Halford & Brough in the Morning - The Canucks Set A Record On Saturday And It Wasn't A Good One

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

In hour one, Halford & guest host Thomas Drance look back at a busy weekend in sports (3:00), they talk Saturday's epic Canucks collapse versus the Kraken (6:00), plus they chat Week 17 highlights with Too Deep Zone NFL insider Mike Tanier.  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.

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This is the worst. Good morning, Vancouver. 7-0-1 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. It is Halford. It is Brough. No, wait, it's Thomas Drance. And we are coming to you live. Hello.

From the Kintec Studios, the beautiful Fairview Slopes in Vancouver. Thomas, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Adog, good morning to you. Good morning. And Laddy, good morning to you as well. Hello, hello.

Halford and Brough for the morning 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 already in hour two of the program. How did that happen? Don't confuse people. Don't say that.

See now, hour one. They'll be like, where was hour one? It's actually hour two. Hour two becomes hour three. Yes. This is getting confusing. Hour two of this program. It makes sense, though, because time stops during the holidays. It's true. It works differently.

We all know this. Drance gets it. Don't call it hour two, though. I thought he was going to go on a time isn't linear rant. Someone's going to download this hour. They're going to be like, but where's hour one? Yeah, just call it hour one. Hour one slash two of this program is brought to you by Jason Hominick from 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 being sarcastic. Let him do that. Visit him at Jason.Mortgage. Tell the people about Kintec, Thomas, before we get into today's show. We're coming to you live from the Kintec studio. Kintec, Canada's favorite orthotics provider, powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews. So, Orfit, what are you waiting for?

Kintec. We got a big show over the two hours that we're going to be here today. Very excited to be here. Happy belated holidays to everyone. I hope you all had a good Christmas or whatever else you were celebrating over the last week. We only have one guest on the program today. Mike Tanier is going to join us at 7.30, a wild weekend of the National Football League. Drance has takes.

Drance has thoughts. Well, yeah, but we only have one guest, but we have an old friend, which is Canucks fatalism. Oh, God. We're going to get into some of that as well. We're going to dwell on that, I'd expect. We will spend a lot of time talking about whatever that was on Saturday afternoon at Rogers Arena.

What happened? The most epic collapse in Canucks regular season franchise history, Andy. We win this history over the weekend. But we are going to forge about 15 or 20 minutes this morning to talk about the NFL as well because there was a lot that happened yesterday. And there's games tonight as well. Going into Week 18, final week of the regular season next weekend. But yeah, Mike Tanier is going to join us at 7.30.

We got a lot to get into, including everything that happened with the Vancouver Canucks. So without further ado, Laddie, let's tell everybody what happened. Hey, did you guys see the game last night? No. What happened? I missed all the action because I was... We know how busy your life can be. What happened? You missed that?

What happened? What happened is always brought to you by the BC Construction Safety Alliance. Okay, on the weekend, which featured a couple of very historic and infamous losses on Canadian soil, the Vancouver Canucks etched their names into the history books with a truly epic collapse against the Seattle Kraken on Saturday. Vince Dunn, Vince Dunn scored his second goal of the game,

just 2-15 into overtime, and the Seattle Kraken overcame a three-goal third-period deficit beating the Vancouver Canucks 5-4 on Saturday. Just the third time, third time, third time in NHL history, the long, decorated history of the NHL, third time that a team has lost a regular season game after they were leading by three goals inside the game's final

five minutes. Would you say they were done in? Ugh. Does that make it worse? I was waiting to just deliver that line. Does that make it worse? You beat Greg to the dad joke punch. Somehow. Are you done with the done puns? Or will there be more? I'm done. I'm done. I thought before we

get into the hardcore analysis of this game that we do a little exercise for the listeners. A little Monday morning torture. We're going to go through every single goal and break down just how bizarre this was after the Canucks had already gone up 4-1 on a Jake DeBrusque goal three minutes and nine seconds into the game. It's actually 5-1 by my standards because I thought

that Dakota Joshua's goal probably should have stood on the board I'm biased that way whatever 4-1 Jaden Swartz scores to make it 4-2 at 15-15 of the third period at this point you're thinking okay we've seen this before Canucks maybe let the foot off the gas late a little bit but there's still less than five minutes remaining and it's still a fairly comfortable lead. Then Vince Dunn does this. I think most people in the building thought he might take a look at shooting that. Now there's a turnover in front. Vince Dunn scores!

Canucks fail to manage the puck in their own zone, and Vince Dunn pounces on it in the middle of the ice, and just like that, it's 4-3. It's a little dirty. It's still good. Things are still good. It's okay. You notice maybe a tinge of nervousness in Brendan Batchelor's voice on the call right here on Sportsnet 650, but still, with about a minute and 20 seconds left

and a 4-3 lead, surely, surely the Vancouver Canucks are not going to give up a third goal in the final five minutes of the game. Now, kudos to the Sportsnet cameraman working the game. I don't have his name in there already, but just a tremendous job when it's at 4-3 to pan over to each of the benches, the Seattle bench and the Vancouver bench. Over the Seattle bench, this is Coach Jessica Campbell

furiously scrawling up a play on the whiteboard. Then over to the Canucks bench, where Adam Foote was doing the same on the defensive side of things. Advantage? Campbell. Here's what happens with 50 seconds left in the game.

Sooner back to the puck. Lost it to Schwartz. Cut into the slot. Low shot. Stopped by Deco. Rebound. He scores. Jaden Schwartz to the net.

Has his second of the afternoon. And the Kraken have clawed back from a 4-1 third period deficit with three straight goals to tie it at four in the final minute it's just a little slimy it's still good it's still good it's pretty slimy at that point it's 4-4 you're still getting a point out of it so you can still salvage this thing it's gone Schwartz done Schwartz, Dunn, Schwartz. So the pattern would only suggest that in overtime, it was going to be that same guy that started this whole comeback, Vince Dunn. Here he is, 2-15 into the extra frame to give Seattle an improbable 5-4 victory.

Into the Seattle zone. Myers delays into the slot. Miller and Besser missed it. It's a 2-on-0 for the Kraken the other way. Vince Dunn in on Demko. Shoots. Scores. The Seattle Kraken end their five-game losing streak with a miraculous come-from-behind win this afternoon in Vancouver. It's just a little airborne.

It's still good. It's still good. It's good. I know. And there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen, your weekend in Vancouver Canucks hockey. Felt like an act of God watching it live,

to be totally honest with you. I do think there's a little bit more there. Here's the truth. For 40 minutes, the Canucks were outplayed by the Kraken and were pretty fortunate to have the lead. And when I say outplayed, that's a relative term because the Kraken are pretty mid

and frankly look disinterested. By this, do you mean like the Kraken held the puck more? I thought the Kraken had better chances. I thought they looked like the better team for about 40 minutes. And yet it felt like one of those, oh, the Canucks are going to get away with this type games. Neither team generated anything.

The goals on the board were largely the result of poor goaltending. Sorry, Laddie. But both ways, I thought Grubauer was atrocious. And I thought the Banniers goal was obviously one Demko would want back. And the Canucks were, I thought, pretty poor for 40 minutes, but they entered the third with a 3-1 lead and, ironically, started to play really well. And for the first 10 minutes of the third period, maybe the first 15.

You might even say the first 15. They actually looked like a pretty serious team intent on winning. The Joshua bounce. I thought that was clearly going to come back when I saw the replay, personally. Okay. It's not a controversial call. You know, while I had my, I was, we were out at a lunch. The game was on the screen.

We were all very excited. A luncheon, right? A luncheon. Not to be confused with a regular lunch. The lay people having their lunches. No. I was watching it. And, you know, the replay went over about, I don't know, seven or eight times.

And all of us furious debating. Was it with his glove? Was it a chicken wing? Can you score off your shoulder? Did he head it in? We were all thinking all of these things. And then there was a simmering underbelly of the conversation. It was like, it's probably coming back.

Yeah. And it did. I think I, you know, as much as I'm a Homer on this one, I think rightfully so, but whatever, it was still a four,

one lead with five minutes remaining. And it felt like a deluge at that point, right? Like it was like, Oh man, this is getting ugly for this mid cracking team. And you know, I mean,

I'm writing live, right? Cause I'm filing at the buzzer every game. I had a whole section on like, where did the crack and go from here? Like what a disaster this team is, you'm writing live, right? Because I'm filing at the buzzer every game. I had a whole section on where did the Kraken go from here? What a disaster this team is. Honestly, at that point, I ended up deleting it. A couple things, though, I do think precipitate. First of all, obviously, the bounce off Juleson's posterior is tough.

That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Yep. But I think the canucks overreacted right so this was the first game we saw them play without quinn hughes their game's been trending in the wrong direction with quinn hughes too but we've been talking about it all year the the with hughes without hughes effect and now that this team is playing all non-Hughes minutes yeah like it's dicey and we know it's going to be dicey on a week-to-week basis at the moment as Quinn Hughes recovers here however in the very first game seeing this team play they actually did something pretty interesting that worked okay Eric Branstrom led all canucks defenders in five on five ice time in the game

the canucks outshot the kraken 10 to 4 in his minutes they didn't score kraken didn't score but they controlled play he was the only defender for whom that was true okay which speaks to something we all talk about or certainly i know brough likes to talk about it he always asks me about it when i do my hits canucks defense, not super fleet of foot. They're not the most mobile group, collectively. You could say that. And Branstrom brings

at least a little bit of that push. Is he Quinn Hughes or Philip Hronick? No. But at least he brings a dimension that this team sorely needs and lacks, to the point of it being a critical absence in Hughesughes and heronix

you know current sort of state out of the lineup after the julson goal branstrom plays or the julson deflection goal right branstrom plays one more shift the rest of the game they built this lead leaning heavily on a number one guy who was at least able to like move the puck and then what happens well julson sends a bit of a hospital pass to susie susie does a fly by clearance picked off by vince dunn back of the net and then derrick forbert another the the left side defender loses the puck behind the net. Like, he literally didn't know where it was. And that sets up the guts of the ice, opens up the guts

of the ice that Schwartz skates into and deposits it on the second opportunity. Very, very Zach Parise-like. Good pull. To what do you either owe or suggest this kind of deployment? Because you bring up a good point. You're not going to replace Quinn Hughes

one for one with anybody. No. But if there is a reasonable doppelganger light, it might be Brandstrom. And maybe the proof is in the pudding through two-thirds or three-quarters of the game because they had staked themselves out to a 4-1 lead where Brandstrom was playing with regularity.

To me, it felt like okay, we've got the 4-1 lead. Old school thinking, let's get our big, tough, physical, defensive defensemen out there and make sure that there's no mistakes. The problem with it is... You can't move the puck. The problem with it is this club right now,

I think honestly, even with Quinn Hughes and Phillip Peronic, you can see the seams from their puck moving generally right you watch this team play and there's nights where they don't generate anything with especially without Quinn Hughes on the ice but even sometimes with Quinn Hughes on the ice because they can't get the puck moving well enough as as a collective blue line group now you remove Peronic and Hughes I just think this is a punch they can't take. You can't afford to not be using Brandstrom right now.

You can't afford it. And I think we saw it. We saw just how bogged down, just how extreme it can get. The margin for error has basically disappeared with the Canucks missing their entire first pair plus Pedersen at the moment. You cannot have that little sort of get up and go that that little ability to spatially problem solve while moving up ice in your lineup and i think they played with fire and got burned so a quick reset here on sunday's news because we're talking about it but we haven't exactly laid it out for the listeners that might not be aware on sunday's practice or after sunday's

practice following a very disheartening loss to the seattle kraken canucks head coach Rick Tauk had announced that Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes wouldn't be making the upcoming trip on this two-game roadie through Calgary and Seattle. Pettersson would be out a week. Hughes will be out week to week. Both are very alarming injuries. Hughes week to week, probably obviously the more alarming of the two because of A, what you just mentioned about how the Canucks are deploying the defense without Hughes in the lineup,

and two, week to week could mean a lot of things, right? Very nebulous injury update. It could be an awfully long time. Let's get into this now because I know that you're writing about this, and it's going to be the topic of conversation moving forward with Hughes out of the lineup. How do you deal with his absence? How ugly is it going to get without Quinn Hughes in the lineup?

Yeah, potentially very ugly. So I've got a new notebook up at The Athletic, and I just sort of pulled the numbers out of curiosity. Five on five this season. Canucks have played 669 minutes with Quinn Hughes, just over 1,000 without him. In Quinn Hughes' minutes, they've outshot their opponents by 86. Pretty good.

Decent. That's good. Without him, they've been outshot by 114. With Quinn Hughes on the ice 5-5, they've outscored their opponents by 18. That's good. Without Quinn Hughes on the ice, minus 10. That's bad. That's bad.

And so we've known that the non-Hughes minutes were problematic for this team all season, and now it's all non-Hughes minutes over this sort of two-week span. Their schedule's relatively soft, right? You're talking Calgary, you're talking Seattle, you're talking Nashville, you're talking Montreal. Yep. Those are their next four opponents.

And yet, I mean, I do think there's a real possibility when you really look at it, that the bottom might fall out of this team's ability to control play at all, five on five. It could be ugly. They're not going to be a good team that goes in as a heavily favored side in any of these next four games. They shouldn't be.

And that's not to say that they're not going to be able to find ways to win. I think we kind of know that this group has some tactical noose, some onions when it comes to grinding out wins here, but that's what they're going to have to do. They're going to have to play low-event hockey. They're going to need to get really good goaltending. They're going to need to convert opportunistically because they're not going to be able to control play.

The thing that scares me the most right now is the great unknown. Because if you go back and you look at Hughes' first six seasons in the league, I think maybe something that we don't talk enough about is the durability of a player. He does not miss a lot of games. I think the most he's missed in a season is six. I know that the first... And that was the groin injury year.

Right. And 2019, 2020, and 2020, 2021 were obviously shortened seasons due to the pandemic, but he was there suited up for all of them. Not knowing what the blue line looks like without him is maybe the scariest. It's like the deep blue sea. It's like when you don't know what's out there,

you know that it's not good, but you're not 100% sure of what that bad is. Well, and we saw the first glimpse of it, and it was like, ooh. See, that's a thing, right? It's like Saturday, and we saw the first glimpse of it, and it was like, see, that's a thing, right? I don't know. Saturday, and I think it would be unfair to point a line between Hughes' absence and directly what happened against the Kraken. There was a confluence of freaky things that happened.

There were, but also they probably don't happen because at some point the puck gets on Quinn Hughes' stick, and he's like, we are skating 50 feet. He skates at the safety, for sure. And then making a sick pass, and now we're set up in the opposition zone, and we're going to spend a minute here, and everyone's going to take a breath

while I make three dazzling dekes at the blue line, and now we're going to cruise to a 4-2 victory. The security blanket part of it is kind of what I was leaning into with this, is that he was always there. When you're always there, and you're always in the lineup, there is a sense of familiarity, but it's also like, okay, when we're in trouble or when we're in the crap,

what are we going to do? And more often than not, it's let's find 43 and let's make sure he gets the puck and he'll do good things. That's gone. Well, they're calling it a hand injury, but it absolutely might be just from the stress of carrying this team. Right. It's a back, it's a hand but yeah so anyway it is a suspected hand injury for hughes which was suffered in the ottawa game on the 21st and then and i we don't have the audio at the ready so i'll just

paraphrase it talk it was asked yesterday if can we can we just give a little bit of dap, though, to J-Pat? Who goes the, let me just play devil's advocate. Yeah, he did. And advocate he did for the devil. Because he asked Rick Tockett, did playing Quinn Hughes on the 23rd against San Jose, where he was doubtful and then a game time decision, then suit up to play, aggravate the injury at all? And Tockett shot it down, I would say fairly emphatically, that whatever he had injury-wise wasn't going to get any worse by playing.

Now, this does open the head coach and that line of thought up to a lot of questions. Namely, well, if it didn't aggravate it, what's changed from the San Jose game to the Seattle game? If it was okay to go in San Jose, what has changed in the three or four days since that allows them not to go against the crack and how serious is this injury? I mean, and you got to remember that the club has not confirmed any of this. Like there's not come out and said that it is a hand injury.

I don't even know if they've designated it as an upper body injury, right? It could just be the old fashioned body injury, but we were all, this is a lot of speculation here. However, we did understand that Hughes was hurt prior to San Jose and played, and then he came back from the break and was unable to go against the Krakens. So something changed in that time.

We're just not sure what. Yeah, it was a game-time decision against the Sharks, and you hope that it wasn't aggravated. Rick Tockett implied in his answer yesterday that what Hughes has was one of those things that can't get worse, which would rule out if we knew it was a hand injury and all manner of injuries. That actually does help narrow it down pretty significantly.

But obviously, if it's a pain tolerance thing and it didn't get better over the holidays, in that instance like for example not to speculate but just for example if you're dealing with a bone bruise something that can't get worse in your hand and it's incredibly painful and you got it out one night and then you're like and three days later i'll be back and then three days later it's still hurting really badly and and you're like i i look i can't do this for the next four months right like there's no way i need to take a sec and let that make sense to me but it basically

has to be along that sort of narrow path otherwise it's definitely something we should be looking at with furrowed brow so um the petterson thing as well it definitely sounds like that's going to be shorter in term than the Hughes injury. Talkit put it out yesterday, and I've already reiterated this, a week on Pedersen. So that means that he won't be available, as mentioned, for the team's next game, which is going to be on New Year's Eve in Calgary. And then they play on the 2nd, January 2nd, in Seattle against the Kraken. We're at a point with Pedersen in this market where he's, you know, I think when we, maybe tomorrow we can talk a little bit more

about sort of the year in review for the Canucks, but it really does feel like 2024 was the year of Quinn Hughes in a way where, you know, because of Demko's injury, because of Miller's inconsistency, especially this season, because of Pedersen's year-long funk. Yeah. Like Quinn Hughes stands kind of alone in the constellation of Canucks stars now, as he should, honestly.

Like he ascended to a totally different level, won the Norris. I mean, it's a totally different conversation today than it was 12 months ago, where it was like this Canucks core group, and now it's Quinn Hughes and everybody else, right? And I think that's, of all completely valid so we're we'd spend 10 minutes talking about Hughes's absence and like we're just kind of getting into the Pedersen of it all isn't that instructive of where the team is I think it speaks volumes but I want to note this in those non-Hinn Hughes minutes, right? In non-Quinn Hughes minutes, Elias Pettersson is the only Canucks center who has a positive goal differential

away from Quinn Hughes. Okay. So his absence as like compounding loss with 43 out of the lineup is actually magnified because frankly, he's the only Canucks centerman this season who's been able to win their minutes away from Quinn.

Yeah. I mean, the other part of this too, and we, this has to bear mention is that, uh, the club's forward depth more than allows it to try and compensate for the loss of Pedersen,

as opposed to the depth on defense. It actually exposes that as well, is that the team is, and the front office has done a very good job, I think, of making sure that you've got options, c and d at four like we saw hugh suitor play really well for 10 games in jt miller's absence for example yeah yeah it's not perfect but it'll work and they've got those options those options do not exist on this blue no so if you want to talk about

the absences of hughes and pettersen sort of illuminating other issues with the team, I think that's one of them is that the worst case scenario going into the season and Brough and I talked about it was like, God forbid if Hughes gets hurt. We never entertained the idea of God forbid if Hughes and Hronick get hurt at the same time. Yeah. Cause it's not an NHL blue line at that point.

No, I don't think so. It's not, it's definitely a bottom. I mean, you would take Anaheim's blue line or San Jose's blue line today over what Vancouver will likely have against the Calgary Flames.

Because when we had... No question. When we were going through this exercise with Hughes in the lineup and with Hronik out, you've got Hughes, who's a bonafide one, Soucy and Myers, who on a good playoff team are probably third pair guys. That's fair.

Yeah. No second pair guys. And then I feel unjust. I think Soucy and Myers both qualify with the very cowardly 4-5. Sure. They're 4-5s. Bad 4s, good 5s?

Right. Right? High-end 5s. High-end 5s. Low- end fours uh but then you've got like at one point with julson and day harney and when friedman was in the mix you could make the argument that that was those were three guys that on a good nhl team aren't on the nhl team they are playing for your american league affiliate and doing a nice job in bakersfield or wherever the sons of anarchy rode through in California, right?

There's a few of them in there. I'm very prepared to learn some Christian Lennon. That's all I'm going to say. We can get into that on the other side. So, okay, we got a couple things we need to get to as well. Fixes on the horizon, either via call-up or via trade. Also, the goaltending split. And we're going to spend a lot of time probably in the back half

of the 7 o'clock hour or the 8 o'clock hour because with everything that's going on, and I know you're going to notebook this later, but the goaltending becomes so, so vitally important. Wake up, Dave. Wake up, Dave. But on the other side, on the other side,

we're going to talk to Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the 2D Zone sub stack. A lot happened in the National Football League yesterday, including a tremendous Sunday nighter with the quarterback class, two of the gems of this quarterback class, Jayden Daniels and Michael Penix Jr. going toe-to-toe. The Commanders are back in the playoffs. The Falcons took a real body blow yesterday.

We can get into that and a whole lot more on the other side. You're listening to the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. 7.30 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. Alfred Ruff. No, wait, that's Thomas Drance. Hello. Drance is in for two shows this week with me. Today and tomorrow.

Wednesday, we're off because it's New Year's Day. Thursday, we're back to our regularly scheduled programming here on Sportsnet 650 including full three-hour shows. So today and tomorrow are both 7 to 9.

Only two hours of Halford and Grants. Feels like it's more than enough. Halford and Grants in the morning. That's right, I changed the name

of the show. 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,

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To the phone lines we go. Our NFL insider, Mike Tanier, our Monday morning quarterback, joins us now on the Health and Brough Show. I went back to the original one. On Sportsnet 650. Morning, Mike. How are you? I'm doing great.

That was some very jaunty play in music I heard. I felt like I was the star of a 1980s cop movie. We've had 1980s cop. We play it a lot. Some people have said 1980s cop movie. A lot of montages for aerobics from the same era. Yeah, it's got a real vibe to it. It's good stuff.

I do want to start. There were so many places to go with week 17 of the NFL season, but I want to start with where you started with this week's walkthrough of the two deep zone sub stack. How the Vikings saved week 18 of the NFL season. Can you please explain for our listeners how the Minnesota Vikings saved the final week of the regular season?

Well, you know, I was talking to some of my colleagues. I'm on some NFL Discord. I was talking to some neighbors. And they were like, boy, week 18 is going to stink. There's not going to be a big marquee matchup for week 18. And as the Christmas games and everything else unfolded and teams clinched this and teams clinched that, we started talking about how it's going to be Rams against Seahawks.

No offense, no offense, but most of the nation is not super excited here in the USA to see Rams versus Seahawks as a Sunday night game for all the marbles. So finally, the Minnesota Vikings, they come in, they beat the Packers, they beat them conclusively. And after weeks and weeks in the rearview mirror of the Detroit Lions, they're in position to clinch home field advantage. The night game, the Sunday night game, is for the first seed in the NFC. It's the Lions, it's the Vikings.

And so we get like a really exciting game. And now Seahawks-Rams can be in the midday slot, that's a better place for it, and some of the other games fit in. The Vikings not only did a lot for themselves and for their fans, but they did something for NFL fans as a whole. How do you see that game playing

out on Sunday? Because there's still a Lions game to go tonight, obviously. They've got to take on the 49ers on Monday Night Football. That number one seed and that first-round buy are huge, but both teams are also comfortably in the playoffs, and there is always a risk, and especially on the Detroit side of things, given how injured they've been, of suffering another injury.

How do you see that one playing out? Well, first of all, I'm curious about tonight's game because the Lions have nothing to play for tonight. They're three-and-a-half-point favorites, and you have the reality that, like, Dan Campbell could rest his starters to make sure they're ready for the Vikings versus he's Dan Campbell, and he wants to win by 60 and issue a statement to the universe, etc., etc. So I don't know what's going to happen tonight.

Beyond that, there is a huge difference between getting home field advantage and that first-week bye and winding up a wild card on the road, having to be in a situation where you might be a road team. Okay, maybe you get past the first round team if it's like, you know, the Buccaneers or something easily. Having to go into Philly on the road, having to go in against your conference arrival again on the road, that's a big difference. So that Sunday nighter is going to be for all the marbles.

Both teams will be going full bore because what's at stake is just too great. One final one on that matchup before we move along. My co-host very astutely threw down on Kevin O'Connell to win Coach of the Year. When was it, Drance? August. Yeah, no, I got some Kevin O'Connell 33-1 to win Coach of the Year that I'm getting very excited about. I don't know if you've done your Coach of the Year updates recently.

I've seen a lot of Coach of the Year ladders being posted on social media. Do you have KOC atop that list? Right now, he is minus 1,000 to win. Oh, let's go. If I had a vote, I'd vote for him, and it has kind of coalesced. You know, I think if there were voters on the fence, yesterday's game kind of was that statement, you know. Here was a Packers team that could still have taken playoff seedings away.

That is a divisional rival. It is an incredibly good team that's been playing football, exceptional football for the last month. And, you know, the Vikings did everything they had to do. Yeah, it got weird late, but they dismantled this opponent. So, yeah, I think Kevin O'Connell is coach of the year. I think he's kind of sewed it up in the last couple weeks. And congratulations.

That's an amazing, that's an amazing guy. I hope you put a little bit of real money on it and, you know, maybe buy yourself a nice dinner or something. I put like 50 on, so not a huge, just a sprinkle. But good fun and nonetheless the the oh i pivoting off this because that video of sam darnold walking into the locker room and it's that's pretty great yeah it's so sick it's flat out 80s sports movies right after we watched the as a as a double bill with the 80s cop movie

that we intro'd you with, Mike. I mean, is there an argument at this point for the Minnesota Vikings not getting something done and sort of installing Sam Darnold as, at the very least, sort of a medium-term answer at quarterback, at least along the mold of, you know, Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield. Yeah, I look at it and I think the answer that they're going to pursue is the franchise tag where you can lock Sam Darnold up.

Darnold, I mean, no one wants to be franchise tagged. If you look at the money, I think he'll take the money for another year. And you give yourself another year because the Vikings now have this happy accident where Donald is playing well. J.J. McCarthy is in the queue. But you can now slow roll McCarthy and say one more year of Donald. If Donald's life's out again, then you can talk to him and say, well, yeah, let's talk about a three-year deal. That, I think, is the most likely scenario. Now, does that mean that you hang up the phone if someone calls and asks for J.J. McCarthy and offers a first-round pick or something? Obviously, you go that route, and then you say, well, if someone does that, then you extend Darnold.

If Darnold says, if you franchise tag me, I'm going to go home, maybe you have to make another move. But I think that's the route you're going to take. I don't think you can just look at that season, look at what they've done and say, hey, yeah, you know what, but you weren't one-year rental anyway. You know, go see what the Raiders are offering. I don't think you can do that. We're speaking to Mike

Tanier, our NFL insider from the 2 Deep Zone sub-stack. Mike gives a presentation of the Clayton Public House. You mentioned J.J. McCarthy, one of the rookie QBs in this year's draft class. Two more played on Sunday Night Football last night. Great game, great finish. Kind of a wild one, the Atlanta Falcons

and the Washington Commanders. Commanders win, they clinch a playoff spot. Huge body blow for the Falcons in terms of their chances of staying alive in the NFC South. What were your takeaways from that Sunday nighter? There was a lot of action late, a lot of big plays late as well.

A lot of action, a lot of big plays late, and credit to both rookie quarterbacks for overcoming early mistakes and getting it done. We've seen Jayden Daniels do that all year. He overcomes early mistakes a lot and gets it done. Hale Marys at the end, team-winning touchdown against the Eagles after a couple early turnovers. Kind of did the same thing last night, so that's no surprise. It's encouraging to see Michael Penix, who was playing pretty poorly early in that game. He throws an ugly interception. He's really relying on the defense and Bijan to get it done.

He's fumbling. He's making mistakes. Late in that game, he's converting fourth downs. He's getting the ball in the end zone on fourth down. He almost leads a two-minute drill for the win, but his coach kind of sabotages him a little bit. So you're right, the Falcons really behind the eight ball in terms of reaching the playoffs.

They need another win. They need a Buccaneers loss. But the last two weeks, if you ask the question, have they found a quarterback in the future, from everything we've seen so far, including some setbacks, I think the answer is yes mike beyond minnesota and detroit battling it out for number one in the nfc i are there are are there any interesting storylines or stakes that you're looking at here i mean aside from carson can cars can Carson Wentz help Joe Burrow make the playoffs,

is there anything else that we should be sort of keeping on our radar as meaningful in Week 18? I love that I'm in sort of like the greater Vancouver-Seattle market, and you're asking that. Is it the Seahawks can still make the playoffs? Seahawks can still make the playoffs. You guys know that, but like I said earlier, that's not something that really national fans are kind of like. The NFC West is depressing.

I don't want to think about it. Oh, my goodness. The thing that we should be looking at is Saturday's games where the Ravens face the Browns, Steelers face the Bengals. And there's a couple of intrigues there. One is that the Steelers can still win the NFC North. It should be AFC North can still be the number three seed in the AFC. The Bengals can still make the playoffs if they win and about five other weird

things happen. So you've got these interesting games and it's cool. It'll happen on Saturday. We'll get some resolution there. And if, say, the Bengals win and the Ravens lose, then you have this, it's a knock-on effect because then suddenly the Dolphins game is important. Then you're right that Carson Wentz game and the Broncos

because the Broncos have to win to make the playoffs. So it's not the best slate of games, and that's why I joked about the Vikings kind of rescued it. But when you look at it up and down, you realize, you know, there's all these little things that can be absolutely fascinating and can make a big difference when the playoffs start. Speaking to Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the two deep zone here on the Halford and Breff show

featuring Thomas Trance on Sportsnet 650. Just one thing, Mike, we do want to clarify the Seattle Seahawks are officially eliminated from playoff contention. That happened last night when that Atlanta Falcons game. Strength of scheduling. Oh my goodness, thank you. You know, I don't blame you for not knowing it because the list of things that the Seattle Seahawks

needed to go right over, not just yesterday and then tonight, but next week, they needed about 15 games to go in their direction. And once the Falcons lost in overtime last night, it was over for the Seahawks. But even once the Rams held on preposterously against the Arizona Cardinals, despite doing everything they could to lose it in the second half,

there was like five games. If they lost three of them, they'd be eliminated based on the strength of schedule tiebreaker. Yeah. It was ugly. So putting a toe tag on the Seattle Seahawks season, a lot of people were saying, you know, there were enough positives, especially from the coaching side with Mike McDonald,

including the midseason changes that he made on the defensive side of the football, that there's some positives moving forward. But there are sure a lot of negatives, and there are sure a lot of questions that needed to be answered, including the one that's been hanging over this team for the last couple years and that's geno smith at quarterback and the costly decisions and the costly errors the critical times that he made time and time again this season now that the seattle seahawks season is done it's the first time they've missed the playoffs in consecutive years since 0809 where do you see this franchise

going from here see they're in the worst position as? See, they're in the worst position. As fans probably know, they're in the worst position to make a quarterback change. They're too high in the draft order to be able to make a move there. They won't be able to treat up. It's not a particularly great draft class to begin with. So you're left trying to find these compromise solutions. And yeah, you're not going to be competitive bidding for Sam Darnold if that's the case. No,

it doesn't look like it's a logical step to try and like trade for a McCarthy along the way. I'm just looking up Gino right now. And there's a little silver lining. Well, no, actually his cap number next week is huge. And the team can save a lot by cutting him.

It's tricky. I don't know. My inclination would be to try to draft a rookie and to run it out with Gino one more year. Maybe there's another solution out there, somebody on somebody's bench, somebody I'm not thinking of, but it's going to be, it's going to be a tricky problem to solve. Mike, you're the best buddy.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this today. Did we just lose him there? Is that what that don't, that tone represented? Ah, okay. Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the buddy. Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this today. Did we just lose him there? Is that what that tone represented? Ah, okay. Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the 2 Deep Zone sub stack here on the Halford & Brough Show featuring Thomas Thomas on Sportsnet 650. Mike knew it was over.

He knew just like when the Seahawks season was over. He knew. He knew. By the way, I did mention that stat. So the first time since 08-09 that the Seahawks have missed the playoffs in consecutive years, that was, for those that forget, for the youths out there, the last year of the Mike Holmgren era

and the one ill-fated season of the Jim Mora tenure. Ooh. Combined in those two years. They went 9-23. It was a dark time. Thankfully, they managed to find their way out of it. What you're seeing right now, Seahawks fans, is the most futility that this group, this collective,

this organization, this franchise have had since the now infamous 21-year playoff drought that they had from 84 to 2005. They just can't block, though, Mike. They can't do anything. That's not true. I think that's wrong. I like Jackson, Smith Smith and Jigba.

I did like what McDonald did with the defense in the second half of the season. I would like DK Metcalf to play less like Xavier Worthy at the catch point. I don't know what's going on with Metcalf. He was hurt. Yeah, he was. I know part of it was like, you know, Metcalf had to walk or, you know, be grounded so that Smith and Jigba could soar. Like, I know that guy.

Yeah. It's hard for a receiver group. Like, someone's going to eat, and that means someone's not going to eat. And I get that part of it. I think, like, the deployment this year, one of the good things that Grubb did, and you can take issue with a lot of the stuff they did as an offensive coordinator, but he got a more robust, like robust package for Smith and Jigba, and he looks awesome.

As advertised as a first-round pick. He looks unreal. You know, he looks like an Amon Ross St. Brown cologne. Right, and that's a high bar. It's a high bar, but it's within the realm of possibility, assuming that the quarterback play doesn't fall off. See, I thought Geno was great. There were too many mistakes in critical moments.

There were, but also... There were too many red zone turnovers. The moment you saw Sam Howell, who sucks, don't get me wrong. Very bad. But who was a quarterback all last season for bottom 10, but not last in the league offense. The moment you saw him play a half of football, it was like, oh, God.

Here's the thing. I don't want to say that Geno didn't have good moments this year because he did. No, I just think he propped up. He was very much Atlas-like in that the extent to which the Seahawks cannot block made the situation completely unworkable, and the fact that he made it work as well as he did is a credit to him.

Not, in my view anyway, not him falling short when it mattered. It was like, it only even, he only even got them to that point because he was so good. The kicker, though, is like, Atlas is holding the team up and then drops it on his foot in the red zone.

And I get, and hey, let's be clear. There's a lot of reason that some of those picks happen that aren't Geno Smith. This guy's not finishing routes. There was a number of spot shadows on Metcalf this year where it was like, you're not doing your job as a receiver. You're not coming back to the football. You're not doing any of that.

But at the same time, you know, and McDonald talked about it. Smith himself talked about it. In very crucial situations, the quarterback takes the heat. It's just the nature of the position, the nature of the league. Should have kept Drew Locke. Five touchdowns yesterday, including a scamper for the win. Did you see his game by EPA, right?

So that's like value added per dropback metrics. Was the seventh best quarterback game in the last 50 years. See, and that's not a chump change game either because the Colts were playing for everything. I know. Everything was on the table for him. It wasn't like he was racking it up against the Titans or the Jags. Really?

That was a team that needed to win that game. Drew Locke went out and had four passing touchdowns and a rushing touchdown. And a rushing touchdown to really kick it in. Anyway, my hot takes on the Seahawks really quick. Gotta keep went out and had four passing touchdowns and a rushing touchdown. Anyway, my hot takes on the Seahawks really quick. Gotta keep Geno. He's not the problem.

They can't block. That's the fatal flaw. If their offensive line was even average, they'd be a playoff team. So that has to be everything that they focus on this offseason in my view anyway. And then the last one is uh it's not charbonnet in the way of kenneth walker it's kenneth walker in the way of charbonnet yeah i mean everyone so it's funny our field goals is a very good seahawks fan blog on the

sb nation and family of networks or whatever but um they said like do we want to have the quiet conversation out loud about k-dub who i love he's amazing but he's legitimately one of the best running backs on true talent in the league yeah but he's on like rashad penny time here where it's like he's just too banged up he's yeah and that's and it's he's also not like he's not like metronome reliable no now granted neither is a guy like saquon Barkley, and obviously Saquon Barkley rocks. Amazing. But negative plays are pretty frequent, whereas a negative play for Charbonnet is still a two-and-a-half-yard gain. Walker's a home run hitter.

That's the idea is you get him in there, and he's got the physical tools and the speed and the elusiveness that Charbonnet, quite frankly, doesn't have. Charbonnet is much more of a meat and potatoes, let's hit a bunch of singles and get out there. If you could combine the two, which is, I think, the goal, is to have them both healthy and readily available, they'll run the ball 35 times a game. It'll be, you know, five yards in a cloud of dust and they'll be good to go. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen.

Okay, let's preview the final hour of this program. From 8 to 9 o'clock, we are going Canucks heavy. At 8.30, we will turn it over to the listeners, I think, for what we learned. Now, I got to remind myself that we are in the middle of a holiday. A lot of people's usual listening patterns aren't there, so we're not getting a lot of submissions into the Dunbar Lumber Test. Just say you're disappointed with the listeners. I am.

Just say it. That kind of goes without saying every day. But today especially, we need some what we learned. And there was a lot that happened over the weekend, the last 72 hours in sports.

So get them in. Hashtag them WWL. What did you learn over the last 72 hours in sports? Let Drance and I know. The Dunbar Lumber text line is 650-650.

Hashtag it WWL. It's your chance to be on the radio. That's coming up at 8.30. Coming up at 8 o'clock on the other side of the break, we're going to get back into what happened with the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday against the Seattle Kraken. But we will do the look ahead because there are some very,

very important questions to be asked and answered of this team. They've got a mini two-game road trip coming up. Then they come back home for one game against Nashville, I want to say. Then they go out on an extended five-game roadie through the East. It starts easy. It does.

Montreal. And then it's a gauntlet. Yeah, it gets a lot more difficult after that. And there's a lot of questions. Two in particular, though, that we're going to focus on. The inability to move the puck, especially from their own end and within the blue line are there fixes on the horizon are there solutions either via call up or via trade also and you can have about a minute and a half to riff here to get

this one started to whet the appetite of the listeners the goaltending situation moving forward yeah i mean i i was thinking in the wake of that, like as I was walking home on the seawall, I was just trying to think of, you know, act of God type Canucks games that we've seen recently. And the one that came to mind for me was that Minnesota Wild 10-7 loss in like February of last year. And I remember in the wake of that game, the club basically iced Casey DeSmith,

started riding Demko really hard until, you know, obviously he got hurt. Right. And then, you know, Archer Shelovs ends up supplanting DeSmith in the playoffs. I mean,

it was a harbinger of a major storyline that unfolded over the rest of the year. Now, obviously I don't think this is an analogous situation that the club needs to be patient with Demko, but six games back, there are clear signs of rust. His save percentage is below 880. He's below expected in terms of the saves that he's making.

And he's only won two of six games. You know, if the Canucks are going to be without Quinn Hughes here, if they're going to need 930 goaltending to reel off some wins, even to just manage like that 550 point percentage, they probably need to hold the fort here. I think there's an argument to be made that Lankanen is their best option in the short term, and yet we all know that if this team's eyes are on the big picture, getting Demko back in form has to be a priority.

Is there a tension there in terms of who plays in the blue paint for the Canucks? That comeback doesn't happen if he's fully ready to go like i'm not saying he's still injured but if he's if he's in his prime form that comeback does not happen especially because the first goal wouldn't have happened now right like the first goal wouldn't have happened and then you probably get one save off done you know like one of those two done say done shots get saved um so yeah mean, it's just something to monitor here. Rick Tockett suggested that they were going to split

on this upcoming mini road trip, but if Hughes' absence is more multiple weeks, the week-to-week has two weeks in it, but if it's more multiple weeks, how does this play out? I think it's an interesting question. Guys, can you feel it? I kind of feel like there's a goalie controversy brewing here in Vancouver.

We've got one final hour to go. Don't go anywhere. You're listening to the Halford & Brough Show featuring Thomas Trance on Sportsnet 650.