've heard me talk about Latvia before. Well, we've had conversations about Latvia before in hockey and Latvian hockey fans. And one of my hockey dreams is to go either to a world hockey championship, which I've never been to,

or just to go see hockey in Latvia, go to, go to Riga to see hockey just because the fan experience to me seems like the best in the world. Those fans are happy just to be part of hockey. And what a glorious thing that is. Like their team can win, they're happy. Their team can lose, they're still happy.

It doesn't matter. They're just so happy to be involved in hockey at whatever level. I was just, and I think we all were, I mean, just thrilled to see the Latvians get a medal and that overtime winner and the joy. The fans went berserk. The players went crazy. It was wonderful. And like right away, my head went a few different places, Elliot.

And it went to a lot of, like whenever there's a moment like this, you think of all the players that have gone before that have helped, you know, lay the foundation, done glorious things, but ultimately, you know, returned home empty handed. And I thought of players like Sandus Ozalynch, who was the only Latvian to ever lift the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. Think of players today like Teddy Bluger,

or players like Zemga Skurgensen, or Elvis Muzlikens, or the late Matisse Kivlenics. People like this. And Artur Zerbe, who I think we all fell in love with during his Carolina Hurricanes run to the Stanley Cup final. Kasper Dogovins, the dog they used to call him, Carlos Grastin, like so many players that I thought of, but one really stood out to me, and that's Helmut Balderas. Now, Balderas played for a lot of those Soviet national teams. He's from Riga, a glorious hockey player.

And NHL fans never got to see the best of Helmut Balderas. He led the Soviet league in scoring twice, maybe three times, and played on Dinamo Riga. And Viktor Tikhonov, you know, once famously threatened Boldaris by saying, if you don't come to play for the Red Army, we'll never take you on any of our national teams when we go to either World Championships or the Olympics, and most notably Lake Placid in 1980. And so he relented and ended up playing on the red army team and in maybe the most historic hockey game of all time uh usa beats the soviet union uh balderas was was on that team and he was the only player on the losing team to skate over to the American bench to shake Herb Brooks' hand and congratulate him on what was an historic victory.

Skated over to the American bench to say congratulations. From Riga to Lake Placid, maybe the classiest gesture of the entire 1980 Lake Placid hockey experience. Do you have a thought on Helmut Balderas, one of the foundation makers of Latvian hockey? When you were mentioning to this story, I do remember Balderas having his battles with the Russians because of his heritage.

When he first came over to the NHL as a player in Minnesota, I remember that story being told. And I remember him as a great international player. Unfortunately, when he came over here, he was done. But so I looked up a book, The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey. And in that book, Wayne Coffey writes that Balderas was warned not to do this in front of where Tikunov could see it. And that's the handshake?

Yes. Okay. And Balderas said of his coach, quote, he can go shit in his pants. Balderas, by the way, part of some very unique trivia. 1989, that's the Met Center draft. Matt Sundin goes first overall. First European player to go first overall in the NHL. And Helmut Balderas gets drafted in the 12th round

by the Minnesota North Stars at the age of 36. He's the oldest drafted player of all time. Anyway, these are just some of the players that I think of and congratulations to Latvia. Congratulations to Latvian hockey fans. One of the things as I was listening to you there, it reminded me and that's Archer's Urbe. And I think people forget the first Olympics I ever covered was 2002 Salt Lake City. forget the first Olympics I ever covered was 2002 Salt Lake City. And if you'll remember the major hockey nations went with their full players, but some of the other players that went like Slovakia

and Latvia, they were not allowed to take their full crew of NHLers. As a matter of fact, those NHL players, I think were only allowed to play, I think, one of the three preliminary games. And also, if I remember with Urbe, he got upset about it. Now, Archer's Urbe was a great interview and a very outspoken guy. He was a member of the NHL Players Association Bargaining Committee during 2004 and 2005. And people told me that he was very staunch in his beliefs. If he took a position, and they didn't say it in a bad way, they said he was honest. He would say, this is my position and I will defend it to the end.

But in 2002, he wanted to play in some of those preliminary games for Latvia and he wasn't allowed to. As a matter of fact, he was actually given permission by Carolina to play in one of the games and the league overturned it. They said, no, we made a deal. Only one of these three games in the preliminary round. And Irby told the story at the Olympics about how he had a phone call with Bettman about it. And he was told, look, like this is the deal we made. You can't play any more than we agreed to. And if you do, there could be a suspension involved. And Irby furious about it and he wasn't the only nhler from those countries like i think ziggy palfrey had a situation where he wanted to play for

slovakia but same reason the kings wouldn't let him play but i remember interviewing urbe about it at the olympics and just how upset he was about that situation, that all the big hockey countries, all their players could come and there would be no problem because their game started after the preliminary round, but all these nations who really needed their NHLers, they couldn't go. And as you were telling that story about Urbe, I remembered that, that's 21 years ago, and I'm sorry if I'm off on a little bit of the details,

but you're right about urbe like oh i remember that two decades ago i know how much this would mean and and you and you know i said this too about the last decade if you're a sports fan of a team or a country for your lifetime at some point in time you should be rewarded and it's great to see these latvian hockey fans rewarded in this way and that's probably a great, Elliot, to talk about our guest on today's podcast, someone we had a conversation with about two weeks ago. He is the Senior Executive VP of Media and International Strategy at the National Hockey League. He is David Proper. And as we've talked about a couple of times, he have the coolest job in the nhl elliott do you

want to do you want to freehand this one as you try to describe what proper does and if you could if you can sharpen the point more so than he tries to find cool places to host hockey games go for it pretty good job eh it's not bad i could, I think. Flying around the world is trying to find great places to house hockey. He's a leading force behind the Global Series, and he's one of the main people responsible for the NHL heading to Australia for preseason games in September between the Los Angeles Kings and the Arizona Coyotes. Enjoy our conversation with David Proper.

David Proper, first of all, thanks so much for joining us here on the podcast. You are the NHL senior executive of media and international strategy. But as I've been told, you may have the coolest job in the hockey world. And I'm going to drill this down in a ham-fisted way and you can fill in the blanks and color it in properly. to exotic locales to find a place to make the NHL fit. We're going to get to Australia here in a second, but it does sound like pretty much the coolest job in the NHL. I'm not going to lie, David. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's great to see you guys. Look, every job has its challenges, but it is a really fun thing to do. It's fun to travel, but it's also fun. People really want to see the NHL. We've got a lot of great fans internationally, and it's a lot of fun to get to interact with them and really see how we can grow the sport. Are your two favorite words, site survey? My two favorite words really probably focus more on the dinners than the site surveys, but no, I hear you. yeah look we uh there are a

bunch of places we've been that we actually haven't played that just getting a chance to see the arena stuff's coming along but it's fun it's i'm not gonna lie it's a lot of fun australia is really interesting to me and i have told our guys that i expect to be part of the traveling party for australia but you kind of opened up a door there. And I'm wondering, tell us some places where you've been to that the NHL hasn't been yet that could be on the radar somewhere down the road. Wow. Okay. All right. I'll give you a couple. First of all, and some of them you probably would have guessed anyway, but Mexico is certainly one that we've been taking a close look at. We have been looking at some of the other hockey nations

that aren't the big ones in terms of size, like Latvia playing in Riga, playing in Bratislava, definitely looking at going back to London. And then we've looked even at some places like in the Middle East, in Asia, just really a lot of people are interested in bringing NHL hockey to play. I mean, first of all, as you know, it's a great sport and it's a lot of fun. But beyond that, US and Canadian sports sell internationally. There's a lot of draw even at places you

wouldn't expect. David, I'm curious, what does it take for a country, a city to get on the NHL's radar? Great question. I mean, it really does depend on each circumstance. So the first thing we're looking for is, is there an opportunity here? And whether that opportunity is to grow hockey or grow the NHL and our brand, that's what we have to assess. So you look at a place like Sweden, obviously that's kind of an obvious one, right? Lots of hockey players from Sweden. We know we're going to sell tickets. We're really looking to grow the NHL and help to grow hockey there. But if you look at Australia, we've been looking at Australia for almost a decade now. Had a lot of conversations with a lot of different people from there that have wanted us to come out

since as early as 2014. And really what's happened is it's taken a lot of time for us to get comfortable that that opportunity could work for us. We had to talk to a lot of potential sponsors and media partners. We had to talk to the people that ran the infrastructure for hockey in Ice Hockey Australia and the New Zealand Ice Hockey Federation. We really had to get ourselves comfortable that if we were going to commit to putting games there, that there was a long-term growth plan. And so that's an interesting one where we really dug deep into that project. And I'll tell you, another one we're really doing that with right now is Mexico. We're really digging in to see whether that opportunity exists in a real meaningful way for

us. You know, David, it's interesting you bring that up because one of the, I don't know if it's a complaint, but I would say that one of the questions I get about how to make NHL better internationally is we go in for games and then we leave. What are we doing to make sure that there's infrastructure? Are we opening offices? Are we making sure there's leagues? Things like that. Will we see offices internationally? Is that the kind of thing you're talking about here? Elliot, it's really a salient point because being the circus comes to town as a way to make money, but it's not a way to grow a business. And we see it a lot in all sports.

I mean, you see a lot of the sports that come here. It's the same way. You play a game here, but if you don't follow it up with things that help to grow the sport, it really doesn't matter. So we've got a pretty large group of people here that focus on things that have nothing to do with the games in Europe or anywhere internationally. So the first thing we do is try and establish a relationship, whatever the hockey infrastructure is, whether it's as sophisticated as in Europe with the

IIHF and the federations in the Swedish or Finnish leagues and so forth, or even much less sophisticated like we dealt with in a place like China. What we've managed to do is we build from there and starting to build the grassroots piece of it. Then we bring in a lot of programs that we've created over the last 20 years that have worked here in some of the markets that were non-traditional hockey markets, and we tailor them for each individual market. The idea is we get the game to introduce people to it, get them excited. individual market. And the idea is we get the game to introduce people to it, get them excited. In addition to at the game, we follow it up with working closely on creating all these events and grassroots projects. So one of the things we started this year, for example, is a hockey day

in, and you know, hockey day in Canada, you know, hockey day in the USA. We do hockey day now, we did hockey day in Finland this year, where we got 20,000 people to come out and watch a game on the video. It was a Rogers game, I believe. We watched the game, and we had a whole bunch of activations around it, and it was just a really good chance for families to come out and engage with hockey. And the idea was then the local team also got involved and tried to recruit kids to play and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of things that go on.

Another really good example, someone on our staff, Mark Black, put together a program to introduce street hockey into phys ed programs in each of these countries. So trying to get them to put a two-week program, you know, they did two weeks of basketball and soccer and dancing and wrestling. wrestling and now we've tried to convince and we've got that to over, I believe the last number I had was over 500,000 students in China had that in their phys ed system. So these are all things that have to follow up. The games are really just what everybody sees. It's all the hard work that kind of, it's all the duck paddling underneath the water that doesn't get seen as much that's probably as or more critical. So in Australia, what kinds of things had to happen before you said yes? The first thing we had to know was that if we went there, there was some demand for hockey and some demand to see our games. And that we became very confident early on. Australia is

just a phenomenal sports country. They love all sports, but they do love North American sports. That was the baseline. We got past that pretty quickly. But what we did see was that most of the sports that went there, or a lot of the sports that went there, weren't able to maintain a real business afterwards with anything other than the money they made at the games. And that's what we spent a lot of time working with. And as we got deeper in conversations with sponsors and media partners and various activation follow-up in the terms of people that would actually try to grow hockey, we started to get more commitments. And as we got commitments that were sort of tied to us showing our commitment by playing the game, that's when we started to feel comfortable that we could actually grow something here. One of the things that I really like about

the Global Series, and I think, listen, I'm not in the minority on this one. I think that everybody understands, and this goes back decades, that there's a wealth of opportunity internationally for the NHL here. But one of the reasons why I really like the Global Series, and anytime the NHL gets involved in Europe, or in this case, elsewhere in Australia, is it shines a light on the local hockey culture. I don't need to tell you this. Hockey culture is different from country to country. You mentioned Latvia a couple of seconds ago. Those fans, man, like Latvian fans are a different breed of cat

altogether. When I first found out that the NHL was going to Australia, I picked up a book that I read years ago back in like 2015, 2016. It's written by a hockey player turned writer, a guy by the name of Will Brody, and he wrote a book called Reality Check. And it's a history of not just Australian ice hockey, but it's also chronicles one year in the Australian Professional League, 2014 or 2015. He talks a lot about how the culture is different than it is in the United States or Canada mentions how, you know, the, the first organized game was played 1906 in Melbourne, which a bunch of local skaters and also servicemen who were,

who were serving on the USS Baltimore who happened to play hockey. I think it ended in a one, one tie, but it really sort of shines a light on this idea that hockey culture is different everywhere you go. And we kind of get these horse blinders sometimes that, well, the culture the NHL presents, that's hockey culture, capital C, but it's not. How important is it for the NHL, not just to bring the NHL hockey culture to another country, but also shine a light on how they're doing it there. I have to tell you, Jeff, you articulated that really well in terms of how we have to look at

this when we go into a particular market. The fact is when we're playing a game, what the fans want and what we've been told repeatedly is they want to see an NHL game in their market. So let's just say we're playing in Sweden. They don't want to see us create a game that looks like a Swedish Hockey League game. They want to come and when it's the Toronto against Minnesota, they want to see what a Toronto game would be like if they went to Scotiabank. And so that's one of the things that we have to focus on with the games. Then what we have to do is embrace the culture. And we do that by trying to involve the local community in the games and the surrounding events that we have. When you come to the Australia games or the Sweden games,

and just tell me who I have to talk to and we'll make sure that happens for you, you'll get a chance and you'll see that really what happens is we build out a game that is a hybrid. And then following the game, it's really about how much to some degree the federation and the leagues want to embrace what we do so we've had instances where we were originally looked upon as oh this is the nhl coming in trying to take our business trying to you know eat part of the pie and when we left they and we worked with them afterwards we showed them that no what we've done is just tried to shine a brighter light on hockey and now it's you guys now have these people that

hopefully want to watch hockey that we can't play a game for every day and they then started targeting those fans and lo and behold we start to see fan growth and those are the kinds of things that as you can well guess as hockey grows anywhere anywhere, it's good for the NHL. David, Jeff is a big ball hockey guy. Huge. And he talks a lot about that. And there's, I remember interviewing Johnny Oduya, and he talked about roller hockey. And Andrew Ferentz has a big ball hockey, get a stick in everyone's hands.

When you talk about the footprint you leave behind, does it have to be an ice hockey footprint or just a hockey footprint? Because building rinks obviously would seem to me to be the biggest question about ice hockey. Yeah, it depends on the market, obviously. But yeah, in a place like Australia, they don't have a ton of hockey rinks. And you've got to build it with ball hockey, with street hockey. You have to. There's no other way to do it. Unless you want to really micro-target and just get a small group of people,

you've got to get sticks in the hands. You've got to get them playing the game. All of our activations around our games, and if you've ever been to that Rod Laver Arena facility and the Australian Open facility, there's going to be a lot of spots for us to do a lot of street hockey activations, and that's the plan is get a lot of Australian kids just to try it. We believe, and look, we've seen it in action.

Kids start to play. They start to play street hockey. They start to want to buy skates. They will start to want to learn all the other things followed behind in terms of the people will build ice hockey rinks. And if there's people that want to skate on them. So look, it's not a short process. It's a long process to grow from a very small base to a large base, but you

got to start somewhere. And that's kind of Australia. We're in an earlier place, but a place like Sweden, we can focus even more on ice simply because they have the facilities to do it. But we still focus a lot on street hockey. Have you demanded that Nathan Walker be temporarily loaned to either the Kings or the Coyotes for five days or however long they're going? We have brokered a trade. Look, I think Jordan Spence is on the Kings, and hopefully he gets to go on the trip. But what we have found is guys like Nathan Walker talking about the game and being excited about the game is helpful. Do we ultimately hope to take a Nathan Walker on one of these games? Absolutely.

We love to bring players back to their home countries. Just didn't work out for this one. But I would fully suspect in the future that'll be something we look very carefully at. Like you mentioned you're going to Laver and I've never been there, but certainly I've seen it. I know what it looks like. How do you decide how big the seating is going to be?

How do you go through that? You just got to run a budget. I mean, the simple answer is there's a certain amount that these games don't make us money for the most part. These are investments. And so there's some certain amount that these games don't make us money for the most part. These are investments. And so there's some size where it's just too small. Either it's very difficult to justify and make it work.

But we're usually looking to run a budget. We can usually make something work at around $11,000. But you've got places like the O2 in Prague or Arena in Cologne where you're talking $18,000, $19,000. the O2 in Prague or arena in Cologne, where you're talking 18, 19,000, but for the most part, European or even international arenas that host hockey are not as big as they are in North America. And so we have to make it work with, you know, a lot of other activations around it to try and generate value. I'm curious about picking the teams. We'd heard for a while that the Bruins were going to be involved. And, you know, I think a lot of us, when we heard that, we were like, boy, that's a big tough ask for them to go halfway around the world and then come back.

First of all, when this gets out, will teams call you and say, do you guys go to teams or do teams call you and say, we want to be part of this? It's a little bit of both. Most of the time, it'll be at a board of governors meeting. I'll have an owner or president come up to me and say, hey, you know what, if you really are going here, we'd like to be a part of that. So if you look, for example, at the Swedish teams and the teams that are going there, you can probably put a reasonable link as to why we took each of those four teams based on their histories, their alumni, and their current players. And it all kind of fits together in a logical sense. What makes Australia so different is that really the bulk of what we were focusing on there was the travel component, how to make it an easier trip.

And for the first one out of the box, the first time we're playing in Australia, to try and make it as easy as possible for what is going to be a long flight anyway. And then, like we were talking about before, if in the long run we're able to then switch that into now we can start focusing on Australia the way we do with Sweden and bring back current players and alumni and things like that that's where we'll we'll turn to eventually our players generally very excited when they hear this like like i said when i heard for a first heard about australia i was like i want to go how do players react to this stuff pretty over the moon you know there's two types of reactions right first there's the players who are from a country and you know i won't forget for a long time uh we called up the nashville predators about playing in uh switzerland to play in burn where roman yosi played uh growing up and where he grew up and i got back a call that said uh we spoke to roman and the answer you have from us is if you don't take us,

you're going to have a big problem. So the players all want to go home. They want to play in their home markets, and that's a great thing. But then there's the flip side of it, which is what you're talking about with Australia, which is some of these experiences are just unique once or twice in a lifetime experiences that you get to go and take part in. And I think a lot of players look at it from that perspective and say, this is something I'm getting to do that I might not otherwise get to do. But the other thing that's really figured in nicely for us is we've had a lot of GMs and coaches afterwards come back and say, these games, these trips have turned out to be really good bonding experiences. The players are all together.

They're kind of forced to be together in a unique environment. And so we've actually, I mean, a great example was the Tampa Lightning and their Stanley Cup ring actually have a little homage to their Stockholm trip. And they sort of say that if you ask them, they'll tell you that trip brought them together and they felt like that was the launching board to their run to the Stanley Cup championship that year. Yeah, you know, David, the only thing I ever hear as a complaint, and I think it's a mild complaint, is simply that I know that the Avalanche

this year and a couple of teams said going to Finland in the middle of the year and then go all the way back, it just took a long time for them to recover. I think they, I think they love the trip. I think they had an awesome time. I just wonder how much do you guys look at? When's the optimal place time to send them? It's a great question because we struggle with not only when,

but then how to send them. How do we set up a schedule? So we work very closely with Steve Hatzepetro, who I'm sure you know in his group, on putting together a schedule. We look for off days. We look how to put the flights, and Lynn White puts together the flights

to try and make it all work so that we have a circumstance where it's the best travel experience that these guys can have, and hopefully the best rest. Ultimately, we try to engage with, they have sleep experts and all that. We try to put the best model we can together. But at the end of the day, it is a trip to Europe.

And, you know, you got to kind of deal with that component. Grin and bear it. That's really tough. I'm not going to phrase it that way, but I will tell you that you hope that if we give them two, three days off on the back end, they'll be okay. Australia's a little different. The recovery from an Australia trip is a little different. That's why we do that even right at the beginning of the preseason. Sure. But still, I think everybody would want to go on that. So Mexico City, I've always wondered, would you play that at Azteca?

Would it be outdoor? What are you thinking with that so let's put it this way we would never start by trying to bite off something as big as an outdoor game in azteca okay of a hundred thousand people at what is that two thousand feet in the air yeah i've seen a lot of incredible international soccer there so that would be an outstanding site. That would be really cool. I will tell you, candidly, we are looking at outdoor games in Europe and we think we can pull that off. But there we've played so many games and done it pretty successfully so far that we feel like, okay, the next step we could take. And we've been looking at that. But I would say is Mexico in the first offing is going to be a very, the only difference with

Mexico for us is it's an easy trip. And so we could do that as a February game and just make it a road trip for two teams to play a back-to-back in Mexico. And it's not nearly the same kind of travel issues. Is that getting close? Yes, I would say it's getting close. I would not say that we're prepared to tell you it's in the next year or anything like that. We've had a lot of very good conversations. We have a couple more, as you can tell from my conversation about Australia, we have a couple more conversations we have to get our heads around. But for the first time, there feels like there's enough momentum there to continue the conversation in a way that makes me optimistic. For example, I love the Lake Tahoe game. And there were some logistical challenges that happened, but I've always felt that take the chance. Are there any more like that that are kind of being talked about, unique locations?

The outdoor game in Europe is interesting. Yes, it is. Because of some of the places that have come to us. Tell me more. Well, I mean, we've talked to the number of the major stadiums in London, a couple in Germany, and that would be an incredibly iconic event if we could somehow pull something like that off. I wouldn't say that we're necessarily close on those, but we could make it work. I mean mean one of the things that we've spent a lot of time investing in and steve's done this as well is putting together the ability to build our

own rinks so that we've got companies that we work with now also in europe that will are able to put together rinks so we're building our own rink in australia there's no ice hockey infrastructure in rod laver the whole thing is being shipped down there and being built. And we pull that off and that works as well as we all think it will. That opens up a whole bunch of opportunities, including a place like Mexico. You know what this screams to me? Old Trafford. I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything.

Wow. I mean, I just, as a, as just like a human being, what a, I mean, what's your dream, David, when your day comes where you, where you walk away from this all and say, you know, it's my time to let someone else have this job or time to retire, whatever that is. Where do you want to say we put a game i i mean i gotta tell you australia was on the list until we actually we've accomplished i mean we got to do it still but we're basically there i'm a big english soccer fan and have been for a long time there's always been a part of me that thought wembley would be just a really cool place to have a game.

The new Wembley is just such an iconic place. Old Trafford is certainly in the conversation. I love the new Tottenham Arena. Those are all just incredible. Beyond that, I don't know. It would be interesting to see if we could actually put a game and really draw from a region that isn't normally a hockey region. Again, Middle East is one that's like that or Africa where what if we ever could do a game there and really see what something could draw. Incredible. I'm somewhat envious of what the NBA is able to do and some of the games that they do and try and the places they go. I know they would never agree with this, but it's a little easier for them to put on a game than it is for us in terms of getting the arena set up. But those

kinds of things just seem like they would be so much fun and such an unbelievable opportunity to grow. This might be a really dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Have you ever thought of taking NHL teams or players to the Middle East or Africa and have them play ball hockey or roller hockey instead of ice hockey? Ooh, no, we haven't. It's an interesting idea.

I don't know how my teams would feel about us taking players to do something like that, but I could see taking alumni and people like that and doing things like that. It's an interesting thought. And just a final one for you, David. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you would want to say or include? First of all, it's not going to surprise you that this is very much like I said. This is a lot of hard work to get to what it ultimately turns out to be.

And that's true of any hockey game, even here in North America. You know, there's so much work goes into it to get it there. But once you get it there, it's really rewarding. I'll tell you one of the things that I really enjoy. First, you love seeing the fans in Sweden, for example, or in Prague go to a game. But there's also something really fun about seeing a fan that travels with the team all the way over to see a game there. I realize that's a big thing to do, but man, is it a fun thing for a fan to get to see their team play in a foreign country, get to tour the country, see as we're able to take over a city, really just be a part of that. And I'm not trying to

sell anything in that regard, but I am saying that's just a unique experience I've had that I would tell you is very underrated and one that I would encourage your listeners to try if they get a chance, whether it's our sport or anything else. It's just a great way to experience a foreign culture. Have you kept any keepsake or souvenir or anything like that that is particularly meaningful to you? Any keepsake or souvenir or anything like that that is particularly meaningful to you? When we were in China, in order to get any traction in China, is trying to work with the CCTV, which is the big television network there. And so we had been talking to them for a long, long time at all levels.

And when we finally agreed to play games there, we started to get some real traction with them. And we came in for a meeting. And if you've ever seen their building, and if you haven't, go ahead and look it up online. They call it the Pants Building because it looks like a giant pair of pants. So they gave me a glass model of that, which I keep because I always feel like us getting on CCTV was an incredible amount of work. And frankly, who to thunk hockey would be on the major Chinese network. But then it's also an incredible like keepsake in the sense that people walk in and have no idea what that is when they see the picture. And it leads to just the interesting stories of those meetings. So that's a good one that I keep. That's great stuff. I keep all my

press passes, things I've just picked up over the years at games. And it's not the expected stuff that you always remember. It's the surprise stuff that you always remember and sticks with you. Yeah. And the ones that bring back that sort of flood of memories of something that you're just, I still don't believe I got to experience that kind of thing. David, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. This was excellent. Elliot, this was great. Really good to see you again. And I really had a good time. I'm going to get to see you in Australia, hopefully. I hope so too. I'm threatening to quit over it. So I'm hoping, the only thing I'm worried about is that they accept my resignation and say, okay, you can leave now. Well, you just tell me who i have to talk to thanks very much david all right thanks a lot guys

after all that the best way to end the podcast is by saying riga it is you win your first ever medal at the world championships, you deserve to have an NHL game. From now on, that is the rule. I like that, especially as long as we can go. I like the way you think. Thank you, thank you. I somehow knew you'd approve of that. Taking us out today, Elliot,

a six-piece band from Lansing, Michigan that'll bring their pulsating energy and a taste of Motown to a stage near you soon. Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers, now that is a great name, are a group of multi-instrumentalists who began their journey eight years ago. Since their inception, the band has released four albums, played at several festivals, and found a unique sound that caters to their live show. With their single, here's Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers with

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