32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Here’s 32 Thoughts

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

What a season! Jeff and Elliotte provide their thoughts on all 32 teams and what we might see from some GMs in the coming days/weeks. They also touch on the Evander Kane gambling allegations (00:00) and provide some context to the situation. Pacific: Ducks (6:00), Flames (9:00), Oilers (10:30), Kings (16:30), Sharks (19:10), Kraken (21:00), […]

All right, let's do this podcast. Elliot, considering the NHL is involved with numerous sports betting partnerships and have partnered with numerous sports books, any indication of games being either thrown or players betting on their own games are taken seriously by the league. And Evander Kane's wife on Instagram saying, quote, can someone ask Gary Bettman how they let a player gamble on his own games, bet and win with bookies on his own games? The NHL reacted swiftly and indicated they will conduct a full investigation to which Elliott Friedman says what? I'm sensitive to this whole Evander Kane situation. And a lot of people I talked to are the same that, you know,

everybody's caught up in the allegations and what's been posted on social media. But I think there are also people involved here who are sensitive to the fact that, you know, it looks like he's headed to a divorce. And, you know, I'm sensitive to divorce personally, Jeff, because in my family, there've been a few of them and my friends have been through a few of them. And I see the bite it takes out of everyone involved. And, you know, there's a young child here too, a young daughter. So I think people are really sensitive to that, that the canes are going through a very difficult, difficult situation. And if you can avoid it, you don't want to make it worse.

You want to try to find a way to make that as easy as possible on everyone involved, including the child. So some of the people I've spoken to are like, that's the big thing we really should be worried about here. And I wanted to say that Cain released a statement on his social media accounts on Sunday morning, denying the gambling allegations. And I know some people who are lawyers and, you know, one of the things that Kane wrote there that they kind of agreed with was that a lawyer wouldn't want him to do it. That, you know, a lawyer's advice is don't do that. You have to let the legal process play out,

but it's really difficult when that's you and you're accused of that and it's spreading like wildfire on social media so i understand why kane would come out with the statement you know the league's going to investigate this for several reasons number one they have to when the tim peele situation happened one of the things we talked about was the gambling angle of it that you know right now all these leagues coming out of the pandemic are going to be depending depending on gambling money, you can't have people thinking that your games are anything but fair. You can't have people thinking they're fixed or they're fooled around with in any way, shape, or form.

And that's why I think they were very quick to come out with the statement and say they're going to investigate it. Because also, if there's any evidence that something's happening with your games it's a crime and you're going to have to deal with it so they're going to look at it if you watch Kane play this year he played he was probably San Jose's best player and you know a couple of players I spoke to said that, you know, by the way he played, you wouldn't think of anything like that, but you have to investigate it. And, you know, the other thing too, is that because a couple of years ago, there was this situation, which has now been taken care of,

or it was dropped anyway, where a casino accused him of owing them money. You know, the league's going to look into that too because they're simply going to say, do we have any worry about here that he owed money to someone and that was the payback? And I'm not saying it is, but you have to look at that angle. But at the end of the day, the number one thing I think of when I see this situation play out with Evander Kane and his wife is when you're going through these

things as a family, they're brutal and I've seen it firsthand and, you know, I hope for him and her and their daughter that at least they can find a way to sort out their situation so that nobody gets hurt any more than they already have been. And we hope that if anybody in this situation needs help, they get it. On today's podcast, we're going to go through all 32 teams. This is the last podcast we'll do where we focus on news and information and what's next for 32 NHL teams. So let's get right to it.

Welcome to 31 Thoughts, to Podcast presented by the GMC Sierra 84. Okay, Frej, let's get rolling here. We have a lot to get to, namely every team in the NHL and where they're at and what's next for them. We're going to start in the Pacific. We'll go division by division, start west and go east. And we'll start with a team that's been pretty quiet. And some might say too quiet. and some might say this is a calm

before some type of storm maybe a big trade who knows we'll start with the anaheim ducks they've been pretty quiet elliot they've been pretty quiet yeah really quiet and they have a lot of guys going into the last years of deals right so you know you're looking at that and saying okay what exactly is going to go on here where are they going you know i did for a little bit hear raquel's name out there because i'd heard the docs weren't crazy about you know the number that it was going to cost to extend them but obviously that hasn't happened yet you know know, the thing about Bob Murray is he's very patient. And other GMs who deal with him say that he'll be like, no, no, no, no, no.

And then he'll be like, okay, this is never happening. Then he'll come back with yes. And you're like, where did that come from? So, you know, they've been around on Eichel. I think Buffalo's ass to them has been really high. I think Anaheim asked them about uh the number one overall pick I don't think it was ever close I don't think Buffalo really considered it but you know they've been one of the teams that's been around on Eichel and um I'd still be surprised if we got to next year and they hadn't done something interesting.

I don't know what that interesting thing is going to be. There's going to be a group of people here that say, okay, we didn't do much in the short term, but maybe we do something in the second wave or third wave. I think Anaheim's going to be one of those teams. I think they're waiting and waiting and waiting to see who comes to them and says, okay, we didn't get our first or second thing done.

Now we're coming to you for our third thing. We saw Tampa, uh, make a deal for Brent Seabrook. Yeah. Can you see Anaheim doing a deal with Ryan Kessler's contract? They've let people know they'll do things like that. Like they're willing to be creative.

That's kind of where we are. And nothing would surprise me. I think they're willing to try some things. I think they're trying to think a little bit differently as an organization. You know, Jeff Solomon is there now and from the Kings. And I think that's one of the things they're looking at is how can we do some things that maybe we didn't consider or didn't do before. Real quick, before we get to Calgary, Ryan Getzlaff remains an Anaheim duck.

There were some rumors about Edmonton, rumors about Nashville, et cetera. Your thoughts on him staying in Anaheim? I think it's what the ducks wanted. I think Dallas did make a pitch for him, a big one, a legit one. I think Nashville did too. We heard Edmonton's name. I think Montreal has looked at him for, you know, the last year. But, you know, with Perry leaving, I wondered if it just wasn't going to be possible.

I kind of always expected he would be back, but he looked around. There's no question about it uh calgary flames bring in blake coleman tyler pitlick nikita zadorov all moves that look like well just to be blunt daryl sutter type moves trevor lewis trevor lewis as well correct and he's a guy that uh sutter's loved for a time. You expect the Sutter team to be really hard to play against, and they just got a lot harder to play against. You know, he has an identity that he likes, and that team has definitely gone to that identity.

I think they like Nick Ritchie too. You know, Brett's there. I think they tried to bring Nick Ritchie over as well, who chose Toronto. That's going to be their identity. That's what they're looking at. I still think Calgary is going to look around and until the Eichel thing is settled I believe they've been right in the middle of all of that I don't think they're done I think if they can

find something else to do that's interesting for them they might do it I know out there the whole thing about Goodrow's trade list coming in you can only trade them to five teams that was a big talking point in the market i don't think the flames ever considered that a major pressure point i really don't think that they ever really looked at it like we have to get it done or else the list comes in i i never got a sense that was an issue i think they'll continue to look around at things but at the very least as you said they've transformed themselves into more of a sutter team you're gonna hate playing against them edmonton oilers cody cc warren fogel comes in for ethan bear yeah who they signed uh who they signed uh zach hyman and a flirtation

with darcy camper of arizona and a darnell nurse extension on the horizon that considering what the marketplace for defenseman is right now may come in at a similar price dare we say to jones and warrensky your thoughts on what edmonton's done well i do a radio hit every friday on bob stoffer's show in edmonton was my last radio hit of the year this year earlier in the week jeff i'd reported that they were looking at a four-year extension with nurse i think that has now changed i believe now they're looking at the eight-year term and i would expect that that number is going to be around hamilton's number ham Hamilton did seven times nine. I'm thinking that if nurse does get this done and they are working hard of it,

it's going to be around the eight times nine range, you know, Kemper. I think they lost out on Kemper because whichever prospect they offered, and I don't know who it was, Arizona liked Connor Timmons more than they liked what Edmonton was willing to offer. And that is why Arizona went with that package. You know, Fogle's a really interesting one in the sense that there was a ton of interest in Fogle. I heard that Carolina was actually a little bit surprised by how much of this interest he was in

to the point where they said, are we kind of making a mistake here? Should we keep him? But they couldn't get a deal done, and now Fogles got one done in Edmonton. Of all the things they did, the two that I kind of really stood out with the most were Bear and CeCe.

CeCe played really well in pittsburgh last year you know even some teams that played against him said that they thought he would be a total non-factor based on what they'd seen in the last couple of years but he played really well there like cc's not a guy who i think is bothered by a lot of things you know remember when we did an interview with mark stone we told him you know we were talking about cody cc and stone laughed and he said yeah you'll never get anything out of him so i kind of wondered if he'd want to come back into this it did surprise me a bit we'll see how that goes but you know the bear thing really surprised me because i really like

bear i like him as a player i think he's still got a lot of room to grow and get better. I recognize you have to give quality to get quality, but bear is the one move. I wonder if Edmonton is going to look back in the future and say, I wish we could have had that one over. What do you think about all this? I'm a huge fan of Ethan bear. I think that Ethanhan bear you know

actually you mentioned darnell nurse and that impending contract on the horizon i think ethan bear helped make darnell nurse a better defenseman like certainly darnell nurse helped out ethan bear but i think that bear really in a lot of ways also helped darnell nurse ed Edmonton, to me, was the most interesting team just because they had a lot of holes to fill. And it seems as if this is a squad that has a couple of Ferraris. And it's almost as if the general manager has the most complicated Rubik's Cube to try to figure out here.

What do you put around Connor McDavid and Leon Dreisaitl? How do you make all of this work? And not all of them are going to be hits. And I don't think all of them are going to be the huge misses that a lot of people think they're going to be. But it was a situation where at every single position, they needed to do something. Like, you know, in free agency, sometimes teams go in there, oh, all we need is a left shot

D, or all we need is a goaltender, a backup goaltender. All we need is a third line winger. It was like Edmonton had like a really big shopping list this time around. And anything in Canada is going to be under the microscope. And that's why I thought the

Cody Ceci thing was really interesting. Because he's had two go-ar canada one in ottawa and one in toronto and seemed as if he really found a home in pittsburgh and i think we do have to tip our caps to todd reardon who worked with him a ton uh in pittsburgh like remember how gonchar was it was the uh the defense whisperer with the penguins for for so long Yeah, Reardon's very good too. Reardon's done a real good job, and I think case in point is Cody Ceci. And he got, listen, a lot of term, and he got a lot of money. The only question is, how is he going to be in a Canadian market?

The interesting thing for me for Edmonton, though, for age, is right now, and we'll see what happens, but as of right now, they're going back with Koskinen and Smith. I got to think that's going to change. I got to think that's going to change, but as it is right now, like there were talks about the Buffalo Sabres with Koskinen.

And then after the Kemper deal to Colorado, all that conversation went away and as if the goalie market sort of dried up. But I would not be surprised at all if come opening night, it's Anton Hudobin, starting net minder, Edmonton Oilers. Yeah, I think that's a fair one to guess. Dallas is going to want to move.

Well, I guess, I don't know what the rules are here. Are we allowed to talk about other teams or do we do each team alone? But I agree with you. I think Dallas is going to move a goalie. I got to tell you, every time I tweeted out something about Edmonton in the last week, it's almost like I wanted to just run away from my device.

Like, cause it was, I just knew it was, it was like setting off a grenade on Twitter. You know, there was one guy who was DMing me, and he's a decent guy, but he was just DMing me one angry Oiler thing after another, and I just said to him, it's bad enough out there. I don't need this in my DMs. Man, they're shaking out there right now, those Oilers fans. We'll see.

We'll see how it goes. Okay, to the Los Angeles Kings here, Elliot. And I look at LA, and we've talked about this before. LA's done the rebuild. The rebuild for the Los Angeles Kings are over, and this free agency period proved it, whether it was the Arvidsson deal, or perhaps more specifically, the Philip Deneau deal.

$5.5 million dollars is the aav and now they're running up the gut on say kopitar and philip denot one two centers selkie trophy candidates what did you think of la and do you agree with me that the rebuild is totally done here oh yeah yeah i mean they're still gonna grow bit, but they've listened to what Doughty and Kopitar have had to say. And they want to get people back in the building, right? Like, to me, that says the Kings are looking at their situation. They say, we've got to sell some tickets here. So I got a funny text after Deneau signed. In my list of predictions, I predicted Deneau to LA the first time I did it.

Or I said LA makes a big run or something like that. I can't remember what I wrote. But in my second predictions the night before, I kind of said I'm chickening out a bit. I think LA is there, but there might be some other teams as well. And when he signed, like someone texted me from around the Kings and they said, you didn't have enough guts to hold to your prediction. You wavered. You wavered.

They did a really good job of keeping it quiet. For example, I will tell you that Deneau works out, I guess, at a gym in Montreal. And someone I know has a connection to that gym texted me and said find out if the no was in LA yesterday or went to LA yesterday and this would have been I would have found this out on Wednesday the day of the free agency so it was Tuesday and I texted someone and they said no that's not true so now I think it's possible like I don't know right now I may have had my timelines off it's possible he Like, I don't know right now. I may have had my timelines off. It's possible he might've gone there to visit.

So when I heard this tip and I got told, no, it's not true. I was like, no, I'm really doubting myself. And, but LA went hard. Like they outbid the Rangers. I don't know if they gave him an extra year or a bit more money, but they were willing to go to a place that the Rangers weren't willing to go. You know, that's why they got him. And Edler too, like Edler on a one-year deal.

You know, you're not doing that. Why are you signing Alex Edler to a one-year deal unless your goal isn't to compete in that division, right? Yep. We talked about OEL in a new challenge last week. I think Edler will be rejuvenated by that too. San Jose Sharks bring in Nick Bonino, Andrew Cogliano, your netminders now, Aiden Hill and James Reimer. Listen, San Jose, as we've talked about before,

have a lot of big ticket players, whether it's Eric Carlson, whether it's Brent Burns, Logan Couture is on a real sweet deal. They're a really interesting team and a tough team, really, to get a read on. Do you have a read on the San Jose Sharks? They plugged some holes they wanted to plug. They wanted a third-line center, and Bonino is a perfect fit. I think they wanted some positivity around their group. Bonino's a pretty positive guy too.

He's got a really good reputation as a teammate. And Cogliano does as well. So I think that helps. The Aiden Hill thing is really interesting. I do think they want to give Hill a chance to show, you know, can he take a job? Can he be the guy? And Reimer gives them a little bit of flexibility there.

Just somebody with a bit more of a pedigree in case anything goes sideways but I do think that they really do want to say to Hill we'd like to see what you can do with this you know San Jose is kind of in a mixed identity place right now you know I'd heard some rumblings about Timo Mayer in New Jersey. Those were flatly denied to me. Someone said, you're way off and don't go down that road, so I'm not. But I do think that Doug Wilson is trying things. Before they bought out Martin Jones, I think he tried to trade him with some retention, right?

So I don't think he's done trying to extricate himself from things. And obviously, whatever happens here with Evander Kane, we'll see where that goes. To the Seattle Kraken. And I don't think anyone thinks that they are done by any stretch of the imagination. They have cap space. They have a lot of defensemen.

Their defense looks good. They'll still need a number one center. And does it seem like, and maybe this just opened the doors for that vana check deal to go back to washington philip grubauer just sort of landed in their laps six years 5.9 million aav you know colorado was only willing to go to a certain place and i think it was five times five or five times 5.25. And then Seattle came right in and beat them to it. It was a bit of a surprise. You know, word started leaking out about an hour before it happened that they were going

hard at them, but it was still a little bit of a surprise that Seattle would do that. Because one of the things that Seattle talked about was they weren't crazy about term and they bent it in a couple of cases they bent it for alexiak they bent it for jayden schwartz and they bent it for grubauer but other than that they really tried to keep it tight you know the one thing i think about the kraken is there's going to be no easy games against them this year they've put together a roster that's going to beat you up that is physically going to wear you down come at you hard i agree with you they still need a number one center and i wonder a little bit how much they're going to score but i think they're going to defend really well and you know that when you

go to the uh kraken house that you're going to get some bruises. I'm really curious to see how people handicap that division. That's going to be a really interesting division next year. The Pacific is going to be Vegas. Some would say Edmonton. Some might be inclined to say Vancouver, who we'll talk about here in a second, and then a whole bunch of question marks. Yeah.

You might even just say Vegas, and then a bunch of question marks, which will offend everybody in Edmonton. I get that. Let's get to Vancouver. A much improved Vancouver Canucks squad. We talked a lot about Oliver Ekman-Larsen and Conor Garland. Throw Jason Dickinson into that mix, and Tuckerman and Jaroslav Halak and getting rid of bloated contracts albeit ones that were set to expire anyhow but still and all of a sudden and I know that the Pedersen and the Quinn Hughes deals are still out there and we'll talk about that in

a second but when you look at the lineup Elliot even just with a couple of additions doesn't everything seem to fit nicer and if you're travis green are you now finally looking at your roster and saying we've got three lines that can score here i think right now if you're travis green you're happier with your group on paper i would definitely agree with that i will say this i think one of the more eyebrow raising contracts was Pullman I think that one caught some people by surprise but I'm prepared to see you know what the Canucks see here they're deeper they should be better I still think you're looking at Pedersen Hughes and waiting to see what they sign for before you truly understand the full piece of the puzzle i do agree with you that this team should be better and the other thing that they

did which i thought was really interesting was they really went hard to make abbotsford a contender so they've got a lot of players there who are good AHL plus NHL depth players and they're close you know you don't have to worry about getting them across the continent things like that if you ever get a situation where you've got a ton of injuries those guys are generally closer to home now and there are a lot of guys who can play in spots at the NHL level. So I kind of liked all that. I'm just waiting to see once they get Patterson and Hughes signed, this is not a Travis green problem because you'll have them on his roster, but what their cap situation is going to look like.

Any idea what the holdup could be on these two deals? I know we're still seven weeks away, but. I think there's a couple of things. Number one, you can't really sign them long-term, right? Because you don't have the room to do it. But I think the other thing is, in Hugh's case in particular, now his situation is a little different because he's not eligible for an offer sheet. But look at what has happened to decontracts.

Well, we just talked about it with Darnell Nurse, and we're going to talk about it more as we get into Seth Jones and Dougie Hamilton later. Exactly. So I'm sure that that has... Or Kale McCarr. Hang on. What am I talking about? Kale McCarr is the obvious one.

What are you doing, Merrick? That's the obvious one. You know know that changes the equation around hughes so we'll see but like i like a lot of the depth signings they made i like luke shen brady keeper i like brady keeper there you like keeper i'm really curious to see pod coles in i have a big personal rooting interest in jack rathbone i like his story and i want him to do well you know i thought jason dickinson was a good pickup i thought it was a really good pickup for them can you pause on dickinson how many times did you hear when people came knocking on dallas's door the player they were trying to steal was jason dickinson yeah that was definitely the

case for a while there's no question about that but we talked about it last week the big one is Ekman Larson if he finds his form it's huge for the Canucks I like a lot of what they did around the edges of their roster but I'm just curious to see like the whole Hughes Pedersen situation what cap machinations do they have to do to get this all or not do to get this all sorted out? Okay. We'll finish off the, uh, the Pacific conversation. We're talking about Vegas and there's a couple of names that are dominating headlines there. Neither of which are members of the Vegas golden Knights, Mark Andre Fleury and Jack Eichel. Now they did bring in Nolan Patrick, Evgeny Dadunov,

Laurent Boissois, who comes in to back up Robin Leonard. But what's the conversation around Vegas from your point of view? And why is the answer Jack Eichel? No, I think, I thought bringing back Martinez was big for them too. You know, we'll talk a bit more about Fleury in the Chicago section still to come. But Jeff, after thinking about this for a few hours here on Sunday afternoon,

this might not be the take that everyone expected, but I think it's actually going to be better for both Vegas and Fleury that both sides have moved on. You know, I know there's hurt feelings. I know it was a shock when it happened. And I know Fleury briefly in the shock of the moment considered retiring. But I think that the more time passes and the more everybody thinks, my bet is they're going to realize it was time it was time for mark andre flurry to go no matter how much he loved vegas and he will always be able to go back there when his career is done if he wants to go back and be part of the organization i don't think that's going to

be a problem and i think it's also better for the golden knights as a team right now that they hand the net to Leonard. And my reasons are this. I just think that the two sides, they didn't trust each other. The Golden Knights didn't fully trust Fleury in goal, and Fleury didn't fully trust the Golden Knights as an organization, particularly when it came to on-ice decisions. And all you have to look is at the evidence. They traded for Robin Leonard. They signed him to a long-term deal. Last year as the season ended, he was their guy.

This year as the season ended, he was their guy again, even thoughurry won the vesna trophy you could just see that in the big situations when there was a little bit of doubt in their eyes they looked to lennar more than they looked to flurry and they did i think investigate trading lennar this year it fell through and then it became obvious to them that the trade they were going to be able to make was flurry that chicago really wanted them and that that was a deal that they were going to do so i think as a staff there a hockey staff they ultimately had more trust in lanner than they did in flurry to go forward for the organization. I think the other thing too is,

you know, last year, the picture of Fleury with the sword in his back that came from his agent, Alan Walsh's Twitter account, there are some teams who believe that this was always going to be the outcome after that happened. That eventually the Golden Knights would say, this happened and we can't forget it. While, like I said, I think they did investigate

the possibility of trading Leonard, at the end of the day, I think there were some people in the organization who never forgot that. So on one hand, I think there's a hockey reason. On one hand, I think there's an emotional reason. On one hand, I think there's an emotional reason. But I think that Marc-Andre Fleury is going to a Chicago organization that just said, look, we don't think you really want to retire.

Come here, and we're going to make you our guy. And the other thing, too, is there's no extension with this. They're going to put Fleury in a situation to play a lot, and if he wants to earn another contract, whether there or somewhere else in free agency next summer, this is going to give Fleury an opportunity, I think a better opportunity than Vegas, then to earn another contract next year. Because in Vegas, you know, he'll split with Leonard or lose the job to Leonard. Next year, he'll split a bit with Lankanen, but I think you're looking at him as the unquestioned,

clear-cut, number one guy. And, you know, I think that's going to be good for him. I just think now with a few days to think about this, get through the emotion and start thinking about it logically, this is the best thing for mark andre flurry and the vegas golden knights is to say you've been great for us and you will be great for us again in maybe an ambassadorial role in your future but the time right now is for us to move on and i think the best thing for Fleury is to move on because the uncertainty of is Leonard taking the job, that's gone now.

And I think he'll be better off for it. People may disagree with my take, but that's my take. As for Eichel, you know, if you listen to Kelly McCrimmon the other day, he sounded like a guy who was pretty content with his team, but we know the way the Golden Knights are. And the way they are is they see someone good, they go after them. They didn't necessarily need Alex Petrangelo a year ago,

but they saw him as the best player available, and they went and got him. And until Eichel is somewhere else, I'm always going to think that Vegas thinks that way. And just one final thing about the Knights. I do think that they made the Ryan Reeves trade to New York on the condition that New York would extend Reeves for a year, and I thought that was a good thing to do I think they'll miss Reeves

I think he was a big part of their identity I was very surprised they didn't put him back in for the home game game five late in the late in the Montreal series because I think the crowd fed off them like to me this is a a real bit of changing of the guard now for the Knights you look back at their original team, there's fewer and fewer guys left. And, you know, Fleury's now gone. Reeves is now gone. Noshik's now gone. You know, who's left? There's Carlson, there's Smith, there's Marcius. So that one great line for them. You know, they also sent Nick Holden to Ottawa, a place where he'll play more than he would in Vegas. I do say on one level, I think think Jeff, it's a little bit sad that, you know,

that wonderful expansion team that the golden Knights had five years ago. It's coming to an end. To the central. And we'll start with the Arizona coyotes who are loaded with draft picks for next season. They already have two in the first round. They have five in the second, which is why I think the most important name around Arizona this season

plays hockey for the Kingston Frontenacs of the OHL. And that's Payne for Shane. Shane Wright. That's Arizona and Buffalo. Look, I'll say this. Last year or around the deadline, there were people who said that the Coyotes were not decisive. They said that you would make deals with them and you couldn't get them closed. And let's just say for a second, that's true.

Well, I give the Coyotes credit for saying we can't be like that anymore? And they were decisive. And they made deals on their terms. You know, the tough thing, I think, for some of their fans there is, you know, they've been told rebuild, rebuild, rebuild before. But I think this is the right time. Like, I think under John Chayka, they made a decision to go for it and they tried. Okay.

And regardless of what that organization says about Chayka now, and I know it ended very poorly, he had the full support of the organization to do it. Well, it didn't work. And now you're losing Taylor Hall and Ekman Larson feels he needs a change. And your roster's aging a bit, particularly on defense. It calls for something new.

And they did it and they did it decisively. And they didn't have a first round pick. And they made that deal with Vancouver to get themselves a first round pick. Those are the decisions you have to make. And I think Arizona did what it needed to do. And I think the guy I'm watching between now and the start of next season is Christian Dvorak. I just can't believe that teams won't be trying to get him out of there.

Not Phil Kessel or Clayton Keller? I think Kessel for sure. I don't know as much about Keller. I haven't heard his name as much, but I have heard Dvorak a ton. And he's a center. He's a physical banging center who can get points. And those guys are hard to find.

I think there's a lot of teams out there that really like him. Let me throw a name out at you. Okay. Calgary. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, right? But Minnesota, San Jose, Rangers, Montreal, there's been a few. Chicago. Marc-Andre Fleury, Tyler Johnson, Seth Jones.

Where are the Hawks at, Freed? You know, the number one thing one thing obviously we learned this weekend the latest bit of news is that they convinced flurry to come play and that's you know it's obviously big for them a a flurry lankan and combination is a pretty good combination i'm a little surprised dylan strome is still there i thought he might get moved we'll see where that goes or if there's still a role for him there but i think chicago was going to look at this as it's a new day we're coming back and and and we're going for it i mean obviously you know jeff there's still a major off-ice issue there the investigation into what

happened in 2010 and i don't know if anybody A, if that report's going to be public, or B, what changes could happen depending on what the investigation determines. And I still think that is obviously something that still could very much affect the organization. But on the ice, they've clearly said, we're going for things. For the credibility of the organization, do they not have to release that, Elliot? If they keep that one secret, look out. I know how people will react, and I think they should make it public. I will say this again. I've written it before, and I think I've said it on the podcast before.

I've had a couple lawyers tell me that if they really want a lot of people to tell the truth, there are some people who say, you know, Brent Sopel's made it very clear that he's not afraid of telling the truth and he's going to say it. But lawyers will tell you there will be a lot of other people who will feel more comfortable about being honest if the report is private. And that is something that companies doing these kinds of investigations, they wrestle with. The Dallas Mavericks made theirs public. The Washington football team did not. Sometimes I do think that organizations say, I'd rather not have this public for obvious reasons. But again, I've had lawyers for people who have testified in these kinds of things or been depositioned in these kinds of things

who tell their clients that if it's going public, you should be very careful of what you say, unless you're comfortable with it. And they've seen examples of people who weren't as forthcoming as they would be if they would have known it was private. So I just would say that from a legal point of view, that's a reason why it doesn't get made public sometimes. We'll see. Colorado Avalanche. So they lose Philip Grubauer. He goes to Seattle.

They sign Darcy Kemper. It costs him a first-round draft pick and Connor Timmons, real good young defenseman. And whenever I mention Connor Timmons, you know, because I love this kind of goofy stuff. Connor Timmons has one blue eye and one brown eye. Oh my God. Okay. And

everybody from the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds is saying yeah, I know that. They re-sign Gabriel Landeskog. They bring in Darren Helm. Curtis McDermott comes in for a little bit of muscle on the blue line your thoughts on what colorado has done and they still and i don't know if the upper limit's going to be a magnet for them but they still do have some cap space too they've always said like we're going to protect for the future right they did kind of what we

expected they would do they got macar done and they worked backwards. And there were some people who were like, people are like, what? Cale Makar is making less than Zach Wierenski and Dougie Hamilton and Seth Jones? They only bought one year of UFA. For Wierenski, it's four years. For these other guys, obviously Jones and Hamilton, it's their whole contracts.

So it's not exactly apples to apples. It's a precedent setting contract and nobody's going to complain about it. You know, they wanted him around Rantan's number. That was the best way to do it and, and get it done. Landeskog. That was a real battle.

They grinded, they grinded, they grinded and they got there. You know, I believe they were always going to take one more run at Landiscaug, and they did. And I think Landiscaug wanted to be an avalanche, and he wanted to win. And, you know, I do think, and this is what another agent who wasn't Landiscaug's told me, he had a player who was dependent on Landiscocks. He knew that his guy

was a good player, but he wasn't going to be taken by anybody ahead of Landiscocks. And he said that one of the things he talked about with his client was how important is winning to you? And the client said, very important. I want to win. And he said, well, okay, look at the landscape and tell me if you go free agent, how many places do you think you're going to get a good contract where you're going to win? And I do think Landis Gog looked at that. Like,

for example, let's just say his deal ended up being eight times seven. Let's go seven times seven. Well, who other forward got seven times seven? Nobody. And if you look at it too, Jeff, where were you going to get seven times seven

or even seven times eight and a half if you wanted to do it that way, where you had a chance to win? I don't know how many of those positions were available. So at the end of the day, they grinded their way there and Landis Scott got a good contract at a place he wanted to be his number one choice and they're good enough to win

and I think that mattered to them you know I think McDermott was a really good pickup for them I've always liked McDermott and I think Colorado felt that that was one thing that was missing from them in the playoffs is I think they felt they got a bit pushed around by Vegas

and you need some of that beef. I've always liked McDermott. I'm a fan of his. And, you know, I'll tell you this. I did have someone say to me that they thought that at one point, Colorado might've been a stealthy team on Eichel. I asked a couple other teams about that and they said they could do it, but there is a salary cap in this league, you know.

So I'm assuming with everything that they've done here, even as a long shot, that probably can't work. The thing is, too, is they still have incredible talent. They're still a really, really talented team, and I think they're going to be a handful for everyone. And I expect if they're good, they'll go out in the light again. Dallas stars, Glenn hitting and raffle. Ryan Suter adds to a really impressive decor for the Dallas stars, which now includes as well.

You want to talk about rough and tumble, hard hitting defenseman, Yanni Hockenpah comes in, uh, in a third pairing role for Dallas. So their blue line looks real nice. And I know a lot of eyebrows were raised, Elliot, about Braden Holtby. And everybody looked at Dallas and said, well, how many goaltenders are allowed to play at one time? Here's how I feel about the Holtby thing. I think that Dallas wants Jake Ottinger to have a lot of reps this year and play a lot of minutes. And so even though he'll be given the chance to win the starter's job at training camp, he'll probably play in the American League and see where it goes from there.

They're probably not sure about Ben Bishop's health. He's had a hard time with the hospital bracelet, as we all know, getting it off. And I think that they're looking at probably starting the season with anton hudobin and braden holtby as the pair and if someone comes in and listen we just talked about edmonton they may be the most obvious choice if edmonton comes in looking for a goaltender they make that move holtby becomes a starter ottinger becomes the backup they'll try to get them games more than once every six or seven games and that's your battery until they know what's happening with Bishop and that may not

be until next year that's how I look at that situation I think that's fair there were rumors that Bishop was going to get bought out and I looked into that and I was told he can't get bought out because he's not cleared to play. So we'll see what happens at the beginning of training camp. The fact that they went out there and got Holpe says to me that they are legitimately concerned that will Bishop be able to play

at some point next year? That's at least potentially on the radar. I do agree with you. I think there's a chance they could move a goalie. I watched today, I'm trying not to look at Twitter as much, but I'm failing miserably in my first week of vacation. You know,

I saw Craig Morgan did a, who covers the coyotes, did a poll of the mid of what division are they in the central division? I can't remember. I completely forgot what the divisions are called now. Midwest central. What? I don't even know anymore.

I can't believe this league. They've changed. They changed the vision titles last two years. I don't know what they're called now. Midwest, Central. I don't even know anymore. This league, they've changed division titles the last two years. I don't know what they're called anymore. There's no more North Division, Elliot. You don't get the easy one anymore. The Canadian Division. Yeah. Whatever they're in.

Midwest, Central, whatever it is. Big 12. They're in the Central. Southeastern Conference. They're in the Central. Oklahoma and Texas moving over. And I saw some of the picks and Dallas seemed really low to me. Like a lot of the people grading them.

I like Dallas. I do too. I think they're really deep. I mean, it looks like they've got 450 players under contract now. They took a run at Getzlaff too. They really tried to get Getzlaff there. So, I mean, a lot of it is going to be health. Like is Sagan going to get back to health? Like a lot of it is going to be health like is say again get back to health

like a lot of those guys are really banged up that team was really banged up after the the bubble playoffs and i just think this rest is going to do them well i really like their team i think they're deep i think they got a lot of bodies so i'm bullish on them too i'm just curious to see what happens in goal their blue line looks so good. Yeah. Their blue line looks excellent. Minnesota Wild. We knew going into free agency that Bill Guerin wanted three defensemen. Had three spots to fill. Kulikov, Merrill, Goligosky at $5 million.

There's the three. Minnesota Wild. I know there's pain on the horizon. We've talked about it with the cap situation in the, with the buyouts of Parisian suitor, but this is a better team and Bill Garen's filled the holes that he wanted to fill.

And this is the roster and they're going for it again. Yeah. They have some interesting questions. Like Goligoski was a guy they really wanted and they got him. Uh, they went after Foligno.

They didn't get him. He goes to Boston. I think they looked at guys like Bogosian and McCabe, and Bogosian took Tampa Bay, and McCabe got the big payout from Chicago. Let me just say I'm really happy for Jake McCabe. I've always really liked his game, and I've liked dealing with him,

and he suffered a pretty bad injury last year. I was happy to see him kind of land on his feet. So they tried those guys and didn't get them. You know, Garen, he's still got to deal with Kaprizov and Fiala, right? And he's still around the Eichel. So I don't think Minnesota's done yet. I don't think we have a truly accurate picture

of what they're going to look like. Like that's one team. You know, I talked before about anaheim about how i think they've got more to do yeah i really do think minnesota has more to do too i i do like i'm really hoping to see marco rossi on this team next year i know it was a challenging year health-wise for marco rossi i'd love to see him on the team look if they don't go out and get eichel then don't you think boldy and rossi are both going to be given looks? Those are candidates A and B, 100%. Yeah.

So that to me is the question. Look at Guerin. We know he's fearless. We know he's not afraid to do things. He's still got some stuff in the hopper. The Caprizov-Fiala negotiations remain. I just look at this and I see this picture isn't complete yet. That brings us to Nashville.

The question I keep asking is are they better? They lose Ryan Ellis. That's tough. Phillip Myers comes in from the Philadelphia Flyers. Dave Verdick in to back up UC Saros as Pecorine retires and Cody Glass comes in from the Vegas Golden Knights.

I'll ask you the question i can't seem to answer myself are they better again they're another team i don't think we have the full picture yet if you take a look at it you remember last year david poiled made a couple of moves really late grandland and holla so i still think he's got holes in his roster. There's the left wing, for example. You know, last year they were waiting late on Killorn. They were also talking about Marcheseau, but they ultimately decided not to do it. Taylor Hall as well.

You got to throw him into that mix because of John Hines. So I don't know if there's as many obvious candidates right now, but that's a team i i look at and i say there's there's still more to do st louis the blues and we thought that could be slash would be a landing pad if landis gog went to the market and colorado didn't bring him back the st louis blues who still by the way have v have Vladimir Tarasenko on the team and in the lineup. They bring in Brandon Saad. They bring in Pavel Bushnevich.

That was good value for Saad. You know what? For that number, are you surprised that Colorado didn't bring him back? I just don't think that they were in a position they could do that with that much term or were willing to do that with that much term. That's fair. And the other thing, too is buchnevich i think it's tough to say how guys kind of get lost in new york because they're on such a big stage there i don't think we've kind of recognized how far that guy has come as a player too and i don't think he was dealt because

the rangers wanted to do it i i just think they knew they they couldn't do it eventually they were gonna lose him and the rangers obviously oh we'll talk about this the makeover they've done in a second but i like those pickups for st louis buchnevich and sod you see there's two really inflamed situations in the nhl right now and one of them is eichel and the other is Tarasenko. Now Eichel gets more air, I think, because he's a captain, a number one center. He's still in the prime of his career, the whole injury thing too. But if you've really been reading the stories out of St. Louis and Jeremy Rutherford, for example, has had a couple of good ones. There's somebody working there, and I assume it's the agent who's working there, just lobbing bombs about Tarasenko every three days, trying to get St. Louis to force him out of there.

Like that is a situation where it is very clear that whoever's working on Tarasenko's behalf is working hard because he wants out, they want him out, and he's working to do it. And St. Louis is saying, no, no, no, we're not doing it until we've got the deal we want. But I think Tarasenko's like Eichel in the sense that he's impatient. He wants this to be over. So I don't know where that one's going to go. We'll talk about Tarasenko a bit more when we get to the Islanders.

Oh. How about that? Tease. I'll tell you this i like what st louis has done and i kind of wonder like this is purely me talking here but if chara plays next year i could see st louis being one of the teams saying you know how do you feel about us man his hockey db could be fascinating if he just goes in mercenary mode and at the end of the career just new team every season trying to grab one

more stanley cup as everybody fast forwards now to the islanders section just so you know my chara teams teams i think would kind of like to have them would be like florida you know washington if you wanted to come back st louis and i'm sure there's more but those are my chara guest teams that's what i'm guessing on your chara dartboard got it my chara dartboard winnipeg jets brendan dillon nate schmidt help round out the defense and riley nash uh comes in as well your thoughts thoughts on Kevin Sheveldayoff's moves? You know, I thought Winnipeg had a really good week. Oh, redid Stastny as well. Throw that in the mix.

Yeah, Stastny coming back. You know, I thought they had a really good week. I thought Nick Schmidt was a good pickup for them. I thought Dylan was a good pickup for them. Like, you always look at what a team's motives are or how a team does things, right? Winnipeg likes guys with term. They like knowing that they have players there for a while and you don't have

to worry. Can you sign them, not sign them? Are they going to stay? They're going to leave. Well, they, they convinced Schmidt to go there and he's got some term left.

They've got Dylan to go there and he's got some term left. Winnipeg to go there, and he's got some term left. Winnipeg likes that. When you look at a team's MO, that fits with their MO. I like that for them. And you know Stasny likes it there, and now Schmidt's going to be part of their Minneapolis mafia there.

That's true. Jeff, one more thing about the Jets. I do think they're going to try to move Sammy Niku here. I think he'd like to go somewhere else to get an opportunity to play. So that's one move I'm still kind of expecting them to make. Okay, let's pause there, catch our breath, have a sip of something, and come back. We'll kick off the Metro with questions about Carolina. No Dougie Hamilton, but we got a lot of questions about defensemen and goaltenders.

That's next. Carolina, no Dougie Hamilton, but we got a lot of questions about defensemen and goaltenders. That's next. All right, Elliot, time for the Metro now. Carolina Hurricanes kick it off. Ethan Baer is in, no Dougie Hamilton. He's in New Jersey. Ian Cole is in, as is Tony D'Angelo and Brendan Smith. Your new net minders are Frederick Anderson and anti-ranta and Andre Svetchenikov is still without contract.

Your thoughts on what Carolina has done. And a lot of it involves the backend. Derek step on added on Saturday night to acquiring X Rangers. That's Carolina's big thing right now is getting all the X Rangers. I think it's interesting. You know, they had a really good team last year and look how different it's going to be. And this is like a real test of the way the owner Dundon likes to do things. And that is that he puts value on things and he

won't go past it you know we talked on the last podcast that i believe their first offer to hamilton was tory krug uh seven times six and a half ish it was a little bit more that that's what they initially targeted sarah seven of theic reported that their last offer was eight years, just around $50 million. So they were willing to go into the six range, but they weren't willing to go anywhere near what he ended up getting. And Warren Fogle, they weren't willing to go where he got to, 275. Alex Nedeljkovic, they weren't willing to go where he got to which is in the threes so that is the way that they do things and this is going to be the test of how they do things does it work does it not work yeah the thing that i always wonder about because i don't know how how

far off carolina was from what he ended up getting i'm talking about the Delcovich here, what he ended up getting from Detroit. And I understand the idea of putting value on something and not wanting to go above. And I also understand the old cliche of being penny wise and pound foolish. And I understand drawing lines in sand and say, nope, we're not going to pay a penny more. This is what we think. But this is sports. And part of the reality of sports has always been, and again, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be so in the future, but has always been, sometimes you just kind of have to pay more to get what you want. And that's just sort of baked in the pie when it comes to sports. That's always how I've been led to believe sports organizations run. But to your point, this is the test.

Yeah. Other common practice is going to be demonstrated to be correct. And they've let the nickels and dimes get in the way of the dollars or Tom Dundon's way is going to be successful. I don't know what the answer is going to be, and none of us do. You know, I still think they got a lot of good players. A lot of good players. I think Ethan Baer is a home run.

I know we talked about him when we talked about Edmondson. I think that's a home run. To Columbus, and boy, we got a lot to talk about here. No Seth Jones, but welcome in Adam Boakvist, Jake Bean, Sean Corrali from the blue jackets youth hockey program proud graduate there patrick linea returns as does zach warrensky with a six-year contract holy smokes it's a six-year contract, $57.5 million for each, 9.58 AAV. You know what it reminds me of? Oliver Ekman Larson, when he signed that eight-year extension in Arizona.

You had to do it for the credibility of your franchise. It had to get done. Two things, show that A, will pay pay and two, he wants to stay. Yes. Both things. Now, Wierenski is younger than Ekman Larson was then. So it's a bit of a safer bet, but I still think it was huge. I think after everything that happened, well, you know, Jones leaving trading out a lot

of that core that did a lot of good things in Columbus. I think they needed to show that they could keep a valuable piece. And I have to tell you, as recently as a week ago, there were a lot of people who didn't think Columbus could do it. You know, when they traded Jones and they started moving some of those guys out, Atkinson, Foligno was gone. I think they're trying to move Max Domi. I just don't know if the fit is going to work there.

I think they want to see if they can get them to somewhere else where the fit might be better. But there were teams calling them. What are you doing with Orenski? You know, we're hearing Orenski might not want to stay. And Columbus said, no, we're not doing this. And they made him a huge offer. And yes, it's a big offer. And this is where the analytics miss.

They don't understand the skin in the game. They don't understand the organizational pressures. They don't understand how your fan base connects to your players, right? And this is a signing that's about that i was surprised when i heard it come down simply because the rumors were that it wasn't going to go in that direction but they found a way they convinced them they threw a lot of money at them and i had heard that when wierenski saw what they kind of did last weekend, they acted decisively and they pitched him on what their plan was.

He was willing to listen to that plan. And then they packed it up with the Brinks truck, I guess. I mean, but the bottom line is I think it's a huge victory because the word around the league as recently as a week ago was Columbus wasn't even going to be able to do this like there was no chance he was going to sign this one to me agree or disagree for each this one to me very much feels like a john davidson deal yarmulke clainen we all know is tough negotiator hard nose all of it you know grind down save as much as you can this one looks to me like this is the show business

side of the columbus blue jackets who is john davidson agree disagree well i agree in a sense i do i i think that that's what davidson was brought back to do but the other thing i really believe jeff is that when you have a year like those guys had last year everybody has to be willing to learn from it and saying what do we have to do to make this better what do we have to do to make sure this doesn't happen again and you know the one thing that hasn't changed with kekalainen is that he's decisive, that he can say he's not afraid. And if he's going to say that, I think this is best for my team, I'm going to do it.

You know, we had that one podcast with Kekelein where we talked about that. And I thought, you know, he didn't back down about the way that some of the way that Columbus handles things. I bet you that Columbus looked at it and said, we have to start doing some things a little bit differently here. And what they have now is they have a new generation of players coming who they can look at and say, whatever that past is,

it has nothing to do with us. We can build something new. And I guarantee the Blue Jack jackets are looking at and saying we don't have to change our code of ethics or ethos but we can lighten up a little bit and i think the other thing too is you know that organization just got put through just basically hell and they showed a real human side yes you know the way a lot of people dealt with it look i i don't want to go too deeply into this because you know i don't know if it's really my place but i think it's impossible not to go through something like that and think okay how is this going to change my life in a better way and i'm sure columbus looked at it and

said it changes you it just does absolutely to new jersey dougie hamilton's new home ryan graves's new home yep jonathan bernier comes in to back up Mackenzie Blackwood as well do you like what New Jersey has done well I think New Jersey is an organization that was looking to breathe some life into their franchise right yep and you know Luke Hughes you saw the way the fans reacted to that so his brother reacted to that exactly like the building stinks like i i thought that i laughed my head off when i heard that you know it was such a real moment and the fans loved it and to me what new jersey had to do here was they had to pull themselves off the mat i think even in their market a little bit too and they created excitement with hugh They created some excitement with Hamilton.

I think they're still looking for another winger. I think they went after Saad, but Saad chose St. Louis. I'm sure they went after some other guys too. You know, Tarasenko, I think they've looked into Tarasenko. I don't know how they feel about it, to be perfectly honest. You know, one of the things that I have heard is that, you know, some teams, I don't know if New Jersey is one of them or not. They aren't crazy about what they're seeing with Tarasenko's shoulder.

And I think that's one of the reasons that hasn't been done yet. But I just don't know if New Jersey is going to go there, but I think they're looking for another winger. And I don't think they're done. Speaking of Tarasenko, you teased it earlier. And so let's get there. The New York Islanders, before we do Tarasenko though,

Palmieri and Sezikis, are they going back? So here's my theory on the Islanders. Okay. My theory is that Lou Lamorello is trying to trade for somebody and he doesn't want anyone to know how much cap room he does or doesn't have. So last year, prior to last season, the first day of free agency, there was no news about Andy Green. The first day of free agency, there was no news about Andy Green. So I was talking with someone after that, and I said, or during that day,

and I said, oh, I wonder what Andy Green, they go, take him off your board. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, Andy Green's going back to the Islanders. Oh, I said, oh, it hasn't been announced yet. Oh, it's done. We just don't know when Lamorello's going to announce it. And it wasn't, I don't want anyone to think it was the agent, because Lamorello would probably strangle the agent if he thought it was, and it wasn't the agent.

It was another team. And we just don't know when he's going to announce it. And you know when he announced it? December 31st, New Year's Eve. So he waited a couple of months. So I think Palmieri's signed. I think Parise's signed. I think Sezikis is signed.

Here's one for the wall for everyone to mark down. The rumor is, and I like, obviously I have no chance of knowing this is true. Okay. But the rumor is Sezikis is signed for like six years, two and a half million a year. I don't even know if it's true. I'm just throwing it out there. Cause I love guessing at what the Islanders are up to while Amarllo's there i have no idea if i'm going to be right i have no idea if i'm going to be wrong i'm just throwing it out there because i'll laugh my head off if it turns

out to be right i don't know if palak's got an extension yet bovillier's arbitration so we might know that one at some point but the one of the things I'm wondering is like, I really think Lamarill is trying to make a move. I don't know if it's Tarasenko or it's someone else, but I don't think he wants people to know what his cap space is or isn't. So is there any chance that he doesn't announce any of these for two months? Yes. Like,

like I said, Beauvilliers arbitration. So we might have to find out. Yeah. Unless this is the first secret of arbitration in NHL history. But what's he going to do here? The thing is, though, the longer that it goes deeper into the summer without Palmieri and Sezika signing anywhere else,

everyone's just going to go, the contracts are sitting in Lou's desk drawer. But yeah, but that's the funny thing. When's he going to announce them? It just becomes obvious that that's what's happening. Who the funny thing. When's he going to announce them? It just becomes obvious that that's what's happening. Who knows? Who knows when he's going to announce it? One of the other reporters said to me, we should have a pool on when these get announced.

When's opening night? October 12th. Then sometime between the 10th and the 11th. But I do think he's got a deal he's working on. I don't know if it's Tarasenko or someone else but that's what i wonder if that's my theory is that he's working on a trade he doesn't want anyone to know how much cap room he's got all right let's get to the rangers and the big one is ryan reeves and we'll get there in a second but barclay goodrow

sammy blay patrick nemeth we'll see what happens with Alexander Georgiev, whether he's there on opening night or not. And the biggie, the headline grabber, Ryan Reeves. Too easy to say that the Rangers were affected perhaps too strongly by Tom Wilson and the events in those last two games against the Washington Capitals. You know, everybody says this is about the Capitals, and I do think that is a factor,

but I think it's more about the Islanders. Larry Brooks has done a lot of great reporting on this. When Gorton and Davidson were fired, he talked about a couple of late season Islander games. Yeah. And they got pushed around, and the Islanders beat them just purely on the Islander games. Yeah. And they got pushed around and the Islanders beat them just purely on the Islander way.

Right. So I think it's more than Wilson. I think it's just teams that were played with some emotion or some edge or a willingness to grind you into the ice. The Rangers, you know, didn't handle that. So Reeves is there Rangers, you know, didn't handle that. So Reeves is there now, you know, Sammy Blay, you know, he's another guy like that.

Goodrow, Tenorti, it says to me, the Rangers thought they were soft. I mean, there, there's simply no other way to say it. By the way, you tweeted out about Reeves telling a team in the Eastern Conference that he was Tom Wilson protection. I think that was the Rangers.

I think that's when he was a free agent. How long ago? What's this current deal? Three years, and they signed him to an extension for one year? Yeah. So I think it was that tour before he re-signed in Vegas. So that would have been the Jeff Gorton then. Yeah.

His last free agency period I heard was that one. You know, who's got to be loving these moves? Who loves hockey players like this? Who? Gerard Gallant. One of the reasons Riley Smith's name is, is all over the rumor mill is because Gerard Gallant likes him too. Loves him.

Loved him in Florida. Loved him in Vegas. I don't think it would surprise anybody if, uh anybody if Riley Smith ends up a member of the Rangers. Just one final thing on the Rangers. They got a couple of big decisions to make here. You got to get Shosturkin signed, and I think he's looking for a number in the sixes. And, you know, you've got to make a long-term decision

on Zbigniew. You know, I think they were in on Deneau. I think other teams have asked them about Strom. You know, I think they were in on Deneau. I think other teams have asked them about Strom. You know, I said it before about Deneau. I think the Kings were either going a year longer or a bit more money than the Rangers are willing to do. And then the whole Eichel thing hangs over this too, right? So, like, I don't think Chris Drury is done

by any stretch of the imagination. So, he's still got some work to do. Flat off your flyers, Cam Atkinson, Nate Thompson mentioned Ryan Ellis earlier, Keith Yandel, Martin Jones comes in to back up Carter Hartz. We knew Chuck Fletcher was going to be active and he has been.

We talked about this last week about they felt that, you know, one of the issues with their group was they weren't willing to play with the, for each other. And they think that's going to change Carter Hart. Now we'll see if they take a run at signing him a long-term. I think there were long-term discussions with, with heart last year,

but they didn't get done. Now we'll see what happens, how the flyers feel about him now, but it's very clear to me if you listen to fletcher talk he's going to challenge his coaches to come up with a better defensive system and he's going to challenge his players to defend better too i think what their gambling is is that some of the chemistry needed to be fixed and now they've addressed that and they hope and think that they are going to be better and uh like i said last week ristolion ellis atkinson you know these

are high care guys and that's what they're going for here pittsburgh penguins uh keystone state rivals there to the philadelphia flyers only a couple of moves from Ron Hextall. I like the McGinn move. I think there were a few teams after him. I heard Calgary was. I would think that Toronto was at least looked into that too. No, because he played for the Guelph Storm or the OHL. He did not play for the Sioux Greyhounds, so that's disqualifying.

So you mentioned Brock McGinn, Danton Hine, and the other one coming in there yeah right right about Danton Hine listen pretty quiet free and again none of it's over by any stretch but pretty quiet initial free agency period from the from the Pittsburgh Penguins I think they've been trying to move Marcus Pedersen a bit and I do think there are teams out there that like Peders's game. I'm not sure they like the number he's at, but they like his game. So I'm curious to see where that's going to go. But it was pretty much what Pittsburgh kind of hinted was bargain bin a bit. And we'll see. I think the other thing that I'm curious about here is when do they have a feeling on Malkin

and how long he's going to be out? Like, I wonder if this comes into a situation where they show up, they get closer to camp and they have a better idea of where Malkin kind of is and kind of figure out what they want to do from there. Makes sense. We'll finish up the Metro. We're talking about the Washington capitals.

And one of the big questions was when it was revealed, what the nature of the Ovechkin contract was and it is five years at 9.5 million dollars on the aav you had three times ten i believe for each yeah i was off on that one i missed that one no but it sounds like he wanted to do something smaller and it it was the team that said, no, we need you for five. You know, first of all, some people were saying, oh, it's too much term to give him. Nope. You know, I don't want to listen to any of this.

I think it's like, again, it goes back to what we kind of talked about with Moransky. As far as I'm concerned, you can never pay that guy enough. If you said we're giving Ovechkin our entire salary cap and nobody else can play for the Capitals, I still wouldn't think that would be enough. For what he's done to the organization? Oh, yeah.

If you look around the league and say how many players individually deserve a piece of the organization, isn't Ovechkin right at the top of that list 100% and he won he won a cup and how much more valuable is that franchise because he played for it how much money have they made because he's played for it you remember it many of our listeners remember it fans that have come to the game more recently may not remember or not know it but when Ovechkin showed up there this team was awful and this franchise was was in the ditch do you remember what it was like those you remember some of the Jagger years when Jagger wouldn't even do like line rushes with the team and war and in the

pregame like he was bad we tend to forget because Washington's now become a real model franchise. It was awful for H. It was so bad before Ovechkin got there. Look what he's helped build. So I got no problem with whatever they sign him with. As for Gretzky, all I want to see is I want to see him give it a good run.

He had a good quote the other day. He said, second place is not bad too. I don't believe that for a sec. I think he wants it. I think he wants it. And I think he wants to go for it. I hope he gets a chance to give it a great run. I really do.

You know what it's going to be? It's going to be a great piece of marketing for the Washington Capitals, for Alexander Ovechkin and the NHL. When's the last time the NHL sold a race? When's the last time anyone in the NHL sold a race? This is going to be fantastic, Elliot. No matter what happens to the Washington Capitals now, you can still say this team is selling a race.

And because of that, the Caps are going to be must-see TV. I'll watch. I know you'll watch. Many people listening are just going to watch. Even if the caps completely implode, people are going to watch to see if Ovechkin can catch Gretzky. I think that's a great thing for the league.

I thought it was very big for them that they were able to get Vanacek back. There were some rumors a couple days before UFA that that might happen. As a matter of fact when they traded dylan to uh the jets i actually sent a note to somebody there saying i'm hearing rumblings that you're going to use these two picks to get vanichek back and they kind of laughed and said no and then of course it happened a couple days later i just didn't think at that time they knew that Vanacek would be available, right?

Yeah. But then they did it. Then they only traded one of the picks, not both of them. You know, they really wanted to move one of those D to free up some space. You know, they're still really tight, and I think they're going to be interesting. They're another team. I look at them, and I kind of wonder, is there something else there? Kuznetsov, I don't think they're going to be able to move him.

I think it's going to be really interesting to see how he comes back and plays next year. But again, I look at them and I say, they want some flexibility. What else are they going to try? All right, Freed, we'll finish off this podcast with a discussion about the Atlantic Division. Can you be more Pacific, as we say in the Atlantic? We'll start with the Boston Bruins. Nick Foligno, Thomas Nosek, Eric Holla, Derek Forbert, Taylor Hall re-signs, questions about Tuca Rask. Linus Allmark is in.

He'll be the battery with Jeremy Swayman. Your thoughts on what the Boston Bruins have done. The Allmark thing kind of threw me a bit, and it made me wonder a bit what they think about the future of Rask because they really think highly of Swayman to the point where they were willing to move Vlader, of course, to Calgary. There was no way I would have predicted the Allmark move. That one really surprised me. You know, Boston, they did a lot of really interesting things. They got a lot of really

good players I thought it pretty good value you know I think they were really disappointed in their forward depth last year and they they got a lot of guys who can really help with that and I like the Riley Mike Riley signing too so now the questions I kind of have is you know what are they going to do at second line center and what are they going to do with jake debrusk because last year debrusk a left shot played on the right side are they going to get put them back on the left side and say okay this is your time again for another shot or are they going to move them there's a Marchand and a Hall in front of him on the left side, though. That's the problem. Yes.

So I agree with that. But I think he wants to play the left side. So what's Boston going to do there? Again, I think it's really fascinating. You don't have Krejci anymore, and we know we have one more year of Bergeron, and then we'll see. I wonder if they're looking around the league at centers and saying,

this is our next guy. This is going to be our target. This is the guy we're going to go after to be a top two center here. That's what I'm wondering about Boston is, you know, they're going to go for it this year. And I, and I like some of the moves they made. I really did. I think they're going to go for it this year. And I, and I like some of the moves they made. I really did. I think they're going to be a, a tough team to handle, but I also wonder if one of the

things that Don Sweeney is doing right now is with the whole from Kretchy and the uncertain future of Bergeron. Yeah. Like I wonder is Boston's next big move. It's next center. You surprised by David Kretchci packing it up no i'll give chris johnston credit we were talking about this the day of free agency off camera and he told me he heard that this was a potential scenario he said that he heard that i guess in krejci like

there's some people in his family that only speak czech and there's others that only speak english and it was important that they all learn to communicate with each other and be around each other and that turned out to be totally true now his family's gonna go overseas and um you know get to know each other and i you can't argue with that. I respect that. Like, how can you have a problem with that? But 962 games, dude. He's got 1,000 on the horizon. Nah, you know what?

Your family's way more. To me, that's typical Bruin, you know, we before me. I would just like to say this about Krejci. I'm really going to miss him. Underrated blunt quote. Like, if I asked him a question about something I was getting an honest answer I really liked dealing with Krejci a lot I really did as I always say about David Krejci like not the fastest guy out there

by any stretch of the imagination you know when he was on the ice he was generally one of, if not the slowest, but he found room sort of right behind the puck to exist and found creativity there. To me, he was one of the most fascinating players in the league for age because he didn't try to catch up to anybody. He tried to figure out a way to play in that little vacuum behind the bullet, as I always to say about david kreitsch that's where he learned to play and for that reason to me he was one of the most fascinating guys in the league he never tried to be fast he just tried to play in that little pocket right there and for my money there was no one better at doing that than david kreitsch man was he yep man was he good buffalo sabers we mentioned jack eichel

uh a little bit earlier we did an entire podcast uh with dr chad press mac um which we thank everyone for listening to well you know i just want to say i appreciated all the comments good and bad like there were same there were a lot of people who liked it there were a lot of people who didn't like it i read as many as i could I will say this, I wanted to say thank you because there were a lot of people that whether it was on Twitter or in my DMs, they added more layers to the story. People brought up things like insurance, which I think is an excellent one that I wished I would have asked. I heard from some people who'd had disc replacements or fusion, and they gave their points of view about their experiences. Like sometimes it happens in the business, Jeff, where, you know, you report something and then more information comes out.

This was one of those situations where we did this interview and there were more perspectives and questions that came to me. And I wanted to say, I really appreciated them because I heard from people who had these procedures before and they weighed in. I heard from people who said, why didn't you ask about the insurance? I wish I would have thought of it. Like I was kicking myself after, because you know, money does drive a lot of these decisions. Sure. There was one thing I wanted to mention.

So the Sabres have a really good surgeon. He does the bills in the Sabres. His name is Dr. Andrew Cappuccino. And there were some people who asked me, why didn't you bring up Dr. Cappuccino's own history? Because he has done some disc replacements before. And the reason we didn't do that is because I felt very strongly that if we were going to allow Eichel's perspective to be told here, I didn't want to be guesstimating or speculating on other people's motives. You know, Dr. Cappuccino to this point hasn't spoken or the doctors haven't spoken. I didn't think it was fair to comment on their motives this was some people said it was biased in favor of eichel well of course it was it was eichel's guy explaining the case

but i just didn't think it was right to speculate on dr cappuccino's motives or hearsay of his comments without him there but i wanted to say that i really appreciated all the feedback positive and negative and i wanted to thank all the people who shared stories of their own experiences with either surgeries because I know a lot more about it now. So I wanted to say thanks. Same. What Elliot just said, I echo it. Echo chamber on that one. How much does the Peter Fish note move a Jack Eichel trade along if it does it all well first of all it was kind of when

that came out and all the buffalo reporters had it i guess lance lasowski had it and john vogel had it i was like oof i kind of wished it would have come out a couple days later after this interview look i don't think that surprises anybody i think eichel's really frustrated it's like we talked about with tarasenko they want want this to be over. They just want to know where they're playing next year, right? And in Eichel's case, he wants to get a procedure done. It was very interesting. So one of the people who commented on the interview was Mike Russo, who writes for The Athletic of Minnesota. And someone asked him, how did the Wild feel about this surgery if they trade for him? And he said, well, the Wild will just, they feel it's going to be Eichel's decision.

So, you know, like, I mean, if you're Eichel, that's probably why you're frustrated because you probably have that intel. But the one thing is like Kevin Adams here, I don't know if this changes it very much for Buffalo. Like one of the tough things here is that, you know, Eichel's mad, but I think the Sabres are mad too. And, you know, Eichel wants to push them and push them, but the Sabres, I think, are like, you can't push us.

We have a line in terms of what we're getting, and we're determined to get it. And I think if Adams and the Sabres felt pressure, he'd be traded already. I just think they're looking at it like, nope, we have our line. And sports is very alpha, like all sports, men's sports, women's sports, they're very alpha. You have to be willing to handle intimidation and you have to be able to intimidate. Whether it's the way you act or the way you compete, intimidation is a big part. And I think the Sabres are looking at it and saying, we're not going to be intimidated here and we're going

to show you. Now, do I think they step it up periodically yes i think they do but i think they're gonna they're gonna say we're not gonna be if you want to use the term bullied we're not gonna be bullied into a move you know i think they're still gonna look to add some things in goal and maybe they try to bring a couple of veterans uh there but and i do think eichel's eventually going to be traded but let's just say it gets traded tomorrow i don't think it's going to be because of our podcast or the statement. I think it's going to be because they get the deal they want.

Outside of Eichel, what do you make of the Buffalo Sabres right now and some of their moves? I mean, Kevin Adams was certainly lauded for the Ristolainen move, the Reinhardt move as well, with Jack Eichel. We'll see what happens there. Butcher, Henestrosa, Hag, Dell, Anderson. move the reinhardt move as well with jack eichel we'll see what happens there uh butcher hinastroza uh hag dell anderson the anderson one was a surprise because everybody kind of thought

he was going to retire but yeah i guess they talked to him in advance and they said look if we bring you here on kind of a mentoring role would you like to do it and he jumped at it from what i understand i haven't spoken to him, but that's what I heard. You know, I still think they might add in goal. You know, Henestros is a guy that Don Granato knows. I just think that they're kind of looking at it like, where do we fit people around our kids who are going to play? I think they want Middlestad to be playing in a big role next year.

I think they want Cousins to be playing in a big role next year. Especially in Middlestad's case, he's been a pro for a few years now. Time to put him out there against the big boys and see how it goes. But they're like Arizona too. It's a lot closer trip to Kingston from Buffalo than it is from Arizona. They know what's going on there. They do. Detroit Red Wings, Pew Suter, Nick Letty, Alex Nedeljkovic.

Still a team that is rebuilding. Tyler Bertuzzi, too. Two-year deal for him, which I thought was interesting. I think there's teams out there that like Bertuzzi, and I think Edmonton was one of them, for example. Suter, I thought, was a really good signing too. I thought it was really interesting that Chicago decided not to qualify him. I think Steve Eisenman, he's building.

He still sees this as a really long-term play and he's just looking to fill his roster out here and there and he wants to fill it out with good pros and he got some good pros. there and he wants to fill it out with good pros and he got some good pros florida panthers sam reinhardt sam bennett re-ups 4.4 aav that was a good deal and montour as well yep spencer night going to be their starter looks like with bobrovsky splitting with him that's an expensive backup man yeah they went they went big after suitor i still think they like chara i do i i think they like chara last year and i think they would love to have chara this year you know he got strahlman done to arizona i'm sure they're trying to sign barkov i can't imagine that

they're going to want to let this one sit no way too much longer that's not a problem that you really want hanging over you and reinhardt like i said like his arb award there's some teams that told me that he's a 775 guy in arb you know there was a rumor going around that maybe he was going to sign for around 6-5 i think if they get him around that number and obviously it's not true at this point, but if they get them around that number, I think they've got to be pretty happy. Montreal, Mike Hoffman settles three-year, $13.5 million. That's four and a half on the AAV. Matthew Perreault, Cedric Paquette,

and the big defenseman, David Savard. Thoughts on what Montreal has done? Well, David Savard, they went after hard, and he made it very clear once he knew Montreal was in, that's where he wanted to go. So that was a nice play for them. He fits what they do. Hoffman and Montreal, they flirted last year

and Bergevin, I think Bergevin tried to move Thomas Tatar last year to make room for Hoffman but couldn't get it done. And now he had the ability to sign him. And I think Hoffman was very happy to go there. You know, I think he liked St. Louis, but I think he was happy to go to Montreal. You know, Byron's out for a little while.

It's going to be interesting there. You know, you don't have to know. So what's going to happen down the middle there? Deneau playing his role allowed Suzuki to concentrate on scoring, right? Well, now you don't have that. So what are you doing with Suzuki? Do you say, okay, it's now your time to take over and be even more of a two-way guy than you've already shown you can be?

Or do you want to create a situation where you can go get somebody else so that Suzuki is in a position to worry about playing offense? You know who might be important here? Because we talk a lot about Suzuki and Kotkaniemi, and they'll be the first and second centers here for the Montreal Canadiens. Jake Evans could be really important for this team. Well, that's true. They really trust him.

There's no question about that. They really, so, I mean, if he can come up and get that role, that's really huge for them. Ottawa Senators. My first question is about expectations, but as far as contracts go, Brady Kachuk, Drake Bathurston still need deals. You mentioned on free agent day,

DJ Smith gets his extension done as well. So two things, the Kachuk and Bathurston deals, and what are the expectations for Ottawa this season as they head back into the Atlantic, a more challenging division than the Scotia North? Well, I think they're going to challenge for a playoff berth, right? I'm very curious to see if Pierre Dorian gets an extension too. If you're going to challenge for a playoff birthright i'm very curious to see if pierre dorian gets an extension too if you're going to extend the coach are you going to extend

the gm makes sense to me like dadnov last year i was surprised that didn't work you know part of me wonder like the family situations aren't easy but i think also like for whatever reason the power play didn't work there for him and with him it just didn't click and i was really surprised about that and i thought it was a really smart move for ottawa to move him to a position where a he's probably going to be better off and b it allows them to do something different with the money like i i have to say to you i was really surprised by the whole Dadunov thing and how it didn't work. But someone said to me, for whatever reason,

the power play didn't click. Between him and them, the other players on the ice and him on the ice, they just never found a way to make it click. And there we went. But I think Ottawa's going to be, the expectations there is going to be to challenge for a playoff berth.

And again, I still wonder if they may go after another veteran on a short-term basis. Like they have a lot of contracts that they have to deal with in the future. Kachok, obviously. The way Norris is going, that's suddenly going to be a bigger deal now too, right? So I don't know if you want someone with a lot of term, but I'm wondering if there's somebody out there

who is a veteran on a short-term deal that they look at and they say, we can bring this guy in for some juice a little bit here. I'll tell you too, the other guy I'm wondering about here is Victor Mete. I'd heard late in the season that they were close to a deal with here. I'll tell you too, the other guy I'm wondering about here is Victor Mete. I'd heard late in the season that they were close to a deal with him. It's not done and he's arbitration

eligible and they just brought in Nick Holden too. They suddenly have a lot of defensemen. Michael Delzotto as well. Delzotto got a two-year deal, so I'm kind of wondering what's going to happen with Mete here. All right, to the Stanley Cup champions. The Tampa Bay Lightning, they lose arguably the best third line in hockey,

all three of them, Gonzo. Corey Perry comes in on a two-year deal. Pierre-Edouard Belmar comes in as well. I really like that guy. A lot of people do. Every time we talk to anyone about Belmar, they always say the same thing, like that guy, Love that guy. Renovates his own houses, eh?

Does he really? Yeah. Gets his hands dirty. I love it. He says he doesn't do the plumbing. He doesn't know how to do the plumbing, but he does the other stuff. Smart dude.

Bogosian's back, and Brian Elliott comes in as well. Does Tampa have enough to three-peat? You know, I like the point extension, 9-5. I know it's, you know, three guys now at 9-5, at Kucherov and Vasilevsky and him and Hedman not far away. But, you know, you've locked up your guys and points a hell of a player. I like what they did with some of these three-year deals for guys like Barboulet and, you know, some of their young players. Zach Bogosian, a three-year deals for guys like barboula and you know some of their young players

uh zach bogosian a three-year deal under a million dollars um i assume they're going to get ross colton done as well too you know to me the biggest question i have with them is how are you going to replace the identity of that gourd goodrow cole, Coleman line. They still have their best players, but that line is maybe the guts of the team. They're all gone. They're all gone. Yeah. So how are you going to create that?

Now, I wonder, is Matthew Joseph... It's going to be different. You don't have the personnel to do the same thing. There's not another, like, here's that new line with Gordon, Coleman, and Goodrow. Matthew Joseph, does he become one third of what they try to do there? Yes, I agree with that 100%. And I know Stamkos, Killorn, people talk about that line with Sorelli as kind of their second line. And a lot of ways by ice time usage, that Gord line was their second line, a lot of ways by ice time usage that gourd line was their second line

especially in the playoffs like count out the lightning at your peril right but i do wonder how are they going to make that work how are they going to replace that big questions finish off with the maple leafs peter marazic comes in three years 11.4 million the aav 3.8 um david camp uh andre kasha nick ritchie michael bunting as well does kyle dubas have more moves up his sleeves here it seems like there are about a million forwards on this team well you do wonder about that is someone gonna go out i gotta tell you there were some people who were really surprised the Rangers didn't end up with Richie they thought that that was all over what they wanted to do but when they got Reeves I guess that ended that I think Toronto's going to be really interesting you know I think their blue line is pretty good you know the Mrazic signing

it's an interesting one Mrazic has a reputation as a bit of a gambler when he plays goal and in the 80s we saw all the goalies gamble now they don't do it as much but he likes to do that so it'll be interesting to see how that works in toronto but the one thing one goalie coach told me about marazic and campbell is that they've both shown in their past they can play well when they haven't played a lot of games like if one goes on a run and the other doesn't play both of those guys have shown the ability to play well coming off of rests and that's going to be important for them because I think Campbell starts the year as the number one, but you know that they're going to challenge each other and there's going to be times where one goes on a run and one doesn't.

I like the bunting signing. Richie, they need that kind of a player. All of a sudden, this division is really hard. I was talking to one of the Maple Leafs players who said to me that he senses that the mentality around the organization is that they're trying to convey to the group that it's not going to be that easy for us to make the playoffs this year. They're really trying to ramp up the sense of urgency before the season even begins. And you look at it, you got Tampa, you got Florida, who I think is really good. And you've got Boston, you've got Toronto, you've got Ottawa, who I think we all think is going to be really improved. And Montreal, of course, who just went to the Stanley Cup final. Now, I don't think anyone's counting on much from Buffalo or Detroit, but I think you've got a few teams there for, I'm going to say two spots.

I'm going to say the two Florida teams are getting in. So I think you've got four teams for two spots. And one of the players told me that they really feel the sense of urgency around the organization that they're trying to convey that we're hardly guaranteed a playoff spot this year and you know if we don't have a big year where we accomplish something there's going to be changes one player that i wanted to pause on here that i didn't mention at the top when it came to the maple leaves because we've talked about him like he really forced his way into conversations last season, is Curtis Gabriel. Yeah.

What do you make of that signing by the Maple Leafs? Truculence. No, I just think that to me, the playoffs are harder to play the regular season physically, but the regular season is harder to play than the playoffs emotionally. Do you understand where I'm going with this? 82 games is hard, specifically when you flip the calendar and you get through January and, oh, man, it's February

and there's still a ton of games to play. I've always felt that 82, well, first of all, I've always felt that 82 is too much, but that's never going to change. And I think you need people to make it fun to come to work not only fun but to drive your motor like when you got like this game as you said in february where you're playing against this team that you really have no rivalry with or reason to hate somebody's got to do something to get you to hate them you know we say this all the time you can't play 82 games in the regular season like you play 28 max in the playoffs it's just not possible you can't do that but you need someone to

drag you into the battle in some of these games and i think that's what gabriel's gonna do i wonder how many times he's gonna go over the red line and warm-ups you want to get you're gonna you're gonna want to get to the rink early. Don't miss warm-up to see if Gabriel crosses the line. Anything else as we wrap up another season here of 31 Thoughts to Podcast? Anything else that you think we've left out as far as trends, whether it's teams

or whether it's the league itself, Elliot? You know, one of the guys I was kind of wondering about that we haven't heard from yet is Thomas Tatar great five-on-five player last time I checked that was important you know I think the other thing too is a regular season player and you know it's true that you know Vegas and Montreal have now benched him in the playoffs but this is still a league where it's hard to make the playoffs you need someone to get you there you know maybe teams might say he's not a get you through guy but he is a get you there guy and that's not insignificant now i had heard a couple of teams that kicked around him looking try to maybe steal

him on low one-year deals and i'd heard initially that tatar was not interested in that. Now, maybe it may change, but I just think he's looking, I don't know if it's a Hoffman type deal, but something along those lines. And I don't know where that is right now. I'm curious to see if anyone pays it or Tatar comes back at a point and just comes to a situation where he says, okay, I realize I may not get what I want

and I have to try something here. The other thing too, I just wanted to end off the podcast. I wanted to just shout out a couple of people. One is Michael Landsberg. He worked for a long time for the evil telecom, but he basically helped build it, right? Day one at TSN. Day one.

Also, the work he's done with sick not weak he's helped a lot of people you know i think a lot of us are really wondering about the future of radio in this business with the popularity of podcasting and mike is a very smart and sharp guy i'm curious to see where he's going to end up, but he built that place. He built TSN. Yeah. Or was one of the guys that did. Also, don't forget what, you know,

off the record as a show, it was a gamble. Yeah. It was a gamble. And, you know, it lasted a long time. And that show, and this is where I want to jump in on Landsberg too, because he was, for my career for each, huge each huge absolutely huge because he brought me into that mix as one of the writers on that show like i've got all day for landsberg uh me and bob makowitz bob

ended up being the uh the full-time producer of off the record and a lot of the shows that i was responsible for with michael were the wrestling shows that helped to put that on the map and michael was you know michael understood that you know raw was coming on with Michael were the wrestling shows. It helped to put that on the map. And Michael understood that Raw was coming on right after Off the Record, and the two properties were back-to-back. And so let's fill up this show with whether it's Mick Foley or Steve Austin or Dwayne Johnson or Vince McMahon or Bret Hart, whatever.

Let's bring these guys on. And unlike many other media properties in 1997, let's interview them as human beings. And I remember having the conversation, I remember having the conversation with Michael saying like, you know, if you had a chance to interview Tom Cruise, would you talk to him like he's Tom Cruise? Would you ever think to talk to him like he was really Jerry Maguire? And he kind of laughed and said, yeah, I kind of get that. And he did some wonderful shows. And I will tell you one thing about Michael, because I've gotten to know him over the years really well as a really generous and thoughtful and caring person. I'll tell you what, Freed, we meet a lot of people in our industry, broadcasters specifically, that are pretty protective and some would say selfish about the chair, keeping the chair, don't share the chair. Landsberg is one of the most generous broadcasters I've ever worked with, one of the most generous people I've ever met. And if you've ever heard him interviewed, he is quick to praise others

before he praises himself. And I think that's not just the hallmark of a great broadcaster, but it's also the hallmark of a great person. I have all day from Michael Landsberg and I'm not the only one who, whose career he's helped enormously. I'm just one of many. So I'm with you. Shout out to the great Michael Landsberg. Well,

the fact that he helped you so much, now I hate him. No, I'm just kidding. If you don't like me, blame Landsberg. You know, the other person I just wanted to shout out was Scott Burnside, who got let go by The Athletic. You know, Scott is a guy we've all known for a long time. I think his stuff is really good. If you take a look at some of the embedded work he did,

like right before he got let go, he did a great piece on the Wild. Like he's the one guy who probably in media who knows what the Wild are willing to trade for Jack Eichel because he's sitting there when they had it on the board. Of course, he's not going to tell anybody, but he knows it. I was really sore to see that. I know Pierre LeBron and Scott are really tight, and I know that was – I haven't called Scott yet.

I will. But I called Pierre to see how he was doing. And I just know that was a really hard day for him. It's a brutal business. And, you know, a lot of people, I don't think this is deserved in the least bit. You know, Jeff,ff like i i never ask about ratings i never check how many people watch hockey night in canada i don't ask really how many people listen to the show or read the blog i i'm so appreciative of everybody you know i i'm very

thankful but i don't because i've seen the way it makes people crazy. You know, there were people I worked with, everything they asked is, how many people were listening yesterday or how many people watched last week? And if the number ever goes down, it drives them nuts to the point of distraction. So I've always said you prepare like a billion people are watching and you hope it actually comes true. I understand you've got to sell things and I get it. I get it. I get it.

I just think the quality of the work he turns in for that to happen. It bothers me. And I do want to end the podcast on a high note. I just want to say a couple of things. I'm really happy for our coworkers at Sportsnet who work on Blue Jays broadcasts, who are back at home. Ben Wagner, Dan Schulman, Pat Tabler, Scott Carson, behind the scenes, Hazel, Arash, Shai, Ben, Arden. I'm sorry if I'm missing anybody. All the technical crew.

I assume Doug Walton is producing the games, butchering broadcasts like he did when he worked on Hockey Night in Canada. Just kidding, Doug. But Joe Settle, like all these people, like we have tickets for the game on Sunday.

I'm really looking forward to it. I'm really happy for them. And finally, finally, I know I'm really rambling here. I want to say thank you to you and to Amal. This is now we have some interview pods that are kind of going to come out that we've pre-taped, but this is our last podcast of the season, really in the regular format.

And I wanted to thank both you guys, Jeff, for putting up with my crazy ramblings and Amal for editing them. And all the listeners, you know, hey, like there's no podcast if it wasn't for our listeners. And whether you like what we say or you hate what we say, we always appreciate that you give us your time because you could be doing anything else in the world as opposed to listening to us. And we really appreciate it. Ditto. Elliot, thanks to you. You're the best at what you do. You're the Cadillac when

it comes to the role that you fill in this industry and as far as Amel goes my pet saying for Amel is always nothing I've ever been involved in has ever been confused with art until I started this podcast and met

Amel and heard what he was able to do with our two awful voices, Elliot. No one's ever said, wow, Merrick did this artistic thing or is involved in something that's confused with art. But what Amal is able to do, both with cleaning up our sound and bringing in music that accompanies voice so perfectly, is really the closest thing that I've come to being involved in something artistic.

And for that, I always thank Amel and all of our listeners as well. Like all three of us here understand how valuable your time is. And I know this as a podcast listener myself. There are a lot of great options out there. myself. There are a lot of great options out there. More so than ever, there are amazing podcasts coming out on a daily basis to say nothing of the ones that are already established and are part of your weekly consumption. And we respect that. And that's what makes it more special when we get feedback or we get numbers on how many people are listening, it's really flattering just knowing how many amazing options you have out there

to listen to podcasts, hockey or otherwise, and you keep coming back to this one. It's a big investment that you make in us here on the podcast, and we hope that we have satisfied that investment that you've made and given you a return on that investment that you can take away from another season of the podcast and say that was worth it i can't wait for the next season of 31 soon to be 32 thoughts if you like the music on this podcast you can find playlists from each of our four seasons on Spotify. We always credit the artists in our show notes. Always.

Taking us out as we take a bit of a break from the podcast is Curtis Baby, a massive hockey fan who listens to the podcast, reached out to our producer a few months back about a track he wants us to hear. And since April, Amel has stashed it away. Here with my Barzell dope, here's Curtis Baby on 31 Thoughts, the podcast. We will be back soon. run detention I'm the lesson skipping legend all the fresh men mentioned in the first breath

talk of the town like gene arthur set the gene shorter now quit chalking my style so what's the deal you know curtis got the death lyrics all up in this media like jeff merrick the hell denim on point like it's Dennis Hopper Pistol pop and penny Pinches plenty till my pockets proper Or at least until my ass Could cop a four pack You dorks act tough in his hands

Like I'm Orlac Battle me is like the end of Christ Bars all dope like the Islanders To center ice Can we leave the podcast? We're burying this at the end, man.