Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Recapping a newsy day for the hockey boys of summer

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Hunter is back for today's episode of Locked On Penguins and he discusses the very busy day around the league yesterday with tentative dates being agreed to (the start of each series), plus when the next free agent frenzy would be and the start of the 2020-2021 season! He also gives his thoughts on how it's going to be a hockey fan's dream to watch these playoffs with what the TV schedule is reported to look like with games starting at 12 pm, 4 pm, and 8 pm Eastern and Mountain time. He also gives his thoughts on the Devils hiring of Lindy Ruff before ending the show talking about what hotel the Penguins would be sharing with in Toronto (hint: it's all their rival teams). 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 this Thursday evening episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, follow the show's Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. Another Friday is upon us as we continue to roll through the month of July. We are just about three, three and a half weeks away from potentially getting the NHL season underway. The training camps are expected to start on Monday. A lot of stuff to get to today on today's episode. I was MIA for a lot of yesterday.

I was mainly only checking Twitter, probably a couple times a day. I was out about doing a couple of things. Socially distancing, of course. You know, not an idiot over here. But, you know, one of them was like a socially distance, like a walk in the park kind of date. I think that's totally fine to do as long as you're being smart. You're not being stupid. Very fun time.

So, yeah, I was just MIA for a lot of yesterday. Really fun time. But, you know, I'm glad I was, I'm back today. I'm glad I can give you guys another episode today. And we'll have another episode coming tomorrow. So today's episode is of course brought to you by Rock Auto Reliably low prices

You can go to rockato.com right now Also before we get started All the hosts at Locked On Including myself We got a locked on t-shirt today Outstanding stuff It's kind of like a green shirt With Locked On at the front of it

And then on the back It has your team every day Can't say thank you enough To Kylie, Carl and David for just sending this out To all the hosts I think those shirts are offered on the official website if you guys want to take a look at them locked on live

dot com actually part of me locked on podcast dot com wow i don't want to screw that up very very very bad but still i believe they are on the website you guys can go check them out and yeah the shirt is awesome i'm going to wear that um hopefully all the time we'll see how excuse me we'll see how often i'm going to have to wash it because i'm probably going to be wearing it all the time so like i said though a lot of stuff happened uh yesterday with the NHL, they came to agreement with their return to play schedule. So it looks like, like I said, the training camps are going to start July 13th. July 24th, it looks like, according to Frank Zeller Valley, the teams are going to travel

to the two hub cities, Toronto and Edmonton. You'll play some exhibition games on the 25th. It looks like July 30th, the qualifying games begin, like July 30th around August 1st. August 9th, the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs began, so that this will be the 16 teams, not the 24. August 23rd, second round begins. September 6th, the conference 5th. Finals begin, and then the Stanley Cup final would begin at the late end of September, and then

October 2nd would be the last possible day for the Stanley Cup final. And then apparently they also want to have the 2020-2020 season start on December 1st. So we're looking at a potential, what, eight-week off-season, even barely if that. This is going to take, this is going to be a lot. I also saw something today. We'll get to the stuff I saw yesterday, too. Chris Johnson said this. The tentative critical dates calendar spells out at how a compressed playoffs will look.

So the qualifying round will be 10 days. Round one is going to be fewer than two weeks. Round two will be fewer than two weeks. Round three will be fewer than two weeks. And the Stanley Cup final will also be fewer than two weeks. So for a team, especially that's in a qualifying round, they will have to play five rounds of playoff hockey in total, like, less than two weeks of an actual series. forgive me if I'm not a little pessimistic about that. I think that's going to end pretty poorly.

Excuse me, good Lord, I just cannot speak today. I just think that's way too short of a time for what I think is the most grueling tournament in all of sports. I think you're going to have a lot of injuries. You're going to have a lot of players playing through things that they really shouldn't be playing through. Also, they've been off for three months. Is that going to play a factor? Some of these players have only been skating for a couple weeks now since getting back for phase two. No phase three starts on Monday the 13th.

But still, I mean, like, that's just five rounds over two months. I mean, you're really going to condense this. I just, I disagree with how they're condensing that. I think they should honestly drag it out a little bit longer. I guess the good thing is, you know, there's not going to be a lot of any travel. You know, the Hub Cities, I guess, unless it's like the Stanley Cup final, I think. The conference finals and the Stanley Cup final might be in Edmonton from what I read today. Don't quote me on that, but still

I mean, or what are we going to have? You know, back-to-back playoff games? I mean, I'm sorry, that's stupid. I mean, this is not the regular season when you can get away with playing Los Angeles one night and Anaheim the next night. You know, the Florida trip where you play Tampa Bay one night.

You go to Florida the next night. You go to Sunrise and play the Panthers. Same with the New York teams. You know, you play the Rangers one night. Then you go right across the river. You can play the Devils in Newark. I'm honestly, same with the Rangers and the Islanders, to be honest,

because the Islanders are going to be playing, I think, in Brooklyn most of the next season because Barclays is going, I think something happened with Barclays. But no, Barclays, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, something happened with that, and I don't think they're going to be able to play a bunch of games. So still, you know, this is not those situations. You cannot have, like, back-to-back playoff games.

That's just going to be really, really weird. If they decide to do that, they'll announce the schedule, I'm sure. Probably, like, by the time they travel to the Hub Cities, is my guess. Also today, we actually are getting a schedule, it looks like, for the games. Apparently Bob McKenzie's been reporting, so it looks like for each day, there's going to be a 12 o'clock game, Toronto time, so Eastern Standard Time. Then, excuse me, there's going to be a 12 o'clock game for Edmonton, which is Mountain Time for Eastern Time, so 12 o'clock Mountain Time. So that's 2 o'clock Eastern Time. So every day there's going to be a game at 12 o'clock at Eastern Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Time, that's for Toronto.

Then you're going to have a game at 6 o'clock Eastern Time. That's in Edmonton. And then you're going to have a game at 8 o'clock Toronto time. And then you're going to have a game at 10 o'clock mountain time in Edmondson. So we're going to say this again. Each day for hockey fans, it will be, it sounds like a 12 o'clock game if you're on the East Coast, a 2 o'clock game, a 4 o'clock game, a 6 o'clock game, an 8 o'clock game, and a 10 o'clock game.

And this is all if you live, of course, on the East Coast. For the West Coast, you know, it's 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 4 o'clock, whatever. So that is a hockey lover's dream. you know, it's kind of a little bit like March Madness, you know, I always remember going into when I was in high school. I, we mean, my friend, me and a couple people, we would sit around the table and we would just have our brackets out and we just have our phones loaded up because we have the school's Wi-Fi because people would just get into it. And we would just have like a circle of phones just like watching the games. It would be honestly incredible. So of course there's not community

schools this summer, but still the people that are working, I'm sure they're going to try to find a way to set it up. But, you know, if you're like a lot of people, in this country right now who are unemployed or are working from home. This is your dream. You can just turn it on while you're working, starting at 12 o'clock, and you can watch hockey literally throughout the rest of your work time if you work until like 5 or 6 o'clock or even later towards 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock. So that's going to be fun.

I think for the part-time job that I have where I do stuff with dogs at this kennel, I should be able to get off around 1 or 2 o'clock every day, so I won't be able to miss too too much of the 12 o'clock game. I'm hoping the penguins do not get the 12 o'clock game. I'm hoping they get the 4 o'clock. or 8 o'clock game considering it's the frickin Pittsburgh Penguins and they're a marquee team. I don't care if they're playing Montreal.

But still, that is going to be a lot of fun. I am very, very excited for that. If it does happen, of course. See what else from yesterday when I was, I mean, apparently the qualifying round games will now count as part of the 2019-20 Stanley Cup playoffs statistics. So if I'm correct, it sounds like the Penguins will have clinched their way into the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 14th straight year regardless. We absolutely love to see it.

I'm looking for other ones. Okay, so Bob McKenzie, he did like a monster summary of like the CBA, like the agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA, which is going through the ratification. He said a lot of it's been reported. I'll just talk about some of them. As Bob McKenzie said,

the Antichel players are going to return to the Winter Olympics in 2022 and 26, subject to reaching agreement with the I-IHF, which is, of course, the International Hockey Federation, and the IOC, which of course the, the Olympic basically Federation, whatever the hell it is. So that's absolutely great news. You know, it was funny a night. I was talking to my mom and stepped out over dinner.

And she made the argument that, you know what? The professionals really should not be allowed to play in the Olympics. It should just be for amateurs. And I'm like, I'm going to stop you right there, mom, because I don't know if it was just me, but I did not really give two shits when those other players played for Team USA and Team Canada or what other countries back in 2018 because it just wasn't the same as when the professionals play. it's just a lot more fun, especially with the rivalries, you know, with Canada and Russia.

Those teams going out in, you know, the longtime rivalry with the United States and Russia, USA and Canada. I love watching Canada's stack team going up against USA's pretty young team, which, I mean, it should be in 2022 and 2020 and 26. It just, it makes it a lot more fun, and the players also love doing it. So kind of disagree with my mom on that. That was a little, I think it was one of her more hot takes, I would say. One more thing before we do go to a commercial bike. We'll come out with some more stuff. The salary cap is going to remain flat at 81.5 million for next season,

and it will grow as revenues recover. Once the escrow debt is repaid, the cap will be determined by using the lag formula, which was discussed with players in the tour meetings. I have no idea what the lag formula is. I'm going to have to do a bunch more research on that. So that's some of the CBA stuff. We're going to get to much more of yesterday's news

after this commercial break. right here. All right, so we're back on this episode of Locked-on Penguins. Looking at other stuff from Bob McKenzie. Apparently, the summaries, it confirms that Toronto and Edmonton are the Hyde Cities. The Eastern teams will play in Toronto, Western teams in Edmonton. Apparently, he says the conference finals and the Cup final will be a single location for remaining four teams. So that location is still to be determined. I believe he also said that it's looking like it might be Edmonton over Toronto, but it sounds like it's still TBD. This is a big one as well. The players' families will be able to join the players in the bubble for

conference finals and Stanley Cup final, they will not be allowed there for, excuse me, the qualifying round and round one and round two. He also said, it's his understanding of the NHL club staff who are part of the 52-person group will not have families join them for the conference final and the Stanley Cup final. So I definitely hate that for the NHL club staff. That's very unfortunate. And I do really feel bad for those people that won't get to see their families for, honestly, a pretty long time.

What else here? I'm also looking at. Bob McKenzie also says the term of the CBA is a four-year extension through 2025 and 2006, and if after the 2025 season, there is still escrow debt over $125 million, but less than $250 million, the CBA will automatically extend for one more year to 2026 to 27 with a 9% escrow cap and a salary cap, which would be the same as in 2025, 2006. So, yeah, there is a bunch of stuff that Bob McKenzie had. There's some other stuff in there.

I'm not going to go through all of that. You guys can look through the other tweets. if you want, if you miss some of the Bob Fathers' tweets. Also, I did find this very interesting from Frank Ceradel yesterday. Apparently for a scheduling note next year, an effort will be made in the future to minimize travel and have back-to-back games played in the same city wherever possible instead of a road trip going from Los Angeles to San Jose to Anaheim,

which would be a back-to-back with Los Angeles and San Jose sometimes or San Jose to Anaheim. The effort would go Los Angeles, then to Anaheim and then to San Jose. It's like, wow, NHL, I literally took a pandemic to get this to pass. Wow, you should do the same thing for the rain. and the devils, like I said earlier on this podcast. The Devils play right across the river in Newark. So, I mean, it really took us this long.

As someone literally said under the tweet, it took a pandemic to think of this. Great job, NHL. So, yeah, not surprising that the NHL took forever to get to one of the easiest things they could have done so many years ago. Also, some tentative dates for next season. So apparently the later of October 9th or seven days after the Cup final ends is opening of free agent frenzy. So if the Stanley Cup final ends on October 2nd, which it looks like it would be.

So October 9th will be free agent frenzy. What day actually is October 9th? That's actually looked that up real quick because I want to see what day free agent friends would be. That is a, wow, can I pull up a calendar, please? I mean, good grief. October 9th would be a Friday. So that's great.

I absolutely love that. That would be like, what, 12 o'clock for free agent friends? great time. We'll see if there's still a bunch of people off work. I'm sure there will be. Also, it looks like, to another date, November 17th, well, two days after my 23rd birthday, the opening of training camps for 2020, 2021, and then December 1st, basically, would be the opening of the 2020-2020 season. So those are tentative right now, so we still have no idea if those are going to go through, but that is what the AHA is looking at right now in their memorandum of understanding. Pierre LeBron also said today that

The NCHL has a call coming with the Board of Governors basically to discuss the CBA extension and the MAA, just to basically just talk about it and what they're going to do for it. Also, it was announced the other day. So I believe tomorrow, July 10th, the voting window closes. The NCHLPA is going to announce the player's decision on the CBA. I'm going to be very curious to see what the acceptance to decline ratio is. I assume it's honestly going to be higher than some of the other sports. I know the NFL they send their CBA, but that vote was very, very, very. close it was i think only decided by less than a hundred players that's not a lot considering how many

players are in that league so i'm to be very curious to see how this vote ends up turning out for the nchelle there was also something interesting today from uh well yeshs there for frank zirabilly apparently in the event of the 2020-21 season starts after november 15th which is yeah like very very likely apparently so players with that contract in that year they will be paid 8.1% of their salaries by october 31st so basically this means that players will have gone from April 1st to Halloween between paychecks. I mean, some of the higher paid players, it's not really going to matter too much for them. But some of the players that make, like, you know, the minimum requirement, such as, you know,

700K, 800K, 750K, 775K, that sucks. There's no way around that. That absolutely sucks. You know, especially, like I said, like a player that's on a two-way deal as well. That's a long time to go without a paycheck. So that absolutely stinks. basically almost it from yesterday. There was one more news item that I wanted to save for last. So the New Jersey Devils have decided to remove the interim tag from Tom Fitzgerald,

which I think is a good decision. I think he was doing a very nice job in New Jersey when he was the interim after Ray Shiro got fired. But for some reason, they're hiring Lindy Ruff to be their head coach. Really don't understand that I saw Rangers fans basically celebrating. You know it looks like it's a bad hire when all the Devils fans are like, what the hell and all the Rangers fans are like, hell yeah, you know, go, go take him. He absolutely stinks. He was tanking our defense.

It also, I had a really good tweet yesterday about this. I'll say it again on this podcast. I just, I absolutely, absolutely love when initial teams, they just continue to recycle through the same coaches year after year after year, including the very bad ones. And Demetri Villavovich, of course, he's just absolutely hilarious. He had one of the really good tweet about this too.

It sucks for NHL teams that there's only 35 to 40 people in the entire world that apparently are qualified to be a head coach at any given time. Yep, you really could not have sent that any better. I know Lindy Ruff had some success with the savers, though it kind of went really sour at the end. I know apparently some of the numbers when he was what the stars were okay, but still, I mean, I was looking at the underlying numbers because he was, I think, mostly coaching the defensemen of the Rangers.

Pretty, pretty, pretty bad. That's all I'm going to say. You guys want to look it up. Please do all the underlying number sites, including natural statric, which is, of course, my favorite. It was not good. So I really don't know why the devils are going through with this, especially when you have Peter Lobulet and Garard Galant out there.

Some Devils fans try to say, oh, yeah, you know, well, maybe they didn't want to come here, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, pay them. Just pay them the money, you know, give them $5 million per year or something like that. You know, Peter LaVuette, I think is a very, very good coach. I think Garard Galant is also one of the best coaches in hockey. It's a sham that he is still not the Vegas coach right now. I still have no idea why they decided to replace him with Peter DeVore up in Vegas.

I still will never honestly understand that one. I guess it was because Mark Andrefleur was having an absolutely terrible season. But I think that finally covers all the news from the last day or so, as we are now 17 minutes into this episode. We'll have one more commercial break. Then we'll have something small to end the episode. But I know today has not had a lot of Penguins content on it. I just wanted to catch you guys up with a lot of the news around the league in case you guys have missed it. you know, I've been out of the loop in MIA.

Maybe you've been traveling. Hell, I missed a lot of it yesterday. So, you know, some of this is pretty new to me today. Usually I'm always up on top of this shit. So I'm just glad I was able to read it all and just kind of digest it and just gives my thoughts on it on this podcast. And, you know, let me know what you guys think. You know, just tweet me at Hunter Hodeys, tweet the show's Twitter at LO underscore Penguins. We'll have a little more coming up right after this commercial break.

All right, welcome back just for a couple more minutes for today's episode. So apparently on TSN today, they, and, NHL released the hotel assignments. Apparently, the teams are not allowed to leave this bubble environment once the phase four starts. So one of the hotels is going to, in Toronto is called the Royal York. So the teams that will be there, the Carolina Hurricanes, the New York Islanders, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Fuller Panthers, the New York Rangers, and the Montreal Canadiens. So that means at Hotel X, the teams that will be staying there are the Boston Bruins,

the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Washington Capitals, the Philadelphia Flyers, and, of course, or Pittsburgh Penguins. So what can go wrong there with the penguins hanging out with four of their biggest rivals? That honestly, those four other teams are their four biggest rivals of the Eastern Conference, which is absolutely hysterical to me. So like I said, what could go wrong? And then I think there's also in the West, let me find that one. So the JW Marriott, which will host in Edmonton, will host the St. Louis Blues,

the Colorado Avalanche, the Vegas Golden Knights, the Dallas Stars, the Edmonton Oilers, and the Nashville Predators. And then at the hotel called the Sutton Place, it'll host the Vancouver Canucks, the Calgary Flames, the Winnipeg Jets, the Minnesota Wild, Arizona Coyotes, and the Chicago Blackhawks. So, I mean, I also think the J.W. Marriott won seems better because, you know, the Blues and the Avalanche get to quarantine together,

especially with the stars. So those are basically the three top teams from the Central. So, you know, what could go wrong there, too? So I loved that the NHL released, which teams are staying in what hotels. That's actually pretty cool to see. you know, which teams are going to be staying with who and whatnot and vice versa with the other hotels. But I think that might do it for today's episode. If there's no other this day in Pittsburgh Penguins history, it looks like there was honestly nothing today in Pittsburgh Penguins history.

So, yeah. But I'm not sure if I said this on the other episode this past week. We did have a birthday the other day for a penguin. Justin Schultz, I believe, turned 30. So happy birthday to him. He's going to probably make a nice load of cash this summer, not with the Penguins. As I said in the last episode, he will not be coming back. I do not think.

I think it would be foolish to bring him back, especially with the way he's been playing over the last couple years. He just can't seem to get out of this injury funk. And he just, his game has just not been the same since coming back. So, but still, happy birthday, Justin Schultz. We really hope you can find your 2016, 2017 form in this Stanley Cup playoffs. So you can go out and get more than the $5.5 million

that you are getting from the Penguins this season and maybe get up to $6 million per year from a team that is maybe needing a defenseman. But anyways, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. of the Locked on Penguins podcast. You know, we're getting closer, folks. The training camp should be starting on Monday. They'll be traveling to the Hub Cities from then in about two weeks. We're getting very, very close to potentially having hockey being played,

and we'll see if they are able to get through this entire tournament fully, because I'm still not sure at this way. I think, like I said, they're going to play, but are they going to get through the entire tournament without having to cancel it? That's the big trick. I'm still not sure yet. I'm kind of on the fence. I should be more excited than I currently am about this.

I think maybe it'll start to kick in as we get maybe a week before the tournament starts or when they're traveling to the Hub Cities, maybe that'll just kick it in. But like I said, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show is Twitter at LO underscore Penguins. And I will talk to you all tomorrow with another episode.