Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Helping the Penguins find some second round gems with Jesse Marshall!

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

It's another mini-Dying Alive reunion on Locked On Penguins as Jesse Marshall joins Patrick Damp to talk about Jesse's prospect mixtape! The boys discuss some of the names on Jesse's prospect video including John Mustard, Luke Misa, and Sam O'Reilly. Jesse gives his thoughts on what makes these players possible steals for the Penguins in the second round of this weekend's NHL Draft. Then, Patrick and Jesse discuss the ultimate question - of the Penguins' five Stanley Cup champions, which one is the champion of all champions?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit at eBayMotos.com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.Ultimate Hockey GMEver dreamed of becoming an NHL GM and managing your hockey franchise? Ultimate Hockey GM is completely free and playable offline, play on the go, as you want and when you want to. Locked On listeners get a 100% free boost to their franchise when using the promo LOCKEDONNHL in the game store. To download the game just visit hockeygm.app or look it up on the app stores. Ultimate Hockey GM - Start your dynasty today!PolicygeniusCheck life insurance off your to do list in no time with Policygenius. Head to policygenius.com/lockedonnhl to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.FanDuelFanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook. Right now, NEW customers get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning FIVE DOLLAR BET. That’s TWO HUNDRED BUCKS you can use to bet everything from the Finals MVP to who's going to hit one out of the park! Visit FANDUEL.COM/LOCKEDON and add a big win to your summer bucket list! FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's the most wonderful time of year, folks, and no, I don't mean Christmas. I mean, it's the day when Jesse Marshall's prospect mixtape drops, and I brought him on the show to talk about just that. You're Locked On Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello, and welcome back to another edition of the Locked On Penguins podcast. I am your host, Patrick Damp. You can follow me on Twitter at Synonym 4Wet. Join today by the one and only Jesse Marshall. We're going to get into it here in just a little bit regarding his prospect mixtape.

But before we do that, we thank you for making this your first listener watch of the day because we're your team every day in today's episode is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. So here we are. It's like a mini dying alive reunion where Jesse and I get together and talk a bunch of nonsense about the Pittsburgh Penguins. But today specifically, Jesse, you're here because I have been waiting for this. Penguins Twitter has been waiting for this.

Just about everybody has been waiting for this. And it's your prospect mixtape, which you drop at this point. This is what year 17, right? Yes. How depressing is that? I don't know if it's depressing. Oh wait, hold on. Are we, is this our Eros tour?

This is our ERIS tour. This is our ERISTor. All right, good. All right. Thank you, sure. It's been what, like four-ish years since we really had Dying Live running. Yeah, probably. Yeah. It was about the length of time that Taylor took off from being on tour.

So this about counts when she came back on the scene with the Ares tour. But yeah, so there's no use in putting it on the back burner or making the people wait. Let's just start with your favorite prospect, maybe the best name in the NHL draft this year, and that's John Mustard. And I'll be honest, watching the mixtape this morning, I was like, okay, I think Jesse's kind of running a bit here. Like this guy's name is John Mustard. He's hyping him up because of the name and all this stuff. Then I watched the highlights and I watched what you had to say about him and then watched his highlights and no, this kid's, he's the real deal. Yeah.

I mean, I think if his name was Joe Smith, I'd probably feel the same way about him. You know, I think at his level, like at the USHL level last year, you'd probably be hard pressed to find another player that commanded the game like he did. And just really likes to have the puck on a stick, takes it through the offensive zone in the perimeter. It's like he's a one man cycle sometimes. from a zone entry perspective, he's electric, just electric when he comes across the blue line. And there are just some players that have that, like, first step burst.

You know, when they get on the puck and they get possession, like, everybody in the crowds really leans forward in anticipation of something happening. He gives you that vibe almost every single shift. So, you know, I think about the way that the game is being played today. It looks like Florida majorly aggressive four check, right? A lot of these teams that are in contention for the cup are, you know, taking the groundwork that I think the Penguins laid years ago. go and putting it on steroids. This is a player that, you know, you're not going to get, I think, any better of a fit in this range.

You know, I say range. I mean, like 30 to 60, which is where he's likely to go. It's completely wide open. I mean, there's a lot of these guys, Pat, that, like, in this area, no one has any clue, right? You see some outlets rank him at 22. And you see another outlet rank him in 81. And it's like, this is a really big discrepancy, right? And I think it just speaks to the variety of player in this draft.

If you have a need or you're looking for a specific thing, you're going to be able to find it through the first three rounds. So, you know, he played in the USHL. He's kind of people use the term selfish. I don't. I don't think that's the appropriate term. I think he's a player who's really good with a puck on a stick and wants to do that all the time.

We don't talk about how defensive defensemen are selfish for wanting to play defense all the time. Like, why isn't that a thing? So anyway, that's like the thing, right? He's in the USHL. He's playing in a smaller, quote unquote, lesser league, if you will, and is kind of like ad hocing his away to scoring goals outside of the system. So, I mean, like, you know, that's valid.

I'll listen to that. But you can't teach these core skills. I mean, that's at the end of the day. That's it. And if expectation is he's going to get better, when you watch that clips I put together today and think about what he might look like with better skating and better stick handling two, three years from now, it's kind of like, you know,

that's scary to think about. Right. And I said this to Taylor Haas, who I had on yesterday, talked to her about a lot of her combine interviews with a lot of the prospects who were in attendance for that. And the common theme I kept bringing up was you look at a lot of these players, especially the ones that are going to be, you know, 18 in the next couple of days or are only going to be 19 by the time the NHL season rolls around. You figure that they're going to have better training. They're going to have better workout. they're going to fill in a lot more. So what you're seeing now, especially for the guys who play at the collegiate level and the junior level,

is that they're going to have to take that step because they're going to go from playing against other teenagers to, for lack of a better term, playing against men. But the thing that got me excited about mustard, and I'm sure everybody else, is you compared him a little bit to Gensel. And the thing that stood out to me more than anything wasn't, oh, he can do what Gensel did really well,

which is just disappear and reappear all the time in scoring areas. It's that he had what you called a volatile shot. Like it's one of those almost unpredictable shots. And I think you work on his skating, you work on his abilities, that shot's going to lead to a lot of goals because it's hard for goalies to track. Yeah.

And when you combine it with that elusive nature, that's a hell of a combination, right? Yeah. So I want to start with that piece, because I always think it's funny, Pat, when a guy can command the attention of all five skaters when he crosses the blue line with the puck, make one pass and then disappear from them until he scores. And that's what John Mustard does all the time. So come across the blue end with possession. All five players have ten eyes on him on the opposing team.

He makes a quick dish pass or a board pass to a teammate. They shift their attention away, and he just slips away into the nether. And then poop, there he is, and he scored. And I thought, like, you know, I was watching all these goals. to just repeat the same trope over and over and over again for him. And I'm like, this is the, this is the Jake Gensel special. You know, like, we used to laud him for that all the time on our show pat for, like, his ability to like full defensemen, spin-off defensemen inside that sort of like

SWAT area and get that one or half second of space that he needs to fire one home. And muster's got that same release, you know, so when you get that guy that only needs a half second to get one on net at a high velocity and accurately. And he can find that half-second. routinely that people struggle prospects pet struggle with that their whole careers some people don't ever develop that ability right that's something that never comes to them naturally and he's i think he has it now so i mean like you said you could take what's there sort of like at a core foundational level and build a house up from that in any way that you really want to because the

biggest thing for me on that is that that inherent trait really can't be taught you either know how to do it or you don't. Because it's just thinking the game on a higher level that is really hard to teach or to develop. And I saw it in a couple of the clips because, you know, again, when it comes to hockey analysis, we love comparing players like, oh, this prospect reminds me of this established NHLer. But he did that little thing in front of the net that Gensel would always do, which is he would

engage slightly physically with the defenseman in front, making the defenseman think, okay, I got this guy checked. He's not a threat. And then just sneak away. So that was a huge thing for me. The one last thing I wanted to ask about him was the skating, because while it's probably not NHL ready skating, there were some strengths there. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I think that I think his top speed is for sure there, right? I think him going wide is where I think he struggles sometimes. You watch some of those clips where he's like taking that thing on a journey through the offensive zone. You know, you don't, you don't, that I think is maybe the most efficient area. But I think speed-wise, he's good. There's just that the cutting ability, right, the edging.

You know, some of that finer work is still going to be refined. So overall, like I think I grade it as fine, if not good. And that's it, right? Like, it's not, you know, there's some other. names on the board here that I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute that are skating wise or like on a different tier than that but this isn't a tier that makes me like shaking my boots at all yeah like because again watching his film like I'm right there with you his top speed was good you see him get up you see him start to gallop up to that top speed and he's definitely

right there with I don't wouldn't I wouldn't call it NHL ready speed but you look at it and go okay we can work with this along with everything else so they he brings to the table. So I like that. And then finally with him, I look at the situation he was in in junior. It's a pretty solid team. He's playing in a system, in a team that is known for success. And I know you and I kind of hate going all the way back to our dying live days, the quote, unquote intangibles. But that speaks for something when you play for a team like that that has a winning culture and you look at all the players that have come out of there and gone on to great NHL careers.

That can only be a positive for him. Sure. And not only that culture exists, but you're a super integral part to it, right? Like that's, that can't go without a mention here. You know, it wasn't very long. He got off to such a heart start at the beginning of that. Some, my favorite tape is the tape from the beginning of the year, the first 20 games where he was really unhinged, you know, like, you know, you can tell it was his, it was his, he was

his first go-round and he was like going to, he was eating more than I think his mouth could fit and his stomach could fit. But he was still scoring at ridiculous rates. And then it just got, as the year went on, you know, there was sort of this refinement behind it. But what you saw is any time the team was in any situation at all, no matter what it was, he's on the ice. And that's why I said the game in the video, he might not be a 20-foot player now or 200-foot player now, right? Maybe that's not like the hallmark of his game, but he's getting deployed in defensive zone situations because he's so good at creating offense, right? The coaching staff is trusting if I put John Mustard's line out there, they're not going to be spending a whole lot of time in the defensive zone. It's just

as good as putting out a checking center, right? We're trying to accomplish the same goal here. So, yeah, more to build off of, obviously, but, you know, I'm a, I think, like you said, from a core skill perspective, it's just he's on, I think, a different level than some of the other guys in his tier. Yeah, he is a guy that. that if he's available when the penguins pick on Saturday in the second round, I would be very happy with that as one of their two choices, because they have two very quick picks in succession for now, because we know that,

I said this yesterday, we know that trades and moves are going to happen. So who knows at this point until their name comes up on the board for a pick that that could all change within the next 24, 48, 72 hours. But that'll do it for this first. segment, we're going to keep the discussion going on Jesse's prospect, mixtape with a couple more names in the second segment. But before we do that, we've got to tell you about our sponsor, and that is Game Time.

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and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your price. first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem code L-O-C-K-O-N-N-H-L for $20 off. Download game time today. Last-minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, we're back here on the Thursday edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I am Patrick Damp, joined by Jesse Marshall, as I've said, and as Jesse said, it's our heirs tour. It's the dying alive reunion. And we're going to keep the conversation going here about Jesse's prospect mixtape, which he dropped today on YouTube. You can find it there. Just search for Jesse Marshall. It'll pop right up. I'll also link to it on social media once we get done with this episode. The next guy I wanted to talk about he's,

I would say, and you can obviously correct me on this one, feels like a little bit of a project, but a lot of, like we were talking about with John Mustard, a lot of skill there to work with. And that's Sam O'Reilly. So would he be better than Cal O'Reilly was when he was a penguin, Jesse? Yeah, probably, I think a little bit. The bar is not exactly set at an unachievable level. Let's put it that way. Yeah, this one is, you know, I really struggled this. Like, there could have been 15 players on this list,

and there's a lot of really good players in this range. But what lands O'Reilly on it is that he was a rookie this year. And I don't want to discount the fact that London was great. They were a phenomenal hockey team. They were a machine-like. in the way that they won. But that doesn't really matter to me because I think at the end of the day, like, you know, it'd be more likely to me that a young rookie CHL player

would find less ice time on a team like that than more, right? Generally, coaching is restrictive as we know, Pat, to younger players, and you've got to earn that trust, right? It didn't take Sam O'Reilly very long to do that. And by the end of the year, you know, net empty, Sam O'Reilly on the ice, penalty kill late in the game, Sam O'Reilly on the ice. And as you look through this tape, you're like, is he ever stopped playing? You know, I think there's ever like a point where he comes off for an extended period of time.

So, you know, what's exciting about it is I think he's already sort of professional on his behaviors and his attitude, his approach to the game. The finer points of his game, you know, the way he uses his stick against his opponents. You know, the way that, again, similar to mustard, he can slink off and find that open space. The way he carries the puck across the blue line with authority. They're all very pro-like already. If he's doing that now and he's only spent one year in the CHL, there's a lot to build off of there. And I talk about in the video a lot, like trusting your hockey operations team and your prospect development group.

You know, you look at the Penguins, you know, they met with Braden Yeager in the offseason. Conceivably say to him like, hey, you're a shooter, go do it. And, you know, he goes and does it and had an unbelievable year in production. That's what you do, right? You coach kids up as you take them and you guide them along that development. path. This is an opportunity, I think, with O'Reilly to have like a really nice, clean canvas that you can potentially shape into a number of different things. But I think of like Mark Schifley, you know, a very similar kind of player to me. And there's nothing he can't do as a forward,

right? And maybe he's not a superstar from an offensive skill set perspective, but he's certainly not going to hurt you by playing in your top six, right? So, yeah, I'm excited about the future for him is I think he's going to wear a letter sooner rather than later from London and you know we talk about intangibles pat like this is another one that has those um they're very tangible this in this case uh me and his case they're very tangible but uh you know the leadership stuff um you know uh it's it's all there it's a total package i think the intangibles are intangibles as they say in the business but yeah that was the biggest thing for me and listeners of the show know because hunter and i could not say enough about how

good Braden Yeager was this past season all the way through the Memorial Cup. He got back to all the things that made him successful. And you figure some of that is the Penguins hockey development coaching staff kind of telling him, hey, this is what you need to do. If you want to make the next step, you want to get to the next level, you want to be a leader, all those things. The other thing I really liked with O'Reilly, you kind of touched on it there, was the hockey IQ.

You could see watching his tape that, he was never in a risky position at any moment. He was always right where he needed to be, whether it was defensive zone, neutral zone, offensive zone. And the skating, again, another guy,

skating probably needs a little bit of work, but the underrated part that you kind of brought up was similar to what we talked about with mustard, underrated shot on him. Yeah. It's, I said in the video, it's no nonsense,

right? Like, you go over all the highlights that I watched, Like there's no settling the puck down or it's got to be on this part of my blade or I have to my preferred motion is this whack. That's it. Like it's just whack. You know, there's no, there's no secret sauce behind that.

It's just an old school. It reminds me of somebody who would have a wooden stick. You know, it's the kind, it's the same kind of like lack of finer mechanics that it works, right? The old Sherwood Featherlight coffee curve. There you go, right. So, yeah, I think that's definitely an underrated aspect. It's playmaking too, right? Like that's the key.

You talk about IQ. I hate sometimes when people throw the word hockey sense around because it's sort of like this unquantifiable thing that you use when you don't have any other words that describe a player. But I think in this case, like if you look at his behavior without the puck, right? Three on two rushes. Possession rushes across the blue end where he has possession and when he doesn't have possession. All the things he does to position himself sequentially within what's happening, everything is to drive the play for. forward. Everything is to create a chance. Everything is to keep the play moving ahead. And that means sometimes being a space creator. I mean sometimes going in on the forecheck like a battering ram,

not making a play on the puck and just eliminating a man. These are things that he's willing and super capable of doing. And that's what hockey sense is to me, right? It's what you do when the puck's not on your stick. And he's got that down pad. And there was a couple of sequences, passing sequences as I put in the video where he, you know, the puck is in his general vicinity for less than a half a second. You know, it's coming and he's making a one touch, you know, just momentum push on the puck, right? Just redirecting the momentum to get it to a teammate. And it's that one step aheadness to coin a phrase that I think it's, again, hard to teach

people. And that's something that for some players takes a really long time to develop. And for somebody to be able to be able to do this in their first year in the CHO is just impressive to me. Especially again, on a team that good. One of the reasons London was that good was because of Sam O'Reilly. It wasn't in spite of Sam O'Reilly. And I think there's a big distinction to be made there.

Which speaks a lot to him as a player because we've said it already on the show. With how good London is and how good that program has been basically forever, they lean a lot on the older players just because that is an NHL factory. And it's really hard to go in and make a name in your first year unless you're damn near a generational player. And while O'Reilly's not that, he was solid enough that they leaned on him in high leverage situations, which can say a lot about the player. One last one, because I don't want to give away the whole video, I want to make sure people actually go tune into this.

I want you to cook on him a little bit just because I liked his tape a lot. And then you look at his numbers. You open the video with him, and that's Luke Mesa. You look at his numbers in the OHL. He consistently has played about the same amount of games each year. 62, 64, 66, they increase a little bit as his experience in the OHL with Mississauga has gone on. But with each year, he gets better. He's, he increased from four goals to 13 goals to 26 goals, from 26 points to 43 to 81.

This player looks like he might be kind of a late round gem for whoever gets him. Yeah, this is another one of those guys, Pat, that there's a lot of scouts that have him 25. I think Craig Button has like 71, right? Like, again, the huge chasm there between opinions. You know, hockey prospecting has the NHL E model that tries to project a player's equivalency to being an NHL star or a regular NHL player based on their statistical profile. And if you were to draft based on that, Luke needs to be a top 15 player. You know, his, like you said, point scoring trends are so positive that it's, you're pretty much guaranteed almost here to get like a guy who's good a tribute to the

NHL in some form or fashion and maybe even blossom into a top six star. I think what you end up with Pat is the same old, same old when it comes to players of his size, right? Not big enough. Yada, yada, yada, yada. You can't watch him and tell me you seriously believe that because he plays, you know, that guy that stole the bulldozer, right, and tried to storm down the city hall, the killdozer. that's Luke Misa playing hockey.

He's the killdozer. Except he's 5'9. Like that's the thing. Like he's not a big guy. But his skating is really strong. He takes people head on. When he gets a low bass pat and he's gliding, the center of gravity is tough to bump him around.

I mean, he's a really difficult guy to move. You would think looking at him, he's way bigger than he actually is. And then the net front behavior, again, he scores a ton of goals in the clips that I put in the video We're him in front of the crease and people trying really hard to move him around and not being able to do it. So, you know, we should be beyond this point where, like, we're talking about in scouting. We automatically take a minus five off somebody if they're under 510. You know, that's, to me, it's just nuts to be doing that now.

There's so many good small forwards in the NHL. And he's not even that small. I mean, he's got a lot of bulk to him. It's not like he's, you know, built like a twig. So I have no concern about his ability. to, you know, a lot of people throw over the Kevin Fiala name around when it comes to him. I think that's, that's right in there for sure, absolutely. I think it's a super accurate pick for a comp.

But again, it's the volatility around where is he going to go? You know, if he was there at 44, I would not be surprised. If he was gone by 44, I would be equally unsurprised. There's absolutely no way to pin down where he's going to end up. Yeah, I loved in the film that you put in on him, like you were saying. He, again, we're talking about a five. nine, five, ten guy like he's, you know, my height, which is hilarious. But you saw he had no fear and hesitation to go to the areas you have to go to score and be successful. And like I was saying,

it's reflected in his numbers. You look at the way he's produced each successive year. He does the things that you need to do to be a successful, both prospect and hopefully future NHL or so I'm with you on that. It's really silly that we're still doing the whole, oh, this guy's not big enough thing because more than enough examples of guys who are quote unquote undersized, still making a big name and having a successful career in the national hockey league. But like I said, don't want to give the whole mixtape away. I want you guys to go watch it. I know Jesse does too.

So we're going to leave it there on Jesse's prospect mixtape. Again, search it on YouTube, Jesse Marshall. You'll be able to find it no problem. But when we come back for our final segment, I unfortunately didn't get a chance to ask Taylor about this yesterday. We got so deep into the weeds with prospect talk, but I did ask Josh about it on Tuesday's episode. And we're going to ask Jesse, who is his Penguins champion of champions?

And we'll talk about that right after this. All right, we're back here on Locked On Penguins. I am your host, Patrick Damp, joined today by my old co-host and my good friend, Jesse Marshall, our heirs tour, the Dying Alive Reunion, whatever you'd like to call it. Jesse, like I said, I asked Josh this on Tuesday. Hunter and I got asked it in a great mailbag question a few weeks ago. And it's taking the five Penguins Stanley Cup winning teams, putting them into a round-robin tournament, and who would come out as your ultimate Penguin Stanley Cup champion? I told Josh, I told Hunter, I've said it before. For me, I have a really hard time picking between the 1992 team

and the 2016 team. So I send it over to you of the five champions, who would you put at the top of the mountain? If I could cheat, and I can't, let's start with this. I can't cheat.

But if I could cheat, I'd pick 93. I picked a team that didn't win to trounce all of them in a tournament. But that's neither here nor there. And we can't give that cup to that team that blew it against the Islanders. It just can't be done.

We have to live with this. So answering a question, 91 and 90, I don't think people realize how similar than 91 and 92 teams were in terms of like goals for and goals against. It was almost like, they're almost mirror images of each other. I think within the year, there may have been 92, 991, 92 may have scored a couple more goals and allowed a couple less, but otherwise, they're almost identical, right?

What they don't have that 2016, 2017 has is the depth. Like Brian Trotcheye of 92 had like, I don't know, like 30 points. You know, he didn't have a ton of points. You know, great defensively. Didn't have a ton of points. I don't think they could keep up with HPK. I just think that that third line, we all knew it was important at the time, but hindsight now, like how important, like, that was the straw that stirred the drink. And it was a pick your poison situation where you forced opposing coaches to have to say like, okay, you know, I'm going to take my best effort and I'm going to put it towards Sydney Crosby and I know that's going to kill me.

But if I don't do it, Sydney Crosby is going to kill me. So what do I do, right? And there's no, there's no right. You know what the right answer is. Have three first pairing defensemen. Like have three or six number ones. You have to have six top pairing defensemen. You're not doing a salary cap world, folks. That's not going to happen.

And the 92-91 Penguins certainly didn't have that. So I got to go 16, 17. The depth man is just such a killer for that team. And the goaltending was unreal for pretty much the entire playoff run. Whoever was in net gave them good goal-tending. So that's the backbreaker for me. It hurts my heart. My childhood Jesse is inside me going, no.

But it's true. I got to go with 16-17. See, the thing that really gives me pause on it is that the 92 team went on that unreal run of 11 straight games to win the Stanley Cup. And yeah, I understand the disparity between the NHL. then in the NHL now. Like it was probably a little bit easier to do something like that in 1992 than it is now. Just because, you know, outside of the Capitals and the Rangers this year, we didn't see any truly disparage disparity between teams.

It was every series was tight, including the Stanley Cup final, which we just watched, which we all thought Edmonton was dead. And then like the Undertaker, they just popped up out of the casket in, decided, oh, no, we're actually not dead yet. We got plenty of hockey left. But still, like, you look at the teams that they did that against in 1992. It wasn't a group of slums. Yeah, yeah, dude, Chicago is really good, Pat.

That's, that you've made a really good point here that is making me rethink my answer now. Because, like, that, so, yeah, you have to acknowledge they went on the run, but like, start, look at what Chicago did to them in the first 20 minutes of that game, right? Yeah. They just destroyed them. Like that's how good Chicago was. And obviously, like, we know how it ended. And they never won't,

they never recovered after that. So I feel like I had a hung jury here, Pat. I don't know what I don't know. Because then, because then like I look at the, like the 92 team, Rangers in the second round. That wasn't just some slouch Rangers team.

That was a president's trophy winner. They were stacked. They were great. And their defense against the penguins at first was, okay, how do we beat them? Oh, I got it. let's have Ryan Graves break Mario Lemieux's arm, and that'll help us win, and they still couldn't do it.

And then you look at, they go to Boston, and Boston was great in those years, and then obviously Chicago. But then I come back to 2016, and it's like you said, the goaltending next level, Murray, Flurry, even Jeff Sackoff for a couple games, gave them great goaltending. HBK was great. and we kind of forget how, like, we talk about how good the penguins have been for this last decade or so. Tampa's been right there with them. They just, until recently, didn't have the Cups to show it.

That wasn't some Luke Tampa Bay team. They had just gone to the Stanley Cup final. They were still very good. And yeah, that went seven, but, like, they could have very easily lost that series and they were still able to beat it. Oh, yeah, they were on ropes for a minute there. And then same thing with San Jose. Like, yeah, you can say what you want about how good the Penguins were, but that wasn't a crappy San Jose team either.

No. I'll tell you this. I think in any case, however you want to sort the top two or the bottom two, 9091 is third. I'm very solid about 9091 being third. And you could switch 91 and 92 and 16 and 17. But seven, you know, if you what I'm saying, 2009. had some warts on that team really like the goal to save percentage is like what the lowest save

percentage i think to win a cup in like the modern analytic era of hockey or something like that so uh i don't feel great about that one and then they kind of got a little lucky to uh in that second run uh where you know they they got bailed out a couple times they had that that shooting percentage was very very generous for a very long time there but uh yeah it hurts high school me to put 2009 is fifth but it really it really was that was a team that got hot at the right time got a lot in the playoffs in February not going to run the playoffs in February so it's hard to ignore that yeah but yeah I mean like it's so hard for me to pick between 1992 and 2016 because those teams were just so damn good yeah but I think that is going to do it for this episode Jesse

let everybody know where they can find you and what you got coming up this summer. Yeah. So the draft endorsement videos on YouTube. I wanted to do it differently this year. I wanted to pivot to try to catch up with the times, I guess. And I do it that way. I will be whoever they take 44, 46, assuming again, they don't trade those picks.

That analysis will be on the athletic like usual. So look for that this weekend. As soon as those picks are made, I'm going to get to work on collecting the video. Hopefully it's somebody that already have a large video repository of. Kyle Davis, please help. But otherwise, that's it. And then, yeah, draft stuff for the, we're going to, whatever I do on the athletic, I'm going to double down on the video for the YouTube channel.

So what you don't, there'll be a whole section of video that you don't see in the articles that you can catch on the YouTube channel. And we'll try to give you a real good couple of minutes of, again, the goal for this year, Pat, has been to try to catch tape that other people aren't. So I don't know if you notice, like in the clips I had today, a lot of them are just zone entries. And some of those zone entries don't amount to anything immediately, but I want people to get an understanding of what this player looks like in a regular zone entry. Like, you know, we see, you could, everybody could look goals up on YouTube, right? Like, I feel like that's very

easy to do. So I'm trying to create like situational videos that help you understand how somebody reacts in like an actual game situation. Yeah. And I, you know, I'm going to consume that content with a fire hose because I've long time been a fan of yours. And like I said, we were co-hosts before. And damn, I know a lot of people miss dying alive. But. life does happen. But Jesse, appreciate you taking the time. I know you got a lot going on. For those of you who have thankfully suffered through me hosting for three straight days,

good news, Hunter will be back tomorrow. We're going to do some more stuff on the draft and get you ready for that. But for Jesse Marshall, for Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you, as always for tuning in. We'll be back with a new episode on Friday.