Halford & Brough in the Morning - Rebuild On Hold

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

In hour one, Halford & guest host Jamie Dodd look back at a busy weekend in sports, they talk an impressive Canucks win over Columbus on Saturday and an equally impressive OT loss to the Avs the following night (3:00), plus the boys look at the other top stories from around the NHL (27:00). 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.

You're listening to Haldan-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You're listening to Halford and Brough. Might we see Thatcher Dempso? I guess it's a possibility. The lie-to-tick-the-test determined, that was a lot. Got a shot, stopped by Lankin, and tried to clear the rebound, but Brindley scored. He followed up, and rolled up. Hold it between Lankan's legs and into the net.

Ball bounces. Are you kidding me? It goes to D.O.G. Another touchdown. Seahawks. Holy catfish! Good morning, Maker. 6 o'clock on a Monday.

Happy Monday, everybody. It is Halford. It is Brough. Oh, no, wait. It's Jamie Dodd. Good morning. Good morning. We'll go over to Addo.

Addo, good morning to you. Good morning. And Lattie, good morning to you as well. Hello, hello. Halford and Brough or Dodd in the morning is brought to you by Sands and Associates. Scory Debt Freedom Hatrick. One, no more interest, two, much lower payments and three. Financial peace of mind.

Visit them online at sands-trustee.com. We are an hour one of the program. Hour one is brought to you by North Star Metal Recycling. Vancouver's Premier Metal Recycler pays the highest prices on scrap metal. North Star Metal Recycling, they recycle. You get paid. Visit them at 1170 Powell Street in Vancouver. And of course we are broadcasting live from the Kintech Studio,

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These two guys. We got a lot to get into on a Monday show. Big show ahead. As mentioned, and as you've already figured out, Jamie Dodd is in for the vacationing Jason Bruff this week. It's very nice to have you back on the program, Jamie. Thank you.

I'm glad to be here. We have a lot to get into on the program today, the first hour, because we're so excited to have Jamie here. An entire uninterrupted hour of Halford and Dodd before we get into the guest list. 7 o'clock is our first guest. J.P. Acosta is going to join us today. NFL analysts from CBS Sports.

Our regular Monday morning quarterback, Mike Tanier, was one of the unfortunate people that got stuck without a flight in the United States of America due to the government shutdown. I believe he's stuck in New Orleans. Yeah. So I didn't realize I was following him on social and saw his odyssey. He's like, oh, now I'm in a bus station in rural. Alabama. I was like, I wonder what Mike's up to. And now I understand. It makes a lot more sense when you put it that way. And we're like, we'll still come on the show. And he's like, but I cannot. We're like,

okay, fine. So JP Acosta is going to join us at 7 o'clock this morning, NFL analyst from CBS Sports. We're going to go through everything in a busy Sunday yesterday in the NFL. Biggest news, locally at least, is that the Seahawks finished a weekend at top the NFC standings with a blow, it went over the cards. Could change tonight on Monday night football when the Eagles take on the Packers, but we'll talk to JP about all that at 7 a.m. morning. At 7.30, we go from JP to J.C. Abbot is going to join the program

at 730. BC Lions reporter, 3-down Nation, an absolutely heartbreaking loss for your BC Lions on Saturday in the Western Final in Saskatchewan. Trevor Harris T.D. Pass with 11 seconds left. That was the difference as the Lions failed to advance to their first

Great Cup since 2011. We will talk to you J.C. Abbott about the game. The fallout. Was it a catch? We'll ask J.C. At 7.30. We'll also put a bow on a BC lion season that was shaky at the start, very uplifting at the end, but ultimately fell short of their goal. J.C. Abbott at 7.30. 8 o'clock, Kevin Woodley's going to join the program from NHL.com and In-Gole magazine. Busy weekend for the Vancouver Canucks, who gained three of a possible four points in their back-to-back games. Saturday was a 4-3 win over the jackets. Last night, for those that missed it, a 5-4-0 loss against the abs. A very entertaining contest. There was also some significant goalie news on the Vancouver Canucks Front over the weekend. We're going to get into all that with Kevin Woodley from NHL.com

and Ingole magazine at 8 o'clock. So working in reverse on that guest list, 8 o'clock, it's Kevin Woodley, 7.30 J.C. Abbott, 7 o'clock J.P. Acosta, that's what's happening on the program today. Laddie, let's tell everybody what happened. Hey, did you guys see the game

last night? No. No. What happened? I missed all the action because I was... We know how busy your life can be. What happened? Miss that? You missed that? What happened is brought to you by the BC Construction Safety Alliance. Making safety simpler by giving construction companies invest in tools, resources, and safety training.

Visit them online at BCCSA.ca.c.a. For the purposes of the what happened part of the program, I will run through this very quickly. Sunday night at Rogers Arena and Nathan McKinnon scored twice, had three assists. For you athletes out there, that's five points. Avs beat the Vancouver Connects 5'4 in overtime. a Wilford Brimley, no Gavin Brinley O.T. winner, you're right, it was Wilford Brimley. That's his name.

The mustache guy? That was on Sunday night. Saturday night. A win for the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 over again, the visiting Columbus Blue Jackets. So three out of four points, a win and an overtime loss against a very good Colorado team and a lot to get into, Jamie, so

much so that you put together a thorough list of the three biggest Canucks takeaways from the weekend. Yeah, I think it's fair to say there's three major stories. or at least talking points, topics coming out of the weekend. And we'll start with the results of the two games. As you said, they get three out of a possible four at Rogers Arena. And especially when you consider, I think, the opponents and the style of play that both

teams are capable of, obviously Colorado much better than Columbus, but both teams dangerous off the rush, lots of skilled players. You come away of three out of four points. You're feeling pretty good, especially last night, right? Nathan McKinnon scores twice in the first 10 minutes. They're coming off a 9-1 win in Edmonton. and you're kind of thinking, uh-oh, this could get ugly. Kevin Lankin is playing the second half of a back-to-back.

More on that in a moment. You're thinking, where is this going? And credit to the Canucks, they showed Adam Foote's favorite word, resilience. A lot of resilience. He loves resilience. Especially the young guys in the lineup, a lot of resilience to battle back, tie that game, tie it late again and with a power play goal, find a way to get the point, despite losing in overtime.

So I think there's a lot to like for, from that performance from the Canucks. They hung tough, you know. I think Colorado was the more dangerous team, but it wasn't by a huge margin in that one. As you know, Adam Foote, hey, 18, 18 scoring chances either way. Yeah. After the game, there was a lot to like from that game.

I'll throw this out to the listeners as we just talk about the results from the two games in total. What was the most encouraging thing from the weekend for the Canucks? And on the flip side, because they did lose in overtime. So, you know, we have to let a little bit. bit of darkness in here to the show. God forbid we do that. What's the most concerning thing from the weekend for the Canucks for you? And I'll start with the encouraging part for me. And that was the scoring. And it wasn't just that they got, you know, eight goals across the two games, which is a good

number. And especially for some of the struggles we've seen them have putting the puck in the net this year. That's really encouraging. You also look at where it was coming from. DeBrusk scores twice. He's starting to heat up, which we've seen before. We know how streaky he is. O'Connor's stayed hot. He scored twice over the weekend. Besser, Garland, Sherwood, Linus Carlson with his first of the season on a really nifty finish to open the scoring for the Canucks in that game against Colorado. So you look at it and you have your best forwards with one noticeable notable exception, but your best forwards mostly putting the puck in the net and depth contributing reliably. And it starts to feel a little bit like the theory of this team up front and how they were

going to get it done is coming together. Like, okay, hey, Besser and DeBrusker, capable of getting hot. They're capable of either hitting 30 goals or surpassing it. That's a good start to your goal scoring. Connor Garland, we know how effective he can be. Kiefer Sherwood, Drew O'Connor. There is depth on the wings as much as we talk about the struggles down the middle. And I feel like you started to see that this weekend and at least what it could look like when everything's clicking. It's a good point to bring up because there was a stretch there. And it was at the tail end of the road trip at the end of October where they managed to muster a grand total vote.

I think it was two goals over two games and the losses to Nashville and Pittsburgh. And then that was followed up with a couple of games against Eminton and Montreal where the goal scoring didn't seem like a problem. But then I think the low point, I think everyone will agree with this, was that Tuesday night home game against the Rangers

where they got shut out on home ice. And you kind of started to wonder at that point how many issues this team was going to have putting the puck in the back of the net. You remember at that point it was, while all of a sudden we're looking at a Vander Cain's lack of goals, and the secondary guys with Roth, to and Carlson, everyone else. And DeBrusk was off to a really slow start and all of these

things, yeah. Yeah. And then the guy, so to kind of put the micro on your, the thing that you were most optimistic for the weekend, the most encouraging sign for me, it was Drew O'Connor. Yeah. So it's funny, when Bruff and I were kind of going through this bit with O'Connor, we fell back on the office space. What would you say you do around here, Drew? What is it exactly? because at the start of the year you'll remember I kind of likened it to a man without a country he was a player without a line

he was just kind of floating up and down the lineup and almost felt like a plug and play guy someone that you would throw in we're like well we don't have a spot or he'll be fine there but in a way that's a positive thing to say about a player too or it can be right as long as he's doing something yeah you're a solution

to a lot of potential problems yeah and now he is that I mean what does he do here a little bit of everything for Drew O'Connor right now And I think once he kind of figured out what it was that he did around here, two goals and three points over the weekend, and to your larger point, they are absolutely going to need depth scoring with regularity this season. If this team is going to be successful,

if the blueprint is going to be orchestrated properly, you know, as Jim Rutherford likes to say, a lot of things need to go right for this particular team. And one of them was, with the lack of high-end scoring that we have, It's going to need to be all hands on deck and, you know, the cumulative effect of everyone's scoring. And you saw it over the course of the weekend, eight goals on Saturday and Sunday combined. O'Connor chips and eight chips and on special teams as well, scoring a short-handed goal.

So a lot of encouragement, a lot of positives. And I think that's a fair thing to say after you collect three of a possible four points. Let's turn our attention to something that we love doing here. And that's poking holes in whatever happened on the weekend. Yeah. And this one might even feel unfurricular. fair to some people, but for me, and I know, you know, we're talking about what's the most concerning thing from the weekend. We're going to get a lot of text in about Thatcher Demko.

Don't worry. We'll talk about Thatcher Demko. I just can't escape that. Okay, we're coming. Hey, three out of four points. That's great. You hang with Colorado. That's awesome. You know what their points percentages right now? It's 500. 500, eh? They have been within a game either way of 500 for like almost a month now. There seems to be this inescapable gravity. to that number for that team. And they've got a really tough stretch of games coming up, starting with Winnipeg tomorrow. Is this going to be the moment where they escape that gravity

and pull away from 500? Because you do have to do that eventually. And as much as we can talk about, hey, they've dealt with a lot of injuries and the travel and the condensed schedule and all of those things. And there's reasons why you can say, well, it's actually not that bad to still be at 500

at this point in the NHL season. That's all fair. You know, the next five games against really good teams. Okay, hey, you find a way to stay 500 in that stretch. And again, we'll say, okay, well, that's pretty good. But at that point, we'll be more of a quarter into the season. That's a long time to be simply treading water.

Eventually, you have to, you got to swim somewhere. You got to find a shore or a dock or something to swim to. Rather than just treading water in the middle of the ocean, that's not going to get it done. Maybe, maybe, hey, whatever. And as the longer you are just stuck at 500, the, the hotter you have to get over the balance of the season to make a real playoff push. And that's my question. It's just when are we going to start to see not just hanging on, not hey, you know, when you consider it,

that's actually a pretty good result. When are we actually going to start to see? Oh, wow, this team's hot. This team has gone seven, one, and two in their last 10. They're going to need at least a couple stretches like that to be around the playoffs at the end of the season. The physical embodiment of a 500 team right now. Alternating wins and losses with military-grade precision. I think they've been doing it since the Montreal game, right? At the end of October, they've gone, lost, win, loss. Or if you want to be positive, win-loss, win-loss.

But whatever the case, they are very 500. Very, like, they're incredibly 500. It's very impressive. Which is, it's kind of a theme in the NHL this year. I think there's seven teams that are exactly 500 in the NHL right now. And then there's another bunch of teams that are within a point of being. 500. So it's a good point to bring up because I think when we, and I know a lot of us are guilty of this of being very myopic on our view of the one NHL team and it's the local one and not

looking around the rest of the league. And it's important to know that there are teams that are off too significantly worse starts than the Vancouver connects in a disappointing fashion. Like some teams were designed to be bad and congratulations they are. But there's other ones that had higher aspirations and they've gotten off to slow starts. But there is a lot, a lot of mid-level teams in the league right now for a multitude of reasons. And if you go into the Pacific Division, it's chock full of them, right? So in that regard, what the Canucks have done to start the season is, I would classify as fine.

They've managed to keep their heads above water. And I will say this. The team has a workman-like approach. And as Adam Foote said on a number of occasions, a resiliency that at times I do not think they had on display last year, especially on home ice. For example, if you had taken last night's performance and plopped it in last year, it would have been one of the best games they had at home last year. I'm not joking.

A 5-4 overtime loss, that game probably would have been one of the best performances they had on Home Ice last year because Home Ice was a dog's breakfast last year. It was embarrassing. And there were too many really egregious bad lopsided losses where the team didn't show any heart, didn't show any fight. And when they got down, kind of folded the tents. multiple comebacks last night was impressive. And I think now is a decent time to throw to Adam Foote,

who talked about a lot of the characteristics in the makeup of his team and what he likes about it now. Here's Adam Foote following last night's 5-4-O-T loss to the Colorado Avalanche, capping off a weekend in which it connects gain three of a possible four points. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, when you look at the way Colorado's been playing, what they did last night, you know,

you don't want to look too far into that, I guess, with some of those games happen to teams. It runs away sometimes from a team that can happen, but they're at a high level. And again, I like the way we didn't like the start, but we were resilient. I'm not a huge talking about chances, but I think what we have to take out of it is, you know,

with our group where we were even, our guys had us 18, 18, 5 and 5 chance against 5 and 5. I mean, 10 to 4 and special teams. I mean, what we're trying to get the players to believe in is it's working. What we're doing is working and we have a lot of young guys. We've got seven guys in that lineup right now, you know, that are playing bigger minutes than probably they anticipated and they're doing a hell

of a job and they've been really resilient. And that's the positives we're going to take out of it and we'll get through this. So he mentioned there, Adam Foote mentioned there, that they only surrendered four chances while killing penalties. That's pretty good. The bad is it two of the, those went in the back of the net. And it was another two power play goals conceded. So when

we talk about most concerning things from the weekend, I have two and I think they might be related, but one is Lankinen who right now through eight starts this year, if I'm not mistaken, has given up four or more goals and half of his starts. That's a problem. And then I think

something that probably plays into that is the penalty kill, which can't kill for its life right now. It is hovering after I think they killed the first nine penalties of the year. in those back-to-back games against the Alberta teams and then since then the penalty kill has been operating at around

63%. And again, for a team where everything needs to go right, you cannot have a bottom three penalty kill in the NHL and expect to make the playoffs. I think that's pretty cut and dry. I think it's pretty obvious. And yesterday there were a multitude of problems.

It was interesting because when Adam Foote was explaining it and I won't bother playing the audio, but he called him small mistakes. Yeah. Minor mistakes, just tiny little things that they need to tweak. And that's fine. But they're going to need to get tweaked relatively soon because if this team is going to break out of this 500 pattern or if you want to call it a funk where they can't string together wins and you're going to need to do it, a big part of that is going to be the

Yeah, they're going to have to find a way to lock that down. And, you know, slight mistakes, as Adam Foote said, Colorado's really good at turning those into big breakdowns. And we saw that last night. Beyond the results, another big talking point from the weekend. Patrick Alvin was on After Hours on Saturday. So after the Columbus game, but obviously before the Colorado game yesterday,

it was Scott Oak and our Varian McIntyre asking Alvin questions. And I got to hand it to Scott Oak because it was pretty funny. You know, he always puts out the tweet, right? Hey, we've got this guy coming up on After Hours. What do you want us to ask them? And a lot of time, it's the player. And it's like, ask him about this funny gif he's in or whatever. Right?

Like, he's like light-hearted questions for the players. Not the case so much for Patrick Alvin when Scott Oak let it know that the Canucks general manager would be on the show. And as he told Alvin something like 75% of the questions they got on Twitter involved the word rebuild. Unsurprisingly, you're not going to believe this. Patrick Alvin did not commit to a rebuild on after hours with Scott Oak and Ian McIntyre. I ain't saying nothing. After a Canucks win on Saturday night. But Patrick, what do you want to tell the fans?

It's done to go suck a lemon. Pretty much. And I had this incredible sense of deja vu, not just listening to Patrick Alvin on Saturday, but really that in total with like the three or four days of Canucks related discourse leading up to it. The entire rebuild conversation. I mean, what are we in year 11 of talking about it really at length? 2025. That's 11 years.

Yeah. I think we all know the beats so well. And look, I'm as guilty of this as anybody. If you've ever listened to my show, which I'm sure you haven't, Alfred, but I'm sure some of your listeners have. That's not true. We've talked about it on occasion, the idea of rebuilding and the strengths and weaknesses of the potential idea.

We know what Alvin is going to say. And it felt a bit like a kind of greatest hits from Patrick Alveen, right? It was, well, you know, we don't want to take a step back when we've got players like Hughes and Pedersen and Demko on the roster. we've got all these young players right loves to list off a bunch of young players they're excited about soyer minio has added to the list has been added to the list congratulations to soyer minio you know hey we're always looking to get better we're always trying to take those next steps but we don't want to give up any of these really exciting young players necessarily we got to be really careful about that

so okay that's all fine that's familiar we understand that but i was thinking about i think what's ultimately frustrating for me is okay look you don't want to rebuild we get that it can be frustrating. It can be disappointing to hear, but I think we all understand that's the reality we're dealing with. Yep. But what's the strategy then to add the high end, the very necessary elite talent to the roster? I think everyone can agree when you look at this and whether it's in comparison to what the abs have with Nathan McKinnon at the top of the lineup or whether it's in comparison to what Leo Carlson is doing with the Anaheim Ducks as a much younger elite player. There is a a need at the top of the lineup

for elite talent for the Canucks. What's the strategy to add that and that's where I think it gets frustrating because it doesn't feel like Alvin has much of an answer for that, which in a way makes sense because what's he going to say? There's no magic. You can't just snap your fingers and do it. There's no magic way

to do it. Because he doesn't have an answer. There's no magic way to do it. So you're basically left hoping that someone like Ratu or Lekermacki takes this massive leap and becomes way more than we think they could be. And I like both players, but no one's looking at them as, oh, that's a future, you know, superstar player who's going to lead you to a cup or you're hoping that a cheap trade acquisition like Lucas

Reichel breaks out for you in a way they didn't with their own team, which hasn't really happened yet. And could those things happen? Sure. But it's relying an awful lot of hope. And I think that's where fans get frustrated with the strategy and why it feels like we're doomed to do like how many more cycles you think we have in us of a rebuild discourse. As those infinitely infinite as those financial advisor commercials have taught me hope is not a plan that's so true i i i i you're spot on with this because i actually felt like the discourse that was inevitably going to be lobbed in alvin's direction on after hours was going to be futile because he was going to offer up the same answers that he's always offered up and it's not even

a justification of the plan it's just like this sort of hybrid strategy that they've got laying out all the things that you've laid out. And then at the end of it, it's like, and so we hope it works. And then we're like, okay, that's fine. It kind of sounds like a plan.

People have poked holes in it. They've never really fundamentally addressed the why. That's, they've never done that. And I think we all know. There's like an implicit why there. And because they won't do it because it requires a bottoming out. And let's just make this abundantly clear.

It requires a bottoming out and a race to the bottom that no one at the higher reaches of the organization is interested in doing. None of them, right? So what we've actually ended up doing, and I lamented this last week, is we've gone so far down the rebuild road that we actually have conversations about the conversation now. The conversation now in Vancouver's

isn't even worth talking about this because it can be so futile because no one's interested in actually doing it. And that's when two things. One, it's too meta and two, you might be talking too much about hockey if you're having a conversation about the hockey conversation.

I honestly think if there's either a producer here or some listener with way too much time on their hands, not that any of our listeners have way too much time on their hands. Clearly not. You could go back like two years ago, two, two and a half, three years ago and pull clips from SportsNet 650 talking about a rebuild and clips from like an Alveen interview

and mash them up and juxtapose them with clips from our shows this week and Alvin on after hours. And it would sound almost identical. When Alvin talked about unearthing gems from college free agency or undrafted free agents or late round picks, I was like, this is the Benning approach. Yeah. That was what Benning. And I hate doing this because there needs to be more frame of references than the previous guy. But it's the most recent one.

And it's the one that left a lot of residual scarring on the market. The amount of times that we heard about picking things off the scrap heap or finding unearthed gems. And again, there's that word hope. Hoping they turn out, I get why it's frustrating for fans. And I know that Scott Oak throwing it out there on Twitter, and then 75% of the 400 questions that he got asked were about a rebuild. So from his perspective, he's like, I must ask. You got to ask something, yeah.

Yeah, I got my finger on the pulse of the fan base. And the fan base wants to know when the teardown begins. It's just an unfortunate exercise that is always, as you put it, the wheels are going to be spinning on it. And we're never going to get any. anywhere on it. Where we're going to go now, though, is to break. On the other side, we need to get into takeaway three from the busy Vancouver Canucks weekend, and that's what was going on in goal. In case you missed it, no Thatcher Demko this weekend. It was all Kevin Lanken

and we were left with a lot of questions as to what's going on. We are halfway through the first hour of the program. Don't go anywhere. More Canucks talk on the horizon. You're listening to the Halford & Brough show with Jamie Dodd here on Sportsnet 650. It's Canucks Central with Dan Richo and Saty R. Shaw, your destination for everything Canucks. Exclusive interviews, inside info, and even the postgame show. Listen 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays and on demand through your favorite podcast app. 6.32 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. Halford Brough. Oh, no, wait. It's Jamie Dodd. We're on Sportsnet 650.

Halford and Brub of the morning is brought to you by North Star Metal Recycling. Vancouver's premier metal recycler pays the highest prices on scrap metal. North Star Metal Recycling Day Recycle, you get paid. Visit them at 1170 Powell Street in Vancouver. One of the presenting sponsors of this show is Sands and Associates. Get out of the penalty box of debt and back into the game with a financial fresh start. Visit them online at Sands-Trustee.com. Now, this segment right here, this particular segment of Halford & Brough,

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That's a separate one. 720, brother. Don't worry about the folks at Limitless AV. They got you covered. Pretty soon we'll have reeds that are brought to by other reads. Yeah, read was just brought you by. That's the next level of sales. Yeah, that's like the next level you get to.

The sales team on the phone. Let's go. Well, you take a read. you do it so often that it becomes iconic. And then it's valid. Imagine going to another company. Would you like to sponsor this other company's read? We should have done out with the fire plan job.

The fire plan drop should have been brought to by something. You know, it's just crazy enough to work. The options are endless on AM radio. They are endless. All right, we went through two of the three big takeaways from the Canucks weekend, and it was a busy weekend. Win over Columbus, overtime loss to Colorado and a whole bunch of other things as well. but the third and maybe the most intriguing takeaway from the weekend, Jamie,

was what went on in between the pipes for the Vancouver Canucks over the weekend. Yeah, and it was certainly the most confusing situation from the weekend. And this started on Friday. It would have been after your guys' show on Friday. Drans and I had a little bit of a chance to talk about it because Dempco missed the Canucks practice on Friday. Yuri Patera was called up. And of course, as soon as Rick Dollywell has the scoop and it's out there on Twitter,

that Yuri Patera, a goalie is being called up. We are so attuned and so alert to any potential health issues with Thatcher Dempco, but there starts to be a lot of concern, maybe even panic. Yeah. A lot of fears about what that could possibly mean for Thatcher Dempco. So Adam Foote's post-practice media availability, a lot of attention on it on Friday. And the answer explanation we got that it was preventative maintenance. Wow.

Basically, Thatger Demko woke up, feeling something maybe slightly off. They've been very encouraging of him. Hey, say, hey, if you're not good to go today, tell us. We want to keep you healthy. So it was preventative maintenance, which, okay, maintenance. First of all, a maintenance day is a thing. We know what a maintenance day is. Sure.

So I don't know if that's different than preventative maintenance. They have one a week in the NBA. But, of course, Yuri Patero was called up under emergency conditions, which there needs to be an injury. Right. It's not just you're taking a day. There needs to be an actual injury for you to be called up under emergency conditions. The CBA is very clear on this. Yeah.

You can be all willy-nilly with your emergency conditions. And then, of course, you know, we heard, you know, he could be a possibility for one of these games over the weekend. Kevin Lankinen starts both. And shout out to Kevin Lankton gets the win on Saturday and then back to back against a very good Colorado team does enough. I know he wasn't happy with the overtime goal, but he gets them a point by playing very well in that game. So obviously, you're not sitting Thatcher Dempco out. starting Kevin Lankton and back-to-back games because of maintenance. Yeah.

There's obviously something going on. Now, Adam Foote yesterday said pretty good chance that he'll be ready for Tuesday against Winnipeg. So maybe who knows what this was. I don't know what we should read. What should we take differently from this than if they had said Demko's day to day with a lower body injury? And I don't know if it's lower body or upper body. I'm just filling in the blanks here. Yeah.

If they had said on Friday, Demko's day-to-day with a lower body injury, possible for the weekend, more likely Tuesday. Is that, we have read anything differently into that than how all of this is unfolded? Should we read anything differently into the, well, preventative maintenance? And maybe he could go, but I don't know. We don't know. The whole thing is just confusing. And I get it with Demko's health.

So everyone is on hyper alert all the times, all the time. I'm not sure we should be more concerned than we were on Thursday about Demko's. health maybe we should maybe we shouldn't i have no idea because we just had so few answers about what was really going on here like conceptually speaking i like the idea is that when you put it out there to a player we are aware that you like to push and we are also aware that we are in a compacted schedule please let us know if you feel like something's creeping up where could be on the verge of an injury you know your body better than we do yep i think it's i think it's a great idea because if there's one thing that's going to sink this season, it's going to be having

Thatcher Demko not available. Of all the other things, I think you can, you know, tape over or gloss over. But if he's out for an extended period of time, and that's just my opinion, but I honestly believe that if he's not there, and it was the biggest issue last year for me, of all the issues that they had, that one to me, it was like, it was staring everybody right in the face all year. And I know Lankinen kind of made the loss of Demko less of a sting, but big picture. He's a core part of this team. He's incredibly valuable. And what we've seen this

year, like, I know Lankton had a tough situation on the weekend, and we'll get into that in a second, but there's a clear divide between the two of them that can't be understated. I think it's the way the team plays in front of them. I think it's the confidence that he gives. So if you're trying to keep Demko healthy, great. Good job

on everybody. You held them out of the weekend. And if you want to go glass half full, which we are very rare to do here on the program, they got three out of a possible four points despite how, you know, dangerous and cataclysmic it sounded on Friday, right? You're going to, wait, you're going to have Patera dress. You're not even going to have Demko in the rank. He's going to be sitting somewhere else, and you're going to play Lankton in back-to-backs. They did it.

They got through it. If Demko comes back on Tuesday against Winnipeg, okay. Now, as for the messaging part and to, you know, satiate the jackals out there that are hanging on every want and need. to the Vancouver Canucks, and especially Demco's health. I agree it was kind of muddled. It was very confusing. And quite frankly, there's too many people covering the team on a regular basis with knowledge of everything, CBA and otherwise they're going to poke holes and whatever.

You're trying to gloss it over. The emergency recall thing was a good point. You can't just use it willy-nilly. There has to be some kind of injury. The fact that Demko didn't dress in either game leads me to believe that maybe it's more serious. But at the end of the day, I unfortunately have the same takeaway that you do. We don't know. I have no idea.

We have no idea. It could be absolutely nothing. Honestly, I'm not saying that to be naive or anything, but just because Demko has a history of injury, it doesn't mean that every time he misses two games is a, like, a portent of doom, right? You're allowed to, he's allowed to still be knocked up in a normal way, right? That sounds wrong, but you know what I mean, banged up in a normal way. I liked it when it was said. I was already winking to click it.

And then you're like, wait, what a second? But I'm going to let him roll. I don't like to jump in. I also want to point out, by the way. And I know I brought this up, so I'm going to follow up on it. This is some advanced goalie analysis ahead of Kevin Woodley joining us at 8 a.m. this morning. Kevin Lankinen is giving up too many goals. Just want to put that out there.

Kevin Lankinen, whose sole job it is to not letting goals, is letting in too many goals. He's not letting them in. He's letting them in. They are at, it's a very, very, very risky proposition for a team that is not offensively inclined, despite scoring eight this weekend to have a guy where half of his starts this year have been four goals against her more half of his starts right that's asking a lot of the guys in front of you last night was he battled yeah i want to make this abundantly clear i'm not saying that he's playing poorly i'm saying that he's allowing too many goals i think it would be a great bit if you adopted

kevin lankitin as you're like equivalent to bruff and piti no just every day can't do that every day it was coming in, furious about Kevin Lankenen. I'm not furious, though. That's the thing. But I also am acknowledging that he's letting in too many goals. Yeah, you're right. Look, we'll talk to Woodley about it, as you said. A very advanced analysis, but in order

for the team to win more hockey games, when Kevin Lankton plays, he needs to let in fewer points. I did think it was interesting on Saturday against Columbus. I thought he made a ton of really good saves. And then a couple of the goals that go in you don't love. I think it was the same story last night. So it's kind of hard.

Again, you're hearing really our top-level goalie analysis here. It's like, that was a good save. That wasn't such a good save. There's not a lot more depth to it than that. The office one, Andy, wants to be a critic. Yeah. That food was good. That food was bad.

Okay, despite how dumb it might sound, do you understand what I'm saying? Or do you think it's just totally stupid? No, I get what you're saying. There's, Demico brings a certain vibe when he's out there. Yeah. You just, the team plays differently in front of him, I think. And it trickles down, of course. but it's Demko's a huge loss

no matter which way you slice it Well I think the band again And Matt and Surrey texts in Okay so what happens if Demko doesn't play Tuesday I mean Kevin Lankin will play I don't know what else beyond that Then we panic Matt and Surrey that's a Tuesday problem

To your point about just the importance of Demko It's not just the difference between Demko and Lankan It's if let's say and we don't know But if Demko missed two months Okay sure sure Well who's taking the other starts other than Lankan Is it Yuri Patera? Don't put that on the universe.

So that's the real concern for me. I can, I'm okay. Hey, if you have to start Kevin Lankton, if there's a stretch five games in a row and Demko has to miss, you know, 10 days or whatever, you can live with that. You can battle through that. If you're having to go to a third organizational goalie now

of any sort of regularity, then you're really in trouble. But they should be able to do that. It's not like Petra's unplayable. And you look at teams like Vegas. They didn't play them over the weekend. It kind of felt like it. Vegas has had a Kira Schmead out there. He's getting shut out.

Who is the other guy that Vegas played? We were talking about him on our chat. Linbaum? Oh, yeah. Aral Linbaum is in there. Good teams still go through stuff like this. You should be able to survive a Yuri Patera. What was the first part of that you said?

Good teams. What kind of teams can survive? Good teams can survive this kind of thing. I'm going to let that hang in the ether. We now pivot to the Canadian Football League. We've got to get through some of the other things that happened over the weekend, non-Kinux division, because there was a lot. And we'd be remiss if we went the entire first hour,

they'll mention what happened to the BC Lions on Saturday in Saskatch. The Lions have not been to the Grey Cup since 2011, and that run of futility is sadly going to continue after our heartbreaking loss in Regina on Saturday. It was a Trevor Harris touchdown with 11 seconds left on the clock as the Saskatchewan Roughriders beat the Lions 24 to 21 and Saturday's Western final. As a result, it is the riders that move on to face Montreal

and next Sunday's Grey Cup in Winnipeg. And it will not be the Lions who did a lot of things well over the weekend, But ultimately, what's going to sting is, one, obviously the manner in which they lost the game, allowing a game-winning touchdown with 11 seconds left, but two, and a lot of people spoke about this in the aftermath, including our 730 guest, J.C. Abbott, who's going to join us from Three Down Nation, a lot of the ghosts from earlier in the BC Lions season where they were unable to close out games, and the defense failed them in the biggest moments. And there's going to be a lot of consternation and talk about what the defensive coordinator,

Mike Benavides called or didn't call up on that final drive, were they too passive? Did they allow too many plays? I know there was a lot of analysts in the aftermath that pointed out that it wasn't necessarily the defensive play calling. It was the execution of the guys on the field. There was a lot of consternation

about what the offense did when Corey Mace made the decision for the rough riders to punt to the lions and give the ball back off kickoffs and punts and go get defensive stops and the lions weren't able to move the chains and keep the clock running. At the end of the day,

the Lions went into the fourth quarter down 14 to 7, did enough on both sides of the football to get a lead that they should have been able to hold on to. And I know that we shouldn't do this, but we always compare one sport to another. And oftentimes it's ones in recent memory. The Lions are going to feel a lot like the Blue Jays did that they had enough opportunities to go out and win a game

and they weren't able to close the deal. For the Jays, it was game six and seven of the World Series. And for the Lions, that fourth quarter because by all rights they should have been able to win that football game and they weren't able to do it. They were given enough opportunities. And as a result, Jamie, their season ends one game short of makeup. So as you said, it's going to be very, very frustrating and that's probably, I'm sure for hardcore Lions fans and certainly the Lions themselves were what, two days out. It's not the time to start looking for positives or looking for the bright side yet. You're still

sitting in that one. But I think you do kind of have to take a lot of positives from this BC Lions season. And I mean, number one is the play of Nathan Rourke. Yeah. I mean, this is the first time

he played 18 games in a CFL season and he was amazing and especially later in the season as the season progressed and maybe he got a little bit more comfortable with head coach

Buck Pierce and all of that. He was phenomenal. So I don't, again, I get it. You're coming off a heartbreaking loss with a chance to go to the Grey Cup. Now it's probably not the time to be like,

but you know, the future is bright. But you've got the best asset in the league to build around right now in Nathan Rourke. I don't think that's going too far at all. If you could choose one player in the CFL but you wanted to build around,

it would be Nathan Rourke. They have that. You made it to the West Final. I do think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future for the BC Lions. Yeah, I just think it's the sting of this particular. Here's the thing. They've done this trip before in the Western Final

where they've gone, and the games haven't been that particularly close. And I know the last couple of West Finals that they've been to on the scoreboard, it looked close. But they weren't really close to winning in those games. This one wasn't just close. The Lions had control of this.

game in Saskatchewan. And the weird part was that for three and a half quarters, the defense had provided more than enough to get a win, which hadn't been the case this year. Also, the Lions were the hottest team, the CFO going into the playoffs, right? They were on a crazy win streak.

This felt like the year where was it a season too early, was it a bit premature? I don't think so. I think this was a real opportunity for this team to take that step now. See, not always looking at that. I get that, but to me it doesn't feel like, oh, man, this is their chance.

It feels like you're going to have repeated chances with Nathan Rook as your quarterback. And again, tough bill to swallow right now. I get it, but I do think that's the big picture view here. So Peter and Cloverdale writes into the Dunbar Lumber text message in basket at 650, 650, 650. Hey, guys, do you think the game winning touchdown would have been overturned if the goalpost were not blocking the view of that quote unquote catch. Well, Peter, in case you missed it over the weekend, BC Lions owner, Amar Doman, took to social media. I believe it was on his Instagram and posted several still shots that seemed to suggest that that wasn't a catch at all in the end zone for the riders.

the ball actually touched the ground. Now, we'll talk to J.C. Abbott more about this at 7.30. There's been a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff in the aftermath. Some of it online, not pretty at all, emanating from this game, which I think kind of underscores how dramatic and tough a loss it was, how many people were paying attention to it, and how much this one is going to sting specifically from the lion's side of things. But we will get into all that at 7.30 with J.C. Abbott from Three Down Nation,

because I do want to get into a couple other things from the weekend. Keeping it on the football front, but moving south to Seattle, where the Seattle Seahawks are now at least for right now, the top seed in the NFC. Yes, the entire national football conference with a 72 record that comes after thrashing the Arizona Cardinals, 44 to 22 on Sunday at Lumen Field. I want to play the DeMarcus Lawrence second touchdown

For those of you that didn't watch this yesterday, this was an absolute whitewash in the first half of this game. For the second consecutive week, the Seattle Seahawks jumped out to a 28 to nothing lead, and this time they did it on the strength of the defense. Two force fumbles, two pickups from DeMarcus Lawrence. Here's what the second one sounded like

to give the Seahawks that 28-point lead. With Ernest Jones out, third down 11, here comes right, knocked away again, lose, here comes Lawrence. Holy smart. Folks, another touchdown by the same guy. It was the same guy. It was DeMarcus Lawrence. I think he's the first defensive player since 1991

to have two defensive touchdowns in the first half of a regular season game. Pretty impressive. Also impressive is, and I did not see this coming from the Seahawks team this year, their ability to rack up crazy points in the first half of games and bury teams before halftime. They did in week three.

Remember when they played the Saints? They were up 38 to 6 at halftime. Last week it was 31 to 7 in Washington against the commanders, and then on Sunday it was a 38 to 7 win. Again, they were up 28-0 against the Cardinals. It's crazy to think, crazy to think that this Seahawks team going into this year where they thought, I personally thought their bread and butter was going to be play low event, low-scoring games, grind out wins, maybe put up 20 points on the board and hold the opposition to 17,

and that's a good week for you. they've completely defied expectations and now they're 7 and 2. Yeah, they're not just winning. They're winning big and they have the best point differential. They're plus 103 through nine games. Best point differential in the NFC second only behind the Indianapolis Colts overall in the league. And what's really exciting

they get the L.A. Rams next week. Also 7 and 2, also blowing teams out. Yeah. Really, really exciting matchup. Yeah. So if you look at the Seahawks right now, you can make the argument that they have, I don't want to say the best defense in the NFL because there's a lot of candidates but the best defense in the conference

right they gave they had five sacks in that first half two defensive scores they wiped out the cardinals on the defensive side of the football and that was a big reason why they scored but that's not I mean it is the strength of this team for sure the pass rush is phenomenal but they also have the best receiver

in football right now if you want to go just on yard yardage right and they've got a quarterback playing at a pro bowl level if they can sort of their run game because the ground game has not been great you're talking about, and I can't believe I'm saying this, about this particular team, but a bona fide Super Bowl contender. And I'll say this, you know, because we're going to break and I can take a breath afterwards,

but I can't believe that I'm saying this because my expectations were so, so not low, but so mid for the Seahawks. I was like, yeah, they'll be okay. You've just been conditioned by the Knicks. Yeah, but also, what going into this year gave you the thought that they would be a wagon? Yeah. I mean, I saw how it ended for Sam Darnold last year. And, I mean, if you want to go back and check the receipts from a lot of different pundits,

there were a lot of people that were not convinced that Darnold of Regina was an upgrade of the quarterback position. And it has worked better than they possibly could have hoped, especially when you look at what Gino's doing with the Raiders. I thought, and perhaps this is my naive football knowledge, but I thought that losing, or not losing, but trading away D.K. McCaff wasn't going to elevate Smith and Jim, but I thought it was going to make his job a little bit more difficult, because he was going to be shadowed all the time. He's not on pace for 2,000 yards receiving anymore,

but he's the first player, first wide receiver in the NFL to break 1,000 yards this year in terms of receiving yards. So he hasn't missed a beat. As a matter of fact, he's thriving in this opportunity. And it's been a real big surprise and a real nice one as well. It's pretty incredible just how well Sam Darnold is playing too. I mean, I think whatever your expectations were,

and obviously he had a phenomenal regular season, mostly in Minnesota last year. And then we know how it ended late in the season and in the playoffs. So he still has to answer that question. But this is exactly what they were hoping for. And probably more, to be honest, from Sam Donald. I'm sure, as you said, they could do the kind of,

they knew they could do the kind of game manager thing with him. And a lot of play action and lean on your running backs. And then you've got JSN to throw to. It's that plus the ability to be explosive. That has been really impressive. I thought the regular season ceiling was maybe a bit higher than that because his numbers in Minnesota were very good last year. And there were a lot of games where he had explosive outings with Justin Jefferson,

and it looked like a really dangerous combination. So I thought that there was a possibility there. But I did not have them wiping out teams, like, as emphatically as they're wiping them out. And, you know, we had a couple texts come in. Unsigned one here, honest question, who have the Seahawks beat that's any good? You know what? The seven wins, if you want to poke holes in them, that's valid. The counter to that is that they're not going out and squeaking out victories against inferior opponents.

Like, you've got to play who's on your schedule and who's in front of you. and they're going out and that's why I wanted to bring up those first half leads. They're going out and saying we're better than these guys. This should be a win and we're going to make sure

that before halftime which is not an easy thing to do in the National Football League and they've done it in three of the seven victories where they've wiped out the opposition so they deserve credit for that for sure. Okay, we're up against it for time

we got to go to break. When we come back, the guests begin on the Halford and Breft Show on SportsNet 650. JP Acosta is going to join us at 7 a.m. He is our NFL insider from CBS Sports at 730. J.C. Abbott is going to join the program.

He's our CFL insider from Three Down Nation. And then at 8 o'clock, we're going to dive back into the hockey talk with Kevin Woodley from NHL.com and Ingole magazine and talk about everything that happened over the weekend with the Vancouver Canucks. One hour in the books, two more to go. You're listening to The Halford & Brough Show with Jamie Dodd on Sportsnet, 650.