Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - BAH GAWD, THAT'S SIDNEY CROSBY'S MUSIC!

Episode Date: July 25, 2020

Sidney Crosby was back at practice for the Pittsburgh Penguins today before their last intra-squad scrimmage game tomorrow and it couldn't come at a better time. Hunter breaks down the official lineup that the Penguins will likely use going into the playoffs now that Crosby is back healthy and also talks about who stood out during their scrimmage on Thursday night as well. Then, there's some mailbag questions came in, including one about what an emperor penguin could do going up against the Kraken! Hunter then ends the show talking about the John Chayka news out of Arizona, while also previewing what is to come for next week's episodes! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, welcome to a Friday evening episode of the Locked-on Piedmanons podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show's Twitter at L-O-U-U-N-Dsquare Penguins. Happy Friday to you all. We are now eight official days away from the start of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. It feels great that I'm even saying that, to be honest, because it looked for a while that we really weren't going to get sports back until the fall, maybe later.

But still, eight days away. It's very, very exciting. The Penguins had another practice today. some practice updates for this first segment for the podcast. We'll also get to some mailbag questions in the second or third segment. And we'll also go around the league as well. There's a big breaking story that looks like is coming out right now with the Arizona Coyotes and John Chica as it looks like they're potentially heading for a divorce, but we'll get that towards the end of the show. But the Penguins had their last official practice today of training

camp before their scrimmage tomorrow on Saturday. Cindy Crosby was back today. Great news. It looks like he is back after missing about a week, week and a half with a minor abdominal injury, as Elliot Friedman called it in the 31 Thoughts podcast. But Mike Sullivan put him right back on that top line, said, you know what? Little injury is not going to really set you back too far. So the lines for the Penguins practice today, Jake Gensel, next to Cindy Crosby and Connor Sherry, Jason Zucker with Evgeny Malkin and Brian Rust, Patrick Marlowe, Jared McCann, Patrick Hornquist, and then, of course, the shutdown line of Zach Gaston, Rees, Teddy Blugher, and Brandon Taneb.

Brian Dumlin, Chris LaTang on defense, Marcus Peders, and John Marino as the other pairing, and then Jack Johnson and Justin Schultz, and the extras, Sam Affordy, Evan Rodriguez, and then Yuso Ricola and Chad Ruehdle. So, yeah, this team is all ready to go. The forward depth on this team right now is just absolutely crazy. I mean, this doesn't even include poor Nick Bukstad, who, who is not, it looks like, is not going to be available for the start of the playoffs, and I don't even think he's honestly going to play the entire

playoff, right? I mean, he probably won't even be available for the Penguins this playoff run, but who knows, maybe he will be at some point. But even if he is, he's probably not going to play with how deep the Penguins are right now. I just really don't see a place for him at all. I mean, you're not going to take anyone out of the top six. Patrick Marlow is going to stay in Jared McCann,

bachelor Hornquist, and I mean, you all know that Zach Ashton Reese with Teddy Bluigan and Bannantana if that line is going to stay together, and they're just going to go out and just try to shut teams down. You know, it doesn't matter what line, you know, Jesse Marshall was talking about this last night. You know, you can just, you put them on it in any situation. And they're, they're just, they're still not going to spend a lot of time in the defensive zone. They get the job done. They get the puck out. They head up the ice. They forecheck like hell. And, you know, he said at best, you know, Montreal is going to be in for a rude awakening when they see this line go out against,

you know, Shea Weber at the back in the net, Jeff Petrie. And they're just going to be right there, like, what the hell is coming right at us? Because this line is just going to give. whatever line they go up against Montreal, a lot of problems, you know, the Gallagher line or, you know, maybe the domy line or whatever line they go out against, like I said, it's going to be a giant problem for the Canadians when they have to see that line. And then, like I said, the Penguins will have their final interest skimmage tomorrow. I think it's at around, what, 7 p.m. tomorrow?

Or it's honestly in the afternoon. I'm not sure. I'm going to have to go double check on that. But I know it's tomorrow. That'll be the final time you guys will get to see the Penguins play before their exhibition game. on Tuesday against Philadelphia Flyers. The Penguins will fly to Toronto as the Hub City on Sunday to get

accumulated there and just quarantine for a bit before Tuesday, like I said, where they will play their only exhibition game against the Philadelphia Flyers as the final tune-up to playing the Montreal Canadians as that series will start next Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern. I believe that game is on NBC. The other games are going to be on NBC Sports Network. Still do not know who is going to call the games. Maybe you'll see John Foresland.

John, that's going to be. interesting situation going on right now with John Foresland and Carolina does not look like he's going to be back next season. Shame on the Carolina Hurricanes for that. He's one of the best play-by-play announcers in all hockey, definitely in my top three. But hoping the Penguins will get Doc Emmerich, just no peer and maybe Brian Boucher and Eddie he'll check though. I'm not really sure if Eddie is going to be calling the NBC games or if he's going to be calling the games for the Blackhawks in the first round. I think he's honestly probably going to be doing the Blackhawks games of the first round. And then, and then, and then,

if the Blackhawks most likely inevitably lose, he'll probably go back to a regular NBC. But I think he's calling the Blackhawks games against the others for the first round. So, in that any case, you know, hopefully having Doc with Brian Boucher and whoever other analysts they want to put out there, just not Mike Milberry, but, you know, whoever else I'm sure, hopefully they'll make a good decision for it. That would be cool. There's also Chris Scuth Barreth you can put out there as a play-by-play guy. I happen to think he's very, very good.

Kenny Albert, he's, some people think Kenny Albert is annoying. He's not that good of an announcer. I think he's honestly one of the best in hockey. And then, of course, you have Gordon Miller, who, I mean, I happen to like very, very much as well. But I think we'll find out the schedule sometime this week. There's one of my really good friends on Twitter. Please go follow him.

Jake Baskin, he always will send out basically the link to see what announcers are calling what games. He'll also tweet them out too on his Twitter. So definitely check out his Twitter. I'm sure he'll be posting those at some point. But, okay, I'm getting carried away about announcers. let's get back to some Penguins Conta. The Penguins did have a scrimmage last night.

It ended in a 3-3 tie. Went through regulation. I think went through overtime as well. I was able to go back and watch some of the highlights. Brandon Tanna put a pretty, pretty good lick on Chris LaTang. I'm sure Penguins Chronicles was going after Krista Tang on that. I think he has me blocked in almost all of Penguins' Twitter block because his takes on Chris LaTang are just so, so, so, so bad.

But I know I saw that. Matt Murray looked like that. I think that was his best scrimmage yet. seeing the puck really, really well. I know he led in a couple goals, but I don't really think any of those three were his fault. That was the best. I think, like I said, I've seen Matt Murray play in camp. It's just, it's just been a much better week for Murray.

You know, he's probably put some of that, this doubt aside that he was not going to start game one in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I mean, he's definitely going to start game one. I did see the article from Josh Yoey where Jim Rutherford, I mean, he, even he thinks that Matt Murray is going to start game one. He also said it's up to Mike Sullivan. he's definitely going to go to Murray for game one just based off the track record. I mean, of course, I don't know him personally, but just going off his track record with

what he's done with Matt Murray in the past. He is going to give him the net for game one of the playoffs. I definitely think that I would be very, very surprised. If it doesn't, you know, that's the final time that we'll talk about Matt Murray until next week. We're inevitably will come up with the crossover with locked on Canadians with Scott and Laura. That's going to be a lot of fun. We'll touch on that towards the late stages of this episode and what's going to be in those three episodes. Also, Patrick Marlowe, again, looked really, really good yesterday. I mean, this is a guy who's

going to be turning 41 years old. He does not look in the slightest, even close to being 41. He was flying all over the ice. He had a very, very nice goal during the scrimmage. Well, kind of a little bit of a dirty goal, you know, Chai Roodle basically shot it wide. And then Marlow just basically, he just pounced on it, banked it off one of the extra defensemen and before Jari could react. And, you know, just, I've really, really enjoyed watching Patrick Marlow through this training camp and all these skrimmages. I'm going to be watching him pretty closely tomorrow as well. But I'm really, really excited to see him on that third line, really hoping that the Penguins can get him that cup before he inevitably calls it a career. Also, someone who's had a very, very, very, very good training

camp and some very, very, good scrimmages. Connor Sherry, I mean, this is probably the best. I've seen him play in a couple years. It's pretty remarkable what he is able to do the strength. I'm really just really, really hoping that it translates over to the actual playoffs and that, you know, he's not just, you know, as everyone says, he's falling everywhere. I really don't think he falls down a lot anyway. I do really hope that he rediscovers that scoring touch that he had with the Penguins a couple years ago. He just seems to fit in right, just right in with Gensel and Crosby. I mean, I know he was playing with Evan Rodriguez last night, and Sherry did have a nice goal, though kind of a little bit of a tap in as well. Chad Roodle basically turned it over to Jake Gensel as a two-on-one towards

the kind of late age of the second period. Connor Sherry had a half wide open net, almost a whole wide open net, just buried it past Matt Murray, who really just had no shot. there. So yeah, Patrick Marlowe, Conor Sherry, they continue to look really good. Also been really impressed with John Marino this camp. Jesse was talking about him on the episode. Last night, it's going to be one of the biggest factors for the Penguins. I know I have Jared McCann up there. That's not a core player. But, I mean, it's going to be awesome to see what John Marino can do in the playoffs. He's now fully healthy. No face mask, full face mask will be required for Marino. He's just, he's completely ready to go. And I'm really excited to see what he and Pedersen can do against the Canadians and just shutting down.

you know, one of their top lines. All right, so we're back on this episode of Locked-on Penguins. As I said, the Penguins have one more Intrasquod scrimmage. Tomorrow you guys can watch. I think the Penguins will be streaming it on their YouTube. I think they'll have a link on the website too, their official website on Facebook, I'm sure. Josh Getsoff has been calling the games for it and with Phil Bork. So they'll 100% be calling that InterSquod Squage Scrimmage tomorrow for the Penguins.

But for this segment, we have a couple mailbag questions to get to. So Alan T. Yoder frequent ask her of mailback questions. Thank you always for listening. Alan. You're absolutely awesome. So he asked basically two questions. So one of them, do we have an update on Mike Lang. I'm assuming he won't be traveling and doing his playoff radio broadcast. I actually do not know. The Penguins have not officially released anything that has talked about Mike Lang and if he's going to be going. I would assume that it's going to be Josh and Phil that's doing it for the Penguins Radio Network. Mike is in the age group where this virus just really, really affects. you know, the elderly population show. I'm not really sure if he's going to travel to Toronto. I would bet that he wouldn't. I mean, maybe he calls the games from home. I wonder though if the penguins can somehow step that up where he calls the game from like his home office or something

or maybe he goes to PPG Paints Arena where I mean no one is there right now anyway. He can call the game there, call the game from a studio or somewhere. Just like I said, like his home office, PBG Paints Arena or somewhere else. and then maybe Phil Bork is actually in Toronto or Phil Bork is there with him and they're just like kind of I guess maybe I don't know watching the game on television or something but I just I don't really think that would work though because the television feed is just going to be behind even more now because you know the NHL likes to be lame and they don't want you know little Timmy little 10 year old Timmy hearing a cuss word for the first time they don't want a bunch of moms just getting mad because their son heard a cuss word for the first time which is absolutely ludicrous but you know what whatever So, yeah, Alan, I'm not really sure the Penguins' plan is for Mike Lang. If I had to make a bet, don't think he's going to travel to Toronto.

I think they're going to give it to Josh Gets off, and I think Phil Bork is going to no-go with him. But stay tuned for an announcement on that. I think they would probably release that next week at some point. I also know that the Penguins, I think they had to send the, there are 52 people that they were going to take with them to Toronto by 5 p.m. today. Let me double-check that real quick. And, yeah, according to Elliot Freeman, the team travel list of the 52 people, headed to the bubbles are due.

We're due at 5 p.m. Eastern today. So, yeah, we should be finding out about that very, very soon. And like I said, it would probably be around next week or something like that. His second question, any chance that they use recordings of each team's goal horns after goals. Crosby's shoots and scores won't have the same ring with the Maple Leafs horn. I would really hope so that they would honestly do that. I mean, the NHEL is, I know they're very painfully boring with a lot of things.

But, I mean, that's just, that's a slam dunk right there. I 100% agree with you. using each team's goalhorn and each team's goal song after they score is just a no-brainer. You can literally just go on YouTube, download it through there. I'm sure you could have someone from the PPG Paints Arena or whatever NHL arena. They could just send it to Toronto through whatever, and they can just download it and just have it ready to go. You know, I do agree having it be the Toronto Maple Leafs Goalhorn or the Edmonton Oilers Goalhorn for the West teams, just like be every team's goalhorn. That's just kind of lame.

it's pretty lazy. It's just half-assing it. Just bring all the team's goal horns and goal songs so that, you know, it actually feels like, you know, that they're playing in their home arena because, you know, there's not going to be any fans. I mean, at least just make it sound like they're playing at home. That's the least the NHL can do for this. So, yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. That's a very, very cool question. It's also something that I've been thinking of for a while, so I'm glad that you asked that. All right, so moving on to the next question.

This comes from Locked on Ducks. this is an absolutely hysterical question. So what can, well, there's two of them actually. What can an emperor penguin possibly do against a mythical creature from the seed that will emerge next year? So this one has definitely got me a little bit off guard. So emperor penguins, for those that don't know, you know, they're actually one of the biggest of the 18 species of penguins found today. This also comes just from Google. So, I mean, I'm just throwing a Google fact out at everyone right now.

They also weigh a lot more than a lot of the other penguin species. but you know even against a mythical sea creature like the Cracken that will emerge next year, what can the Emperor Penguin do? Basically nothing. Maybe you can just,

they can slide down on their belly and just try to escape it, though that's that likely to happen? Probably not. If anyone has ever seen the Cracken in a bunch of movies, I mean, Clash of the Titans has a version of it. That is pretty badass.

And for those that aren't familiar with the Clash of Titans movie, it's just basically about the son of Zeus, Perseus, just going off, getting Medusa's head, and then basically trying to kill the Cracken before it kills this daughter of this place because they were trying to sacrifice the daughter to Hades to basically get the gods to have more power again, I guess. And then the other version that I think a lot of people would know of the Cracken is from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies when Davy Jones was basically his pet.

He would send him out to the ships of whatever pirate he wanted to kill. and he would the cracken would just bring the ships down to the abyss of the ocean it even took down the black pearl which was of course jack sparrow ship who was played by johnny depth but you know i'm getting a little off topic here but the only thing that an emperor penguin could probably do to escape the cracken is to just slide on its belly going down very fast and then just get in the water and just try to out swim it but is it going to out swim the crackin probably not it would most likely perish and just die while trying to get away from the Cracken who is, I mean, the Cracken is just very, very fast in water. Like I said, just watch Clash of the Titans, watch Dead Man's Chess,

which is the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. You guys can see just how fast the Cracken moves in water and just how deadly it is. So yeah, Emperor Penguin, you hate to see it, you will probably perish. So yeah, like I said, the only thing that you can do, just slide on your belly on the ice, try to get into the ocean and out swim it, though. You'll probably die trying. And then the second question from Locked On Ducks, what are your thoughts on the new Seattle jerseys? I absolutely love them. I love the design of it. The logo is just completely badass.

You have the S with the tentacle. Then you have the eye at the top. Just so well done. The color scheme is just so great. Everything about the uniform and the logo and just the name, everything about that announcement yesterday was great. Except for when this guy would just not stop talking for the first 10 to 15 minutes. of when they went live. And it was just like, okay, man, just get to what everyone wants to hear.

And then you guys can discuss it all afterwards. But, you know, he had to keep blabbering and blabbering on for 10, 15 minutes. But going back to the original point, the jerseys are sick. They're beautiful. Love the logo. Love, like I said, the tentacle with the eye at the top. The color scheme just fits it all to. It's an A plus plus for me.

That's a 10 out of 10. I'll go even further and say that was an 11 out of 10. So, yeah, just great. job by Seattle yesterday. I can't wait to see those jerseys in action and cannot wait to see what's going to happen with that next expansion draft. Maybe when the Penguins try to send a good old friend Jack Johnson over there as his contract will still be going and still be going pretty good when Seattle will be making their picks for who they're going to have on their team. All right. So for this last segment, I thought we would talk about some pretty big breaking news

that it's potentially about to come very, very soon. Apparently Elliot Friedman tweeted out this was about, I think, an hour ago that it sounds like that. Arizona Coyotes GM, John Chicaa, is not going to be coming to Edmonton. They had, like you said, they had until 5 p.m. Friday night to submit

their 52-person travel list. And it's not really known if he is on that list. That's what Elliot Freeman said in the article. There's a growing sense that Chica and the coyotes are headed for divorce. Apparently, one source indicated to Elliot that his office had been cleaned

out ever since it was reported that Chica did not attend a dinner last week with Taylor Hall. More stories that filled out about agent team conversations that did not involve the current general manager. One agent told Elliot Freeman that apparently he's gone dark and he also did not respond to messages for that story. I mean, of course, I mean, why would he? But this is shaping up to be a very, very interesting situation for the Arizona Coyotes. I honestly don't think John Chica has done too bad of a job up in Arizona. I honestly think he's done a pretty good job during his tenure. I was having a couple of having a Twitter discussion

with a couple of people from Hengen's Twitter. Danny, who I very much beg you guys to follow. I'm honestly going to try to have him on the podcast here at some point. His at is Shiry Irving. So that's S-H-I-R-E-Y, I-R-V-I-N-G. He does great, great work for the Penns blog. Just also fires out a bunch of hot takes, but you know what, Danny's, he's a G.

Also with Jeff from the Penn's blog, Letang Colt, the other Jeff as well, just talking about John Chica. And honestly, he did a lot of good things for the coyotes. I think he honestly did way more good than bad over his tenure. I mean, remember, you know, he brought in Antirontah. He brought in Darcy Kemper. He got the Alex Goligowski situation.

That was when Alex Goligowski was still good. Stole Nick Jalmersen from the Blackhawks or basically pennies on the dollar. I thought the Derek Step-on trade at the time was pretty, pretty good. Of course, you know, the big one, Taylor Hall, he finally made that big move. didn't really have to give up too, too much to the Devils in return for that. The Phil Kessel trade, I mean, a lot of people are going to call him an idiot for that, but I mean, you would still take a pretty big gamble on Phil Kessel at that point, especially after he was, what, a couple years removed from a 90-point season,

I think the last season, before he kind of fell off a clip this season. He basically was still a point per game player for the Penguins. I mean, of course you're going to take a chance on Kessel and hope he does not fall off the face of the earth as he did this season. But, you know, there is still some valid criticism for him. You know, he didn't go all in, maybe as he should have. He kind of was stuck in the middle. But, you know, as soon as the West got not that good,

because the West was pretty good for a lot of the years that he was there. And the coyotes were just kind of trying to figure themselves out. But, you know, as soon as he saw him in the West, which is not that good, he said, you know, what, screw it. We need to give the fans something to cheer about. We got to go out and get a franchise player that we hope to re-sign. I still have no idea of the coyotes or even. going to re-sign Taylor Hall.

But it was a mood they had to make. You know, they got into the playoffs because of it. But still, this is a very, very odd situation that's going on with John Chike. I also think one of the biggest things that happened during his tenure, he just never got like that consistent goal-tending that he needed. You know, Antiront was hurt during parts of his tenure. You know, Darcy Kemper was as well. I also thought he worked at the cap.

Pretty, pretty good when he first got there. You guys remember the Marion Hose's situation, the Pavel Datsug won. Got a ton of picks. and assets as Jeff was telling me in my mentions on Twitter. So like I said, I do think he did a lot more good than bad, but still, this is potentially turning ugly. I'm not really sure who the coyotes would hire if they do end up moving on from John Chica. It always is weird when the general manager is not there for a face-to-face meeting with

their potential franchise player in Taylor Hall. You know, that just screams something is fishy, something is off, and, you know, we could be seeing something announced. maybe this weekend, maybe next week. Who knows if he's even on the 52-person list that the Coyotes would be taking to Edmonton. So we're going to have to pay attention to that. Also, just to end this episode here, I figured we would talk about what's on tap for next week. So as I've been teasing, we are going to have a big preview crossover show with Locked on Canadians next week with Scott and Laura.

Absolutely loved in the death. It's going to be a lot of fun to talk about that series. On Monday, we're basically just going to be refreshing where the teams, were the last time we saw them how both teams were playing. Any news from the pause? Tuesday, we're going to break down some of the biggest storylines heading into the series for each team, you know, expectations, what's at stake for each team? And then on Wednesday, we're going to have the head-to-head breakdown of the series plus predictions. So it's basically going to be an hour total of a preview, but we're going to break it down into 20-minute segments

for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And then for Thursday and Friday, I'm in the process of hooking up a couple more guests to come on the show right before the planes. series against the Canadian Sarge to just talk about what they think is going to happen in the series and just make some general predictions for the penguins going into the playoffs. So that will do it, I think, for this episode of Locked-on Penguins. As always, always appreciate you guys listening. We're one week away, guys. We're getting very much closer to this getting started, and I can't wait to break it all down

with you after each game and just so much more. So thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Lockdown Penguins, and we will talk to you all on Monday with starting with the crossover. All right. Have a great weekend, everyone. one.