32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Islanders Mix Playoff Intensity With Identity

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

The third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is underway! Jeff and Elliotte recap the Islanders-Lightning match-up (9:00) and the Canadiens-Golden Knights series (0:10) to kick off the podcast. They also discuss players who have been given permission to talk to other teams like Dougie Hamilton (19:30), the New York Rangers hiring Gerard Gallant as […]

anyway shall we yeah let's get this let's get this going all right we'll start with montreal vegas okay car cast style again on 31 thoughts the podcast presented by the gmc sierra at4 welcome to it once again we have a lot we're going to try to cram in between right now as elliot uh just climbed behind the wheel of his bentley, until he arrives at his palatial estate. Freed, you just finished working the Montreal-Vegas game. Before we start to drill down on a few things here, what was your main takeaway from it? I thought Montreal had a great start.

I think they started as well as you could possibly hope. They ran into penalty trouble and they ran out of steam. That's one of the things with this Vegas team. They come at you in waves. I think they're deeper than Montreal is. And you can't let up on them. And that penalty trouble, they got into the second period. I thought it just completely changed the flow of the game

and Vegas took over from there. But all the questions we had about the Canadians, would they start on time would they be thrown by their first crowd in over a year you know the physical nature of the Golden Knights would that be a problem for them I thought they answered all those questions really well I just think the power plays they gave up wore their players down, and they ran out of steam. Vegas is just flat out good. But to the point about starting on time, Montreal was there.

Montreal had legs. Montreal had energy. Montreal went at Marc-Andre Fleury hard. Price was great. Price was great. And maybe the most hilarious moment of the entire game, in that scrim in the first when all the halves are crashing, Marc-Andre Fleury and Brendan Gallagher's

in the middle of it. Marc-Andre Fleury grabbed Gallagher's helmet and skated off with it. I don't know why that made me laugh so much, the way that he hid the helmet and skated away, but it's Marc-Andre Fleury. I thought Romanov on Petrangelo was a big indication that we're here to play.

I was impressed with the start by the Montreal Canadiens. But at the end of it, my takeaway coming away from this is just Vegas is just a better team in game one. And it was offense from the blue line. It was the screenshot by Shea Theodore in the first. It was a great fake shot turned into a pass to Alec Martinez to make it 2-0, which was probably the play of the night.

It was a nice goal by Holden. Production from the back end. There was a whole lot to like there for the Vegas Golden Knights. I love Sherratt and Pacioretty getting after it, after each other. Like these teams, it seems, you know, White Cloud crashing Corey Perry. These teams got at it early and they went at it all game long. Like, if you're a Habs fan, you don't like the outcome, but I thought that was a fun game to watch, Frej.

I really did. I agree with you. I really enjoyed it. How much tampering do you think is going on with Alec Martinez right now? At Casablanca, sir? What? Gambling? So the blog's coming out today, too.

I was supposed to do it Monday, but I got tied up between the Dougie Hamilton stuff and the Gerard Gallant stuff. And one of my big central points is that the lesson of these four remaining playoff teams, and we talked about it last Friday, is you have to have big, strong, mobile, multi-talented, skilled defenses, right? And I just don't think Vegas is going to be able to keep Martinez. I don't think there's been any, if not much, talk with him about extending him. And the way he plays, and again, he's hurt, and he blocked another shot tonight painfully and didn't miss a shift. Teams are going to go after him.

There's no question. But I just think Montreal, there were a few of their guys tonight that I just don't think reached the level yet that they have to get to. I think Kotkaniemi was one, and he missed a few shifts in the third period. I think Caulfield on the power play was obviously excellent. He was buzzing before he scored that goal. But at even strength, you could tell he struggled to find space. You know, I said in the second intermission, like, Alex Tuck,

if you redo Alex Tuck's draft, how high does he go? Like, he's around the top 10. And I think he's a guy who, he elevates the third line of the Golden Knights, and he makes them very dangerous. I think Anderson's done it in spurts for Montreal, but he has to be to the Canadians. And he had a couple big hits on McNabb. He has to be to the Canadiansadians what tuck is to the

golden knights on every shift i think those are the guys i look at from montreal that have to elevate the hand injury to weber you could see was really bothering him that's a concern yeah petrie you know you're thinking he's gonna get in kulak unfortunately had a rough night i just wonder if we see some depth changes around montreal's blue line so alex tuck is 18th overall in the uh the aaron eckblad draft that was the philadelphia draft to me the big question about alex tuck considering what we know about him now and he looked good on that play in the third when he rang the pipe is if if Minnesota had a redo. Like, I know there's a lot of teams.

Florida would want a redo on March. So Columbus with William Carlson would want a redo. And Minnesota, hindsight again being 2020. Those are three of the main teams that would want a redo in the expansion draft. To the point about Alec Martinez, see, I get the feeling on that left side that Alec Martinez walks away. They can't afford to keep him.

I think they're okay with that because they can slide Nick Hague into a, I mean, he's a left side defenseman and he's a big guy too they can slide him into one of those positions so it seems as if they're going to be insulated for when they lose alec martinez like haig still has to develop certainly but i think that lessens the blow and i think they're probably prepared for it would that be accurate in your mind? It just feels like Nick Hague has that spot. They just won't be able to keep Martinez, not because they won't want to, but because they can't. And somebody out there is going to chase him big.

And I would suspect it's more than one. See, I'm getting a picture right now, and I do want to talk about Islanders Tampa. I don't want to give that series a short shrift. But one of the things I'm getting a picture of right now, Jeff, around the league is, you know, Dougie Hamilton now has permission to look around. I believe Curtis Gabriel has permission to look around.

And I wouldn't be surprised if there's more. I think there's a lot of players really worried about the tight nature of this offseason seattle's arrival notwithstanding and i think you're going to see a lot of players out there saying look if we can't make a deal could i talk to other teams and i i think you're going to see it granted and if you're not going to see it granted then start checking checking phone records. Cause I think the tampering is going to be like crazy because players out there are really worried about how tight money is going to be. And the belief that Seattle is going to want to maintain flexibility and not

shoot for the cap right away. So I think that's what we've got right now is everybody trying to find out what their market value is as quickly as possible. I want to get to Dougie Hamilton here in a couple of moments because I have a couple of thoughts on that and I'm sure you have more as well. I wanted to remark on a couple more things here in Vegas, Montreal. I have to talk about Carey Price. The save on Mark Stone on the two-on-one with max patch already was outstanding there was another play with cross-eyed marsh so uh was another one like i look at these goals and i'm like oh geez man like you got you gotta hand it to vegas they are getting bodies in front of price they are moving around again that pass by theodore

to martinez i'm sorry everybody bit on the shot i mean he's slapping his stick to he's about to he's about to explode that thing forward and then changes to the last minute and slides it over nobody's stopping that one i don't care yes you tooic Haschuk. You are not stopping that one. No one is stopping that play. So Montreal's seven-game win streak is over. Marc-Andre Fleury with 28 saves. The Vegas blue line is a big story. We'll see what adjustments Montreal makes for game two. But Pete DeBoer's squad, full value in game one.

This is an interesting series. The Islanders and the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a classic game played by the Islanders. They waited for their chances. They capitalized on their chances. It was Matthew Barzell and Ryan Pulak with the goals. Semyon Varlamov, outstanding. How did you see game one?

Well, Sport Lejeque also saying no rush chances for Tampa, right? Zero. I think it was, how many was it for Islanders? Seven? Seven or eight? Whatever it was, I don't care what the Islanders number was. I just look at what they did to Tampa. When I see a zero next

to Tampa, I'm not even remotely interested in what the other one was. And the Islanders to defend the rush very well, depending on what metric you used, I think they're anywhere from one to four in the NHL this year, I've seen. But the thing about New York is I'm beginning to look at it this way. A couple of years ago when they got through the first round and into the second round like that was a surprise and they weren't ready to win and last year when

they got through to tampa they gave tampa everything they could handle yeah but I didn't think they could score enough to win now I know game one was a 2-1 game but I never felt like the Islanders were in trouble and the thing I look at them right now Jeff is I think that they might actually have enough offense to win I know we think about them as this dedicated defensive team and they are yeah and I know we think about them as this dedicated defensive team, and they are, and I know we think about them as this great role-playing team, and they are, but I look at the improvement of Barzell, and make no mistake, he is better. I look at the improvement in Brock Nelson, the guys like Beauvillier and Pajot, Bailey,

the stuff that they get from their D, that's the thing that might actually be different about this Islander group. I'm beginning to think they can score enough to win. Well, we talked about Ryan Pulak when we had our conversation about bringing in specialists for the All-Star game. Yes. And for the hardest shot competition, like here's a guy that's been cranking it up since he played junior with the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Why not have, you know, if Ryan Pulak's not going to be there as an All-Star, bring him in as a shooting special. I love that idea. And that's what he did. Like there was nothing about that shot that was anything other than he put it through Andre Vasilevsky.

Here's Pulak. Tees it up. Scores! Ryan Pulak with a drive that may have changed direction on its way through. But the puck finds its way past Vasilevsky and it's 2-0 New York. That's his fourth

of the playoffs and it's a grind down low and they're outnumbered. So you got two Islanders against three Tampa Bay, but they come out with the puck. He just put it through the goaltender. So Kevin Woodley, the goalie whisperer, told me that that's a very strange weakness on Vasilevsky. Steve Vallecat, who we are going to have on the podcast at one time, his clear sight analytics numbers show that Vasilevsky is unusually weak against those kinds of plays it's a very surprising

weakness but I'll tell you a great story I heard about Pulak that when he was in Brandon in the Western Hockey League and the rookies came to skate with them some of the veterans during rookie camp he wasn't allowed to take slap shots. He was only allowed to take wrist shots I believe it. He used to hurt guys in the Western League on the regular like imagine you're a 16 year old standing in for the net and Ryan Pulak's winding up even if you're a 16 year old like on the Brandon Weekings looking to tip it Let alone someone who's trying to block that shot like he terrorized when I'm sitting in my recliner And he teased it up i start cringing

start cringing but the islanders don't take penalties tampa's been murdering people with the power play yeah if the islanders are disciplined tampa's gonna have to beat them at five on five and i i think that's the difference with new york now and the new york of the past two years they look like they can score enough to win. There's one thing that I'm very curious about, Barry Trotz. And we just had him on Hockey Central a couple of weeks ago. And part of me says, man, I wish we would have had him now because the Pat Maroon, Ross Johnston, center ice,

I'm going to put my foot over center ice, I'm going to put my butt over center ice. I'm going to put my butt over center ice. Like, like it's childish. It's dumb. No, I loved it. I don't know.

I thought it was great, dude. Listen, I'm the guy that loved like the, the chicken stuff from, from Patrick moon. Like, I feel like I'm 12 years old in the schoolyard.

Like I love that too. Ross Johnson hasn't played a game of hockey in the NHL since May the 10th. He's not getting in this one, but part of me thinks back to I wonder how much Barry Trotz would look at that and kind of snicker because he comes from that era in the Western Hockey League.

I'm going to go on a little path here. You can ask Kelly Rudy about this. He told me this story. Barry Trotz, old Regina Pats defenseman. He comes from that era where in the Western League, warm-up was sometimes like the rodeo. Like anything went.

Anything went at center ice. And for the Regina Pats, he had three very distinct coaches. He had the late Brian Murray. He had Bill LaForge, who's also the late Bill LaForge. And those stories are notorious. And he also had Jack Sangster. Jack Sangster coached a few teams in the Western League. I think he's coached Seattle.

I mean, his teams were always tough. And they used to, you'll like this one, Elliot. They used to call them Sangster's Gangsters. Like that was it. Here comes Sangster's Gangsters, the Regina Pats, or the Seattle T-Birds, or whatever. But the toughest team was the new Westminster Bruins, always. Yeah, Punch McLean.

Ernie Punch McLean, that's right, the coach. And Kelly told me that he was playing on the Medicine Hat Tigers, and they were a really young team, like 16- and 17-year-olds. And here comes New West. And it's like here comes a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds driving Camaros to the game, and they've all got mustaches and smoking cigarettes. Holy, they're men. they look like they've been

doing bench press and you know flies all day long and lat raises and they're jacked and he said there's this one guy Boris Fishtrick there's another late Boris Fishtrick whose son Mark played in the NHL a little bit as you well know he like ran the show in the Western

League like Filipov was on that team Barry Beck would have been on that team. But Fistrick would put up like 460 pims a year. And Kelly said that during warm-up, sometimes Fistrick would take the puck from his own zone, skate into the Medicine Hat Tiger zone, and take shots on Kelly. Imagine that happening now in warm-up.

Someone from the other team coming in and blasting shots at your goalie. It's not going to happen. The other thing that Kelly told me was Fistrick would skate into the medicine hat tiger zone. I'm sure he did it against other teams. Lift the net off the moorings, skate it back to center ice, and stand there beside the net, inviting medicine hat to do something about it. Come back and get your net. This is a young team. I said, Kelly, what'd you guys do?

And he kind of laughed. He goes, we skated off the ice. We didn't have enough. But that was the Western League at that point. Like, that is that same era of very trads. They take all your pucks, too. We did a piece on, for CBC, for Hockey Day in Canada, we did a piece on Punch McLean once because he also,

when he was older, after he was finished coaching, he got lost outside in the wilderness for a few days and he survived it was like it was a couple of weeks everyone thought that oh we've lost ernie i remember that well and he just and then he just appeared and he just came back so like i look at that ross johnston thing yeah as that's part of the islanders identity that's just who they are see See, I think of that as like, maybe I'm reading too much into it. Cause I love this, the, the story of Barry Trotz,

old Regina, Pat's tough, snarly defenseman. That's like Barry Trotz reliving some of his past. No, you know, I don't, I think it's funny and he probably would laugh about it,

but to me, it's just about the identity. Like that is the Islanders arriving in a series and don't forget to that just like the Canadians in Vegas these are two teams that haven't played each other all year right now they they faced each other last year in the bubble but they haven't played all year and you know Barry trots is saying to everyone I just want to remind my guys of who we are and i know this tampa team is a great team but i want to remind them of who we are and what we are

too and you know i didn't even realize until you just said it that ross johnston hadn't played since May 10th. A month. Yeah. But it doesn't matter to me. I totally understand why Trotz does that. It makes perfect sense to me because that's the Islanders. And they haven't won nothing seriously. I'm here. I'm here. Let's do the Dougie Hamilton. Yeah, I just cut that out because I put my earbuds in,

but I remembered to turn off my wireless so you wouldn't cut out. Let's do the Dougie Hamilton here. I want to get to the Rangers and Gerard Gallant. So as you reported on Monday morning, the Carolina Hurricanes have allowed teams to talk to Dougie Hamilton, perhaps for the purposes of a sign and trade, which would allow an eighth year on any deal. Yep. What happens here?

Walk us through who do you, maybe who do you think would be interested in what this says about the Carolina Hurricanes at this point? And the one thing that I wonder about, as everyone's wondering about Seattle and the expansion draft, isn't Dougie Hamilton a fit in Seattle already? I would think so. Well, first of all, the one, let's talk about the Seattle thing for a sec. Who's the previous GM in Carolina?

Ron Francis. Now, Francis didn't trade for him. That deal was done after Francis was out. But he hoarded defensemen. Like Jeff Hoard's old pro wrestling illustrated magazines. Oh, the Bill Apter mag. So good. So good.

So you know that Ron Francis, and not only is ron francis you know it's the line the surest predictor of future behavior is past behavior ron francis built the hurricanes through the blue line and i would believe that seattle is going to do the same thing and if you take a look at what's available, particularly in free agency over this year and next year, there's a lot of defensemen and there's a lot of defensemen at different levels. There's the studs like Hamilton, Seth Jones next year, potentially Colton Pareko potentially next year. But there's also a lot of really good defensemen that can play other roles. There's Brandon Montour.

There's, you know, we talked about Alec Martinez earlier on. There's Jamie Oleksiak, even though he most likely goes back to Dallas. I think there's a lot of guys like that. So, and don't forget also, Vegas, when they had the expansion draft, right after the draft they traded four defensemen for four draft picks in a prospect one was Mark Mathot one was Trevor Van Riemsdyk one was David Shlemko like that's what they did and I would expect that Seattle's going to do that so I do agree with you I think Seattle's one of the teams's going to take a good long look at Dougie Hamilton.

The other person I want to throw into that mix is not just Ron Francis, but their department of, for lack of a better term, analytics, which includes Alexandra Mandrycki. And as we all know, Dougie Hamilton is a darling when it comes to analytics. And I can see Mandricky saying, we need to be more than curious about how we can bring in Dougie Hamilton here. This is a whole other conversation for another thing, but I wanted to vote for either Hamilton or Slavin on my Norris ballot this year.

And so I asked around a lot about, you know, who should be the choice of the two of them. And the more analytic people all picked Hamilton. And a lot of the people who I thought might be more, I test people said Slaven. Although this year, some of the eye test people said to me,

they would normally pick Slaven, but this year they said of the eye test people said to me they would normally pick Slavin. But this year they said they would take Hamilton. So there was a slight edge to Hamilton this year. But I really like Slavin a lot. And I was going to vote for one of them. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. But the point is that someone had told me Philly, they thought, was going to be big on him earlier in the day. But I got some pushback on them later.

Someone said to me that Philly's targets is not Hamilton. Now, I think it's more likely it's Jones or something else. But I heard that Hamilton was not Philly's top target. However, I do think there's a bunch of teams that will look at this. And I know that after the report went out, because the permission came on Sunday, not everybody knew about it, but I'd heard that some teams or people that previously had had Hamilton were getting calls saying, okay, what, what are we dealing with here? What do we have to know about him?

I think there will be a lot of interest. I think Carolina in some ways is hoping that maybe he comes back and says either he doesn't like the deals that he's hearing about or he doesn't like maybe some of the teams that are giving him the biggest offers. But we'll see. I think there's going to be a ton of interest in him. Well, the thing about Carolina is that if you're going to go to a contender carolina is a contender

yes they are and dougie hamilton said as much at his infamous season ending interview when he talked about the tampa bay lightning being 18 million dollars over the salary cap so if you're looking to go for the best situation where money is comparable, how many other teams out there other than Carolina are in position to win right now? Because Carolina's there. Carolina's right there. Which leads into our next question,

which I will ask you every podcast. What's the latest on Rod Brindamore? See, I think they're going to work it out. One of the reasons I didn't get the blog done on Monday, well, first of all, because new information kept on coming in, but two is, Jeff, I'm parsing over every word because this is the time of the year you end up on old takes exposed because you say something that turns out to be terribly wrong.

Yeah, it's awesome. Wonderful. So I think he's going back to Carolina. I think they're working this out. It sounds like Brindamore and almost all of his staff are working it out. Nothing is done until it's done, but I hear it's headed in that direction. The one exception right now is Dean Chenoweth. Chenoweth does their um penalty

kill and defensive coach you know from what i understand him and tom dundon were talking chanoweth said that he wanted to stay but he he felt that he was not near where a coach of his position would be ranking in salary i don't think he was asking to be the top paid such assistant. I think he wanted to get into line with some other positions. Tom Dundon feels that, you know what, there's a line he's not willing to go past. And I think you're seeing it with Dougie Hamilton too. He just said, look, if you feel you can get that somewhere else, more power to you, but I'm not doing that here so

the word that i'd heard was it looked like it was going to work out with brenda moore in carolina and maybe chanel might be the only coach who doesn't return but nothing's done until it's done okay um new york rangers andard Gallant. That's the team we married him to almost instantly. Yep. As all reports are, all indications are, interviewed really well with the Rangers. He did seem like the preferred candidate. I'm sure the decimal point is very much on point for Gerard Gallant.

Was this as obvious as it seemed right from the get-go, Elliot? I do think right away he was their top guy, but I think they wanted to make sure that someone else wasn't going to drop into their lap that they wanted to talk to. They waited on Mike Sullivan. I do believe they wanted to see if after Pittsburgh lost, the first round of Sullivan would be available. they found out no and i do believe they waited on brindamore and then i heard late last week they reached whether they were given information or just decided not to do it they just decided they brindamore wasn't going to be available to them or wasn't a road they were going to go down and i heard they decided on the

weekend that galant was the guy. And I think they told him on Monday and then the rest of the day, they, they worked on getting the deal done. It's a four year deal, uh, for Gallant to be the head coach there. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm happy for him. I love what he did for team Canada. Uh, you know, I, I thought he did a great job in Vegas and they're going to want his passion. They feel that what was missing from the Rangers was passion.

And there's no question he's going to bring that. No doubt about that. The question then becomes, what does the rest of the off season look like for the Rangers? And do you think in their mind, the rebuild is over? Oh, I think now it's about winning. You don't make the changes they made without winning, expecting to win. Right. So now it's full steam ahead.

This is all about wins and climbing up the standings and let the Jack Eichel rumors fly, but not just Jack Eichel. I think they're, well, first of all, they've got to decide Zabinijad. Yep. I would assume at some point they're going to talk about extending Fox. I mean, he could win the Norris this year. Absolutely. So I look at it this way, Jeff. But look at it.

He's been in the NHL for five minutes and he's a finalist. Yes. So, Jeff, you know, that salary cap room is going to dry up quick. Yeah. I'll tell you something else, too. I think they could be interesting in a lot of different places, but to me, the biggest question I have about the Rangers is at the beginning of the year, last year, I think they were really worried that Zbigniew had, cause he was

going to be a long hauler after getting COVID or whatever the situation was. I think they were really worried about him. About his production? Yes. Because it took a while for him. There's no doubt. But then when he got hot, forget about it, man. So that to me is one of their biggest questions is, okay, what is his next deal?

And then, yes, I do think they're going to go out there to what is his next deal? And what is Fox's next deal? And what does that allow them to do around them? I wouldn't be surprised if they start talking to Fox about an extension. They can't do it until July 1st or whenever the calendar starts. I wouldn't be surprised if they start talking to him about that too. The price will just go up after that, right? How many times have you heard that? The price just keeps getting more expensive. Lock in earlier once you're

sure of what you have. But are they still the favorite in the Jack Eichel sweepstakes? So, someone told me this week, do not be surprised if Buffalo ends up,

obviously they're picking one, with another pick high in the draft. Now, I don't know if that means Eichel. I don't know if that means Reinhardt. Because both of them could potentially bring that. But someone said to me, watch some of the teams that are picking high and Buffalo. Okay, so Anaheim at three. That's one team. You know I feel they're going to do something big.

Yeah, Columbus has three picks and their highest is fifth. Columbus is going into draft and develop mode, right? So I don't know how high we're talking here, but it makes a lot of sense. Doesn't that depend on what they get for Seth Jones? Yeah, it could. I'm just trying to think if Buffalo's going to get another high pick, Anaheim, Columbus both make some sense. You know, the other one too is LA.

They pick eighth. And I know John Hoven, the mayor, he's really plugged in there. And he said that LA is not in on Eichel. Maybe they like Reinhardt more than Eichel, but I know some teams are saying, I wouldn't be surprised if LA likes Seth Jones too. Sure. But I know some teams are saying,

if someone's moving up into the top 10, LA's pick is the one a lot of teams are talking about. One final thought on the Rangers, up into the top 10, LA's pick is the one a lot of teams are talking about. One final thought on the Rangers, just because it was such a hot button issue. And I don't think in Rangers fans' minds it got addressed in that last game. I still think Tom Wilson is going to be public enemy number one. Do they look to do something about their quote unquote Tom Wilson problem? Would it surprise you?

No, not at all. Like essentially what I'm saying is how deep does that burn still in the psyche of the New York Rangers? I think the bigger question is it's not just Wilson, but we know now that one of the storylines was they had some big games against the Islanders and they didn't match what the Islanders did. So to me, that's not only about the Tom Wilson thing. It's about an overall attitude thing.

So I think something like that gets addressed. Yes. All right. And now let's wrap her up. Okay. On that we'll uh we'll call it a day thanks for joining the car cast once again thanks for listening to uh 31 thoughts the podcast we're back with another one later on this week a couple of games down more on the horizon both games have been interesting the playoffs continue so far they've been great taking us out a five-piece band from kitchener ont Ontario known for their joyous

harmonies high energy performances which we hope we'll be able to see this summer and have collaborated with some great Canadian musicians I the Mountain released their debut album Little Wind last year but have been putting out a number of great singles and from earlier this year, here's I the Mountain with Coal Mine on 31 Thoughts, the podcast. Put me in the ground Oh, put me in the ground But I found love Once back in the city There she lied next to me, till she went away. Oh, how I would shiver No one in the house

Oh, no one in the house. But I found love. Once back in the city. There she lied next to me. Until she went away. Until she went away And I found God Waiting by the window Waiting on His light to come Come take me away I found love