Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins earn their BIGGEST victory of the year so far against the champs!

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The Penguins earned a massive victory on Thursday night, beating the Florida Panthers 5-3! Patrick and Hunter begin the show discussing a hard-earned victory by the Penguins over the Florida Panthers. While it may not have been the prettiest of wins, the Penguins took some big punches, literally and figuratively, from the champs, and got up each time. They also talk about how Ben Kindel looks like he's NHL-ready and shouldn't be sent back to his junior team after another big-timer performance. (0:00) Then, the Penguins look to make it five wins in a row on Saturday when they welcome their rivals, the Columbus Blue Jackets. They talk keys to victory, who to watch on the Blue Jackets, and how this begins a stretch of stiffer competition for the Penguins. (16:54) Finally, it's Friday, which means we're reacting to your hot takes, answering your questions, and so much more in another Fan Take Friday! Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!RugietReady to level up your confidence ? Head to https://rugiet.comand use promo code LOCKEDONNHL for 15% off your first order.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHLfor $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.MonarchTake control of your finances with Monarch. Use code LOCKEDONNHL at https://monarch.com/lockedonnhl for 50% off your first year.FanDuelDownload the FanDuel app now by visiting FanDuel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins.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.

Against all logic and all reason, the Pittsburgh Penguins took down the defending champions on Thursday night, 5 to 3. Hunter and I are going to break down that game right after this. You're locked on penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. A happy victory Friday to you and yours out there, and welcome back to the Locked on. on Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Patrick Damp. You can follow me across all social media platforms at Synonym 4 Wet. Joined as always by the one and only Hunter Hodes. You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can give our show's Twitter account a follow at L.O. underscore penguins. And you can find us on Instagram at Locked on underscore Penguins. Of course, as always,

we appreciate you making us part of your daily routine. Don't forget that you can find us wherever you get your podcasts as well as YouTube. And if you follow us on YouTube, make sure to hit that notification button. That way you can be among the first to know when we drop our daily Monday through Friday episodes. Before we jump into it, this episode is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use the code locked on NHL for $20. off your first purchase. Well, that sure was fun on Thursday night, wasn't it?

The Penguins put up a 5-3 victory over the defending champion Florida Panthers. And I don't want to go into the weekend on a negative note because there's no reason to, but I will start here, Hunter. They got the victory, but they were severely outplayed. However, this has been an extremely tough, extremely resilient penguins team. I got to give a shout out to Phil Bork on the broadcast last night who said, this team has taken punch after punch from the Florida Panthers, and they have responded each and every time.

It was a phenomenal effort by the penguins. Anytime it seemed like Florida was about to really come roaring back and tie the game, the penguins responded in kind. And I still don't know if we can answer the question, is this team good or not? But I'll tell you this much, they're fun. The vibes are good. They're fun to watch.

That's really all that matters right now. Considering how this team has played for the last three years, the start to this season is such a welcome change. And if you're not smiling after almost every game at this rate, something's wrong with you. Pat and I, we've been coming here, smiling like Butcher's dogs after most of these games. And it's just such a welcome change compared to last year.

Just enjoy the ride, my friends. Don't get too high. Don't get too low. There will be a time where we can discuss if this is real or not. And I do think it is coming fairly soon. Pat, I usually wait until around Thanksgiving. If this team is in a spot by Thanksgiving in about a month, then we can have the conversation about,

okay, this might be real and this could potentially be a play. out team. That's right around the 22 game mark, give or take. So I want to give it another month to see if they keep playing like this because they have a lot more tests coming up. As for this game, I thought the Penguins were the much better team in the first period. They outclass Florida. And then of course, you knew the Panthers were going to punch back. And they did in the second period. They outplayed them in the third. But every time the Panthers either A, got right back into the game or B, tried to be, they're little rats just because that's how the Panthers are, the penguins punched right back and got

so many clutch goals. Connor Dewar, for example, Ben Kindle, of course, we'll get to him a bit later. Sidney Crosby, Pat, what type of performance was that? You cannot understate how good of a game that was by Cid. That was a vintage Crosby performance. And I'm sorry to steal your thunder, but that is the most engaged I have seen Crosby all season. And yes, the goals are nice, the points are nice, but he was doing everything that makes Sidney Crosby, Sidney Crosby last night. He was physically engaged in the corners. He owned the puck. He was moving the puck incredibly well, and he drove play every single time he was on the ice. That was one of if not his best performances to date this season. It was definitely his best performance to me. He was also getting a bit

physical. Him and Anton Lundell were having some battles along the board. Sid was not with him throughout that game and you could tell he was very low key in a way, excuse me, trying to like run him into the boards at times. And the couple goals that he scored, the first one, just a beautiful one timer on the power play. And then you can say the same thing for the second one, Bob, maybe could have had it, but that was still a really well-play shot. The power play was phenomenal last night. The puck movement was sensational.

That's saying something compared to last year because last year the puck movement was really good. and it's on steroids this year, in my opinion. So, Sid was great. They did benefit. They got an off night from Brovrovsky, but every time the Panthers tried to punch back, Penguins punched them again. It was a really nice, resilient, full team performance.

Yeah, you look at the underlying metrics, Pat. They were out attempted, outshot, Panthers had more high danger chances, etc. But when push came to shove, this team battled, they fought, and they were resilient, and that's why they won this game. And we got to shout out Tristan Jari. He was phenomenal outside of that second goal that he gave up,

had some type of scorpion type save on Brad Marshan in the third period. It's really nice seeing him play like this. I don't want to get too high because we've seen this at times from Jari. He'll have some good sports bat, and then he'll go back to being like a pumpkin. If you look at his splits, usually the first half of the season, he's better. Second half of the season, that's where it goes to crap. So I'm going to be paying attention for that this year.

But right now, we got to shout him out. He played great. And the Penguins continue to get literally 929, 25 goaltending this year. That has been a big story of their success so far. I also don't want to make excuses for him because, you know, you want to be objective as best you can. I will say this for the second goal. It was a soft one, but I also have to give Florida their flowers for that goal because that was the same play that they scored on the prior power play with Brad Marshawn.

And Jari kind of anticipated that pass was coming because the coverage in front of him once again on that power play was not really good. So he was preparing for that cross ice, cross crease pass to Marshawn. and he leaned too early, and then they took advantage of that. So it is on him, but I also have to credit Florida for, I have to credit them for noticing that he was leaning in taking advantage of it. But other than that, he was arguably one of the reasons they won that game because the second and third period,

Florida just blitzed them for 30 minutes around that much time. if I had to guess. And he continued to make timely save after timely save. Now that we're getting to the end of this segment, it's time to have the conversation, Hunter. I'm just going to come out and say it. I don't know if Dubis listens to this show. I have my rumors and my thoughts that he might.

Not the conversation we're having, though. But if you do listen to this one, Kyle, Ben Kindle is an NHL player. I don't think he's going to be an every nighter. I don't think he should play more than 60 or 65 games. But through every game he has played, he has been one of the Penguins best forwards. In the only way I can describe the goal he scored last night,

a goal scorer's goal. Just a sensational shot. And you look at the two goalies he has beat this year, Pat. Igor Shus Thurkin and Sergey Bobrovsky. Both are top five goaltenders on the planet. One of them I know for sure is going to the Hall of Fame and Sergey Bobrovsky. He could not have placed that shot any better.

That give and go with Tommy Novak was awesome. But I'm going to go, what's we run to before that? Kendall's in the offensive zone. He makes an ill-advised pass to the slot area. Florida picks it off. He sticks with the play. Penguins are able to get it back, and then they have that give and go.

he's able to fix his mistake with a beautiful goal past one of the five best goaltenders on the planet. It's stuff like that that you also can't teach. And I think I have finally arrived to the point where I am fine with them starting his ELC. It's taken me a while just because I am very protected of those first years. But I think so far in the seven games that he has played, I think he has shown that he is an NHL ready player. and I think he is ready for this, whether he plays 55 games, 60 plus games, 65, somewhere in that ballpark. I think he is ready.

I know I said before the season, I would send him back to junior just because you usually do not see this type of jump from a prospect that's 18 and especially outside of the top 10. But he continues to get better in every single game he plays. He was sensational again last night. unless he absolutely bombs these last two games on the nine-game trial, and I do not expect that to happen. I think he is going to be on this team, and they will start his ELC, and it's deserved. I think he is an initial ready player right now.

I think you might see Billy Coyvenin with him later on this season. I think you could see Rucker Mergrorty with him later on this season. I do like the chemistry that he is starting to build, though, with Tommy Novak. But he is ready for this. Again, I'll take a little bit of an L on that one, man. was very psyched about the pick. I knew from the jump that he was going to be a good NHL player at some point. I did not think he was going to become reality this quickly. So I'm just, I'm over the moon, man. And I hope everyone out there in the fan base that did not

like the pick at the time, hope you're feeling bad about it right now. And I'll end with this when it comes to Kindle. It's the same thing that I said for Harrison Brunick in the sense that While I don't think they are anywhere near completed products, they still have a lot of work ahead of them, a lot of improvement to make. I don't think any of that improvement will be made at the junior level. They have pretty much done everything they can do at juniors. They've proven they can hang at the NHL level. And yes, we all want our brand new shiny toy to be here all the time and we always want to play with it. but occasionally them having a couple nights off is not the end of the world.

We don't want to burn them out. We don't want to stunt their growth. So if you keep them around, they get to learn from some absolutely legendary future Hall of Famers. They get the NHL training schedule. They get the NHL resources. And that's only going to help them in their long-term development, even if it means they only play 55, 60, 65 games.

So at this point, I think it would pretty much be malpractice to send one or both of them back to the junior level. But huge win for the penguins where they're playing three games and they're scratched. I think you're going to keep seeing that throughout the season, especially if both stay up. And I do think at this point, they are both going to stay here. I've kind of known for about a week that Brunick was probably going to just based on my prediction. I think I am now there with Ben Kindle that he is going to stay up. And when you look at the rookie class for this year, the 2025 NHL draft rookie class, only Matthew Schaefer is out playing Ben Kendall right now.

And that's no disrespect to Ben Kendall. Schaefer is an absolute freak of a defenseman. But Kendall's outplaying Michael Mesa, in my opinion, by a mile so far. This is going to be a really good NHL player once he especially keeps developing pat. Once he's like 20, for example, 21, who he's already this good now. Imagine what he's going to be in a few years, guys. If the development continues, we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves,

but the early returns are very good. Huge win for the penguins, but they will be back at it this weekend on Saturday night. When the Ohio rival Columbus Blue Jackets come to town, we're going to get you ready for that game when we come back right after this. Before we do that though, we've got a couple of sponsors to tell you about, and the first one is Ruggiat. Let's be real, making excuses doesn't solve anything. And we have all heard those excuses before. It's just stress, I'm tired, or it happens to everyone sometimes.

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Back here on the Friday edition of Victory Friday edition of Locked-on Penguins as the Penguins are going to look to make it five wins in a row on Saturday night when they not only face the Columbus Blue Jackets, but induct their first Penguins Hall of Fame class in over a decade. We have talked that one to death, though. That's going to be a lot of fun, be on the lookout for that. But not going to be an easy night. We love to talk about how the Columbus Blue Jackets are, the little brother,

but they're doing pretty well to start. They've beat some formidable teams. Their young talent is really starting to turn a corner. and this is going to be a fast, hard to play against Columbus team led by Caril Marchenko right now with seven points, five goals in six games. They've also got Barankov, who's got three and three for six points. Boon Jenner, a big time thorn in the penguin's side who has got two goals, four assists, six points in six games. So Hunter, this is not going to be the type of. Columbus team we're used to seeing, they're going to have to earn one on Saturday night.

First off, it's crazy that Boone Jenner has been on this team since I was a sophomore, junior in high school. I'm about to be 28 in three weeks. So I just had to get that out of the way. Like, he's been there forever at this rate. But you also got Adam Fantilly. He's off to a great start, two goals, five points in six games. He's going to be really good in this league for a long time.

I'm always excited to get the chance to see him play against the penguins. you know, Charlie Coyle, who's off to a decent start. Zach Wrenski, who was coming off, and all pro season last year already has four points in six games. I like this Jackets team heading into this season. I think they can still push for a playoff spot. I just still think they need another big weapon in their top six. They still have Sean Monaghan's heading the top line with Marchenko and Varanca.

They got Jenner with Fantelli and Kent Johnson, who I also do like on the second line. But I do think there are one more top six forward short. from being a bona fide playoff team. Their bottom six, I still don't think, is that bad. I like Cole Cylinder as a third liner. Charlie Coyle has been in the league for a while. Defensively, Zach Wrenski and Matichuk on the top pair.

And Mattichick, I do think it's going to be a player for quite a while. And this lady got Dante Fabro back with Eric Good Branson. I do think their bottom two pairings can definitely be exposed a little bit. I'm not as high on someone like Provarod or Severson anymore. And same thing with Good Branson. and so I know the Penguins still have, you know, at least some defensive issues, even though these last four games, they've been fairly solid in all those categories. Though, again, the Panthers, they were carrying the play for a lot of those games,

and Jari was great. But still, I think that's an area where the Penguins can really exploit. It's those bottom two pairings on Columbus. And I will say, even though Elvis Mers-Likins is off to a good start, three games play 927s, 8%, 2.69 goals against average, I do think, excuse me, this is a goalie that can be had. He has struggled at times throughout his career against the penguins. So I do think that's also an area where the penguins can take advantage as well.

When you look at some of the numbers for this game, Penguins are 12 and 1 and 3 against the Blue Jackets dating back to December of 2019. There are also 22 and 3 and 4 in their last 29 games overall against Columbus, dating back to February of 2017. Hell, here in Pittsburgh, going back to 2000, 2001, the penguins are 24 and 4 and 1, just in Pittsburgh against the Blue Jackets. This has been a rivalry that's been dominated by the penguins

throughout its history. We'll see if it can continue, but this is still going to be a good test with the young talent that Columbus can throw up them, how fast they are. And again, the start that Merzleekins is off to, excuse me, but I still think this is a goalie that can be had. I think Archer Sheelov is going to start if they continue this rotation, but we'll still have to see.

I just want them to put on a show for the Hall of Fame inductees, Pat. I mean, come on. Like, that's, that's reason enough to come to this game. And to your point about goaltending, it does look like they will get Mersleekins tomorrow night because Jet Grieves is starting tonight when the blue jackets take on the Washington Capitals. So it's a back-to-back metro weekend. end for the blue jackets. But the thing I will say is I'm mostly on your side about, I'm a little bit skeptical of Elvis Merslicans, but where we are in this season right now with

how early it is, you just got to go with what's been happening. And he has had a pretty solid start. The other side of that coin is you're not going to get a Sergey Bobrovsky off night every night when you play teams with good goal tending. So for the penguins, this is going to have to be the kind of game where you have to earn every goal. You're going to have to go to the net. You're going to have to get in front of Merzleekins. You're going to have to battle in front to get positioning, look for rebounds, look for screens and tips because Merzleekins is very much, at least early, the kind of goalie where if he sees it, he's probably going to stop it unless it's a 100% or kind of shot. So for the penguins, they have to stick to the structure

that they have been playing with for the last few games. They've got to continue to be good on the forecheck. They've got to continue to have that puck support. And then they got to win the battle in front of the net. So big challenge for them, but really good opportunity for them to string yet another win together here against Columbus. Right. And also the Penguins will have another advantage in this game.

You hinted at it. Blue Jackets play tonight at home. And then they will travel to Pittsburgh for the second half of a back-to-back. And yeah, I get it, Pete. Columbus and Pittsburgh, it's not that far of a drive. But this is still, you finish the game against Washington, you have to travel to Pittsburgh, and then you play less than 24 hours later.

A back-to-back with travel is pretty hard. So the Penguins, they're going to be well-rested for this game. So that's another advantage that they will have in this one to try and get to seven and two going in the next week's games where you play the St. Louis Blues that were a playoff team last year. After that, you have your first back-to-back, but travel, you play the flyer. and then about you play some other teams coming up.

The Maple Leafs are coming up. The Winnipeg Jets are coming up. The Capitals in Pittsburgh is coming up pretty soon. So schedule is about to get pretty hard here. But again, you definitely have an advantage where you're getting a team that plays tonight, less than 24 hours later, back-to-back with travel. You'll be well-rested. You should see, especially when you look at the effort from the last few periods against Florida,

the Penguins are going to raise that effort level by quite a bit, in my opinion, for this game again i love the resiliency i love the compete level against the panthers i love they were able to punch back even during those two periods where they were outplayed but i do think you're going to see all of that get raised now that they'll have they'll have had a day to recover and we said it going into the panthers game and that street continues this is where we're going to find out a whole heck of a lot about the penguins team because you can only play the games in front of you like i said yesterday. It's not a restaurant. You can't look at the waiter and say, sorry, this schedule is not cooked well enough. Please take it back. You can only win the games in front of you, but the games in

front of them over the next couple of weeks are really going to show us if the penguins are taking advantage of lesser competition or if the penguins are elevating themselves to a level that nobody expected them to be at. So penguins, blue jackets, PPG paints arena, 7 o'clock on Saturday night, You can catch the game on SportsNet, Pittsburgh. If you're not in the building, Hunter and I will obviously have a recap of this game on Monday, as well as getting you ready for the rest of the week ahead. But that doesn't mean that we're done with this episode. It's Friday.

And that means we want to hear from all of you in another edition of Fan Take Friday, which we will get to when we come back right after this. Before we do that, though, we got to tell you about one more sponsor. that is Fandul. The NFL season is here and Fandul has an offer you don't want to miss. Right now new customers can bet just $500 and get $300 in bonus bets if that first $5 bet wins. That's right, pick a bet, put down $5. And if it hits, you'll unlock $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. FanDuel, it makes watching football so much more exciting, especially when you've got a little something riding on the action. Say, oh, I don't know,

during Sunday night football this weekend when the Steelers and the Packers are playing. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Whether you're a casual fan or you love diving into the stats, Fanduel makes the game day experience that much better. So what are you waiting for? Visit Fandual.com to download the Fandul app today and get started. Back here on the Friday edition of Locked on Penguins, I'm Patrick Damp right alongside Hunter Hodeys.

And it's fantastic. Friday, ladies and gentlemen, which means we're opening up our little mailbag that we do every week on Friday, answering your questions, reacting to your hot takes and everything in between, and that everything in between Hunter includes a poll that we put up on YouTube, which is a new part of Fan Take Friday that you guys really seem to like, so we're going to keep doing it. This week's poll, pretty easy. Penguins are six and two, but are they good? And with 120 votes, 68% of respondents say they're good, actually, while 33% say, mine's not changed.

They're still mid. So pretty overwhelming response there from the community that they think this team is good, actually, and we talked about that. We're going to see. But we will start in that vein with a longtime fan take Friday respondent at Penn 68 on YouTube says it has been a very small sample size so far, but I like what I'm seeing from this team. I would like to see more games before I make the determination if this could be a playoff team or not, but I will say the team is showing to be very scrappy and they are going to

compete no matter who they're playing against. I don't have much to add to that one. That's pretty spot on. 100%. I mean, this team is a blast to watch. They play sound structured hockey. You're not seeing a lot of the odd man rushes or the chances off the rush that you saw countless times. the game these last few seasons. Dam Euse has done a great job cleaning those up. The offensive pressure is also a lot of fun to watch. Once it gets kicked into high gear, the power play is a lot of fun to watch.

You could tell that this team really needed a change behind the bench. And again, I'm not trying to, you know, throw shade up Mike Sullivan or anything like that. But you could tell that it was time for a new voice. And the players are fully bought in to what Damuz and his staff are telling them. And the results speak for themselves so far. There was another comment if I can find it here. Yeah, from Matt Wallach who says,

need a third option of it's still too early, but like the way it's going. And that is where I fall under as well. I think it is too early to say whether this team is actually good. I want to see how this team looks going into the Thanksgiving break. If you can get some results over the next month against some bona fide playoff teams, especially teams that you're going to be playing against over the next couple of weeks, then we might be able to push the button of, you know,

Peter Griffin, me and Pat of, oh, hello, we're back department. I'd like to file a claim because I'll say it people. Pat was trying to send me that last night. His hand is over the button. We're not going to push it yet, guys. We got to wait another few weeks before we can determine if they are back or not. But I'm willing to see if they are in a playoff spot by Thanksgiving, I might be saying at that point, okay, then this actually could be a playoff team this year.

But Pat, I do think you forgot that potential third option, as Matt said. But hey, for the purposes of the show, I'm fine that you did too. The hand is hovering over the we're back button. I'm not hitting it yet, but I'm getting close. But we got some time to go before that. But something you said in that that I do think is a good place to go next. And this is from Christopher Hart on YouTube. Still a bit early.

But the real question is, should we have gotten rid of Sully years ago, considering the Rangers are currently playing like the penguins of the last three years? here's where I'm going to come down on this. And I think I've said it on the show before, but in case I haven't, I think the way you can kind of retcon this and make it work is when Jim Rutherford resigned at the end of that season, if you would have gotten rid of Mike Sullivan then and kind of hit that soft reset button at the end of Rutherford, I think that would have probably made it a little bit more feasible and a little bit more

workable. I also want to address that last part of the Rangers are currently playing like the penguins of the last three years. I said this to one of my beer league teammates earlier this week, coincidentally while we were having beers, so the name was very apt. But Mike Sullivan, in my opinion, at this point, needs to pull a Bill Parcells and tell whether it was Kyle Dubus or now Chris Drury in New York, if you want me to cook dinner, you need to let me do the grocery shopping too because you look at a lot of the rosters he's had over the past few years and it's like, okay, you know the coach that you have. You should probably give him some of the players to play said system because you look at the Rangers right now and it's the inverse of

what he had in Pittsburgh. He had players who were pretty good, couldn't get goaltending. Now he's in with the Rangers, pretty good goal tending. Team can't score. But you know what's funny about that is that when you look at the players outside of the goalie, it's the same type of roster that he had last year and then the season prior. So it's like, no wonder they can't score. And you're also seeing the same things pop up that popped up with the penguins these last few years.

It's like, yeah, I've seen that before. You know, the, you know the meme, Pat first time. Like, that's, that's kind of what we're seeing here now with the Rangers, but we don't want to spend too much more time on that. This next one comes from Fred. The young guys are definitely making it exciting. The whole team looks like they are having fun. I love Sully,

but Mews has been like a breath of fresh year. New voice was needed. Sid and Gino are still straight up dogs. I 100% agree with all of that. You can very much tell that they needed a fresh voice. Again, no shade to Sully, but it was needed. And yeah, Sid, very much a vintage performance. He tied the franchise record with Mary Lemieux Pat.

497 multi-point games. He is going to set that record potentially on Saturday against the Blue Jackets. And he is also now two points away from 1700 for his career. I also did, I did think Gino was fairly good last night, too. So I'm glad we had that take. If I can get to one more here, there's a couple of this. We'll save that one actually for a bit later. I like that we have so many of these this week because we can save some of these

for a bit later on in this season. This is a fun hot take. Well, part of a hot take. This comes from G. Tots, who always puts some good takes here. The Penguins current goalie group will have more shutouts than give up a goal on the first three shots this year. Okay, I like that one after what we saw last year, TBD.

Bonus hot take for mine, anti-Torna media fan base. Sidney Crawsey will be a penguin longer than Austin Matthews. He's a Rilly-Neilander is a Toronto Maple Leaf. I really don't think that's that much of a hot take, but I do think the first thing. first one, I like that he put that out there, but the second one, I don't think it's not hot of a take. Yeah, that one we got that, that first one, we got to kind of let the season play out.

I think it's possible the way the penguins have been playing really, but at the same time, there might also just be a, hey, they don't get as many shutouts. They play well. And maybe there's a couple games here and there where they don't have the best start. So we'll see. But I actually, I want to say this about the Toronto one. I don't think that's that far fetched. but it's dependent upon what they do over the next couple of years because at some point,

you've replaced a bunch of coaches, you've replaced a bunch of managers, and who does that leave? And I know I, I know that I have my, my conflicts or whatever you want to call it with some of the guys at SDP, but I still love them. I still listen to them. I still subscribe. but Dangle made a point a while ago that I keep coming back to. It relates to an earlier hot take from our show here as well. The best teams that win the Stanley Cup,

their biggest players have that dog in them. When the games get bigger, they turn into psychopaths. And outside of Willie Nealander, a lot of the players who have been in and out of Toronto the last decade, they kind of shrink when the game gets bigger. And I love Austin Matthews. I think he's going to go down as one of the greatest American players of all time.

And he's one of the best goal scores we've ever seen. But do you really think like we saw last night against the Panthers? Do you think he's jumping into a scrum when someone hits his line mate? Probably not. And if things don't go well in Toronto, the only people left to blame are the guys wearing the sweaters. Well, don't tell that to Leaksans. We'll still blame anyone else. except those top players, but, you know, that's a different discussion for a different day.

One more here, Pat, before we wrap up, I promise we'll get to some of these other ones a bit later on in the season. This one comes from John, and John says, I think what they have done is created a different culture on the team. I like with someone said that they're creating competition and allowing their younger players to play. Players are getting the plane, not because of their salary or because of their veteran status, but because they are the best players on the roster. I think that's what this team has done. And you're 100% right. You know, they're given opportunity. to younger players, even some of the veterans that are on the team, they're still being pushed for their jobs. There's other players in Wilkesbury they're going to be coming up at some point

later on this season. The culture you can definitely tell is different so far. So I totally agree with that take. I also come back to something I've said for a while. They finally for the first time in a long time have younger players who are viable. They have had a ton of quad A guys over the past five to six years who we want them to come up and play because they're young, but they're probably not going to be significant contributors. They're just going to be run-of-the-mill guys. Now they actually have some young talent that can challenge for spots, that can challenge veterans. So that in itself has definitely changed the culture. And I think last thing I'll say on it is it's a different, I'm going to make a big comparison here, but

stay with me. It's like when Mike Johnston came in versus now when Dan Mews came in. You could kind to tell when Johnston came in all those years ago. The veterans and the stars were kind of like, no, you're a junior coach. We don't like you. And whatever the first impression was, it wasn't good. With Mews, they're in. They respect them. They like what he has to say. They like what he's selling. And they're bought in. So that in itself has. been a huge, huge difference for this team. But Hunter, unless you've got anything else to add, I think that's going to do it for our Friday episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.

Thank you as always for joining us here on a victory Friday. Hunter and I will be back on Monday with a new episode to recap the Columbus game as well as get you ready for the week ahead. But for now, for Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you once again, and we will be back on Monday.