Halford & Brough in the Morning - Conor Garland Loves Sharks (Not The Hockey Team, The Animal)

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

In hour two, Mike & Jason chat the latest around the red hot Maple Leafs with Sportsnet's Luke Fox (2:37), they talk a BC Lions coaching change with 3 Down Nation's JC Abbott (27:02), plus they discuss Conor Garland's love of sharks (39:30). This podcast is produced by Andy Cole and Greg Balloch. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Back check, forward check, and fade check. Rough Sportsnet 650. That was Nikita Grabenkin. Grabenkin. Played his first game for the Toronto Maple Leafs last night. A 3-0 win over the Vegas Golden Knights. If you're unfamiliar with the work of Nikita Grabenkin, don't worry. You should be. He, with a lot of other guys, as I was watching last night, got the same response. Who is that guy?

He was laughing all the way to the Grabenkin. He's lucky he didn't get tossed out of the game for that hit from behind on Shea Thano. You know what? Good on Grabenkin because he set the tone for last night. He threw a big hit early and then many, many big hits followed, including the one on Matthew Nyes from Zach Whitecloud, which was the one,

that's the one that's drawn the majority of the attention. That was a great hit. Perfect. Not a lot of people agree with you, Jason Brough. People that know the game do. Ooh, snap. That was a great hit. And to compare it to the Reeves hit, just, I mean.

I will say this. I thought it was clean. Very polarizing. Because a lot of, not just like casuals, but like the hockey people, they pay on the TV to talk about it. Who? Bruce Boudreaux. Yeah.

Luke Gazdik. He's the Leafs homer. Gazdik didn't like it? Nope. Thought it should have been a penalty on the play. Really? Should have been tossed from the game. Gazdik's gone soft.

Hit through the body, though. It was the leaving of the feet. It was the skates coming off the ice and the leaving of the feet. You guys have gone soft. Hit through the body, though. It was the leaving of the feet. It was the skates coming off the ice and the leaving of the feet. Okay. I'm not, hey, don't get mad at me. I'm not getting mad at you. You're getting mad at me. I'm not mad at you.

Luke Fox is going to join us in just a moment here. Hopefully, he can figure out this non-fight that we're having, apparently. Before we get to Luke Fox, we do need to take care of some business here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. This show is brought to you by Vancouver Honda, Vancouver's premier destination for Honda customers. They have a friendly, knowledgeable staff that can help with anything you're looking for,

sales, financing, service, or parts. We are in Hour 2 of the program now. Hour 2 is brought to you by Jason Amunak at jason.mortgage. If you love giving the banks more of your money, then don't let Jason shop around to find the perfect mortgage for you. I am joking. Visit him at Jason.Mortgage on the internet. We are coming to you live from the Kintec studio.

Kintec, Canada's favorite orthotics provider, powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews. So, what are you waiting for? Kintec, to the phone lines we go. Luke Fox from Sportsnet joins us now on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Morning, Luke. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you guys? We're good.

So let's start with the hit. It's out there now. Clean hit, dirty hit, good hit, bad hit. I thought it was a good hit with a bad result. You know, the NHL that I like to watch, if you hit a guy and it starts through the body and it's in the neutral zone and the guy has his head down a

little bit uh you don't like to see the result you know the the fact that nye's left the game but i like big hits and i i thought it was clean and i i guess the refs agreed you know they they looked at it at the on the ipad for quite a while and uh it injected a jolt of energy in the game though it woke the Leafs up they were ticked off um that uh you know White Cloud wasn't given a major uh what I would say is though I didn't like the fact that the Vegas Golden Knights ended up on the power play after that. So, Simone Benoit, who comes in to stick up for his teammate, gets a double rough, and White Cloud gets a rough. I thought optically that wasn't the greatest look. Maybe just give them both a rough.

But, you know, it infuriated the crowd, and it invigorated the Leafs and they got the win. It was a pretty impressive performance from the Leafs. And frankly, the Leafs, except for one or two efforts here and there, have been pretty impressive without Austin Matthews. What is the key to it? Yeah, it's been something. So there's six and one during this recent stretch without their captain.

And I think there's a couple of keys to it. It's not just one thing. I think it starts, I mean, you know, in the aftermath of last night, everyone wants to talk about the kids, you know, Fraser Minton and Nikita Grabenka bringing in this breath of fresh air, some new energy. But really it's the other stars that have been phenomenal. So of those six games mitch marner

has had multi-point nights in five of them uh william e lander was probably the best player on the ice last night he's been great but the guy that really stands out to me is john taveras so he's taken over the first line center role um this is a guy that, you know, would have every right to feel a little bit insulted of having the captaincy stripped from him. He's getting a little bit older. Everyone's predicting a step back. And he has been absolutely phenomenal during this stretch. He's been a little bit more physical.

He's risen to the occasion both offensively and defensively. Since he's been first-line center last week or so, him and Marner, and they've brought Bobby McMahon up there as well. They've limited or shut down the Ovechkin line in Washington, which at the time was arguably one of the hottest lines in hockey. They served McDavid a minus three, which is his worst plus minus in all season and dating back to most of last season. They shut him down, get a win over Edmonton.

And then last night they did a phenomenal job on the Jack Eichel line, which is also one of the best lines in hockey. So John Tavares to me um as you know it feels like there's a reason why they call it alternate captain it alternate captain instead of assistant captain because he's acting like a captain now with matthews on the sidelines so marner's a pending ufa and tavaris is a pending ufa what's the plan here with those guys? The plan seems to be to be patient, to take things slow. So there, there were some conversations in the off season, you know, and during training camp with, with Tavares, especially,

he's made it clear that he wants to come back. But, you know, the Leafs aren't willing to meet his price just yet. So there's a sense that they're just going to play this thing out. In Tavares' situation, Brad Trier-Living knows that this guy just started a young family, has three kids, you know, wants to stay in Toronto. And the Leafs certainly as as this past stretches exposed uh they need centers and he's still an effective one at his age uh but that's the big question mark is this does this become a steven stamko situation where they low ball them and try to get him to take such a team discount that he says, hey, I'm still producing, I have value,

and this is insulting, and he ends up walking out the door. There's no sense that's going to happen yet, but there's also no urgency to get a deal done. And with Marner, it seems similar in that both sides know where they stand. Marner's price has only gone up. And then you think about the Elliott Friedman's report that the cap could spike dramatically. If you're Darren Ferris, Marner's agent,

or if you're Mikko Rantanen or any of these big name free agents, you're just like, why would I rush to put pen to paper? Maybe the cap's going to take a gigantic spike, and that's only going to favor my client, who's still in his prime and still producing. So the Marner camp is in no rush, and I think the Leafs, from the Leafs' perspective, they're like, maybe we've got to wait this out

and see how this team does in the playoffs, because they've never got it done in the playoffs, even though Marner is having another fantastic regular season. So it's kind of just a sit and wait. Austin Matthews, what was the reaction in Toronto when it was reported that he was over in Germany to get whatever looked at? Because nobody seems to know what exactly is wrong with Austin Matthews. I know when Elliott reported, he said,

you know, don't panic. I know that's the message from the Maple Leafs. There's no panic. But, you know, when your star player takes a trip overseas, even if it is, you can call it common, it's kind of like, oh, what's going on here? Yeah. Like, how often in the middle of the season, when a guy is listed as day-to-day and the GM insists he's still day-to-day, even though it's going to stretch past the three-week mark, do you find out that the guy's taking a cross-Atlantic flight? What is going on in this market is there seems to be a disconnect between the team's messaging and the reality of what's happening yeah so they're insisting no setbacks everything's fine

he's progressing and yet a couple uh a couple weeks ago he tried skating did it for two days and then stopped skating like that doesn't sound like a guy who's who's ramping back up um they've had the benefit of a really soft schedule so that vegas game is came last night came in a stretch of one game in seven days so the leafs looked at the schedule they say our captain's not quite feeling right something's bothering them it's not and it's been lingering since training camp let's take advantage of this light schedule to to get him the help he needs um knowing that the whole leaf schedule is viewed through the prism of it's kind of a 82 game dress rehearsal and nothing matters no one really cares unless this team gets something done in the playoffs so let's make sure

this weapon of ours is ready to go come then but i think it's more how this is handled you know i don't even think true living comes out this weekend and talks about germany if elliot didn't suss that out they're trying to be very secretive about injuries, and it's not just with Austin. David Camp, they said he might play Sunday, and then all of a sudden he's on LTI. And that means he has to miss 10 games. They're being very cloak and dagger about the status of their injured guys. It's kind of created a little seed of distrust, I think,

amongst the fan base and what the message is coming from the organization. We're speaking to Luke Fox, NHL writer for Sportsnet, here on the Alfred and Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Last week for Sportsnet.ca, Luke, you wrote the following. The most compelling conspiracy theory I heard from someone in montreal this week the canadians are keeping an eye on jim montgomery who of course is a bilingual montreal native and a jack adams winner now in light of the fact that jim montgomery has been fired by the boston did you decide to circle back with montreal and just check again you wrote also that it's a theory not a report but

did you circle back on this one at all uh no I've been busy dealing with all the happenings in Leaveland the last few days but uh it is interesting yeah when so when Montreal was rolled through Toronto I've you know talked to a bunch of people close to the Canadians, and that was the theory that was out there. And I think it's born of a couple things, that the team's strict policy of only hiring bilingual head coaches, and Jim Montgomery, you know, going around, like his points percentage, his record, he's a good coach, man. Like, this is not all on him that he got fired. That has a lot to do with

roster construction in my mind and the fact that they just don't have enough guys beyond Pasternak to put the puck in the net so I would not be surprised for teams to suddenly say look at their own coaching situation and say do we need to make a move to go get him? And the thing is, this has happened in the not-so-distant past when the Bruins fired Claude Julien. The Montreal Canadiens made a coaching change, gnashed him up right away, just because they deal with such a small pool of coaching candidates. And the other thing is,

I don't think anyone expected the Canadiens to be great, but they've stopped taking steps under Martin St-Louis. And as beloved as he is, and he does have term on his contract, unlike Montgomery had, unlike Derek Lalonde, like some of these guys are lame duck coaches, St-Louis is not that. But the Canadians have been a bit of a mess and they've stopped taking, taking steps. And so you just wonder if that is a possibility, because if the Canadians don't do it,

I'm sure some other team will grab Montgomery pretty quickly here. Speaking of Canadian teams that aren't taking the requisite steps, the Ottawa Senators, I know you've been tied up with Maple Leaf stuff, but Hey, they're in the same province. You got to be keeping an eye on Ottawa as well. If you had to pinpoint one particular thing, and it might be tough, so feel free to have A, B, and C here,

but what's the one thing that's prevented Ottawa from taking the leap this season? We might have lost him there. I don't think this is a dramatic loss. You really threw him with your questions. He's just thinking hard. I'm like, Luke? Luke? Give it another minute no way we lost him we are speaking of luke fox from sports net here on the halford and brough show on sports net and of course the

connects are going to be in ottawa on saturday i haven't i've been paying more attention to ottawa this year than i have in years past for a variety of reasons one curious to see how the travis green thing works out two there is this understanding that because they've undergone so many changes in ownership and the front office and behind the bench that it's kind of they can't keep making changes there eventually they're going to have to make a change to the active roster if they need to shake things up yeah you can't fire the coach again you can't change the general manager again and they just got a new owner like at a certain point you're gonna have to look at the group and be like now this is on you guys because we've tried everything else we got luke now okay luke

sorry i don't know how much of my last question you caught before we have none of it none of it repeat the whole thing you there yeah okay i'm gonna start right from the top again so the ottawa senators if you had to pick one particular thing, and feel free to pick a couple, but one particular thing, one reason why the Senators haven't taken the leap yet this season, what would that reason be? Porous defensively. I think they're too loose.

You know, they show flashes. They're a very fast team. I think they're too loose. You know, they show flashes. They're a very fast team. I think they have great stretches, but there's a serious lack of consistency and some very costly defensive lapses that expose goalie after goalie. And, you know, part of it may be the goalies they choose to invest in, but part of it is the environment those goalies play in,

and it's too loose of a game. And, like, it's getting a bit old. It's funny, like, the division I cover closest is the Atlantic, and every offseason we're like, oh, this is the time the Senators are going to take a step. This is the time for the Sabres, the Red Wings, and yet it's more of the same year after year. We were just talking about Ottawa, and we said part of the new issue here is that

you can't blame the coach anymore because he's brand new. The GM is pretty new. The owner is new. So I think at a certain point, you have to look at the core that they've built around and say, if they need a shakeup, is it going to come in the form of a trade? And if that is the case, who are some of the candidates to go? Yeah, that's it. That's a great question. And it does feel like that. It does feel like that's the next option just because like you said,

they just went and hired Travis green. They've gone through a bunch of coaches. They've gone through a bunch of goalies. Like at some point you have to start looking at the players. I wonder about Thomas Chabot. You know, an excellent player would have great value, I think, out there on the market. He's been there a while. I don't think you want to give up on your captain, Brady Kachuk, just yet.

I think guys of his makeup are really hard to find. And then Jake Sanderson, I think, is going to be a stud. I think he's already a great player. But you certainly need to get some new blood in there. And I think it has to cut to the core. They keep trying

to add, you know, they went and added Claude Giroux. They went and added David Prawn. They're trying to find the right support players and try to help out the leadership core but it feels like that might be the next shoe to drop is is someone more significant uh you mentioned all those teams in that division that are trying to make the jump auto is in there for sure buffalo who we talk about a lot on this show because of the parallels with the time and when they broke into the NHL with the Canucks. They got a good win last night. I want to focus on Detroit here for a moment because they are at 7-9-2, so they're tied on 16 points with Montreal for the basement in that division. The biggest, most glaring issue with this team is they can't score goals.

They're the second lowest scoring team in the NHL with Anaheim. The only team that has fewer goals is Chicago. With the amount of talent that theyeim. The only team that has fewer goals is Chicago. With the amount of talent that they have at forward, you'd think the scoring goals would be the least of their problems, but it just is not happening for the Red Wings offensively this year. And I guess the question they were like, the other one is why? Yeah, well, I think, I mean, so they have some nice names. Like Patrick Kane still has something, but he's not he's you know he's not

what he used to be after the surgery um you know i think they wanted more from alex to brink it he hasn't quite lit it up and to me like i love dylan larkin i think he's a fantastic player i think he's a good leader i think he's a great two-way player but i think on a real legit cont I think he's a great two-way player, but I think on a real legit contending team he's a 2C and not a 1C. So I just think they have some nice pieces, but they just don't have that high, high end of game breakers.

Lucas Raymond was the way they paid him, they're kind of betting that he's going to take another giant step forward. It hasn't quite happened. You just start to wonder how long that can go on. And I'm not thinking about the coach. I'm wondering if Steve Iserman has a limited shelf life here.

And I know he's a legend in that market, but they have this great new arena that has never hosted a playoff game. Like it's, it's one of my favorite arenas. Like once you get in the building in the whole league, it's beautiful. And it's empty because they can't fill the seats because the team has been so bad for so long.

And part of it, you just chalk up to being cyclical because they had that incredible streak of making the playoffs. But how much longer can this go on where you start to say is this guy capable of building a great team or maybe it was just a one-off in tampa uh 46 goals collectively as a team dylan larkin has 11 of them so he's been a quarter of their offense this year it's crazy how little they're scoring in detroit yeah hey luke thanks for doing this today, man. This was great.

Really appreciate you taking the time. Enjoy the rest of the week and all the games on this weekend. We'll do this again soon. Okay. Thanks for having me on, guys. Have a good day. Thank you, Luke. That's Luke Fox from Sportsnet here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650.

You might have accurately called it with the Red Wings. It's really playing itself out that it's a lot of good and not enough great. especially if we're like lucas raymond gets the big payday this offseason two goals two goals in 18 games now you look at the point total and you say hey 17 points in 18 games that's great but putting the puck in the back of the net has been such a challenge for that team raymond's got two goals tarasenko's got two can. Tarasenko's got two goals. Kane, three goals. Kane's got three goals. He called it.

He said he wasn't what he used to be. I'm going to go step beyond that. I'm going to say he's pretty much washed. He's not adding a whole lot of offensive punch to that roster. But the Iser plan did the thing, which was, now we're ready to go. Let's go add the veteran free agents. Kane, Tarasenko. Wrong veteran free agents.

Cop, right? They went out and added these guys in free agency to Kane, Tarasenko. Wrong veteran free agents. Cop, right? They went out and added these guys in free agency to get them over the hump. How different would it be if they'd taken Quinn Hughes and not Philip Zedina? Just a wasted draft pick. It wasn't just that they didn't get Hughes. It's that Zedina totally bust.

They could have had the Hughes-Heronic pairing in Detroit. They could have had it. And on topic pairing in Detroit. Could have had it. And on top of that, Hughes, Michigan, like, sells itself. I've gone over this a million times. Yeah. Like, I've relitigated it a million times. I think it's the most costly miss that that organization has had draft-wise in the last, I don't know, two, three decades.

Maybe ever. Maybe ever. Because they used to be, you you know synonymous with hitting on draft picks especially late but that is just such a costly one for them and you're right part because the dinas did nothing for them it's vancouver radio so even though he plays for the leafs congratulations to local boy fraser minton yeah who scored his first nhl goal last night and ended up being the winning goal for the toronto thes in their shutout victory over the Vegas Golden Knights. Fraser Minton, I believe he played Vancouver Minor to start and then went over to West Van where he was the West Van Academy, where he was actually teammates with Conor Bedard.

So that team had some talent. I'm just checking it out right now. Conor Bedard. So that team had some talent. I'm just checking it out right now. Conor Bedard and Fraser Minton together on the same Academy team in West Van. I've got it right here. Hold on. I'm right on this. I looked at it. Oh. Yeah. I'm not just like

digging at it. I looked at it. What happened to second leading scorer Brandon Burr? Where's he? I don't know. That is a pretty talented team. Yeah, I watched. So Minton, not Mittens, by the way.

He's at Union College, by the way, right now. He's getting an education. Yeah, that's good. Go learn. I will say this. That game last night, and I hate saying this this and i know it's vancouver radio and i know we shouldn't praise the leafs at all i am terrified that they're learning all the lessons that you need to be successful in the playoffs they ate so many pucks last night like they got

they were pinned in they didn't play great against if you look at the shot totals and i want the second period especially they were caved in the whole period but they had guys like stephen lorenz just throwing their bodies in front of pucks berube just told them like you're gonna have to man up and play harder check harder be more physical he was more than happy to watch them get into a slug fest where they wanted to get after white cloud for the hit on nyes, and they weren't able to, so they just kept throwing the body. And here's the thing. They were also taking a ton of hits to make plays.

Like Chris Tannev got his nightly crumpled into the end boards to make a play-type hit. And they just kind of kept going. And they got good goaltending. With Joseph Wall and Anthony Stollers, they have good goaltending. Matthew Nyes is a big dude, big power forward, very valuable player for him.

For the Leafs, I'll be curious to see what he's like in the playoffs. He's got to get healthy now because he was the one that got crushed last night. Well, he will, and he's only 22 years old. JC Abbott is going to join us next to talk about some of the changes that the Lions have already made and some of them that are still to come. You're listening to the Alfred and Bruff Show on Sportsnet 650. Hey, it's Vic Nazar. Have your say and join me on the People's Show with big takes and even bigger bets weekdays 3 to 4 on Sportsnet 650 or wherever you get your podcasts.

7.32 on a Thursday. You're listening to 6.50 a.m. The Zone. A Thrash Thursday. I kind of like that, actually. Thrash Thursday. I know, right? It's not bad. Get the energy up.

What did we have before on Thursdays? We didn't. Open day. Thrash Thursday is all right. Who's the thrashiest of the thrash metal bands? Napalm Death, Camel Corpse. Napalm Death? They don Corpse. Napalm Death? They don't sound. You went too far

with Cannibal Corpse. Can you go a little harder? Sound hardcore. You went too far. Hey, you asked. You went too far with Cannibal Corpse. Those are the old school.

I mean, there's a lot of newer ones. Megadeth, Anthrax. Well, Megadeth is a classic. You should read some Cannibal Corpse track titles. Slayer, of course. No, no.

Yeah, Cannibal Corpse is too far. Slayer and Megadeth are almost like mainstream thrash, though. Youayer, of course. No, no. Yeah, Cannibal Corpse is too far. Slayer and Megadeth are almost like mainstream thrash, though. Like, you gotta go like... That's fine. That's thrash enough.

You gotta go down more. I feel like we've got adequate thrash with those guys. Oh, yeah. We don't need to go deeper into the thrash subculture. A lot of thrash there. Guys, we're a hardcore band.

What should we call ourselves? What about Napalm Death? That'll do it. Text all the boxes. All right. JC Abbott is to join us in just a moment here for some Beast of Lions talk. We're a country band. Yeah.

Didn't see that coming. We're playing the Opry. Christian folk rock. I went to go see Slayer at the Commodore like two decades ago. Nice. It was right after my buddy had shoulder surgery, and he still insisted on going. I was like, buddy, such a bad idea.

You're going to get jostled. His shoulder never healed. He's in the mosh pit. This was a bad idea. He's like, do you think it'll be rough? I'm like, I bet it will. Anyway. Okay, before we get to JC Abbott, business at hand.

Halford and Brougham in the morning, brought to you by Vancouver Honda, Vancouver's premier destination for Honda customers. They have a friendly, knowledgeable staff that can help with anything you're looking for, sales, financing, service, or parts. We are in Hour 2 of the program. Hour 2 is brought to you by Jason Hominuck from jason.mortgage. If you love paying too much for your mortgage, then don't let Jason shop around to find the perfect mortgage for you.

Just kidding. Let him do that. Visit him at jason.mortgage. To the phone lines we go from Three Down Nation. JC Abbott joins us here on the Halford and brough show on sportsnet 650 morning jc how are you i'm doing well guys thanks for having me on thanks for coming back on we said goodbye and farewell to jc like two weeks ago like we'll talk to you later and then of course the bc lions offseason happened it's been busy since the gray cup was handed out over the weekend. So let's start with the dismissal of head coach Rick Campbell. I was parsing through a bunch of the stuff that the team president, Dwayne Vaneau, had to say yesterday.

I noticed that for three down nation, you picked up on the same quote that I picked up on. And that was from Dwayne Vaneau, quote, I wouldn't say there was a loss of the locker room. I would just say that our owner has given us all the tools we need to build this football team. And I just don't feel like we performed this year the way we performed the last couple of years. That was the key for me. It was like Rick Campbell was given all the tools and he just wasn't able to build.

Yeah, that was my big takeaway from the press conference yesterday. Obviously, there's a lot of different things that went into this decision, but the big message was you were given everything you needed to win this year by Amar Doman, and you didn't deliver. It took a step backwards. And all the other things that happened in the past, the two consecutive West Final appearances, three straight years in the playoffs,

that doesn't matter when you don't meet the expectations that are laid out for you. And the Lions didn't this year, right? The expectation was we have a home great cup. We want to be in that game. We want to win that game. And Doman was going to spare no expense to make that happen. The Lions are going to be over the salary cap.

There are going to be fines that come down the pipe here this offseason that Doman has to pay. They'll probably lose a draft pick as well. He was willing to do all those things so they could get that reward at the end of the tunnel, that home great top, and they didn't even get a home playoff game that was just not acceptable in the eyes of ownership and rick campbell paid the price for that okay so rick campbell was the head coach but he was also the co-gm with neil mcavoy neil

mcavoy gets promoted to vp of football operations and ryanmaiden gets promoted to general manager tell us a bit about the new GM yeah Ryan Rigmaiden's been around the Lions for a number of years 14 years total though those weren't consecutive he spent a little bit of time with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers right at the start of their era of dominance that they've had helped them win a great cup in 2019. He's really widely regarded as one of the best U.S. scouts in the league, has done some fantastic things in terms of finding talent south of the border and has been in line for a couple of different GM jobs over the last number of years,

was in line for the Montreal job before it went to Danny Machocha, turned that down because of some of the ownership concerns that were happening there at the time, was reached out to by the Edmonton Elks for their vacant GM job before that went to Ed Hervey, but declined to interview for that because he wanted to stay with the Lions, and the Lions wanted to promote him and give him more responsibility here as the GM. They really talked about how essential it was to keep him in the fold.

Neil McEvoy spoke about how he wanted them to keep Ryan Rigmaiden, and now he's got the final say on the roster. This is Ryan Rigmaiden's team for all intents and purposes, and he's going to have the keys to the car in terms of setting what the future looks like for this team. So one of the first orders of business, it sounds like, is going to be trading Vernon Adams.

How much of an asset is Vernon Adams in a trade for the BC Lions? I think he's a huge asset. Now, the wrinkle to that is everybody in the league knows that the Lions have to trade Vernon Adams Jr., so they lose some leverage. But there's still going to be interest in this guy from multiple parties because he's just 31 years old, and I would argue he's a top three quarterback in the CFL right now, and that's what you should try to go out and get if you're another team.

He's been traded twice in his career for first-round picks. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation to get something like that in return this time around. I also think the Lions would like to get some players or a player back in return as well. But you have to expect that there's going to be at least a couple of Alberta teams interested in VA's services, maybe Saskatchewan as well, maybe Hamilton.

There's going to be several sugers, and the Lions are hoping that that will jack up the price as they go through that process. Would there be any hesitation to trade him within the division? Yeah, I've spoken to people within the lines organization about that and i think the frank reality is they just don't have any option you know in the in a nine team league you have to play everybody anyway it's not ideal if it's a division rival and somebody you can face early in the playoffs, but the East Division is going to be mostly set at quarterback. The Ottawa Red Blacks are not going to be interested because they've got their guy, Andrew Brown.

The Montreal Alouettes are making a decision in their own right between Kogi Fajardo and Davis Alexander, but they're not going to bring in somebody else into that equation and the toronto argonauts of course have chad kelly who is hurt right now but they're now saying they expect him to be back for training camp so they're not going to be interested in ba either that leaves just the ham Tiger Cats and the East, and if the Ticats decide to renegotiate with Bo Levi Mitchell, who is under contract

for next season, but at a reduced rate that is probably less than what he deserves right now based on his 5,000-yard season, then they'll also have a guy. So the East division could be an entire no-go in terms of a trade partner,

and they'll have to look to the West. So it's not ideal, but you've got to play them anyway in this league, right? It's not like you can avoid an opponent. So they've made their peace with that. We're talking BC Lions with Three Down Nations, J.C. Abbott. J.C., does Buck Pierce make too much sense for the BC Lions' new head coach? Not only has he done a pretty good job with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, they're also going to have to find a coach, I imagine,

that works well with Nathan Rourke, who needs to bounce back a little bit after what happened this season, needs to find his game. Is Buck Pierce a match for the BC Lions? I think he is. And I think he's by far the front runner right now for this team's head coaching job. I like Buck Pierce a lot. I think he's done some tremendous work over there in Winnipeg, but I've been a fan of his digging back to his time as a quarterback in D.C., and I think he would jump at the opportunity to come back to this city where he really started his CFL career, and he has some fond memories of playing here. From the Lions' perspective perspective I think the biggest thing is you want to be in a situation where you're hiring the right head coach and also having a fantastic OC for Nathan Rourke

and Buck Pierce gives you that the only other option really on the market that jumps out is promoting Jordan Maximic internally, and then you have him to be your OC as well. Because if you don't promote him, the likelihood is he's going to head off to the Edmonton Elks either as their head coach, he's been already requested for an interview there, or in the more likely scenario based on the rumors, Rick Campbell ends up as the head coach there and Max Simic joins him as the OC.

So if you're hiring somebody else as the head coach in BC, you're going to lose that guy. If you're bringing in one of the other candidates, for example, like a Mark Killam, who's always been spoken about as a head coaching candidate, well, he's not an OC. So if you're going to lose your OC, who is that guy you're going to replace him with?

There's not a lot of strong candidates out there right now that puts you at risk with so much riding on Nathan Rourke's success next year. To me, it's really a two-horse race between whether we want to bring in Buck Pierce or if we're going to roll the dice and promote McSimmick internally. JC just wanted to get your final thoughts on Grey Cup weekend and specifically with regards to Randy Ambrosio's final state of the league address as the commissioner as the CFL looks for a new commissioner?

Well, in terms of the Great Cup week, I thought the Lions really hit it out of the park. It was a fantastic festival, just a great venue down there by the water at the convention center, and they nailed it with some of the activations and the lines going all the way around the block for the zip line. It was a really engaged group. I think it was the best festival that they've ever had when the Greycaps been in Vancouver. And I've spoken to people who've been to 25, 30 Greycaps who had similar sentiments. So kudos to the Lions on that. As for the future under Randy Ambrose, I've said this in the past randy ambrosi's

tenure as commissioner is going to be looked at more fondly the further removed we get from it because unfortunately the reality is he put his foot in his mouth a whole lot and he said a lot of things that were never going to happen. The way he spoke hyperbolically at times about the imminence of expansion and revenue from CFL 2.0 and other things of that nature, they were never going to happen. And no reasonable person could have expected them to happen. But unfortunately he sold the public and the Board of Governors on a bill of goods that he couldn't deliver. But as we get further away from that and we look at what he actually accomplished, the

league's in as good a state as it's ever been, I would argue, even better, particularly from an ownership standpoint, because he's got Amar Doman in, he's got Pierre-Carl Pelledeau in, he's got Larry Thompson in in Edmonton, who, of course, the jury remains out on, but it looks like we have strong ownership across the board, which the CFL has almost never had, and we've got growth in the three major markets. That's a major win for the CFL. Unfortunately, it gets undermined by some of the things that have come out of Randy Ambrose's mouth, but I think we'll end up looking at his tenureship

a lot more positively once we start figuring the things that he actually said. Well, hopefully you're right. I've expressed my worries about the CFL from time to time on the show, but I want the best for the league and appreciate you taking the time today to join us, talk about the BC lines and the CFL as a whole. Thanks, JC. It's been my pleasure, guys.

JC Abbott from Three Down Nation. Get your What We Learned into the Dunbar Lumber text line. We're going to talk to Drance, and then we'll have time to go into the Dunbar Lumber text line and read them in hour three. I wanted to throw out a special congratulations to a guy that has been a terrific hockey player for the Vancouver Canucks and just had a baby boy, Connor Garland. Congrats to Connor Garland and his family. He left the Rangers game right after it ended and raced right to the hospital. And he has a son,

and Connor Garland and his wife have named the son Quinton after Quint, the character from the movie Jaws. If you're not familiar with the film, spoiler, Quint meets Jaws near the end of the film. So you have the lead of the movie. That would be Jaws.

Then you have the second character, the antagonist, I suppose. I don't know which one's, who's the protagonist? Who's the antagonist there martin brody and jaws are the two leads did you call the lead jaws that's the lead jaws he's the number one jaw not top billy lead character he's seen in the film for all of five minutes that's the lead character it's what the movie's about he's not the lead character he has no no dialogue. He's not a real person. He's a real animal. Anyway, I did not realize that there's a...

Well, Richard Dreyfuss was in it, and he was the scientist, and then there was Roy Scheider, who was Martin Brody. Roy Scheider was the lead, yes. Roy Scheider was the lead. The tritagonist.

Jaws was not the lead. Jaws was the lead. Jaws had top billing. His name was on the poster. His picture was on the poster. He was the one that got the Academy Award. He went up there. He won the Academy Award.

Yeah, he went up there for it. For all the sharks out there that preceded me that didn't get this award, the tritagonist was Quint. I learned this. Yeah, he had the great monologue about World War II being in the ocean with the sharks. I like how that connects to be very upfront about this. That was- So the people didn't confuse that it was for Quinn Hughes.

No, no, no. Quint. Qu, no, no. Quint. Quint. The T is vitally important there. That was called foreshadowing. Yes. Yeah.

Because things did not end well for Quint. Did not. Connor Garland loves sharks. But. And this is. Comes with a but. This is hilarious. I love how much he's still fascinated with sharks. Like apparently as a kid, grew up on the East Coast where Jaws is from.

Yeah. And. He has a summer home on the Cape. I sort of imagine he's on that. He just loves sharks and you get all these. I was doing some research for this yesterday because I just thought it was hilarious. And I think he grew up with Ryan Donato. Yep.

Who was – what was it? Conor Bedard's line mate recently. That's right. In Chicago. Now with Seattle. Right. You can tell that Donato was like, oh, yeah, the guy loves sharks. I just want to imagine Garland sitting on the Canucks bench right next to Hughes or something,

just dead silence for 30 seconds. He looks at Hughes. What's your favorite kind of shark? I just think they're neat. Okay. Hughes is like, what? Garland starts listing all of his favorite sharks in order, why he likes them, like Milhouse with the sprinklers. But the butt that comes with it.

I keep trying to tease the butt here. The teasing of the butt. What else? Connor Garland loves sharks, but he's terrified of them. Right. And I don't think he's actually ever seen one. No. And he's too scared.

He stays in the locker room during the sharks warm up. That is. During away games when they come out of the mouth. Apparently he won't swim in the ocean yeah because of sharks but he loves them too that is the true test of how much you respect the shark yeah it's like me with bees where you love the bees but you're fearful yeah of what i was talking about bees i respect them but i'm terrified of the power they possess yeah so i did way too much research on this, the phenomenon of, what's it called?

Galeophobia, which is the fear of sharks. And I was up till midnight last night. I just became fascinated with this. So what we all have to understand that- You stayed up till midnight researching this? I did. As a species, we as humans are not inherently fearful of sharks.

So you're not born fearful of sharks. Yeah, you see jaws and then you're like, I'm fearful of sharks. So you're not born fearful of sharks. Yeah, you see Jaws and then you're like, I'm scared of sharks. Then you become scared. It's a learned phobia. And then I guess- Like quicksand. I remember- Yeah, right.

You're not scared of quicksand when you're born, but once you get stuck in it- When I was a kid, we did the Universal Studios tour. Oh, I loved that tour. And I was terrified of the Jaws part. That mechanical shark. That mechanical shark. I was like, dad, dad. As a kid, it means last year.

Yeah, you know you're in those carts. I was like, dad, why don't you take the aisle seat? But it's interesting. I was absolutely terrified of the backdraft sequence. So my brother is the exact same as Garland. There's equal parts admiration and love of the shark with fear. What do you think it is about the shark? Is it the...

Well, it's the teeth. Obviously, it's the... Those cold, dead, black eyes. I think it's the eyes, man. I think a lot of it's the eyes. They live forever and they just don't stop swimming. They're like a relentless killing machine. Yeah. If they stop swimming, they die. I think... They're it's the eyes. They live forever and they just don't stop swimming. They're like a relentless killing machine. If they stop swimming, they die.

I think they're nature's psychopaths. But they're not! Yes, they are! What, are we going to snuggle with a shark? I mean, it depends on the type of shark, too, though. Sharks have gotten an unfair rap of being like carnivorous, I want to kill humans. Yeah, some sharks are pretty docile, but some are terrifying.

When sharks bite surfers or swimmers, it's often a curiosity to be something unique. Yeah, they think it's like a seal or something. Yeah, that it's entered their ecosystem, right? I went to the Ripley's Museum just like a couple months ago in Toronto. Okay. So I'm a bit of a shark expert, I'm going to say. I did my research.

They were in the tanks with all the other fish there, and everyone was wondering, like, how can that be? And it's because they keep them well-fed, and apparently the only time they attack anything is if they're, like, starving hungry. They won't go after any of the other fish. All the other fish are like, Larry's got low blood sugar right now.

Look out. Also, though. Can you please toss him something? Throw him a couple humans. He's got that crazy look in his eye. They showed an x-ray of the shark's teeth. That's terrifying. It's like a conveyor belt of teeth that just keeps going.

Did you know that sharks don't have bones? Just teeth. No bones in a shark. It makes them delicious. Shark fin soup, man. Yeah, it's like salmon. Constantly shark fin choking on them. That's not legal.

So I should stop making it probably i'm telling people my shark fin soup party is i gotta clear out my bathtub we got some problems at home no like okay and you the scariest part of it i think is actually captured on the original job there was a novel first. The book was better. The novel first and then the poster, which is- I thought the weird part about the book was when it was written out, da-da, da-da.

The whole first chapter is that. Spoiler, if you haven't read it yet. And don't tell me you were going to go home and read it. You weren't. So the cover is, it's an unsuspecting- How do you write that in a book? It's like, and then the shark came and... And then you have the...

The cover and the movie poster are the unsuspecting swimmer. It's just a leisurely day at the beach and they're swimming. And there's this gigantic, bloodthirsty, teeth-showing shark underneath. So I think that's what the fear is. You can't see it. Garland's going to miss the next game because he'll listen to this segment. He won't get any sleep.

Or he's going to be so upset at our lack of shark knowledge. Yelling at the radio. We should get Garland on and not ask him any hockey questions. Just shark talk. Just talk about sharks. That would be amazing actually. We should pitch that. Nothing about hockey. Just sharks. We'll pitch that. Nothing about hockey, just sharks.

We'll pitch that to the Vancouver Canucks. Thomas Drance is going to join us next. And so if you thought the show was bad right now, just wait a few minutes. He knows a lot about sharks. I'm sure he does. He knows everything about everything. He is Thomas Drance. You're listening to the Alfred and Brough Show on Sportsnet 650.