OverDrive - Duthie on the NHL CBA changes, the expansion to 84 games and the Navigator Cup against O-Dog

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

TSN Host James Duthie joined OverDrive to discuss the CBA changes for the NHL, the league expanding to 84 games, how the schedule length will impact games, the lead up to free agency, Navigator Cup in the golf match against O-Dog and more.

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The station that champions Canadian music. Loud, proud, and all yours. No passports required. Just press play. Tap into Made in Canada now on iHeartRadio.ca or the free iHeartRadio app. Here's James Duffy. How you doing JD? I'm good boys, excellent.

Well, are you excited for tomorrow as well? You and Brendan Gallagher taking on the O-Dog and Nasim Kadri, the Navigator Cup. How are you feeling about things? Very excited. Um, I mean, this is, I think my last appearance on the overdrive program this year, and I think what happens tomorrow with Coketown Woods will may decide if it's my last appearance ever, if I'll be banned from the program by one of your co-hosts because he, he doesn't like what happens out there. So what is the format?

Like, I want to know the format. Like let's just play golf like grown man straight match as i a year to your your talking about you can hear from the blacks and i on every whole i p off from a hundred yard and yards away well there's a little handicapping process i mean come on your your your is you do the same thing you like which is really Three elite athletes out there and and also oh and so I think it'll be handicapped appropriately No, yeah, I think it's I think it's a scramble. Oh two-man scramble. I don't know

I don't think there's a lot of shots involved Maybe maybe couple of shots or something But I mean the host the gym nance of the day is is Brian Hayes, so he probably knows more about it than I do. Yeah, no, I'm excited myself and Bob Weeks. Are you gonna say hello friends when you welcome everyone? I don't know, I don't think so. I don't know what I'm gonna do, man.

Well, JD, there's been a guy on the show who's playing tomorrow who's already setting the table that he's got the bad, what is it, the bad back, the bad. Si joint, I can't, Mike Hyro said, don't even think about hitting golf balls I said to Hayes Hayes might be hitting shots like tiger O'Neil. I would make fun of you, but I When we used to do these, you know the one Owen I did against Dubas and Jerry D that was a famous that we carried on for a couple of years afterwards

I don't think oh would play with me again so I had different partners but I had that going on and it was like it was embarrassing. You can't hit the ball! I had the massage gun in my, I had the massage gun in the roller in my cart and every hole I was riding around on the thing and it was I felt like I was 90 years old so I feel for you buddy take that take lots of that but I'm not trying to put a doubt the rivalry because the rivalry is intense and if I can promote something I don't think it's out there yet but somewhere I believe on the weekend a documentary is going up on YouTube but I think we'll show a portion of it on the free agent frenzy which

really goes deep into the history of how our friendship deteriorated into a rivalry and really gets to the roots of what went wrong and I think it'll be a fascinating view for everyone who's uh, you know, who's run the tab on Netflix and Crave. I love it Well, and again is this match that will be played tomorrow will be shown on TSM on Canada Day Do you guys have any idea what they have? They're shooting this like a PGA Tour event. Oh yeah, dude. There are dome trucks, dome is the production company that does our hockey games and our sporting events.

There are dome trucks that cope down woods out there laying cable right now. Yeah, that's right. It's a PGA Tour event. Like Marissa Roberto is Dottie Pepper. Marissa's walking the like. Definitely not worthy of any of this, but it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

And you know, it's the Navigator Cup. The real, I don't think the documentary gets into this, but the real root of the rivalry is that, you know, I was the McAlpine Lincoln spokesman for a long time and then O came in and started cutting my grass. And that's where my resentment started to grow. Okay. Well, we look forward to that. that again up on TSN's YouTube channel. All this kind of stuff can be found throughout TSN throughout the weekend and Canada Day. So it sounds like there will be a new CBA between the NHL and the NHLPA. I think what sticks out the most if you're a fan is that they're going to 84 games. It's ridiculous.

It is. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous. It is. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous. You want more games of watered down like, like watered down is a strong word. No, it's right. It's right. And wait till there's 34 teams. That's what I mean. You want 84 games now? They got the eight wrong. The eight should be seven. Yes, I agree. Well, LeBrun, run you know put out a tweet last week and he's been on this for a long time and you may have had him on which I think is probably his most liked tweet ever and I could not have agreed with him more on every every aspect of it about how the season if anything should be shorter

but the 82 games it should start in mid-september after three or four exhibition games and the Cubs should be out with a number with May in front of it. But it's never going to happen and I guarantee you under this new CBA, it won't happen. In fact, the cup will probably go later because – and this is partly our fault as fans – we want best on best hockey and they're committed now to going to the Olympics and having the World Cup every second year and so that is a you know a two and a half week window or whatever a three week window they need in the middle of the season which extends the season so we in our I don't say our lifetime but I would say and certainly in my career time we'll never see a time when the Cups handed

out you know the Cups going to be something June 20th every year now going forward, which is a shame to me, but it is what it is. Well, I want to pop in here, like them saying like 84 games, yes, it's going to be a short in preseason. Do you think guys play most preseason? Most veterans play two games. Right. They're still going to play two games in the preseason. Now you've got to add two more onto the body. Insane, man. And then you look at teams like Florida Panthers. They play 82 games. They play 20, whatever, in the playoffs.

And then you've got guys at the Four Nations face-off. This year it's the Olympics. They're going to add games in. And then you're going to expect to play. It's just too much. At some point, the top players are going to get, they're going to suffer most. Jamie, why didn't the players say, don't even think about asking us to play two more games? That's the point I don't understand. We're all really happy that there's going to be a new CBA because the two most miserable years of my career were the lockout years, in particular 0-4, 0-5, which was just, you know, we were on there every single

day with the insiders talking about nothing but money and caps and percentages. And I wanted to stick a pen in my eye every single day. And the half season one was almost as bad. And so I think, you know, I'll stand up and applaud the fact that they're going to get this done and we're not going to have any sort of turbulence. But I'm with O that I'm surprised that there wasn't pushback, especially from the best guys to say, Whoa, this, this is too much guys. This is, it's too much to add two games to play best on best that often,

even though I know the players want that, uh, to, to hand out the cup at the end of June. So it's essentially just, you know, two months off for the teams that go deep so that that would be my one surprise is that the top end players in the league that didn't push back on that a little bit but I guess it's all it's all revenue generated then you know the percentage of the revenue of the players get so that's that's probably why they didn't well exactly that's what it comes down to it's a gate-driven league and this is more money you know just there just two more games for every team and an extra.

I mean, my wife was asking me the other day about baseball. She said, why is baseball, you know, not a sports fan. Why is baseball on every day? And why do they play a hundred and like 162 games? And it is, if you take a step back from it, you do wrap your head around that. That they play basically every day, one day off for six months is nuts now baseball is nowhere near hockey It's not in the same world as hockey, you know hockey would probably be closer to football It's not football with the impact by any sense of the imagination

But hockey is also not basketball where there's yes, there's a lot of grind on there, but there's not the physical contact. So I think an 84 game season for a sport as physical as hockey is a bit out of proportion with everything else. Well, and as you pointed out, Olympics this year, then they're launching into the World Cup every year. So there will be international hockey every two years. Well, let's look at the best players. So I was going to say McDavid, but let's say Matthew Kachuk.

He is, and he told me last year that he plans for, and obviously rightfully so, he plans to be finished at the end of June every year. That's what he trains for, that's what he plans for, that's what he schedules everything around and he's been right three years in a row essentially. But so Matthew Kachuck will play in every best on best tournament and the Florida Panthers look like they're going nowhere. And so, you know, this guy, of course the injury this year took him out for a while, but there's no end in sight to him playing.

What are they playing the playoffs? Four times six, like, you know, around 24, 23 games plus 84 now is 107 or whatever. And then add the two weeks of best on best, 115 games or something like that every single year. Obviously, you won't go to the final necessarily every year, but at some point, that's got to take a huge toll on the body if it isn't already. Don't you think load management is coming then? Like I would think that they're like you start to look at players and go if a guy's little

nicked up it's like now always before it was like you can battle through something, you can play through something. Nowadays it would be like this guy's nicked up he's gonna shut him down for a week because you got to... Yeah I don't know if that's gonna be like addressed guy's nicked up, he's going to shut him down for a week because you got to eat. Yeah, I don't know if that's going to be addressed in the CBA, probably not. I know it's a problem in the NBA, which they're trying to address, but I think what will be is, yeah, it will be what you say, Noodles, is it won't be obvious load management, but the little pulls or something, the lower body injury where the guy's out two weeks where

he doesn't really have too much It's probably gonna happen more and more often Yeah, and again, we're still waiting on all the details and and Pierre LeBrun will join us later this afternoon And he'll have more but it sounds like you know they're gonna go to an 84 game regular season Shorter terms on contracts right it will drop by a year one year Yeah, yeah, so it you know if you have the, you could offer seven, and if he's a free agent, you can get six. Right now, it's eight and seven.

They're maybe attacking the long-term IR in the playoffs, which I do think that has been somewhat overshadowed by the state tax stuff, where it's state tax this, state tax that. Florida and Tampa and Vegas, they had a lot of money buried that allowed them to go out and acquire pieces at the trade deadline and then the players miraculously returned to game one of the playoffs. I don't know. I'll be interested to see if they address that, how that is fixed because that is a difficult one to fix.

And as much as I know we think they manipulated it to an extent, I don't think any of these injuries were fake, right? Matthew Kachuck had a hernia and a doctor and Mark Stone was legit hurt and was a Kucherov for a temp. I can't remember now the 12th. Yeah, Kucherov, yeah. But yeah, that'll be a really interesting one because that's a difficult one to address unless they just say that you can't get relief on those. Right?

Right, well that would be it. I mean ultimately, or you have to, you carry the cap into the playoffs. Right. And in other words, it's like, well this is what you have. So if you added a player, then that guy can't play. You know, or two other guys, then that guy can't play. Or two other guys have to go and can't play.

Like you... Right. Although if you take a step back, you're trying to have the best players playing in the playoffs, the product for the fans, and you wouldn't want a situation where you have to sit some $6 million guy and play some scrub. Yeah, it's complicated. It is. But yeah, maybe that's the most fair way to do it.

Maybe there's a buffer, like you can go 10% over the cap or something, but it can't be, you know, because Florida, I believe, by the cup final. 20 million? Yeah, it was like, they had like 93 million dollars where the players or something, the cap was like 82. You know, like they were way over the cap. So, you know, I could see that being addressed.

Anyway, we'll see. What are you thinking for Tuesday? We're kind of split. Are we expecting action or what? Well, I was saying to the boys this morning that it's a complete... It's a polar opposite show to Trade Center where Trade Center, first of all, it starts very slow for the first four hours and kind of builds toward the deadline, whereas free agent frenzy is the opposite.

Even though there's all these supposed rules about teams not talking, we know that they do and the insiders are usually breaking who's going where before we even get on the air at 11 a.m. Eastern. So when we come on at 11, even though the signing period is until 12, we'll probably have a ton of news right from 11 to 1.30 or 2. It'll be just jammed with stuff happening. And then sometimes it lulls down in the afternoon because most guys are deciding to sign at 3 o'clock. Why don't we just stop the show at 2 and say thanks for tuning in?

Are you going to get up and walk out? You have no idea my exit strategy. Like as soon as it starts getting into crappy trades, I'm out. This time's for real. I'll shake your hand and my ass is walking out. No, you have to stay and there's a reason you have to stay that I can't say on air right now. Yeah, I know what it is too. And you know what it is, and we're sworn to secrecy right now, but, and I'm not trying

to give people a lame tease where we're gonna do some skit at 5 o'clock, but everyone who's watched TSN for a long time needs to watch our show just before 5 o'clock on Canada Day is all I'm gonna say right now and and i mean that sincerely no no no goofy uh... song and dance routines with the boys i love it well watch between eleven a m and five and we're all going to be there we're all excited to hold the alley they wouldn't be able to get a big but if need be come right before five o'clock

and you know uh... by jd bring your a game tomorrow. Oh, get healthy. Like I said, I know, I know that, uh, our relationship is severed now, it's not broken and it probably will carry forward onto the golf course tomorrow. Is it a nine hole match? I wish you the best. I want you healthy out there. I want the, you know, I don't want anything tarnished by, you know, going down after three holes. I know that,ished by you know going down after three holes I know that you know leaf nation is going to be cheering for you and cadre

They all love oh, they all love cadre. You know Brennan Gallagher is the the the enemy from Montreal I'm the enemy within so we're underdogs, but we like that and I want you healthy because I want it to be legit All right, well put I like that sounded. Sounded very sincere too. I hope you reciprocate. The Navigator Tops is the most prestigious trophy in sport. At the end of the day, me with a quarter of a back, and I'm not trying to sound like a jerk, is better than Duthie. That's actually true. All right, well in that case, we'll see what comes of it tomorrow. We'll see you then. Thank you, James. I would expect him to have a comeback, but he's not wrong.

See you, JD. See you, boys. James Duffy. Seasoned gamer or just video game curious? This Week in Gaming is the podcast for you. We break down the latest in the world of video games from basics to beyond. The hottest gaming news, insight and industry leaders and more weekly.

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