32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Duck Surprise?

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Chuck Fletcher joins the podcast! Jeff and Elliotte chat with the former General Manager about the upcoming NHL Draft as he’ll be joining Sportsnet for all the coverage in Nashville (43:00). They also get into Chuck’s time in Philadelphia and what went wrong during his five seasons (1:13:45).The guys also get into some news from around the league including draft talk (1:00), the latest from Calgary (11:30), Buffalo on the hunt for defensemen (15:20), Montreal signs Sean Monahan (16:30), Winnipeg has decisions to make (22:30), Rangers look to add some coaches (23:10), Leafs keeping busy (24:30), Carson Soucy being linked to teams … Vancouver (26:40), who will Chicago surround Connor Bedard with (29:20), who might be heading to the Hockey Hall of Fame (36:00) and Jeff updates us on the BCHL story that caught everyone off guard last week (39:50).Email the podcast at [e-mail] or call The Thought Line at 1-833-311-3232 and leave us a voicemailMusic Outro: The Skinner Brothers - Death From AboveListen to the full track HEREThis podcast was produced and mixed by Amil Delic, and hosted by Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman.Audio Credits: Columbia and NHL Network.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.

Jesus. Call the tease. Hold on. Let me start all over again. Welcome once again to 32 Thoughts to Podcast, presented as always by the GMC Canyon ATU 4X. Glad to be with you today. Elliot, Amal, and I have a very special guest coming up

towards the end of the podcast today. He is Chuck Fletcher, former general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota Wild, other titles in the NHL that we get to eventually more as we get closer to the interview.

And I know you have a couple of thoughts about the interview and Chuck Fletcher, but really generous with his time and I'm really happy that Chuck's going to be

joining us for draft coverage in a week, Elliot. Looking forward to it. One week tonight. And I think that's where we're going to start. I think we probably should. So one week out from the draft. And what have you said before? This is the time of year where everybody lies. Isaiah Thomas, when I was breaking into the business around draft time, everybody lies. And then he told

me the truth and I didn't believe him. So we're one week out and, you know, one of the questions is where does the draft begin? We know it doesn't begin at one because Conor Bernard is going to go first to the Chicago Blackhawks.

But depending on who you talk to as we get closer and closer to the draft, I would imagine there'd be some people with some wild theories. Some are legitimate and others are just sort of put out there to throw people off the scent.

What does it feel like to you right now, Elliot, seven days out? So just talking to several people, there seems to be a feeling that in some order, like, right, Chicago Bedard. Yeah. in some order like right chicago bedard yeah and then i think a lot of people seem to think that between anaheim columbus and san jose and we'll see if san jose moves a lot of teams seem to think that they're going to keep the pick because it's hard to find these players sure that the four centers are going to go in some order one one, two, three, four. That being in alphabetical order, Bedard, Carlson, Fantilli, Smith. And for that reason, a lot of these teams seem to think

the draft is going to start at five with Montreal. And we mentioned Reinbacher. The teams think that Montreal likes Reinbacher fifth. Eric Engels thinks they also really like ryan leonard who i understand tested like a beast at the combine but you have okay an alternate now i want to just stress before merrick does this this is like the marvel universe you know there's earth one earth two and earth 612 okay merrick is going to at least earth two on this it's not a report no but there's some people out there who have a theory

okay so i got a text so we're recording this tuesday evening 10 after 8 eastern and i mentioned to you that i had a really interesting text from someone as I woke up this morning. It said, I heard the last podcast and I hate your take on Anaheim. And I said, OK, I get this often. So I'm not offended. Two, what did you find so offensive about it? And he said, where did Pat Verbeek come from? And I said, Detroit. Petrolia, Ontario.

Well, Petrolia, Ontario. Yes, Hunter Brothers Territory, Petrolia, Ontario. And, Petrolia, Ontario. Yes. Hunter Brothers Territory, Petrolia, Ontario. And we texted back and forth about Steve Iserman. And he said, look, he's been with Iserman for a long time. And the one thing we know about Iserman is he's his own man. He doesn't listen to anyone else's noise. He doesn't get on the trolley tracks of how anybody else thinks. He makes his own decision. And then he sent me a picture of Steve Eisenman and the Detroit crew standing next to Moritz Sider on draft day in Vancouver, which I thought sent home the message.

He said, what are you getting at? And he said, I think Pat for beak is going to take Matt Faye Mitch cough at second overall. That would be a wow. That would be a wow. Now, no matter where Mitch cough goes, that's going would be a wow. That would be a wow. Now, no matter where Mitch Koff goes, that's going to be

a wow. That's going to be one of the first gasps that we hear. You know how I love the gasp at the draft. It's one of the great moments. I love the sounds of pucks hitting crossbars, and I love the sounds of gasps. And when Detroit at the Vancouver draft took Moritz Seider, there was a gasp. And this one person texted me today who said, you know, don't be surprised if Pat Verbeek, much like Steve Eiserman, where he used to work in Detroit, would make his own choices. And again, this is, to your point, Elliot, not a report. This is something we're just freestyling and talking

about and this is the the what ifs you know there's that great alan arkin scene and glenn gary glenn ross are we talking about it or are we talking about it like we talking about this or are we just talking about this elliot we're just talking about this what do you think about that text i got this morning i think it's a really fascinating idea and i i thank whoever it was for sending you that on a day we were recording the podcast because it's really interesting gift number one i kind of agree with you in the sense that the verbique is the kind of person who would do that yes his give a bleep meter on what other people think is very low. And the other thing too is Verbeek isn't a long rebuild here. He's not in a rush to make the Ducks a contender.

I think if there's anybody that high in the draft who would have the leash to do that, I think he's kind of the guy. Would be interesting though, like you're basically telling ducks fans we're picking two overall and you're not going to see this guy yeah for three years plus plus you've also got to be sure that when he is eligible to come to north america he wants to play for you yep absolutely. Absolutely. No, trust me. When you think it through, it both makes some sense, is very dangerous, and flies in the face of everything

we've been talking about here for the past however many months about what happens after Conor Bedard. So don't know if it happens. happens none of us do but it's that time of year where theories like this get thrown around it is a whopper of a story if that happens though oh yeah absolute whopper you know you mentioned your conversation with eric engels um and the uh the idea that montreal canadians like ryan leonard to he's, and we're going to talk more about this in our preview podcast with Sam Cosentino and Jason Bukala. See, Ryan Leonard, to me, represents one very specific player or a type of player, which after the playoffs, a lot of teams covet.

Because you know, Elliot, that there are managers saying to their scouts, go find me a Matthew Kachuk. Go find me someone that plays like a Kachuk. And if you look at everybody in the top 10, Ryan Leonard is closest to playing like a Kachuk. You mentioned beast in the gym, beast on the ice. Physical engages all of that. i really wonder if we're going to see the matthew kachuk effect and maybe see ryan leonard go higher than some people expect

because of it that's what this week is all about crazy speculation now do you disagree with me at all that if Mishkov does not go top four, it's going to go some form of Bedard, Carlson, Fantilli-Smith? Yes. San Jose, I can't get a handle on San Jose. I know they want really good young hockey players and they want really good skilled young hockey players. I know that positionally they want defensemen and goalies, but they do want as much skill and youth as possible in this pipeline. And Will Smith does represent that.

I do like Zach Benson of Wenatchee, the Wild, in the Western Hockey League. I think he's an excellent player. Put it this way. I'm very warm to how you think on this one. I'm not totally right there because I still have questions about San Jose, but I'm very warm to it. How's that? How's that for being nice and vague? Well, you know what? Take some aspirin and see how you feel in the morning. Take two aspirin, call me in the morning. Thank you, Dr. Friedman. The other thing about the

draft is we always wonder about the trades. And I know we go into every draft and say, oh man, there's going to be whoppers. Oh, there's just so much happening right now. There's so much chatter. And listen, last year, Pierre Dorian delivered and there was the Alex DeBrinckit deal. There were other deals as well. We think of Cam Talbot, et cetera. But I mean, we go into every draft, Elliot, suspecting there's going to be a lot of trading. Now, this season may feel unique because already the trade chatter is picked up. Heck, we've already seen a three-way deal in the NHL between Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Columbus. But where's your spidey sense on how frisky general managers are going to be vis-a-vis trades

leading up to next Wednesday in Nashville? There's a lot of talk out there. You know, Winnipeg, we've talked about Winnipeg ad nauseum. They've got a lot going on out there, and we'll see where they go. Philadelphia is definitely another one. We interrupt our program to bring you this important message. Another Wednesday morning insert here on the flyer section. I wonder if Detroit is one of the teams looking into Travis Konechny. He fits what they're looking for,

and he has some term. See ya. You know, I had people tell me, look out for Philly on Monday. They're going to do something today. Nothing happened. I had people say to me, look out for Philly on Tuesday. They're going to do something today. Nothing happened. People say to me, look out for Philly on Tuesday.

They're going to do something. Nothing happened. I think Philly's ready to do a lot of different things. It's just that I'm not sure the other teams have fully committed to what Philly's willing to do or talk about. But I did have a couple teams tell me they do think the Flyers will have at least one more first-round pick than they already have. I've heard these are trades that could be involving moving Kevin Hayes, or it could be moving somebody else on the roster.

They've got a lot out there. And now that some of their other players' names have kind of been out there, I think teams know what Philly is and is not willing to do. And on Hayes, they're very flexible. Some of the other players, like their young players, they're not doing. Meanwhile, players like Lawton and Konechny and Sanheim, the prices are a little bit higher. So I think everybody knows what Daniel Breer's position is on all his various

players. And I think he's ready to do anything at any time. The question is, does he firmly have a trading partner yet? But, you know, like I said, there are teams out there who believe Philly will have at least one more first

rounder when we get to next Wednesday, you know, the other one to me, and I'm not sure if we're going to know by the draft and in Calgary, we already know about Hannafin. He's in a situation where at some point in time, they're probably going to move him. But I think the rest of their decisions surround Lindholm. Now I think Lind Lindholm and the Flames are talking. I believe that the Flames know that if they want to keep Lindholm, it's going to be Horvat money

in that area. Eight times 8.5, both Lindholm and Horvat are Newport guys. And I think the Flames understand that that's where this is going to come in. I think there've been conversations, not only about the contract, but the direction of the team, which way are the flames going? I think Lynn home has indicated that if he commits, he wants to know that the team is still going to try to compete. They,

it won't be a rebuild. Like I think they know they've got to plug in some younger players and I think he's okay with that. He just doesn't want it to be a rebuild. Like, I think they know they've got to plug in some younger players, and I think he's okay with that. He just doesn't want it to be a full rebuild. But I think the Flames are waiting for Lindholm's decision before they start to decide on some of their other contracts, like the Toffolis, the Zdorovs, the Tanevs, other players like that. Because, look, if Lindholm and Hannafin are out, Calgary could have some very

different decisions they might need to make. They might have to sit back and say, all right, without these two players, where are we going here? But if Lindholm stays, I think they're going to try to stay in the race, you know, quite a bit. Lindholm, I don't think is staying unless that happens. So Lindholm's decision, I think is the big linchpin to all of this. And I'm told that the flames are not pressuring him to make a decision by the draft.

Like if Lindholm waits a little bit longer, if I don't think they're worried about that. So I'm not sure aside from Hannafin, who's made his decision, that he would like to see what else is out there. I think Calgary's prepared to wait a bit for Lindholm and then kind of go from there. By the way, the other thing I heard, don't expect Markstrom to be moved. I think there were some rumblings.

Would Markstrom agree to go anywhere? I've heard he wants to come back. So that's kind of where it stands on him. So then we wonder about Dan Fladar, because I would imagine that Dustin Wolf's coming in next year. He's got to be. Yes. And the goalie market's going to be very, very volatile. So all these teams that have goalies to move, there's a lot of pieces around goaltenders out there. And I think that's not only a challenge for Craig Conroy. I think that's a challenge for a lot of other GMs, which is to play this game of musical chairs and see which goalies end up where.

Okay, let me circle back to Lindholm there and maybe try to crystallize what you're saying here. Is it too simplistic to say the decision rather to go for it again or take a step back rest solely on Lynn Holmes decision if he's in then they're going for it if not it's time to maybe take a step back here and see what value we can get for other players. Is that too simplistic? I don't know if it's too simplistic, but at the very least, if Lindholm and Hannafin are moving, I think the flames are going to have to really think about like,

that's a top pair defenseman and a first line center, right? Yep. I don't necessarily think it means they rebuild completely, but I think they have to sit back and decide what this means if lynn holm stays they have a number one center and also a commitment to him that they're going to continue trying to contend i think if they don't have either then calgary and their brain trust conroy along with maloney and notice they they have to kind of sit down and say, okay, what does this all mean?

Let me, uh, let me circle back to Hannafin there for a second, because I think by now, you know, my default setting when it comes to conversations about defensemen. Oh, Buffalo's interested. Oh, Buffalo's curious. Oh, Buffalo's kicking tires. I don't know if it happens with Hannafin, but does it not feel to you very much like maybe job number one for Kevin Adams right now is trying to find defense to try to help you know so they don't overplay and burn out Rasmus Sandin so they don't

burn out and overplay Matthias Samuelsson or Owen Power there is that and this was this existed last year too that sensitivity about just killing these guys by Christmas. I think, what did you say on your show? They're looking at every defenseman who's possibly out there. I think you're completely correct on that. Every free agent, every defenseman who's asked for a change of scenery, anyone that's whispered one to a friend at the gym, Kevin

Adams has you on speed dial. I think that's, I don't think that's a secret that that's job number one here would appear for, for Kevin Adams. One of the other big stories on Tuesday was Montreal Canadians and Sean Monaghan signs a new contract. It is a one-year deal.

1.985 with a $15,000 bonus? Elliot? I had a tweeter who asked me about that. Why the $15,000 bonus? I kind of lookedeter who asked me about that. Why the $15,000 bonus? And I kind of looked into it a little bit.

I thought it was an interesting question. And from what I understand, the team and the agent recognized that the more bonus-laden this contract was, the more difficult it might be to trade it. Yeah. For example, if Montreal next year is out of the race and, and Monahan has a good year and someone looks at them, the thing about bonuses, like this whole league, most of the teams that are good, especially they're right at the cap as Boston found out this year. And people have watched. If you go over the cap, any bonuses come off your cap the next year. Yeah. Boston is four and a half million shy on their cap next year because of their bonuses.

And, you know, Montreal is in long-term injury because of Carey Price. So they're not crazy about that idea. They want the flexibility for as they start to move forward. And the other thing is, if you're another team that needs, that wants to trade for Monaghan and you're close to the cap, you risk the bonus overage. So that's kind of what both sides looked at here. I think initially, I think we expected this would be a bonus-heavy contract, but they realized that it would make it very hard to trade Monaghan if they got to that point.

Monaghan if they got to that point. And the other thing too, is the Canadians didn't want a situation where, you know, for example, if you trade a guy and he reaches the bonuses after you trade them, you can be on the hook for them. And Montreal didn't want that. So I think this was purely a situation where to keep maximum flexibility on Monahan to trade him next year if you wanted to do that the understanding was it couldn't be a bonus heavy deal and that's why this kind of came up like this and i think the 15 000 bonus was basically to like get monahan to two million i think that's kind of the way it went,

to be perfectly honest. Okay, you tell me whether you think this is naive. Okay. So I have a hard time looking at any move for a either high end or middle end forward on the Montreal Canadiens, either an acquisition or a re-signing and not seeing it through a Pierre-Luc

Dubois Winnipeg Jets lens. Is that naive? I don't think that's a wrong thing to do anyway. Like I know you're the sports net conspiracy theorist that you've got all, you know, you're like Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with that, all that stuff on the wall, a great gif out there.

No, but don't you see it, a great gif out there. No, but don't you see it, man? Don't you see it, man? First of all, I don't think you can have too many centers. They have Suzuki.

They have Dvorak. Doc can play center. Evans has got a couple of years left. Skill adapts, skill adapts, Elliot, skill adapts. They've got a lot of center.

That's number one. I've thought a lot about the Dubois in Montreal and Dubois. To me, the biggest question is, does Montreal think this makes sense for them right now? Even if you think Dubois is the answer in two years, then you do it now. Because you may not have the opportunity. You may not have the chance. That's right. If LA offers a whopper here. If you think that you're going to need them in two years, then I think you're going for it because you may not get them in two years.

But number one, I think Montreal has to decide, A, do they want this player? Do they want this player salary-wise that's going to cost them? Now, here's the thing that someone said to me on Tuesday that I thought was really sensible. We've talked about how Winnipeg doesn't want to rebuild. No. Whatever they trade for these players, they want to stay in the race.

It's easier for LA to do that than it is for Montreal to do that. Montreal has a lot of good pieces, but they're younger. They're, as you like to say, green bananas. True. These are going to be good players, but they're not going to be good players, impact players yet. Like to me, and this is just my opinion, if Montreal wanted to trade Doc for Dubois, I think that probably could have happened already.

So you think they've talked? You know, it's just, it just seems like an obvious one to me. Like, I'll just be blunt. Like when I saw the Monahan signing today, my first thought was,

what does this mean for Kirby doc? Well, first of all, also don't forget Monahan is, he's an older guy. Kirby doc is 22 and he signed for three more years at 3.4 million. Like, you know,

honestly, Jeff, I don't think if one has anything.4 million. Like, you know, honestly, Jeff, I don't think if one has anything to do with the other, you know, Monahan is a really good story. And I really admire, like he could have easily taken everything he's earned and walked away. Right. And this is a guy battling through a ton of injuries to play.

He deserves a lot of respect. And he's shown like a guy who really loves the game because it would have been easy for him to leave. So I don't look at Sean Monahan signing as have any way in effect of Kirby doc. I just think that if, if Montreal wanted to do that, that would have been an easy trade to make. So I don't necessarily think that Montreal is going to do that. Now, this may all be moot. We might get to a situation where someone else enters the picture or Montreal steps up and does it. But I think the biggest question that people have is, does Montreal really feel this is the right move for them? Engels wrote the other day that he's not convinced about that. And I think Montreal is still kind of deciding that.

So we'll see. Does this Dubois deal need to get done by the draft? I don't know that it has to, but I really get the sense that, does Winnipeg really want this to drag? No, that's why I'm asking. We always look for the pressure point moments. There's one right there, and everybody's together.

The thing is, for Winnipeg, Halibut has a contract. Shifley has a contract. Dubois does not. They didn't take him to arbitration. That says to me they want to sort this out. And if you're LA and you're trying to win the Pacific Division next year in a really tough division, Don't you want to know? Yes, you do.

And that's why I ask if, you know, the big moment here is going to come next Wednesday in Nashville. Merrick, you reported the other day that Michael Pekka was going to join Peter Laviolette's coaching staff with the Rangers. Another name possibly to keep an eye on, Phil Housley.

He's potentially in the mix there as well. Listen to the 32 Thoughts Podcast ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Fellas, it's Appy here from Melbourne, Australia. How are you going? Just wanted to say g'day. Big fan of the show. Been following your careers for a long time

since Jeff used to do a podcast with a guy called Greg and Elliot since you were, I don't know, doing writing. Anyway, I just wanted to say, who do we have to campaign to? Maybe your bosses to get you guys down to Australia, all three of you, to do a live pod. That'd be sick. Really looking forward to the games in September,

going with my mates on the Saturday and then taking my seven-year-old daughter on the Sunday. So she's pretty excited about that. Yeah, so let's go Devils. And Amal, great job, buddy. And Amo, great job, buddy. Elsewhere around the NHL, let me ask about everybody's favorite topic,

the Toronto Maple Leafs. There's a couple of things. The hunt for an assistant coach, we talked about that last podcast. What about players that need contracts? We've talked plenty about Austin Matthew matthews i will spare you the oxygen elliot i am not going to ask you about austin matthews uh but i will ask you to uh to share some breaths and some thoughts and some oxygen about william nylander who's also a year

out i think they're going to take a run at this if they haven't done it already i think they're going to take a run at this too see i think he's juggling a lot of balls i think he's talking to shen you know last week someone told me they heard it was close it wasn't the case i think they've continued to work at it i think they take a run at neilander i don't know that they've started it yet really in earnest but i think that's coming does the fact that he's also represented by lewis gross factor into this at all and for those who don't know he was also he's also the agent for johnny goodrow now with columbus there's a fact i know that in this industry you can't do that and you got to park it but this is still i don't know if that wound is still open

does that factor into this at all? You know, sometimes I ask things when a negotiation doesn't work. I ask people, do you think you were dealt with fairly? Sometimes I'll say it to the agent and I'll say it to the team. Do you think you were dealt with fairly or unfairly? And I will say this, that Goudreau negotiation, they thought they had them and then they lost them the flames even off the record because as you know sometimes people are sure yeah like to say things off the

record they won't say on it nobody felt that they were dealt with unfairly in calgary they just think at the end goudreau changed his mind they They thought they had a deal on basically the Huberto contract. Look, I think Tree Living and Conroy have talked about the lessons they've learned from that whole process. And I think they will protect themselves. But I don't think they feel they were dealt with unfairly. A couple of different times you and I had conversations about Carson Soucy. And certainly around trade deadline time.

And there were teams that were interested and Ron Francis always said no, even though he was a bottom pairing defenseman, the very effective bottom pairing defenseman and Seattle had a heck of a run. What happens to Carson Soucy now? I think there's going to be a lot of interest here. I think Seattle knows it's going to be very lot of interest here like i think seattle knows it's going to be very difficult to keep him if they can at all we we mentioned on the podcast on monday and we talked about vancouver must be thinking of something oel being bought out there yeah when the podcast dropped i had about four people who texted me sus Susie. Like, that is right up Rick Talkett's alley. Yeah.

But I don't think they're going to be the only ones. I think there's going to be a few teams in on this. Susie played really well in the playoffs. And it was interesting. Like, he didn't have a great regular season. There were a couple teams that actually told me they didn't think he was as good as he normally can be in the regular season. But once the postseason started, you could see he really, he loved it.

He was really engaged. You know, there's going to be a lot of interest and they think that Vancouver is going to be in on that. We interrupt our program to bring you this important message. Okay. Wednesday morning ad to the Canucks section. I woke up this morning and had a thought. We know the Canucks are looking for another center.

What if their target is Ryan O'Reilly? Just something that occurred to me. We'll see. Am I insane or pure genius? In 10 days, we find out. Rick Dallowall reported that they may not be qualifying Ethan Bear. So, you know, I don't think Myers is going anywhere now. Is that because of September bonus?

Well, no, it's not. It's not only the September bonus, Jeff. It's that, look, like OEL's out, and if you're not qualifying Bear, that's two NHL defensemen coming off your roster. For a team in Vancouver that we think that the mandate is compete for the playoffs, you're down two NHL

defensemen now I don't think he's on the market so I mean you know Rutherford he's tricky he can do anything but I'd like to see how they address three guys off the roster so I don't think Myers is going anywhere right now one more thing uh we started the podcast off by talking about the draft uh the stars of the draft, listen, whoever gets Conor Bedard wins the draft. Chicago Blackhawks are going to win the draft. They get Conor Bedard. What do you hear?

What do you know about the Blackhawks, you know, in and around the draft, either with picks? I mean, they have their own pick. They have Tampa's pick in the first round. They got four picks in the second round. But what are you hearing about the team? What are you hearing about them? Listen,

you get Conor Bedard, you go shopping and you start looking at free agents. What do you hear around free agency in Chicago? I think they're going to take Bedard first, Jeff. I would like to say that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Say that slower. So the gravity can sink in. That's a bomb. First of the bomb deep into the podcast. Wow. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Say that slower so the gravity can sink in. That's a bomb. A bedard first. A bedard first. Preach bomb deep into the podcast.

Wow. I think there's teams who believe their second pick in the first round is 19. I think there's teams who believe they want to move up with that pick. Get a little bit higher. I'm wondering about whether or not they're going to qualify Caleb Jones. There's some rumbling that maybe they won't do that i know what that's a tight that's a tight collar fits tight when you have seth jones there as well yes that's a tight fit i don't want to put words in anyone's mouth but you know you're fair it's fair to bring that

up so on a podcast a couple weeks ago we talked talked about they're going to have to find players to play with Bedard. You can't just run them out there with nobody to play with. And we threw Barbashev's name out there. And I just think Barbashev, they're not going to do what Barbashev's going to get now. I think he's going to really hit the jackpot. You know, a lot of people are wondering about Max Domi. It makes sense. It's a good fit there.

But I'll tell you who someone suggested to me. This one is really interesting to me. I thought it was a really intriguing idea on a short-term deal. Okay. Vladimir Tarasenko. A finisher to play with Bedard. I think you've got to give the kid a chance to succeed, right? Even if your team isn't very good, I like that idea.

I like that idea too. I think you need to do a couple of things here. I think you need to surround him with skill, but I think you also need to surround him with players that will protect him. And I know the days of those players are gone. You've got to give him somebody who can score. No, I'm not.

That's what I'm saying. Like, I think you need to surround him with a blend of, and it doesn't have to be in one player. This can be a couple of different players. Um, I think you need to surround him with both skill and some toughness as well, because I mean,

Elliot, every game next year, he's going to be a target okay we know that but i'm not talking about the toughness right now i'm talking about giving him a chance with a score that's what i said you need both that's all but to your point about teresenko yes i could see that i could see that humoring me no i'm not humoring you because i think they need both like look first of all they're gonna they going to bring it like over the next few years. We're going to see a lot. But I think one's easier to find than the other.

Yes. And the other two is Bedard's a right shot and Tarasenko's a left shot. Get Tarasenko the puck in the home plate area. I mean, he gets that thing off his blade fast. As you like to say to me, Elliot, that's not your worst idea. A couple of things before we wrap up here. I just wanted to mention, I think the devils and Meyer are really grinding away at it. Timo Meyer. Eight years.

Fitzgerald's quoted and nobody's disputed that Timo Meyer told his agent to do an eight-year deal. So until someone tells me otherwise, I believe in that. I think there's a lot of people curious about Pittsburgh. What's Dubas going to do? How is he going to announce himself? You know, when Dubas was in Toronto, he took a look at Eric Carlson this year. I don't know that that can even work, but he did take a look at Eric Carlson this year. That was one of the things I was kind of spit

balling. But what I, a couple of teams were kind of thinking about is will Dubas put his first rounder on the table for a goalie? Oh, and I'm not convinced Gibson's that guy for him. I'm not convinced that Dubas is a Gibson guy. Well, first of all, he was a Kitchener Ranger,

not a Sousa Marie Greyhound. So that takes John Gibson right out of the equation completely. Man, they need help with that pipeline. They really do. That's a big one. Because I kind of, I don't know, maybe I'm looking at this too naively but i'm looking at whoever went into the pittsburgh situation i thought it was going to be a

combination of let's just be good enough to make it in the playoffs and with players like letang and crosby and malcolm maybe but you do need the goaltender i know a lot of this depends on whether you know tristan jari re-signs or what you can get on the market. But surrendering a first-round draft pick, Elliott in this draft specifically? Yep. I know Dubas has done this before, surrendering the firsts.

I get it. Oh, man, I don't know. I don't know. Just putting it out there, not telling you what I know, telling you what I heard. Okay, Alan Arkin, are we talking about it or are we talking about it? We've talked about how Boston would like to keep Bertuzzi. I think they'd also like to keep Hathaway. That's another guy I think they really want to keep.

I've heard Sweeney's burning up the phone lines. I think he's got some interesting stuff going on. And the other one is, in the last pod, we talked about the one-year deal and then the eight-year deal. We mentioned Mikey Anderson. Someone pointed out, how could you forget the obvious one?

I go, which one was that? And he goes, Kotkaniemi. And I go, you're right. That was really dumb. They got investigated for it, I think Carolina did. And they got cleared. But that was a case where they had won, and then they did eight. And the Hurricanes bent over backwards because they knew that they were going to get the probe.

They knew they were going to get the probe. And they bent over backwards to make sure that they did everything there by the book. But that was a one versus eight where there was a complaint and an investigation, but they were cleared. Elliot, as we record this podcast, it is Tuesday evening. On Wednesday afternoon, the latest inductees for the Hockey Hall of Fame will be revealed. This has always been a source of great cannon fod, great cannon fodder for sports talk radio. And that continues. We've discussed various names at various times on this podcast, players that we think should be in coaches, managers, builders,

you name it, officials. We've had to talk about, you know, goalie coaches making it into the hockey hall of fame as well. We'll cross our fingers and hope to get something unexpected on Wednesday, but it very much feels like there's one lock and that's Henrik Lundqvist. I agree with that. Then after that, there are a whole lot of question marks. What are your question marks around the hall this year? Now you think that Carolyn Ouellette's getting in too, right?

I do think that Carolyn Ouellette is getting in. I think this is one that is, I know there are a lot that are overdue. This one is really overdue. I also do wonder about Jennifer Botterill and I wonder about Megan Duggan as well. So we'll see. But I think if one female hockey player is going in, I'm guessing it's probably going to be

Carolyn Ouellette. So what you're saying is you're a lousy Sportsnet teammate? Jennifer Botterill is getting in. So what you're saying is you're a lousy Sportsnet teammate? Jennifer Botterill is getting in. So you're voting against Jennifer Botterill? Botterill is getting in one day. See, here's the thing, and I don't know if the selection committee thinks this way.

I think they should both go in now. I just don't know whether they'll do two Canadians at the same time. I think they both deserve to be in. I just don't know whether the selection committee is going to do that. Charlie Day. I'm telling you. I'm on the McGilney train.

McGilney and Brindamore, every year there's a couple guys. I really thought it took too long for Zubov. I really fought for Alfredson for a while. But I have to say this. I am really the, like the two players, male players at the top of my list are McGilney and, and Brenda Moore, you know, Guy Carboneau got in, which I loved. I loved the Guy Carboneau selection. And I really think that Brenda Moore deserves to be in just like Carboneau is, but McGilney is my guy. I don't know why he's not in. I think deserves to be in just like Carbino is, but McGilney is my guy.

I don't know why he's not in. I think he should be in. He was an incredible player. Incredible story, Elliot. Well, that's the thing. People forgot what the world was like back in. There's a story flowing on social media about McGilney telling off Mike Keenan saying, you think after what I went through and the threats me and my family got that I'm going to be scared of you? They were shooting at him and Jerry Meehan. Shooting.

Like that guy should be in the Hall of Fame. And those are the two players I really root for. McGilney and Brindamore, I think, are the next two on my list that should get in. I'm glad you brought that up about McGilney because to me on the numbers, the performance, all of that, McGilney should be in. But then you couple it with the story. And this is where the hockey player bleeds off the page a little bit here.

And this is one of the reasons why I love that Václav Nedimansky is in the Hockey Hall of Fame because of what he did and what he meant for Eastern European hockey players making it to North America to play then in the WHA and then the NHL as well. And that was a brave decision as well. And he excelled in an incredibly trying situation there. And I feel the exact same way about McGilney. And I feel the exact same way about McGilney. I cannot fathom, Elliot,

fathom what was going on in his head when he was escaping. I cannot imagine. And then I can't imagine what happens when you arrive and then you perform the way that McGilney did. I'm sorry. Even just on the stats he gets in, but then you couple that with the story I go McGillney all day long I'm with you 100% like that guy should be in the hall of fame

one thing we want to mention following up on the last podcast when we mentioned Wenatchee and the situation where a BCHL team turned into a western hockey league team and all the players became free agents and Elliot you were hoping that there was going to be some type of meaningful solution here and this wouldn't cost you know players their chance for scholarships because they don't have a place to play etc uh we got a note from someone in the bchl saying that they were blindsided uh by this situation they're taking care of the players as best they can and fortunately most teams do already have spots left and also they can take more usa players as well and he added

if this was last season it would have been awful but not so much this season and i'm with you and i think we're all on the same page here's hoping that all those players find a place to play in the pchl i hope that uh they can find a transition for all these players find a place to play in the BCHL. I hope that they can find a transition for all these players because it's not their fault. So I'm happy to hear things are being tried. Quick pause. When we come back, Chuck Fletcher, who's turning into our teammate next week, Elliot,

working with us on our draft coverage, former Philadelphia Flyers general manager and former GM of the Minnesota Wild. Okay, welcome back to the podcast. What you're about to hear is a sort of multifold interview. We talked to Chuck Fletcher a couple of days ago, Elliot, and it ranged from not just the process of when you're a general manager, what happens with the draft, but a lot of it I found turned into relationship talk and how you relate to the scouts and how you feel and how you defer. and how you relate to the scouts and how you feel and how you defer. There's some wonderful stories in here about being offered trades at the very last moment before you go up and make your pick.

And at the end, we do address the situation with the Philadelphia Flyers from earlier this season. Quick thought on our conversation with Chuck Fletcher before we present it. First of all, I really enjoyed it. One of the things that I understood was going to be a challenge here is that when we talked about Philadelphia, number one, Chuck Fletcher's still under contract for the Flyers. And I can't expect someone to forfeit a general manager's salary to make this a more entertaining podcast. So I knew he was going to be careful.

And secondly, I mean, look, if you know anything about Chuck Fletcher, he's not going to, you know, throw bombs at people on the way out. It's just not his way. It's not his style. You know, I kind of knew that going in. We tried. We tried to trip him up a little bit. There's no question about that. But as you'll hear, Fletcher was very careful and he wasn't throwing any rocks at the Flyers on the way out.

Here's Chuck Fletcher on 32 Thoughts, the podcast. Enjoy. First off, Chuck Fletcher, happy to be working with you this time around, both Elliot and I at the NHL Draft.

Second of all, we had a lot of stuff we want to get into, specifics about the draft, time in Philadelphia, etc. But I'm curious from a general manager's point of view and i get

that when you're a gm nothing is fun and everything is stressful i get all that but is there a part of you that found the draft to be as fun as at least some people watching it or people working it i find it one of my favorite events on the calendar what's it like for a general manager as long as you have a first round pick it it's great. No, the draft and free agency are actually the most enjoyable time of the season for general managers. It's not a zero sum type of event in that multiple teams leave the draft feeling they did really well. So many people are happy with what they accomplished at the draft and free agency. It's not like one team's winning, one team's losing. Over time, we find out who actually won or lost, but there's a great sense of optimism

of renewal. It's a great day for the scouts, great two days for the scouts when they get a chance to pick some players that they've been following all year. But I really enjoyed it. Always enjoyed the draft. It's a lot of fun. And you're still a couple of months away from the grind of the regular season. I wanted to ask you about some rules I heard. The first one was that the GM makes the first round pick and your scouting staff takes over from there. Is that correct?

Certainly about the rest of the picks, I would say it's quite accurate. You know, even if you scout a lot as a general manager, it's very difficult to get out and know all the players 70, 80, 90 deep on your list. It's just too difficult. So you have to defer to your people at some point. In terms of the first round, that might be mixed. There might be teams that really rely on their director of player personnel or their chief amateur scout or their assistant GM that runs the draft. And some teams have GMs that are quite involved and get out there, but you're always relying on your scouts, but ultimately the GM's either going to get the credit or the blame

at the end. So particularly the high picks in the first round, you want to make sure you feel very comfortable with. I've heard before that managers don't like trading away their first rounders because it upsets their scouts. Their scouts feel like it's a waste when they don't have a first round draft pick. Is that true? It does bother you. I mean, you got to look at it. Pro scouts have a different racket. They could be called upon any day. You could be making a trade in September, March, in the summer. So pro scouts are always on call, but amateur scouts are in their cars all winter driving around, putting their list together, and they get those two days to see their work come to fruition. And it's really disappointing when you don't have a first.

And I've had a couple of years, we had one year in Pittsburgh, Ray Sherrill and I, we didn't pick to the fourth round. And that's tough when you see about 118, 119 names get called before you even get to call a name. So it does bother you, but obviously you're doing what's best for your team. And the teams that have moved their first round pick or their second round picks have done so for a reason to try to give themselves an advantage during the year. But I only amateur scouted for one year full time, and it was difficult. It's a long, long road. And believe me, when you get to call out names, it's a lot of fun. Can I pick up on that? Because I'll preface this with an anecdote.

So I'm curious about the relationship between a general manager and his amateur scouts. So this would have been 2005, 2006 season. And I was at St. Mike's Arena. It was a game between the Barry Colts and the St. Mike's majors. And everyone was there to see Brian Little. And I was there talking to a scout. And even before the game began, closed his book and said, you know what?

I think I might need to go home. I said, why? And he said, my manager just showed up. He's going to see Brian Little skate once, make up his mind about the player. And all my three years of following Brian Little, it's going to go Brian Little skate once, make up his mind about the player, and all my three years of following Brian Little, it's going to go completely out the window. As a manager, how aware are you when you go to a rink what the scouts are thinking about your presence there?

Oh my gosh, that is so true. I used to kid our scouts all the time. I said, you guys have your list, I have mine. I'll go to the U18s. I'll watch the players play for 10 days. I tell them I have my list. No matter what you've done the last seven, eight months, you know, I know what I know now after 10 days.

And it just drives them nuts. They hope you're kidding, but it's true. A little bit of information can be really dangerous. You can catch a player playing a great game or a poor game. You know, he might be sick. There might be something going on in his life. And, you know, you take those small snapshots and you make, you know, big picture decisions based on them. It can be very dangerous. So you have to rely on your scouts. They're there. They start in the summer. Actually, they've seen him as underages, but then they see them in the summer. They see him in the fall and

the winter. They see the evolution of the player. They've met with the player. They've typically met with the agent. They know met with the coach. You know, they have a pretty good feel for, for the player and his background and, and what he's accomplished. And you really need to rely on that. And particularly if you believe in your staff, if you're starting to make too many decisions as a manager, it tells me that you don't believe in your staff. All right, Chuck, I want to hear about the fights. Tell me about some of the biggest fights you ever heard in draft meetings or at the draft table. Oh gosh, we've, we had some beauties in Anaheim.

You know, our assistant GM and the gentleman that ran the draft for us was Tim Murray. And Tim, a very close friend and one of the smartest hockey people I know and should be in the game, by the way. He's a brilliant guy, but... Media misses Tim Murray. Tim didn't have a lot of patience for certain situations. So we're going through

our end of the year scouting meeting and it was Sidney Crosby's year. So this is the, what would that have been? The 2005? 2005. 2005 draft. Yep. And so we're going through the name and there were a lot of defensemen that year and we were having a really hard time sorting through them. And so we're just going in circles for hours and some crazy comments were being made. And so finally Tim stands up and says,

okay, I'm going to put all the defensemen at the top of the list. We'll put Sidney Crosby at number seven. And you guys can't figure it out. This was what, I mean, people were screaming at each other. One guy broke his computer. He slammed the top so hard.

And we had to take a break for about an hour and a half and come back. And I remember during that break, I turned to Tim. Everybody had left the room. It was just Tim and I in the room. I said, you did a fine job there. I said, you just cleared out the whole room. But when we came, we came back, everybody, uh, we got the list together and, and figured it all out, but it's really emotional. And, and what you find is a lot of scouts have an area that they cover in particular there, you know, some guys cross over, some guys don't.

But typically, you might have a guy out west, a guy in Ontario, a guy in Quebec, another person in the U.S. or a couple people in the U.S. And what tends to happen at times is people get a little parochial. They battle for players in their area, which is why it's important to allow a lot of crossover. But I find every year there gets to be choke points in the list where people are fighting for their own players. And that's where somebody has to sort it out and put the list in the right order. But it's understandably emotional. Guys work hard and they have opinions and they believe in their ability to assess talent. They

want their player higher than the other guy's player but it's just the way it goes let me pick up on something there um and something that elliot referenced earlier about scouts picking later on there are some teams maybe most teams do this i don't know you're the authority that do towards the end of the draft passion picks where it's the sixth round and you maybe it's your western guys okay you get your passion pick in the sixth and you guys over here in ontario you get a passion pick in the seventh and covering the ushl you get your passion pick in the fifth or whatever it is how common an occurrence is that like and and does it feel like it's a it's a cookie for the scouts like all right this one is all yours

this is your passion pick yeah i think it's very accurate but there's different ways of doing it i mean for for many years the teams i've been with we would typically put together an overall list of 80 to 100 players and that would often cover your first four to five rounds of picks and once you start to run out of names on your overall list you rely on your individual league lists. But what I found was when you're sitting at the table, you make your pick, say, in the fourth round, you all of a sudden have chatter at the table. Hey, if this guy's there in the fifth, we should get him. And you almost want to see who's most passionate about their name. And it often comes

out where somebody's fighting harder than everybody else for their player, and you go with that player. You're starting to get later in the draft. There hasn't been a lot of viewings on these players outside of the area. People, they know the player the best, and you want to see who fights for their player the hardest. I've seen another method where you ask your guys to, to list one name, not a high profile name, but one later name that they would be very happy to leave the draft

having picked. And so you get a list of seven or eight names that way of guys that players that again, maybe aren't the highest rated players, but your people really believe in them. And they would be very happy if you could draft those players. So there's different ways of doing it, but typically as the draft goes on, let's be honest, a lot of these players are picked later for various reasons. They obviously have some attributes that scouts don't feel will allow them to play. Maybe they have one attribute that does. Maybe they're a great skater, they have great size, they have a great shot, they have great hockey sense, whatever it may be. It really comes down to you're talking about players that are somewhat flawed in the eyes of the scouts, but who's going to fight for the player with that one attribute that they feel will allow them to get to the NHL.

And once the emotion gets involved in that sense, you often get to a really good place. Can you give us some examples, maybe Chuck, that you remember of players that were home runs via that thinking or via that kind of style? Home runs might be a little tough. I'll go back to my first year in Minnesota, the 2009 draft. And we had a scout named Paul Charles that really believed in this goaltender named Darcy Kemper. And we had drafted Matt Hackett that year in the third round, but we didn't have a lot of goaltenders in our system. We had Nicholas Backstrom at the time, we had Josh Harding. And so we decided to take another goaltender late and we asked for some names. And I remember Paul Charles really stepping up and, and really pushing for Darcy Kemper in the sixth round. And then later on the

next round, we had a couple of scouts really step up for this kid that had played at Shattuck. And he was a Finnish kid that had come over and spent a couple years in the U.S., a player by the name of Eric Holla. You know, he was a player that our group felt really strongly about in the seventh round. And so, you know, you get some hits like that where players can come in and play really well. And there's other players that sometimes, you know, maybe don't make it as far, but they end up playing in your system. They end up being with your American League team and helping your other prospects develop. But it's a great process to go through. And

again, it's something that can allow you to find a player later on that somebody has a lot of passion for and maybe isn't higher up on the list just because you don't have enough viewings on the player. Chuck, you mentioned lists. Before we get off that, I love stories where people either veer or don't veer from lists and weird things happen. Like one of the famous NFL draft stories of all time was the Dallas Cowboys never veered from their list. And they admitted that the one time that they did it, it cost them Joe Montana. He was the next guy on their list and they didn't take him and they took someone else and they lost Joe Montana. Now, Dean Lombardi, who you know very well and have worked with, the people who worked with him in L.A. would tell me that weird things would happen because he never veered from his list. And the one time they convinced him to do it, he had a big miss and he would never admit who it was. But so like when you guys put your list together, did you ever change it or veer from it? That's a good question. I would tell you in the first round, never. I grew up working with Brian Murray and Brian was adamant that you would never change your

list at the draft table because emotion gets involved and you have months to prepare and get your list in order. And we've always kind of had a rule that the top 20 picks were inviolable. You would never change the order on the list. But I do remember in 1995, we believe we were picking 10th that year in Florida. I was working with Brian Murray in Florida and Tim Murray. And there was a big debate at the table about Radek Dvorak versus Kyle McLaren. But we had Dvorak higher on the list, but we had a scout that was pushing really hard to draft Kyle McLaren, a big, strong Canadian defenseman over,

you know, a European player. And I remember the argument to this day. And Brian and, and Brian said, you had two months to make that argument. You didn't, we're taking Radek Dvorak. Both players actually turned out to be really good hockey players. And I'm not sure what the right decision was in hindsight, but in terms of the first round, never definitely have veered as you get a little bit later in the draft that, you know, when you're taking a guy at 50 over a guy you might have at 45. I've seen that a lot, and sometimes it works out well, sometimes it doesn't. But we've tried to put a rule in place for that reason,

where the first round, the lights are on, there's a little bit of energy in the building, and we just don't want the nerves taking over and just take the player that's in front of you. So there's always been the um the debate chuck as you well know and this is specific to the first round as well uh do you just take the best player available or do you draft for positional need and i'll frame it this way chris pronger's told people the story of his draft year the alexander dague draft and he

goes second overall san jose originally had that second overall pick and pronger was talking to san jose and san jose was of the mind that we're not going to take you because we already have Mike Rathje and Marcus Ragnarsson. And so we already have enough big defensemen. They ended up trading the pick anyhow and Hartford ended up getting it and Pronger ended up going second overall, but San Jose wasn't going to look at Chris Pronger because they already had Chris Pronger types. And then I can recall the year that Colorado took Connor Bleakley, the forward from the Western hockey league, Patrick Woff fought against it.

He wanted the defenseman and he felt the Colorado needed defenseman. And that in his mind, hockey was at a point right now where kids are so close to joining the NHL and making an impact as first rounders. You could draft for position. Do you still subscribe to the best player available or are we at a place in hockey where kids are close to making an impact? You can go for positional need. You absolutely can go for position provided you're not going by a better player. That's

where you got to be really careful. If there's a market difference or a real difference in the future prospects of those players you're looking at, you got to go with the better player because things change. Connor Bedard this year, maybe Fantilli, you might have a couple of kids that are drafted and step right into the NHL. But for most of these players, it's two, three, four years down the road. Things change. Injuries happen to your club. The perceived need you have now may be different. But a lot of these players, it's two, three, four years down the road. Things change. Injuries happen to your club. The perceived need you have now may be different. But a lot of that gets flushed out through the meetings. When you're having meetings, those are the debates that happen.

You're getting on the list this year. Maybe it's people debating between Ryan Backer and Will Smith and Leonard. They're all maybe all similarly rated. Do you want the big right shot defenseman? Do you want the playmaking center? Do you know the gritty winger with skill and sometimes that you can you know your needs can come into place a little bit more there if you feel they're similar on your list you know based on your on your team but but again I think it gets dangerous when you do that when you start going by better players to fill needs in the first round. I get it later on once you get to the second, third, fourth round,

drafting by position. There's probably not a huge difference that you can perceive at that point and future prospects. So go with what you feel you need. But first round, top 10 or top 15, you shouldn't be going by a better player or you're going to get burned. Okay. You're probably the greatest pick of your career was Kaprizov. And there's a lot of things that go into that. When to take him, the Russian factor. You knew you weren't going to get him for a little bit of time.

Can you just take us through that process and when you identified him? And one GM told me once that the scariest thing about a pick like that is you never know where anybody else has them on their draft card. So you're sitting here, you've got a player you really believe in, you know you're going to get them somewhere late. But the worst thing is, does someone step up and steal them from you? Can you take us through that process and deciding when to pick them and how you came to picking them? Yeah, it's a great story. Well, you know, first of all, Brent Flair ran our draft and, and Brent really liked Kaprizov. You know, there was some, some concern about the Russian factor, some concern about the size and the skating combination,

but we had a second-round grade on him. And that year we took Eric Sinek in the first round, and we got to the second round. I believe we were picking 50, and there was a player, Jordan Greenway, that was still available, big, strong, North American winger. And we actually thought Greenway would go late first or early second. So when he slid to us at 50, we took him. But if Greenway was gone, we were probably taking Kaprizov in the second round,

believe it or not. That shows you how smart we are. I mean, Greenway is a wonderful player in the NHL, but Kaprizov should have been a first round pick, you know, obviously a high first round pick. So we don't take him in the second. We didn't have a third that year. I believe we had traded that for Devin Dubnik. We get to the fourth round and this is where some of those debates that Jeff was alluding to earlier and you get the position. And one of the guys that we also had talked about in the second was Vladar, the goaltender, I believe Boston drafted and he went in the second. And the next goalie we had on our list was a Czech goalie named Stechka, who actually was a backup to Vladar in a few tournaments. And he was still there in the fourth, and we really needed a goalie. And we had a couple

scouts that said, we got to take a goalie. So now we take this player in the fourth, even though Kaprizov is by far and away the highest skater on our list, we took a goalie. We don't have a fifth-round pick, and we talked to a team, the Bruins, that had had a lot of picks in that draft, and we traded a future fifth to get the fifth, and Kaprizov is still there. So I think it's a story where clearly Brent was correct.

He had a high grade on him, and he believed in him, and he liked him. And yet we were incredibly lucky. Let's not kid ourselves. We went by him in the second, we went by him in the fourth, and then we had to scramble to get a pick to get him in the fifth. But we did and other teams didn't. So, you know, it was a great break for the Minnesota Wild. But there's an example where you're both, I guess, good and lucky. But to be honest, a player like that should not be going in the fifth round. It's funny you say that because that's what the Patriots always say about Tom Brady.

Not that we get credit for taking him in the sixth round or whatever it was, but why didn't we take him earlier? I love the way they think, but I was curious, was there anyone, Chuck, thought was going to, that you knew liked him, that was going to take him? Were you worried about any particular team? There wasn't, but I do remember the conversation after we took Stachka in the fourth round. I remember turning to Brent and ultimately it was my decision, but I, you know, I went with the guys and I didn't know these players at that point. You know, I said, you know, we're not going to get Kaprizov now. So after that, it's every pick.

You're sitting there, did he go? No, he didn't go. We're trying to get an extra pick. We're trying to get a fifth-round pick, and it worked out. But you just assume at some point the player was so skilled, despite the size and speed, despite the Russian factor, that somebody would take him. Obviously, it was a different time.

And now it's swung back and you're seeing many more Russian players being drafted. But again, we were very fortunate. Is it scary drafting goaltenders? Who doesn't? Unless you're a former goalie, who wouldn't? We always laugh. I mean, the last few years, what we've done when I was with Philadelphia is we literally let our two goaltending coaches just go through all the video and form their own conclusions. And they can talk to the amateur scouts a little bit to get some impressions and

get some anecdotal information, but it's just extremely difficult position to understand. So I find it terrifying. And I don't know that we've been particularly good or particularly bad with the teams that I've been with in terms of drafting goaltenders. But I do know that, and I believe this came from either Dean Lombardi or Doug Wilson, call it the old San Jose model. But the theory of drafting one goalie every year, whether it's a third round, fourth round, fifth round, maybe there's a guy you like early in the first or second, but at a minimum, as history has shown, there's a lot of goaltenders coming out of the third, fourth, and fifth round and trying to take a guy most years and make sure you have several in the pipeline and you hope one or two make it. So that's kind of been the approach we've lived by, but it's, I find it very difficult to profess to be an expert on goaltending and you really have to allow,

in my opinion, your goaltending coaches to make that decision. Okay. So we've talked a lot about, you know, just drafting players and the whirlwind around it. Now let's add the other variable. Your phone rings and someone calls you and says, another GM says, I need this pick or how do you feel about this? How much of this stuff is done in advance of the draft? And how often do we get the draft day movie scene of your phone rings and someone throws you a wild idea right in the middle of it. I got a couple stories there. It's a little bit of a mixed bag. In the first round, again, you don't see a lot of teams trading back in the top 10, but the mid first round,

the late first round, if you're sitting in that area, you will have conversations with teams leading up to the draft. I remember the 2019 draft was my first one in Philadelphia. We were picking 11. And I remember John Chyka with Arizona had spoke to me a couple of times prior to the draft and the morning of the draft, he was at 14 saying that if a certain player was at 11, they'd have interest in moving up. And would you consider, you know, 11 for 14 type of swap? And of course at that time you can't commit to it, but you know, I said, sure, the idea is interesting depending on who's, who's on the board. And he said, what would the cost be? I said, it would cost your second round pick. So you have those conversations. So when you're on the clock, you have an idea. But I do remember one year,

I think it was 2014. I was in Minnesota and I got a call from Tim Murray and we were picking, I'm not even sure the exact number, maybe 18. It's a year that we drafted Alex Tuck in Minnesota and Tim Murray offered me three second round picks for 18 out of the blue. We had never discussed it before. So you're on the clock. You got about four or five minutes to make your decision. We knew we wanted to take tuck. And now all of a sudden someone throws three second round picks at you. You're trying to figure out what's the value of those three picks.

Where are they? What does our list look like? And I just said to Tim, look, I'm not smart enough to figure that out right now. We really like tuck and that's the player they wanted, a Western New York player. So we passed on it. And to this day, he's still angry I didn't do the deal. He said, how did you not do the deal? I offered you three second round picks. I was so stupid. I said, I was too stupid to understand it, Tim. But in the first round, you often see teams calling. You let teams know we're willing to, we'll consider moving up or we'll consider moving back.

You call the teams around you just to get a feel for the lay of the land. But as the draft moves on, the second, third, fourth round, you get a lot of calls. Teams have a player that's on their list that they can't believe is still there and they're trying to trade up to get him. The scouts are harassing him. This guy's still there. He's 24th on our list.

Or pick number 45. Give him a future, you know, whatever. And so there's a lot of those type of calls. And you're always trying to shuffle. You're talking to your analytics guy. You're talking to your head scout. And you're trying to figure out the value of each move, whether you're moving up or down.

And those are hard to script because those happen more on the fly. But the first round, certainly, you're a little bit more prepared. Okay. I got two follow-ups based on that. Number one, now that was kind of in the infancy of figuring out what draft picks were worth. Is there a chart now that everybody looks at and says, okay, this is the value of this pick and this is the value of that pick. I know like some people like Josh Flynn, for example, in Columbus gets a lot of credit

for being someone who tried to figure all that pick. I know like some people like Josh Flynn, for example, in Columbus gets a lot of credit for being someone who tried to figure all that out. Yeah. My, my guess is most teams have it. They're much better now. Let's put it that way. And certainly I think every team's analytics department has, has looked at that and you can put in the variables you want and it spits out, you know, whether it's a win for you, a loss for you, or even. And so certainly I would assume most teams do that. I know certainly that's something that we've had a use of in Philadelphia the last few years, a really good analytics department, and they're able to put in the variables that you want and let you know whether it makes sense or not.

Okay, so we've heard the name Tim Murray mentioned a couple of different times here in this interview. And I can recall at a CHL NHL top prospects game in Niagara. So this was a Connor McDavid draft year. Now the draft previous had been in Philadelphia and Tim Murray and the Buffalo Sabres were selecting second and they took Sam Reinhardt from the Western league and Tim Murray went up there and said, the Buffalo Sabres select Sam Reinhardt from the Western League. And Turmary went up there and said, The Buffalo Sabres select Sam Reinhardt. That's it.

There was no thank yous. There was no congratulations to the Stanley Cup. There was nothing. And I asked him about it at the Prospects game in Niagara. He said, well, you know, I'm trying to set the record for fewest words said on stage. He said, what I'd like to do is not say anything. I just want to walk up on stage, point to who I want, and then walk off the stage, but

they won't let me do it. How conscious are you? How aware are you when you go up there to announce a pick, what you're going to say, who you're going to thank, how are you going to couch it? How are you going to frame it? Like how much of that, it may be a frivolous question, but I'm always curious. How much do you prepare for making that first round pick i tend more towards what uh you know tim murray or even steve eiserman they're kind of men a few words when they get up there they just make the

pick and to me it's it's uh the draft is about the players and the prospects and they want to hear the name you're going to call instead of a lot of words, but there's obviously different situations. Some teams have, you know, staff member retiring or there's been some sort of tragedy that they want to recognize or something with the host city. So everybody has a different tact and some people like to have a big introduction. That really wasn't for me. Maybe not quite to the extent Tim did it, but try 10

words or less, 12 words or less, make the pick, let the prospect know and let his family celebrate and let the draft move on. But there's a lot of thought about it in terms of who goes up on the stage. It used to be just five or six people would go up on the stage. So certain scouts would go up and certain scouts wouldn't. Sometimes you'd try to figure out who the team was picking based on the scouts who were bringing on stage. If the Western League scout was on the stage and they must be taking a guy from the West or if the European scout, now everybody goes up and sometimes even family members and you can't even get everybody in the picture. So I'm not saying what's right or wrong, but it's a lot different now than maybe what it was So I'm not saying what's right or wrong, but it's a lot different now than maybe what it was.

I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it was a little bit more simplistic in the days where you had to let the scouts know in advance, you're going up for the first pick. You're not, you're holding the jersey. You're going to announce it for the photograph where people are going to stand and who gets the prospect next to them.

There's a lot of stuff involved. And I think for some teams, it's a much bigger deal than others. Chuck, last one for me on the draft is from all your years of doing this, is there a characteristic that you think is shared by all successful picks? I'm talking about the players. Do you think that there's a characteristic that they all have that we should all look for? I don't know that they all have it because there always are some supremely talented players that just have the great attributes that can play regardless. Maybe they don't hit the ceiling that you think they would hit.

But to me, there's two things. And one is hockey sense. There's different ways of defining hockey sense, but having intelligence and maybe even as important, if not more important as the passion, whether you call it compete or drive or passion, the people that think it pretty well and love to play tend to at least achieve if not overachieve. And they're the ones that give themselves the best chance. So they're almost non-negotiables for some people, but it sounds simple. It's sometimes it's hard to measure them. You can miss, you can think you, uh, the player has good hockey sense or doesn't, or has great

drive or doesn't. Things can sometimes change with respect to someone's, uh, circumstances, which might impact their passion, uh, you know, off the ice circumstances. So you got to be a little bit careful, but the only players to me that ever overachieve and really truly hit their ceiling have those attributes. And those are what you're looking for. Obviously you want the biggest, strongest, fastest player with those attributes, but that's a great starting point. And when you draft players with that, you give yourself the best chance to get a player. Philadelphia, first of all, how are you doing? And, you know, have you thought back into your tenure there and, and how things went? You know, I, I saw it coming a little bit at the end, Elliot. Um, obviously we hadn't had a lot

of success the last two seasons or was, you know, a lot of noise, you know, and dissatisfaction in the marketplace. I'd had a lot of conversations with my boss. So I was certainly aware that, you know, things could happen. So you're aware of it. I would say this much right now. I think the first month or six weeks after it happened, I watched a little bit of hockey, not a lot. I just tried to get away, try to decompress. You spend a lot of time with your family. We did some traveling, took a couple of great trips. You do what you can to try to get your mental health back a little bit. There is a big toll mentally, physically, even with these positions when things aren't going well. And I've started to reflect back a little bit. And obviously when

you're in the moment too, you're looking back at times and what you did right and what you did wrong and what you need to do to get better. But so there's been a little bit of that. I'm sure there'll be more as the days and months go along. And if I have a chance to speak with some of the people I worked with a little bit more and maybe deep dive and decompress a little bit more. But, you know, at this point it's been a little bit more cursory, but, but certainly, um, you know, it's never a fun process to go through. I will certainly say that it was, uh, it was a tough stretch. Is there, or are there things that you want people to know about you and your time in Philadelphia?

Essentially, what do you want people to know about you as Flyers general manager? You know, it's never, first of all, about the manager. You know, you have a staff, you have good people you work with, and you rely on to help you make decisions. And, you know, and it's a great organization. There certainly is an expectation there in the marketplace of wanting to see a good product, of wanting to see a competitive team, of having, you know, the good fortune of seeing a lot of good teams over the years. So you certainly understand what you're getting into when you go there. You know, look, we tried hard. I would say it was a really difficult hand and clearly I didn't do enough. We didn't do enough to make it better, but there was certainly a lot of challenges that we faced

and some we dealt with better than others, but we weren't able to overcome a lot and not every decision we made worked out. And yet in saying that, there's still a few good young players there that I think Keith Jones and Danny will have a part of their future going forward. So, you know, I did feel we were getting a little bit better the last year. We improved a little bit on the ice. We were getting younger. There were certainly some things there from a directional standpoint that were making more sense. But, you know, clearly we didn't go into a full-on rebuild

when I was there and there was a lot of questions why we didn't and we didn't win enough games. So, you know, there's certainly different things that you deal with, but it's a tough question, Jeff. I don't know. I think people have to form their own opinions and with time, I think some things will become clearer. We'll see what, how some of these young players turn out, but there are some pretty good young pieces there that I think will be a part of a pretty good flyer team going forward. Chuck, is there anything from your tenure there that if you could do over, you would do? You know, it's a great question, Elliot. I've looked back at it and, you know, I go back to when I first got there our first off season in the summer of

2019 we you know we made um I thought a couple pretty good trades there we traded a couple picks to get Justin Braun and we traded Radko Gudis who was a good really good hockey player for Matt Niskanen who was a player that we felt could better play with Ivan Provorov who was our top young player at that time. And those guys came in, we had great success. They really stabilized our defense. And when the pandemic happened in March of that year, I think over the previous three months, we were the second best team in the league. We were on pace for 106, 107 points. And we came back in the bubble. We didn't have the same mojo that we had when the season shut down in March of that year,

but we still got to game seven of the second round against a pretty heavy Islander team. We lost game seven. At that point, Niskanen decided to retire. And I don't know if I regret anything, but certainly from that point on, it seemed like the focus that we had the next three, four years was always about how do we replace Matt Niskanen? How do we get that top right shot defenseman to help Ivan Provorov become the player we all want him to be and need him to be to take a step? You know, we tried different things the next year. We didn't have a lot of cap space. We tried Eric Gustafson, who had played pretty well with Duncan Keith for a while. That wasn't a great fit. And then going into that summer of 21, we made a lot of moves and we thought we did a great job

making the moves we did. You know, we traded a couple of players and Phil Myers and Nolan Patrick to get Ryan Ellis. And then we traded a first and a second to get Rasmus Rostelainen, almost sort of a repeat of that summer of 19, bringing a couple right shot D to pair with Provorov and Sandheim. And, you know, we had some good forwards up front. We had Sean Couturier almost coming off a selkie year. We had Claude Giroux going into the last year of his contract. We were in the process of moving Voracek for Atkinson. We had Kevin Hayes. We thought we had some good forwards. We were hopeful Carter Hart would take a step, but we really focused on our D and, and literally from that point on, it just seemed like everything went the wrong way. You know, Ryan Ellis ended up playing four games for us total,

just an incredibly sad story. And, and then you're, you're sort of chasing from that point on the next year we brought in Tony D'Angelo. So you're constantly, it felt like churning trying to find that right fit to be competitive. But the only thing I will say, the timing of some of the injuries we had were pretty tough, even going back to last fall. Sean Couturier had a recurrence with his back and Cam Atkinson out of nowhere had an issue, an upper body issue that was really tough. We lost both players basically in training camp and obviously if that if you knew that was going to happen in June or July you could you could maybe do things a little bit differently or look at things a little bit differently or backfill a

little bit differently and you know coming on the heels of the season it didn't give us a lot of time to do much of anything and you know the year before Kevin Hayes has a recurrence of his abdominal injury has two surgeries, Sean Couturier hurt his back. You know, we had all kinds of issues that just seemingly the last two years we dealt with and I think 1100 man games lost. So certainly some mistakes were made and we were aggressive in trying to fill holes. I'll say that, you know, moving a few picks, trying to fill the holes. But some of these injuries you've never seen. Even Joel Faraby last summer, he was able to come back and play. Probably not at the level he had hoped, but 21, 22-year-old kid that needs disc replacement surgery. Just, you know, Ivan Fedotov, our Russian goalie, gets conscripted into the Russian Navy.

Just things that you can't really make up that seem to happen. And I wish we would have dealt with some of them a little bit better. You know, in hindsight, you could do things a little bit differently, but it was a tough hand at times. And again, we obviously didn't play it well enough. You know what I just hear, like Chuck, you know, Danny Breer has been given the opportunity to rebuild. I wonder if there was any part of you that thinks, I wish we would have decided that sooner. Well, you know, look, last summer we kind of

hedged a little bit in that we really wanted to try to get another right shot defenseman. So we thought it was important to get D'Angelo. Our power play was terrible. Our retrievals were terrible. We needed another skill player, but we didn't really go all in because, you know, Ellis wasn't coming back. And Couturier, I never in my wildest dreams thought he'd miss a whole year, but I wasn't a hundred percent confident he'd be ready to start the season because he still had some lingering nerve irritation issues. So we kind of hedged. We didn't really go all in, but we tried to make the team a little bit more competitive. I mean, obviously Atkinson and Couturier make your team more competitive,

whether competitive enough people can debate. But we didn't trade our pick, you know, the year before we had added Owen Tippett and an additional first round pick. We drafted Cutter Gauthier. You know, I think Tyson For, and Cam York are going to be good players. So we certainly had some young assets coming and it's a little bit how I managed in Minnesota. I guess you're constantly trying to, I guess you call it build on the fly. You use some picks to try to add to your team, to try to be competitive. And, uh, but yet you you're mindful of making sure you have

enough picks coming enough young kids coming where you're the prospector isn't, isn't completely empty. So you're trying to do it a little bit both ways, but that's the way life goes. And, and, uh, you know, you do the best you can. You know, we've, um, on this podcast and elsewhere talked a lot about, um, the Matt Niskanen decision to walk away. And to your point, it's tough to get over a Sean Couture loss. It's tough to get over a Ryan Ellis loss. Niskanen just seems so crucial to this team. Did that completely catch you by surprise?

Were there any hints? Did you have any idea that at the end of the NHL and the bubble, he was going to walk away? No, no, we did. And the first I found out about it was Matt had grabbed Mike Yeo on the plane ride back from the bubble and had told him that it's enough. And he wanted to go back. And he was about 60 games shy, I think, of 1,000 games. And he had played at a very high level that year.

He'd just been an exceptional player, like a true top-pairing defenseman. He was a little bit older, but he had played at a very high level that year he'd just been an exceptional player like a true top pairing defenseman he was a little bit older but he'd played so well and you know I knew the you know the pandemic was tough on him you're in the bubble for two months away from your family at that point as you guys remember there was no guarantee when we were going to start the that season the 2021 season it turned out we didn't really know until maybe late November even into December that we were going to start in January so I think he probably felt that if he did play another year he'd be apart from his family he had all you know had all the tough restrictions and so I know it was tough on him it was tough on

a lot of people but there wasn't any inkling till the end. But in saying that, we had a couple of stabs at replacing it. And I really feel Ryan Ellis was a good get. I think it was a trade that made sense. We traded a couple of young players. David Poyle wanted to get younger, but we felt we could work around them and we thought Ellis would be a great fit. We knew there were six years left. We were a little bit concerned maybe the last two years, and I don't think we anticipated getting 490 games in those six years, but certainly didn't anticipate getting four.

So that one hurt because he was, I think, a really good fit, a pretty good two-way defenseman, had that skill, had the big shot. He could kill penalties, block shots, a character guy. And that really was demoralizing, obviously, for him and for our group once he was out. And, you know, that season there, 21-22, we were around a playoff spot up until Thanksgiving. And he couldn't get back in the lineup. And then Couturier left shortly after. And that was the end.

The last one I have is, Chuck, there's always rumors about interference in Philly. Was it a problem? No. No, there was no interference on the hockey side at all. We have a big staff. We have a staff that had a lot of opinions, which I don't mind. I'm a collaborative guy, rarely, I don't know that I ever made a decision that I just

went rogue on and made on my own. Every decision was vetted through the group and, you know, it was generally consensus, if not unanimous in a lot of cases. So you're working through it, but you're always getting everyone's opinions. But no, there was no interference whatsoever. It's a noisy marketplace. There's a lot of rumors in that marketplace. There's a lot of people with theories outside of the team.

That's all Jeff's fault, by the way, just so you know. What's that? That's all Jeff's fault, by the way. Yeah. More often than not, the rumors weren't true, but they do add a different layer of difficulty at times because you're managing you got to kind of manage around things that aren't true but no there really wasn't interference there was a lot of a lot of off-ice

issues but nearly none a lot of off-ice issues but not a lot related to, um, to interference or, uh, we were always on the same page. And I worked for a man, Dave Scott, who was very supportive, was great to work with. And, and, uh, you know, I had a chance to work with Paul Holmgren when I first got there, he was president of hockey ops and he hired me to be the general manager and it was incredible. And then a few months later, he, he stepped away, um, for personal reasons. And, you know, that that's kind of too bad. I would have would have loved to have had Paul there for longer in terms of a full time capacity and working for him. But, you know, these things happen, but Paul was always supportive in there right till the end in terms of being an advisor. So there was really good people there. There was really good people there. Okay, last one here. And this is, listen, we're very much looking forward to working with you in Nashville.

This is going to be fantastic. When you look back on your time and your draft picks in Philadelphia, who are you most curious about to see how they develop? I mean, you've already mentioned Cam York. You've mentioned Tyson Forrester. Is there one player? Are there two players? Is there someone that you look at that you drafted and you say, I'm really curious to see how this player

finds his way? First of all, I think that the obvious choice would be Cutter Gauthier, the young man we took last year in the first round. I just think he has tremendous upside. He's coming off a world championship as a 19-year-old. I think he was second in the tournament in goal scoring, which is incredible for a young man, I think was playing 12 to 14 minutes a night. So I think he has a chance to be a pretty impactful hockey player in terms of the size,

the strength, the shot, the skill, the skating. But there's, I think a couple players that I'm more curious about that maybe not highly thought of. One was Bobby Brink, a player we took in 2019 in the second round. We thought he might go late first, and we traded a couple picks to move up and get him. And Bobby was coming off a great college season two years ago, and then he had labral surgery, tore his labrum in his hip.

Actually, while he played in college and kind of played through it that year, but got the surgery last year. Missed a lot of time. Really tough injury to come back from. I think he started playing decent at the end, but he's a young man that isn't the biggest guy, isn't the fastest guy. And so there's some knocks on him that way, but he has that passion and that hockey sense and that skill. And it'd be interesting to see, I know he'll be much better this year because he'll be about eight or nine

months removed now from being fully healthy and have a chance to get his conditioning back. But I'm curious to see what type of player he becomes. And then another later pick, a kid named Hunter McDonald, who was a freshman, drafted as a 20-year-old sixth round, played as a freshman last year at Northeastern. And I thought he was one of the top players in hockey East as a freshman and a big, strong, heavy, rangy defenseman. Actually likes to get up in the play. I think he's going to turn into a pretty good pro player,

particularly just what we saw in the playoffs this year, that style of player. And so I'm really curious to see how he develops. I he could be a really a great find by our scouting group there well listen this has been a lot of fun uh we've kept you for way too long we always apologize at the end of our favorite interviews because they go on for so long because we enjoy talking to our guest uh chuck again look forward to working with you in nashville thanks so much for parking a lot of time for me and Elliot today. Much appreciated.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Elliot. We'll see you guys next week. And make sure you pay that Amex Black before the initial rookie dinner, okay? Oh, geez. I think the bill should be paid by order of compensation.

So I'm not sure I'm going to be at the top of the list anymore there, Elliot. Chuck, this is great. Thanks so much for this. Much appreciated. Yeah. Thanks guys.

And that's Chuck Fletcher. A, we thank him for his time and B, look forward to working with him next Wednesday at the draft. Now there's a distinct sound, Elliot, to British rock, as you well know.

Over time, that sound has evolved, but never strayed too far from what works the skinner brothers are true rock and rollers and their latest album showcases the band's versatility and creativity from that record here's the skinner brothers with death from above on 32 thoughts the podcast Are you coming or going? I can't work you out Turn up the music, we're having it hot Keep on my toes in case now I go south Talk one more time, lose the taste of your coffee

Cause I'm no complete 1969 Came for the love Let pop this death from my butt Thank you.