32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Jarmo Kekalainen on the Dubois-Laine Deal

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Columbus Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen joins Jeff and Elliotte (11:50) to discuss how and when the trade with the Winnipeg Jets came together, why Jack Roslovic was an important piece, the possible misconception about Columbus as an organization and community, and how the club tried to move up in the 2016 draft to select […]

to demonstrate my love and dedication to hockey and my commitment to the game. Okay, so here's how the podcast today is going to work, folks. Elliot and I are going to briefly talk about the Pierre-Luc Dubois-Patrick Line-A trade that we saw over the weekend. Throw Drek Roslevic in there, of course. He's a big part of it in the third round pick.

But you're going to hear from Jarmo Kekulainen, general manager of the Blue Jackets, here in a couple of seconds. After the interview, Elliot's got lots of juicy bits of news you're going to want to stay tuned for. So it's going to be a lot about Columbus, a lot about Winnipeg, a whole lot of Jarmo Kekulainen, and then some news.

That's the deal. Before we get to Jarmo though, Elliot, take us through your Friday, and take us into your Saturday morning as well. Friday night was a wild one. As the trade rumors really heated up it looked like these two sides were going to do it and then other teams jumped in boom here's anaheim boom here's montreal take us through your friday saturday so jeff thursday night i'm just

looking back at the app to see what games were going on thursday night because i'm trying to remember what i was watching. Oh, jet senators. That was the game I was watching early. Cause by the way, I have to tell you early on, I've never felt more disconnected with three quarters of the league. Like it's almost like we're covering a 17 league up here because we're doing so much Scotia North. Yeah.

And I don't like this feeling actually. I'll tell you, I, I don't like this feeling actually i'll tell you i i don't like feeling so cut off with the rest of the league but you know that's a conversation for another time but i was watching ottawa winnipeg and then all of a sudden you see okay dubois not playing and your reaction is here we go we all knew this was going to happen here we go and then you know i switched on the app to look at the game and i want you know you go to nhl.com you check the shift chart you go look at his shifts and you're sitting there and you're going oh my goodness and you know how it goes on twitter everybody starts ripping tortorella because it's kind of the easy thing to do. Like I sent that clip to people I know don't like Tortorella and they looked at it and

they said, can't blame them for this one. And I, the thing that to me was the most amazing was the Tyler Johnson thing. He just allowed himself to be pushed off the puck. And, you know, we talked about this the other day when we did our last podcast. So the one thing we realized on Friday was that I think on Thursday night there was a conversation between Kekka Leinen and the agent for Dubois.

It was Pat Brisson. And I think they pretty much knew that it was over. That Columbus was going to do it's once around the league and say okay here's our deal and make it and they knew and we'll talk to Kekulonan about this they knew that Winnipeg's offer was there he told us something about the offer that I didn't know before that it had to be a two for one. It was not going to be a one for one. You'll hear more about that in the interview, but he knew that that was there, that Winnipeg was in his hip pocket, just as the Jets knew

Columbus was in their hip pocket. And I think he went around and he said, okay, what does everybody else have? What's everybody else willing to do? And, you know, I heard Calgary up their offer, but it wasn't what Columbus wanted. Montreal, you know, my belief, Jeff, is that before the season, I think the Canadians might have, would have considered Suzuki, at least thought about it.

But the way he's played now that the season's underway, the Canadians just decided they couldn't do that. Anaheim was in there. They upped their offer. I've heard it did not include either Ziggurats or Drysdale, that Anaheim was not willing to give up either one of those players. And I just think that they reached a point where they realized that the best offer they were going to

get is Winnipeg's. And I think in a lot of ways that deal was done on Friday night. I understand that Winnipeg had to do some final due diligence. And I think it was just medical records just to make sure everything was okay. And once that was done on Saturday morning. The Jets made the deal. But I think everybody knew on Friday night. That that was going to be the deal. It was just a matter of. You know. It wasn't done until it was done then.

So that's kind of where it all went. So Ron McLean. Really did his best on Saturday. To try to draw out of Pierre-Luc Dubois. What exactly happened. What was the conflict? What was the issue? Or what were the issues?

And Dubois went, you know, full matrix and dodged and weaved and ducked and pretzeled his way around, not exactly saying what the problem or problems were. Okay, so you mentioned you didn't have control necessarily where you'd end up, but you did have a little bit of leverage in the sense of, I want to trade. Everybody wants the answer. Why, when did you know, Pierre-Luc, that you had to leave Columbus? Can you give us the answer that we've never really had, why you wanted out? I said since the start of that i'm not going to go into detail and and i won't but i i can say um you know it was a it was a process it was thinking about a long time it wasn't um overnight it wasn't you know i just woke up one morning and and and it was a decision to make it was something that i i thought about and you know as negotiations were going you know obviously

you don't take anything personally but as they go longer and longer you can you kind of start to think about stuff in situations and you know at some point I thought I mean you know there's privilege of all the hockey player and there's really the wild that the human and I wanted to stay true to myself to my teammates I knew that if it was you know a longer deal that deep down I I wanted I would have wanted this to happen um so I wanted to know to be real myself or be real to my teammates and everybody um I know you know some people weren't happy about it and I get that um but I'm extremely grateful for for everything that Columbus the fans of the city my teammates and the staff have done for me.

But I do find it interesting that he talked a lot about being true to himself. There was a lot of references to being true to himself. And that's a very personal thing to say. That could mean a number of different things. Personal, political, religious, don't know. I don't know that we're ever going to, unless he decides to disclose, find out where the disconnect happened, or if it was even one specific moment, or if it was an accumulation of things. I just don't know. There's probably only a handful of people who do, but I think that there was enough in that

interview with Ron that leads you to conclude that what we discussed last podcast, which is there's more to this story than what meets the eye is accurate. We don't know exactly what it was, but was that not Pierre-Luc Dubois at least confirming in your mind that there was more than just, ah, you know what? The coach barked at me and I don't like him. Yeah, there's no question that's true. I think there's a lot to unpack here and only he can answer those questions. I think one of the reasons he answered the way it was is because Columbus had tried to change his mind and he said, no, I'm staying true to what I believe.

And that is that I want to go elsewhere. I think that's part of it. There's a lot of theories here from wanting to play on a bigger stage. And when I said that, because it's gotten a lot of traction, people are like, oh, well, Winnipeg, that's a joke. It's the smallest market in the league the one thing this is not me taking shots at Columbus in any way shape or form but the one thing about Winnipeg is hockey really matters there and I think for some people that's important and I could see for Dubois that being really important.

So it's not necessarily the size of the market. It can also be how much does it matter there. And in Winnipeg, it matters a ton. And Yarmou goes into a passionate defense of Columbus in our podcast in the interview coming up. And I agree with him. I really like it there. But for whatever reason, it wasn't that way for dubois another theory that's been given to me

is that you know the way columbus does business also will be addressed in our interview you know i believe columbus was willing to go eight times eight for dubois i think they were going to make him the wealthiest player in the history of the franchise. So I don't think, you know, that was a problem here. I do wonder if one of the things Dubois was concerned about long-term was that if he signed for say eight years, other players on the team might leave as free agents. He's seen it happen to Panarin. He's seen it happen to Bobrovsky. It's possible he was concerned about that. And I could see him not saying that Jeff, because, you know, it throws other players out there and some people just won't do that.

That's fine with me. But I think at the end of the day, he made it very clear that whatever the reason was, he wasn't going to change his mind. And the more I thought about it, you know what I kind of thought of was James Harden. You know, James Harden efforted his way out of Houston. He made the situation untenable and Houston said, that's it. We're doing it. We can't allow this anymore.

And Dubois did the same thing. He made the situation untenable. Like there's no doubt for me now that after watching John Tortorella on Friday and the way he talked that he knew it was over and the blue jackets, just like the Houston Rockets with James Harden, the Columbus blue jackets were with Dubois. And there's been a lot of theories too about, is there a personal reason that Dubois, you know, didn't want to be in Columbus, you know, whether it was something with his teammates or whatever, that answer, I mean,

it leaves a lot of things open to interpretation. And until he decides to say what it is, everyone's just going to keep guessing. Either that or Jeff, they're just going to move on and say it's over. There's no point in talking about it anymore. What do you think people do with this? They just give up the hunt?

Yeah, not in the Twitter era. Let me introduce you to Twitter sometime. We do have the same questions as well about Patrick Laine and where it went south with him and the Winnipeg Jets. We'll pause that conversation because you did reference what Jarmo Kekulainen does discuss

in this interview. So let's get right to it so people can listen to it. This is Jarmo Kekanen, general manager, pulling off the big deal with Kevin Shevelday off over the weekend on 31 Thoughts joins the podcast. He is Jarmo Kekulainen, general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Jarmo, thanks so much for doing this.

And I'm always curious about how deals come together and maybe more specifically when deals end, you know, we know that there are other teams out there obviously interested in Pierre Luke Dubois. In your mind, when was this trade over? Like at what point did you say,

okay, I'm done. He's going to the Winnipeg Jets. Well, you got to do your due diligence around the league and see what the interest level is and what type of options we would have available, and we did that, and we ranked them in order,

and you might have to make a couple rounds of calls just to make sure that everybody who's interested got their opportunity to give it their best shot, and we did that as well, so it took a little while, but we came to the conclusion there after the last game that Dubois played that we want to do this sooner rather than later so we were pretty busy on Friday and working on that and then Saturday morning we um we were ready and and now we have uh Patrick Klein and Jack Roslevich here.

And we have Patrick Klein and Jack Roslevick here. One thing that became clear to us on the outside is that you and Kevin Sheveldayoff had discussed this for a while, that you kind of both knew that if you wanted to do this, there was going to be the opportunity to do it. I'm curious, Guillermo, how long had you guys known that you were each other's potential trade partners if you needed to be? Yeah, we had a good dialogue for a while, and this was probably the best match right from the start. But as I said, we had to do our due diligence and make sure that we've done our homework on every opportunity that might be out there. And after we had done that, we returned to talks with Winnipeg several times and wanted to make sure that all parts of the trade work for us as far as the cap goes. There's some cash involved there and other parts of the deal that we had to iron out. And once we cleared those hurdles,

we were ready to pull the trigger on both sides. Can you describe what it was like Thursday night for us? I know what a incredibly competitive person you are at a lot of things. What was it like watching that? And can you talk about your discussions after the game that night internally well internal talks are always internal talks for me and i'm very serious about that but you know there are certain values that that um you know we have within our our organization and within our team and in our locker room. And we have a very demanding head coach who will never compromise those values.

I would never want him to compromise those values. And I support him 100% when he does his coaching, enforcing those values. And it came to a point where that wasn't the level of commitment to those values and um it came to a point where where that wasn't the level of commitment to those values that was given by Pierre-Luc Dubois and that's why he was benched and I support the coach 100% on on that decision and and um like I said after that I think there was a little more urgency on our part to get this done and we're're happy to move on now with two players that we like a lot. Even if the trade hadn't occurred on Saturday morning, to the organization,

had Pierre-Luc Dubois played his last game with the Blue Jackets? And what I'm sort of getting at is, was there any way that he would have played Saturday afternoon? No, no, he wasn't going to play Saturday. But after that, it's the coach's decision on how he wants to handle the player. And, you know, there's no need to really get into that, but there's always second chances

and opportunities to redeem yourself as a player if you make a mistake or don't live up to the values that we hold strong here. But you have to show it through your hard work and practice and how you conduct your business in the locker room and within the team. And I'm sure then our coach will always give every player a second chance or an opportunity to show that he's ready to live up to the expectations and the values. You know, one of the things I'm curious about, because I can remember, we all can, specifically at the Buffalo draft

when Winnipeg took Line A too, and you surprised everybody. Everybody except your own organization, I should add, by selecting Pierre-Luc Dubois at number three. Knowing how much you value Patrick Line A with your team now, did you try to move up to get Line A at two?

Were there any discussions about that at all at that point? Absolutely. Absolutely. We tried like hell to move up from three and weren't successful. And at the time we felt like we took the next best player and he's turned out to be a good NHL player. And, you know, the funny part about people talk about the value of position at center and wing and, you know, I funny part about people talk about the value of position at center and wing.

And, you know, I agree with all of that. But at the same time, when we took Pierre-Luc Dubois, we'd played six months of center the previous year in junior. And, you know, the experts told us that he can't play center. He's a wing. Well, he turned out to be a pretty good center in this league. So that's how times evolve sometimes. And, you know, we have some guys this year that have stepped up to the plate and gotten the opportunity to play a different position,

like Alexander Texier. We drafted him as a center, but as a young player, you want to bring him in slowly and make sure that they're up to the task, which is the most demanding position on the forward side because of the defensive responsibilities. He's played great for us so far at centre. Whether he's ready to do it full-time through the whole season, we'll see. But when we drafted him, we saw centre in him, and he played centre growing up and in France and in Finland.

But because of the defensive responsibilities, he was sometimes moved to the wing as well. And he's been a wing pretty much the whole time so far with us, but this year he's played center now and he's played great for us. So that's how we try to evaluate players too, is that, you know, okay, they might be playing wing now, but can they play center? And when Jack Roslevic, who I see as a big part of this whole deal, was drafted, he was drafted as a center,

and he's played center and wing in the National Hockey League for his career. But, you know, Winnipeg has a very strong forward group, and there's only so much of opportunity to play in the top lines as a center. There's only two of them if you take top two lines. And, you know, sometimes you could fall behind somebody that's got more experience and is playing better at the time. But an opportunity is a wonderful thing. And we've seen that so many times in this league

where all of a sudden when you get an opportunity, you take off with it and never look back. I can tell you a story about Pierre-Luc Dubois. He was playing on the wing with us and wasn't playing very well. And then all of a sudden, Coach Tortorella and I had a lot of discussions about it. He moved him to a center and put him with Artemi Panarin. And he took off and played great and has played center ever since. So that's why I think they create real opportunities

for young players to show what they can do. And if they're not ready for it, then fine. But until you give them that opportunity, then it's hard to evaluate. So that's a big part of our long-term decisions too when we construct our roster and look forward to not only this year, but next year. Who do we sign?

Who do we resign? Is there enough opportunity for that guy? Is there enough opportunity for in that position for that guy who we see as a, as a center or a wing? So it's an interesting process. What would it have cost you to move up one spot at that draft? I'll tell you one thing. I am never going to talk about any of the

the private talks that i have with the general managers in this league i'm never going to put any any of my colleagues in a bad spot by saying that they offered this guy or i offered that guy or i offered this and that to move up or they offered so and so for this player so that's one thing i take very seriously. That's a very boring answer, I have to tell you. Okay, hang on. Let me continue this quick fishing trip here, Jarmo. Did you ever think you were close?

No. No. They were not moving the pick. The one thing that I have thought about here a bit is that, remembering that draft, when it was coming down everybody was talking the top three was Matthews line a Poole Yarvey who by the way is looking like a totally different player happily for him but you you took a chance and Jeff and I and your fans know you that you're confident and you believe in yourself but at the time it was a risk and

i've wondered if that disappointed you more throughout this process at all yermo that you put yourself out there and you turned out to be right and it didn't work out long term well i don't i want to take the best player available. I live by the principle that the biggest risk in life is not to take any. I have tremendous faith in our scouting staff. I think they do a great job. They've done a great job for us. We're always going to make our decisions based on what their list is looking like. We're not going to make them because of outside pressure

or with all due respect what the experts are saying how the list should be. We look at our list, and those guys have worked on it all year long, watching players over and over and over again, doing all their background checking and research on them, and then they put them in order, and that's the order we're going to go by, and it's very very

simple how crucial is it now um for you yarmo to start to build uh and you've already commented on this but if you could expand to build a long-term relationship with patrick linea in columbus yeah i think we've already started we had a really good conversation with patrick and you know he's looking forward to the same goal and as we have which is to build a long-term relationship but uh you know you you have these young players for you have their rights for seven years and they've committed to that and agreed to that through CBA and you know after that if they so decide they can be unrestricted free agents and I respect that right just just as much as I hold on to the right that we have to have their rights for a certain amount of time or a certain age

and expect the full commitment through that time. But, yeah, I see a player that is still just tapping into his potential. I think he's become a lot more 200-foot player than perhaps he was when he started in this league. But I've never had any doubts about his competitiveness and willingness to learn to become a better player and his work ethic. I have a pretty good network of people that I can talk to from who've known him since he was a kid.

We've done our research for his time in Winnipeg as well. He wants to have a great career. He wants to be the best and hopefully he's with us for a long time. You know, I am curious what your general manager eyes see in Patrick Laine. Elliot and I have talked about this idea that perhaps nobody in the NHL can score from distance quite like Patrick Laine. No one shoots from farther away with more accuracy, and we all know how hard the shot is. What do you see in Patrick Laine? Well, I see a great passer.

Everybody knows. A blind scout can tell you that he's got a great shot, but I've seen him make unbelievable passes through the seam in the power play. He's very creative offensively. He sees the creative offensively. He sees the ice very well. He's also a big, big body that I think that he can hang on to pucks and do even a better job at that just by sticking his arse out

and protecting the puck. That's when he's at his best, when he has the puck. That's the one growth area I'm sure that Coach Tortorella is going to concentrate on is how do we get you the puck more? And that's why you need that 200-foot game is that the best players in the game, as soon as they lose the puck,

they're hungry to get it back because that's what they want. They want to be on the puck. And, you know, I always talk about Pavel Dotsyuk, for example, how great he was at that and what a magician he was with the puck. But when he lost the puck, you could never feel like you were out of danger with him. He'd come back and put that back pressure on you and lift your stick and go the other way. And that's become a real good 200-foot player.

What is Roslevic's ceiling? How good is he? Well, we believe he's a big part of this and we were adamant right from the start with the talks with winnipeg that we wanted both of these players in the deal and and it wasn't happening one for one and jack's been on our radar for a long time ever since the draft and every every conversation basically probably to a point where he was sick of me i've asked about about Roslevic from Chevy. And so I wanted to make sure that in this deal,

now we get him as well. We've seen him as a center growing up. We believe he's a center and can play center and he's got great speed, great skills, good hockey sense, sees the ice. A lot of those things that, that we need right now. And he's going to get a great opportunity here. I have three more for you. so we'll go in order here. Number one, did you ever feel that you got a satisfactory explanation

on why Dubois wanted it to go this way? No, and I don't really even want to answer that question any further because that's something that he should tell people if he wants to. But the one thing I know that there's a misconception there that there's something wrong with Columbus. This is a great city. I mean, I could live here for the rest of my life. I'm from Finland.

You know, it's safe. It's got everything you need. It's a beautiful city, and we've got great fans. We've got a great building and great ownership here, and people are excited about hockey and then again it can give you the small city uh safe feeling when you when you go into the suburbs where we live for example with great schools and and uh some of the best golf courses in the united states if you love that in the off season so i can't say enough about columbus how great it is here

and me and my wife talked about it many times that we could easily live here for the rest of our lives. And, you know, I'd still go to Finland in the summertime to my cottage. But this is a great place to live. And I hate to see this misconception there that somehow people want out of Columbus because it's not a great city. It's totally wrong. You know, as I said, if you become a ufa and you want to go somewhere else if you want to live in new york well we're not new york or if you want to live on the ocean then i'm sorry but that's something we can't offer but we can offer anything

that a professional hockey player needs from things that i mentioned people are passionate about hockey here and it's not just a great hockey city. It's a great sports city. When you look at Ohio state and major league soccer champions here, and it's just a booming city where you can just see that, you know, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the United States and they're building everywhere here and it's turned better. Well, that leads me to my second question, which is probably the toughest question I have for you, Yermo. And that is that one of the theories about this is that there's a certain way that Columbus

does business that you guys are hard to negotiate with, that you've got a very demanding coach, that your organization is demanding in a lot of different ways. And that is what leads some people to want to leave. A, do you believe that? And B, do you feel there needs to be a change in the way the Blue Jackets do business? No, I don't feel that way at all. We have certain rights in the CBA. And as I said, when you become a UFA, you know what they tell me when they become UFA?

Here's what I want for money or I leave. So, you know, when we have the rights and you don't have arbitration rights, for example, we're going to say, well, we think this is a fair contract. Here's why. Here are the comparables. And, you know, let's agree on a deal. We're never going to try to squeeze you and put an unfair offer on the table. Sometimes negotiations can get a little hard if the other side's unreasonable, but I don't think we've ever been unreasonable. I think the contract, once he finally wanted to sign with Pierre-Luc Dubois, took me and Pat Brisson 10 minutes to get done.

And, you know, we just signed Olivier Brixrand to an extension and he's very, very happy about it. But if the player wants to leave for other reasons, and there's nothing we can do. We offered Artemi Panarin one of the biggest contracts in the entire league. We felt that he's worth it, and he's one of the best players in the league, and I think he is. Once you burn it, we're going to pay.

But we'll also have a cap to manage, and now it's going to be flat for a while. So if we just hand out money here in contracts just because we want to be good guys, then maybe the players will like us more or our negotiations more, but we're going to be losing players and not being able to keep our team together because we would be over the cap. We don't get any sympathies from the players and agents when they have the right to ask for whatever they want. We either have to say yes or no when they become UFA.

So we got to conduct our business the right way, but we're always going to try to be fair about it. Shorthanded on Saturday, again, for defending Stanley Cup champions who are off to a great start this year, your players gave you the best game of their season after you made that trade. To me, we all talk, especially sports people, it's a lot of hot air, but actions speak. And the way your team went out on Saturday and played,

that said to me was validation of the move that you guys had decided to make. Did you look at it that way too? Well, they were able to focus on the right things, which is playing hockey and being a team. And that's one of our biggest strengths is that we are a team with the capital letters. And we have a great room.

We have really good leadership here. And guys love playing for each other and with each other and going to battle. That's the way it looked like again on Saturday. We've always been that way here for about a few years now. We're truly a team. I love that about our guys and our room. That's how they approach it. Like I said in the beginning,

there's certain values that we don't compromise and it doesn't matter who you are. You have to live by those values that we think very highly of within this organization and within our locker room. You could see the focus and joy within our team on Saturday's game. We finally looked like a team and we played great

and I'm proud of the guys. It was a wonderful effort and a lot of fun to watch. Columbus, shades of a couple of seasons ago, sticking it to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a key game. Jarmo, thanks so much for doing this. Congratulations on the trade. Best of luck with Line A and Rasslevic and the rest of the Blue Jackets organization

the rest of the season. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Ketos, Jarmo. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Ketos, Jarmo. Thank you. Aloha. Take care now. Well, Elliot, that was Jarmo Kekulainen, general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets. As a draft geek, a couple of things that stand out there specifically

is trying to trade up in 2016 to get number two and the fact that he was not close uh to getting the number two overall pick and drafting patrick line a what stood out for you in our first of all i would just like to say to everyone that notice how jeff says the best answers were questions that he asked okay i i i work with a very selfish co-host i I like to promote Jeff's questions. He only likes to pat himself on the back. I would like everyone to notice this. Enough of me talking about me. Why don't you talk about me for a while?

Kekulani was good. There's no question about him. He's a good interview. He doesn't, if you ask him a question, he's going to give you an answer if he wants to. Obviously he's not going to tell us everything we want to know about what the Jets asked for or personal decisions. Look, he hid nothing. And you always wonder, what are the most passionate answers to these questions? And three things stood out to me.

Number one was that he wasn't doing a one-for-one. Roslevic had to be in the deal, which explains why other teams were interested in Roslevic. Teams like Pittsburgh didn't get him. Number two, his defense of Columbus as a city and a place to live. And number three, his defense of the way they do business as an organization.

I think those were kinds of some of the things he's very passionate talking about those last two things, both the city and the organization. I think those were kinds of some of the things. He's very passionate talking about those last two things, both the city and the organization. And when you're the general manager of a team, that's probably the way you should be. So when I'm hearing Yarmou talk about and defend Columbus, the city, I think to myself, because I mentioned this is not going to be a one-for-one,

Jack Roslevic is going to be part of that deal. I wonder how much, and this is not to disqualify how much of a wonderful hockey player Roslevic is. He is. He's skilled. He's fast. He's a real good player. He's a really, how would you phrase it, Elliot? Really strong middle six center for the Columbus Blue Jackets. That'll probably end up being his spot.

He's a really nice player. I wonder how much of that, how much him involved in the deal is the fact that he's from Columbus, that he's the guy. We're bringing someone from Columbus home. Like not saying this is all about marketing because it's not,

this is a hockey team and you're trying to win games. Is this just a sidebar that we're bringing the local boy home to cement him back and the the concrete can harden around him back in his hometown i think that you can't do that unless you really believe the person can play that's why i've prefaced it by saying this guy's a good hockey player yes just hearing how passionate he is about columbus columbus columbus yes and they're bringing roslovich back here it's hard not to look at this right now and say that winnipeg didn't do anything else with roslovich because they knew that they might need him in this deal i just wonder how much of this is trying to and that's why i asked

the question about the long-term relationship like right right now, if you're Jarmo Kekulainen, and because that story is out there, you go back to, you know, whether it's Federoff or Foote or Nash or Panarin, Bobrovsky, Jeff Carter. Like there is that history of players that want out. about trying to get a long-term relationship with line a and bringing the columbus kid back to columbus how much of this is trying to change the story of people leaving columbus well i'm sure it's probably a lot of it but they've been successful at getting guys to stay too you know nick felino stayed yep cam atkinson stayed it's hard not to look at what happened with Dubois and think about the NBA, right? It was a very NBA move that he pulled. And Tortorella on Friday talking about how he's given up the X's and O's

to Brad Larson and Brad Shaw because he has to manage the young players in the dressing room. This situation, it's a younger player, not free agency, wanting out, and it falls on the player and how he handles the situation. We've been honest. We've had the meeting, but then it comes down to the play. I know you're going to ask me a lot of questions. Let me just explain something to you, what is my responsibility as a coach of this team for all players.

In fact, I've even given most of the X's and O's to Lars and Shazi because this is an all-consuming job with the athletes, the different type of athletes we have right now. And, you know, a little bit of the prima donna type stuff that goes on and not waiting your turn for situations on the ice, not waiting your turn in the locker room. My job is, and I think it's a very important one I take very seriously, is to monitor attitude, Character, attitude, effort. What type of teammate are you? Will you play under a team concept? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think it's really important with today's athlete that we watch that daily. And I do. I do. And the spotlight's on here because of the situation that arose when camp started. I don't think it's a really big deal as far as the spotlight because it doesn't change how I go about that part of it. He is another player in a 23-man roster that I have to watch. I don't care how much money you make. I don't care when you are drafted, free agent, fourth line, first line, it does not matter to me. We live and die on our team concept.

We live and die playing as a team. I think about that, and I think about how in the NBA, there's teams that players want to play for, and then everybody else battles, really battles to keep great young players before they become the free agency. And a lot of cities and markets don't like that and I think it hurts the league in many of these cases. Again, as Kekulainen says,

if a player wants to go somewhere, that is their right. That is their right. I don't have any problem with that. I just understand if I was a fan in some of these markets, I don't know if I'd feel a lot of loyalty to the league if I knew a lot of the star players

didn't feel loyalty to my city. And I do think that you've got to be looking at this case in the National Hockey League and saying, okay, is this a one-off in this situation or are we headed this way? That's what I was going to ask you. Is this a blueprint for how to get out of town?

Well, it worked right. Quickly to quickly. I'd like to think it's not for me. You know, if I was ever that on, like we, and again, I don't want to relive this, but you know, we talked about how, you know, sometimes we really hate our bosses, but I believe you

have to show up to work. I would hope I would never do that. I don't like it, but I also understand if you're that unhappy at a workplace that you feel that that's your only recourse. Like, I hope that never happens to me. Like, look, like how have the young players changed the sport? The thing that Jan Waukeka-Lennon talked about, they're using the power of the CBA against the young players. They have the hammer when they're UFAs.

We have the hammer when they don't have, have say Arbrights or they're restricted free agents and he uses it and they use it. And they are, as you heard, unapologetic about that. This generation of players has thrown that on its ear. They're getting paid more money sooner than ever. McDavid, the guys in Toronto, Aaron Ekad seth jones aaron ekblad's deal affected seth jones deal all of that stuff jeff so now what if the next step is okay we're doing what james harden did i think it's got a lot of people uh nervous i'll tell you this. There's one guy I know, I think he could be a really good general manager. And he said to me, he will never be a GM in this league. And I said, really, why not? He said, I just don't think I am properly equipped to deal with the young player

of today. And he said, look, like I just know myself. This person loves hockey. They're good at their job. They work for a good organization. And they just said, I don't think I'm wired this way. And, you know, it's a challenge. The players are more empowered in all sports than they ever have been before. Younger people feel more empowered with social media than they ever have been before. Younger people feel more empowered with

social media than they ever have before. We're all going to have to deal with it. From the Winnipeg point of view, what happened with Line A in Winnipeg? And we've talked plenty about how the leadership group runs the team hard. That may rub against the player like Patrick Line A. I've never been one that feels that every hockey player should be treated the exact same way because we're all unique individuals and everybody reacts to things differently. The one criticism of Winnipeg has always been with this group that they run them hard and they expect them to do hockey things one specific way. But where did it break down as far as you've been able to piece together between Liney and the Winnipeg Jets?

I thought it was really interesting that Blake Wheeler, he dumped on the narrative that he wasn't a good enough captain to Liney. And we all know that a year ago, Wheeler came out and said, look, I recognize i might be too demanding on certain people and i'm going to change and he was having none of the he was too demanding online and he said if i have any regrets you know my regrets would be you know some of the frustrations that took place over the years um i've always had a real positive relationship with Patty. Every time we've communicated, it's been nothing but positive.

Never any fighting, never any yelling at each other. More so just a player in his mid-30s has 20-20 vision looking in the past. You know, as a young player, I certainly had a lot of habits and things I needed to overcome. So maybe, you know, I, I could have communicated a little bit better instead of just getting frustrated. That would be the extent of it. Um, never once was I hard on Patty far from it, you know, if anything, you know, I was very respectful and coddled, uh, you know, a teenager and a young 20 year old. So I don't regret that, but I, I,

sometimes I wish, you know, instead of, you know, I guess my instinct is to get frustrated and, and, and maybe not say anything. Whereas, you know, maybe if I could have communicated better, you know, maybe it would have made things better, but ultimately I don't think that would have happened. And I think it's interesting that, you know know wheeler basically came out and said i took my medicine last year and i feel i i made the change i think some of it was for whatever reason when it wasn't on the power play shifley and wheeler just didn't think that they meshed or the jets just didn't think that they meshed i I think that line a wanted to be with him. I just don't think Shifley and the jets believe it worked. And part of it might've been because they felt they needed depth.

They can't all be on one line, but I just think they felt as a group, it didn't work. And I think line a was unhappy with that. And, you know, the other thing is, and I always think of Gary Roberts when it comes to this, when Gary Roberts left Calgary and decided he was going to come back and play,

he wanted somewhere quiet. And then when he went to Toronto, he said, after being somewhere quiet, he wanted somewhere where it mattered a little bit more. And I think people go through different phases of that in their lives i wonder if you know pavel burry thought it was a fishbowl and that was one of the reasons that he wanted out i wonder if linea just could use something a little quieter right now too now i have to tell you i think in this particular case linea is another guy who wanted a big number again i have no problem with that ask for what you want see what you get i do think that what line a wanted the jets were never going to do that

and i also think that it might have caused some problems i think that if you take a look at some of those jets players they're very well paid but not in that stratosphere of like you know say 10 or 11 million dollars what lonnie would have liked long term and i think that the jets were worried about you know what that would do everybody there is kind of in a group and if you know one player was higher than another that much, I think the Jets were worried about that. I think they were worried about the effect on it. And they made a decision saying, you know what? Everybody who's at the top here is going to be in the same kind of area.

And we're not going 2 million, 3 million more than that. I really think that that was a factor. How much of that dynamic plays itself out on a team? We so seldom focus in on the who's making more and what that does to a room. We want to pretend that things like jealousy doesn't exist amongst hockey players who in a lot of ways measure themselves based on their compensation. Let's say line A wins the Rocket Richard three years in a row and is ripping off 55, 60 goals a season and gets himself to that $11 million stratosphere. Would that have upset that room that much, do you think? Well, I think there's a difference between you think he's going to do it and he actually does it i do think that

if it happens when a player does it i think that there's a certain understanding of well he's done it like you can't just talk about it as an abstract idea right so i do think there's a difference between that and believing that they're going to do it yes i do believe it comes up and look like hey I've talked about when the Pagoulas got into Buffalo, they had all the right intentions. I really believe it. And the players admitted

when they started throwing the big deals out to Leno and Christian Ehrhoff, it affected their room. And we both live in Toronto. You don't think that the Tavares deal affected everybody there, all their negotiations? It did. And that's just the way life is.

These athletes, they're competitive, and they're competitive on the ice, and they're competitive off the ice. But I think you have to get your team at the right time, Jeff, that they realize they're about to win and they say, okay, we're about to win here. So we have to figure out a way to make this all work. Like the one that's going to be interesting now is going to be Vancouver. So the news breaks on Sunday night that Elias Patterson is going to switch agents. He's going to Pat Brisson and JP Berry, who also have Quinn Hughes. So now the two best players on your team are going to be represented by the same guy.

And Quinn Hughes is at a place in the CBA where he is not yet eligible for an offer sheet or arbitration. so it would seem that he does not have a ton of leverage you know johnny gutero was in that situation it doesn't seem that he would have a lot of leverage but you know now all of a sudden he's in the same stable as petterson you know how much does that change everything it's a challenge how much for people listening to the podcast right now that might not understand that dynamic and may think that everything is done on an individual basis you know elias petterson may be represented by caa and quinn hughes may be represented by caa but that doesn't come up in the discussions with

each player specifically but But does it? Like we've seen situations where, I'm trying to think of an obvious one. Taylor Hall gets drafted first overall to Edmonton. And he's an oral group client at that point. And right away, another oral group client gets signed in Ben Eager to provide some security, let's just say, around Taylor Hall in his rookie seasons. So I think to pretend that it doesn't happen is folly. But in this situation, what's the dynamic at play here? Look at Columbus. We just talked about it. Brisson had three different blue jackets. He had Wierenski, he had Jones, and he had Dubois. And, you know, one thing I'm always careful about is saying, well, if you treat that guy

poorly, well, his other client is going to get you back with that guy. Yeah. That's not always true. Like every situation is different, but it can happen. It has been known to happen. Like in baseball, Scott boris there were teams that refused to deal with them they just said we're not dealing with the guy and you know i don't think that's a great strategy either i do know there have been some cases where teams have said

okay we can't deal with this one agent but we have to so i'm not going to do it i'm going to give it the responsibility to someone else. So they have to do it. Around the draft, there's always stories about, you know, this player is not going to get drafted to this team because that general manager won't do business with that agent. Yeah. I don't think you can live like that. We know GMs that have. Yes.

But you've got to hire someone else who can. But, you know, like I remember one GM complaining to me about a package deal. The one that I know people have talked about over the years was Marian Hossa and Thomas Kopechki in Chicago. Well, there was Solani in Korea with Don Baisley. Yes. That was a package deal. Yes, that was, obviously.

The thing is, you just have to be aware of the dynamics there right i gotta tell you when when news was leaking out over the weekend that petterson was switching there were a lot of guys trying to find out if it was already done or he's actually a free agent man the jockeying was going on like he may be playing poorly to start the year, but that doesn't mean any of these agents thought any less of him. How do you read the Vancouver situation as we dovetail to that? How do you read the Vancouver situation right now?

I know it's torches at the castle gate right now, pitchforks and peasants, but geez, it's not looking good for the Vancouver Canucks right now. No, and I do think the identity of the team has changed. I think Markstrom and Tanev, not only as players, but as people, I think there were two people that really stabilized them when things went badly. Pedersen was really tight with Markstrom when he would be upset or needed advice or anything like that.

Markstrom was his guy. Same with Hughes and Tanev. like that Markstrom was his guy same with Hughes and Tanev I've had a couple of teams tell me that Tanev was a good passer and obviously he's not as dynamic as Hughes who is but at least he could you know alleviate some of the pressure on Hughes if Tanev had the puck he would get it up the ice you know Hughes he's getting killed out there and without tana's passing ability next to him it's harder for them to get it up when he's getting bombarded and hit and i think this has affected their personalities and i think it's affected their play it's an awful start and all of a sudden these games with ottawa this week they're huge yeah huge for Vancouver

you know where do you think Edmonton Calgary and Vancouver would rather be right now the Canadian division or the Pacific oh please they'd rather be in the Pacific it's not even close but it's early still though there's no such thing as early, Jeff. It's a sprint this year. There's no early. So you've made up your mind about all of it right now, then? No, I haven't made up my mind about all of it,

but I know the odds. I'm a gambler. I know the odds are getting really long. I'm just not that quick to dismiss it. I am still trying in my mind not to overreact to everything that I'm seeing in the first couple of weeks. I know it's a compressed schedule. I know it's only 56 games. I get all that. I'm still trying not to overreact to everything that i'm seeing in the first couple of weeks i know it's a compressed schedule i know it's only 56 games i get all that i'm still trying not to overreact right now jeff there's no room for you in this business if you're not going to overreact to things i gotta tell you i woke up this morning to apologies in my direct messages

for uh from people in vanc Vancouver over all the craziness. You know what? Everything that Vancouver's gone through, like two and five to start the season, goal differential of dash 13. They've allowed 33 goals against so far. Through all of it, Bo Horvath's played some of the best hockey

we've ever seen him play. Deadly on the power play. He's been outstanding. And you know know what now what's going to happen is everyone's going to try to take that play away from them right of course they will it's fine another coach said to me he said chloe julian he prepares they couldn't believe that play worked twice all right a few more things around the nhl i want to get to um obligatory joke uh we'll just get it out of the way uh how unfair is it that arizona gets two teams before toronto elliot san jose sharks you know california california is lifting and we'll see if it happens as we're taping it there are reports that the governor is going to

lift their stay at home orders i hope that's good news for those players that they can get home and and see their families and and be at home i mean hopefully it's good news for those players that they can get home and, and see their families and be at home. I mean, hopefully it's good news in general for the people of California and where everybody thinks that we're going with COVID, but I will be happy for those players when they get to go home. You know, it looks pretty good.

Brent Burns. Burns walks in and scores a backh, top shelf over Kakanen. And the Sharks have reclaimed the lead with less than two minutes to play. Oh my goodness. Great players just sometimes make great plays and you have to tip your hat. What a play by Brent Burns. That was a really nifty play, wasn't it? And I had a lot of people sending me messages, and we saw it on Twitter last night too, kind of saying like,

make this guy a winger again, get them off of the blue line. Look at these moves, the big man in tight candidate for goal of the year. Like it was a beautiful, to me, again, the best goal that I've seen this year is still Patrick Laine on that

breakaway where he's on a breakaway and he shoots from essentially what the, just underneath of the, the face-off circles like you have to be so flipping confident in your shot that on a breakaway you're shooting from there and he scores that to me is the goal of the year it's not it may not be as flashy because liney just comes in and slings it in we've seen it do it a million times but the the context makes it but that brent burns play was fantastic it was it's it a million times, but the context makes it. But that Brent Burns play was fantastic.

It was. It's not a surprise that he would have the flair that he would do it. By the way, Darren Stevens, his Twitter handle is at SharkStats. He's got really good stuff on little notes that you wouldn't have expected. He had a really good one the other night on their game on the 20th.

He played 31-47, which was the most in a game in Sharks history by a defenseman age 35 plus, and the most of any NHL defenseman age 35 plus since Valentine's Day 2015, which was Andre Markov. 2015, which was Andre Markov. Oh. However, what Stevens did update was that the scoring crew in St. Louis actually knocked him down, knocked his

ice time down 56 seconds. So it went to 3051, but I thought that was really interesting. Wouldn't Adrian a coin have had some nights like that? I don't know if he would have had them at that age like i do remember a time when he played for the islanders it seemed like he was playing 40 minutes a night yeah i just want to go back to what i was saying earlier

i feel really disconnected with the u.s teams you do i go out of my way to make sure that i watch them every single night and follow them i agree like. Like I try, I really do try, but I really hated last week's blog just because I felt I was really disconnected from the American teams. I really have to work on it. You know, I was talking about it with an agent. Normally his teams would come into Toronto, a Toronto based agent.

And he said, you know, I'd be going out for dinner. You really miss that. You know, Edbased agent, and he said, you know, I'd be going out for dinner. You really missed that. You know, Edmonton, Toronto last Wednesday, it wasn't the game that everybody hoped it would be, thanks to Dave Tippett, but you go to the morning skate, it would be so exciting. All that's gone.

Like it's, it feels really weird, Jeff. I'm in a really, I feel really disconnected with the league and I don't like the feeling of it, I have to say I really, I feel really disconnected with the league and I don't like the feeling of it, I have to say. Okay, let me help you with the blog this week then, right here on the podcast. I have two American thoughts for you. Okay.

New Jersey Devils. Jack Hughes is good. That's one thought. And the next thought is, so is Ty Smith. Yes. Ty Smith's been fantastic. He's been really good. Yeah, we talked at the beginning of the season about the New Jersey Devils and doing it without Nico

Heischer and all the challenges that New Jersey had with Crawford retiring etc that goal Sunday night that Jack Hughes scored on Ilya Sorokin short side power play goal walks in and finds like the tiniest spot to shoot at and nails it that's the way you want to see the Devils move the puck and the power play goal walks in and finds like the tiniest spot to shoot at and nails it that's the

way you want to see the devils move the puck in the power play and they feed jack hughes he goes top shelf with a wicked wrist shot all kinds of time head up look at the screen by miles wood in front and hughes goes short side upstairs to give the Devils a one nothing lead. First of all, the confidence to take that shot is great, but Ty Smith points in five consecutive games to start the career six points so far. I don't know. We talk about, you know, the future of this team and we talk a lot about the forwards. How about Ty Smith? Smooth skating.

We should mention Ty Smith. I have to tell you, there were people in that organization who worried they'd miss there. Because he didn't make it right away? That's one of those guys that you look at and you say, listen, this guy played four plus in a handful of games after his bantam, but he essentially played four full years in Spokane in the Western Hockey League and was not hurt by it

at all this is a reminder that if a player does not make it at 19 years old or 20 years old 100 it's not the end of the world same with cock and yemi in montreal 100 i do know like there were there were some people there who were worried they'd missed on him and it just reminds you you just take your time don't be afraid to take your time like look at pool yarvey yeah everybody oh flop now he's coming back and he looks like he's a player playing on mcdavis line you know doesn't look as good to start the year as i thought they would is colorado oh why just because they've lost to some unlikely teams most recently the anaheim ducks on sunday evening la has given them a lot they can handle they're just a little slower out of the gate than i thought they would be you want to come over to the don't

panic jeff side of things or do you want to stay on the overreact elliott side of things no no i i don't panic with them i think they're still too good yep you know that west division that's the only division where where as we tape this podcast on monday morning everybody's played the same amount of games everybody's played six so it's all even there's no reason to panic jeff it's all even and you've've got Vegas at 10 points and everybody else from five to eight. Elliot, let's talk about a pretty big piece of news around the NHL today, and that's the NHL ruling on John Chayka.

To reset, he resigned on July 24th as general manager and president of hockey operations for the Arizona Coyotes. And Elliot, I think we can all recall the press release that the Coyotes put out amongst other things, highlights including Chica has chosen to quit. Alex Murillo, who's the owner of the Arizona Coyotes,

extended Chica in 2019. It was a four-year deal. And then as the story goes, another NHL team called to talk to John initially was rebuffed and the team said you couldn't talk to them. But then Chyka was allowed to and maintained that it wasn't a job interview. This was the New Jersey Devils, Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who own various sports teams. And the position that we all were led to believe it was, was to oversee other sports properties.

They don't just own the Devils. They also own the 76ers, Crystal Palace FC, amongst others. The Coyotes felt duped. They asked for a ruling and an investigation and a ruling by NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman. And that decision came out today, Elliot. Yeah, I haven't seen the full ruling. From what I understand, the league has said that they will only give the ruling to

the affected parties. And then it released like what I would call a summary to everybody else in the league. And basically it said that he's suspended through December 31st of this year. And the quote is Chica engaged in conduct detrimental to the league, breached his obligation to the club and was properly terminated by the club. So there's a lot of questions here. I had heard that he had the permission in writing so without knowing how the commissioner ruled on that i don't know what to say i have to say i'm not

surprised that the league did this i had some people who thought it was going to be longer but when you think about it and someone pointed out to me this morning, yesterday, which was Sunday for the purposes, we're doing this on Monday morning, but Sunday was six months to the day that Chyka had left Arizona. So this suspension by the time it's done is basically going to be almost 18 months. I think it's going to be 17 months. it's going to be 17 months. But, you know, some people said to me that, you know, they thought that it was going to be more that maybe Bettman might just say that you signed the four year deal as you would point out Jeff and he had to stay out for the full deal, but that's obviously not the case.

Now, the biggest question here is what's going to happen with this in theory devil's position as was reported last week. Tom Fitzgerald has a four-year deal, a long-term deal, I should say. I don't know what's four years. A long-term deal, but he's only got a one-year deal to be the general manager. You know, they're going really well. They've started really nicely.

They've got structure. As you talked about, Hughes is better. I think Lindy Ruff, the players have seemed to really respond to him. You know, we'll see what happens here, but we're doing this about an hour after we got the information. I haven't seen the full ruling as of yet. I'm curious to see what it's going to mean.

I'm curious about what the NHL would think when they get all of this information. Like what would, from Gary Bettman's point of view, what would be most concerning in this entire case? The commissioner has fought hard for Arizona. Okay. Yes. So I don't know if prejudice is the right word, but he definitely has a leaning towards Arizona. But whatever happened here, the league doesn't want that it wants its teams and

its owners to be protected like who does the commissioner care more about owners or general managers owners all day long so one thing he's done here is he's protected his owner like any gm who might be thinking about something like this, they better have their ducks in a row because the commissioner just suspended them. I think the other thing too is in some ways it's easy because the other execs don't like Chica because of what happened with the

testing, right? Right. So it's not like anybody is going to stand up and say this is wrong no one's going to stand up and say you know i'm going to defend them because they're upset at him for the other thing again i don't know what the ruling is here as we do this i had heard that chica had everything in writing and i know it got ugly and you know the one thing i always said was that he was really going to have to win to win it was going to have to be a clear-cut case because you know the league is going to side with the owners on this one generally and you know i'll wait to

see what happens but obviously he didn't convince the commissioner. I wonder too what happens to John Shika out of all of this. And I understand that he made his enemies and some people around the league weren't exactly thrilled at how he behaved. But does this, I don't know, maybe radioactive is too strong a term, but does this bring into doubt even when his suspension is over his future in the NHL?

I don't know. I mean, you know, maybe he says enough. I don't want to do it. Or maybe he comes back to and says, F you, I'm coming back. Or maybe he says, look, I learned my lesson and I'm coming back and I'm going to be a different person. You know, he hasn't talked to anyone, right? Right. So it's hard to know what he's thinking exactly.

I mean, there's no question it became harder. I think the biggest question here is the one thing we don't know is that what's New Jersey thinking in all of this? Was it a done deal? What's New Jersey thinking in all of this? Was it a done deal? And was there a promise made that when this is over, you're still going to be our guy? Elliot, I want to get to something you mentioned on headlines on Saturday, and that is the idea of the draft.

Or should I say the drafts? Two drafts next year? Well, I should say that everything here is at the approval of the NHLPA, right? And I had one agent who said to me, it will be very difficult to get the Players Association to agree to this

because you're asking for people to give up a year of their careers. And also the relationship between the league and the players association. I don't know how good it is right now after their second run through at the CBA in November and December. Look, I think the teams are saying this is unfair. This is ridiculous.

And you cannot allow us to have a draft. A lot of prospects haven't played very much around the world. The NCAA is still chugging along. The USHL, some of them are chugging along. Overseas, some are playing, some aren't. In Canada, they're not playing right now, and there's real worry that they're ever going to get a chance to play again. The Western Hockey League is really going to try later february but not every team might be the ohl will do something elliot

you're closer than this to me i always concede that i was just told on the weekend by one of the teams that ontario is asking for the same it's the same thing that's going on with the ahl they won't let the ahL play in Ontario unless they do the NHL rules. And that's what I heard they're asking of for the OHL teams. And that's a big ask. And the NHL teams are really worried about

this. And Chris Johnston mentioned the possibility of combines or all-star camps. It's not the same. And Jeff, I believe that the teams are saying the league said let's get the season started which they have and then we'll worry on the draft and now the teams are saying this is unfair we cannot make these decisions this year if we get only a minimum amount of games so some of the solutions are number one is maybe you move the draft to December or January.

So that way a player can get some time in the NHL next year and, you know, you can give them their service time and things like that. That's one solution. But I know there's a couple teams and it came up in at least two team scouting meetings that why don't we have a big extravaganza, a big hockey extravaganza in June 22 in Montreal. You do the NHL draft, the late 02-03 draft, and the late 03-04 draft, whether it's three days apart, whether it's a week apart, whether it's two weeks apart.

You have everybody in montreal and maybe what you do is you do it before and after free agency so how do you determine order for the first one the first one is this year's order and the second one is next year's order it's fascinating maybe you could do averages i't know, but you lock it in. But, you know, so basically they're brainstorming. I mean, the two drafts while everybody's in the same city, holy cow, what an opportunity for newsworthiness. I do understand what the agent said to me though, is that I wonder if you're going to have to do something with service time to make it work for the Players Association. More on this in the weeks to come. And that does sound like an insider's dream, by the way, for you and guys like CJ. Before we split here, and I want to do some stuff, and I think you do as well, a little bit later on this week in our next podcast on the NWHL and their opening weekend in Lake Placid. There's a lot to take out of that weekend from what we saw both on and off the ice and talk a lot about the interim commissioner, Tyler Taminia, who is really an interesting person in

the game of hockey right now. I'm curious your thoughts on her. And we have to mention that they colored the ice. We'll do that on the next podcast because that was done purely with you in mind. We'll talk about that on the next podcast. Listen, it looked wonderful.

I loved it. I also liked green mixing with blue in the jersey. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about with the NWHL later on this week in our next podcast. I want to conclude by getting your thoughts and having a thought or two about George Armstrong, who passed away, one of the great leaders of the Toronto Maple Leafs, multiple Stanley Cup champion, Allen Cup champion as a coach, Memorial Cup champion as well, was a longtime scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Before that, the Quebec Nordiques.

Actually, it was Gord Stelic that brought him back into the Maple Leaf mix. And then he had a 33-year run as a head scout as Stelic mended the fences between George Armstrong and Harold Ballard. When I say the name George Armstrong to you, Elliot, what comes to your mind? Well, there's a serious thing and a fun thing. The fun thing is when he took his dentures out at the draft. That was hilarious. I have a denture story with him too, by way you want to hear it sure he wants because he used to live near a funeral home in leeside and he actually got a dead guy's dentures and replaced johnny bauer's dentures with this guy's dentures one day all the guys on the team loved it

johnny maybe not so much yeah Yeah, well, too bad. It's funny. When he pushed out his dentures, I laughed my head off. Yeah, that was great. What I remember, I mean, obviously the captain of the last Maple Leaf team to win the Stanley Cup, which was before my time. But I remember Punch Imlach. I looked for, I have both of his books uh heaven and hell in the nhl and hockey is a battle and it's not in either of those but somewhere i know i've read you know he basically

came up to the mapleys after bill borolko died yes true 1951 and they always said that even though he was new to the team at the time, he played an enormous role in helping them settle down after that tragedy. And I have a book here. It's a book of documents written in blue and white. And it's basically documents about the Maple Leafs and their history. But I didn't know about this, but Detroit, when he was called up from the old Pittsburgh Hornets, Detroit tried to claim that there was a mistake

in the paperwork. So he was actually their property now. And the Leafs and the red wings had to appeal to the league as to why armstrong was theirs and montreal was one of the teams that arbitrated it and obviously the maple east won but imagine how different it could have been if detroit which at that time was the power yeah that was that they were they were at the height of their powers with gordy howe would have gotten george armstrong uh the production line uh red kelly and george armstrong yeah that's uh that's a powerhouse that's a complete powerhouse the um you mentioned the

last captain in the 1967 team and i think the the one you know one of the enduring images that we'll all remember of george armstrong is scoring the empty net goal it's the face-off alan stanley punch him like as you know liked his defenseman to take face-offs to the defensive zone whether it was tim horton whether it was pro and evvo like didn't matter like your defense when you're taking draws alan stanley ties up and smacks the the blade of bellovo who complains about interference it goes to red kelly to bob polford to george armstrong to the empty net gump worsley had been pulled by toe blake and that's going to be one of the enduring images and that was the over the hill gang, the guys that the players that were too old

to play hockey anymore. Like all these guys in their late thirties that were thinking about winding things down. And even at the end of that season and the Maple Leafs kept bringing them back on one year deals. At the end of that Armstrong said, I'm retired, I'm no good anymore.

He said, I played good the last month in the playoffs, but that doesn't erase the last seven months where I was really bad. But the Maple Leafs still protected him in the expansion draft and hung on to him. And every year he'd say, ah, I can't do this. And every year he would until he finally did hang him up after going through that dance with the Maple Leafs four or five different times. You mentioned books. I want to recommend one as well. If you're interested in his era specifically, it's written by Kevin Shea, who for my money is one of the best hockey writers ever. It's called Toronto Maple Leafs, Diary of a Dynasty, 1957 to 1967. Great stories of George Armstrong and great stories of that era

of Maple Leafs teams as well are our condolences to the family and the friends of George Armstrong