OverDrive - McLennan on Hughes' future with the Wild, Tkachuk's return to Ottawa and the Maple Leafs' outlook

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

OverDrive Host Jamie McLennan joined OverDrive to discuss Quinn Hughes' future with the Wild, Cale Makar's incoming deal with the Avalanche, Brady Tkachuk's upcoming return to Ottawa and the hostility in the crowd, the Maple Leafs' roster entering the season, the outlook in Toronto and more.

Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Frankie, you're wearing black. I'm wearing Navy. I'm curious to see what noodles is going to bring to the table. Let's bring them in here.

He usually joins us around this time. Oh, yes, I love it. You called it. You said gray shirt. Frankie called it. I think that's the closest thing he has to Tommy. Bahama. That's basically pink for noodles. Basically a big shirt.

I love it. I was going to wear a pink shirt. I love it. But here's the thing, guys. I'm on holidays. I don't know how you guys, you know, treat your holidays. But when I go away on vacation, I number my shirts. This is number four.

And I have a rotation of eight shirts. And I bring them every year. You can go back 10 years in my pictures when I go to Italy or you name it, traveling, you can see on the fourth or fifth day, this shirt will be there. And it drives Steph nuts because she's like, all the pictures look the same. There you are with that shirt again. And I'm like, yeah, because this is my travel shirt. So I thought I would unpack this because I heard you guys chirping me about black.

So I'm like, okay, I've got to do something here. But that's what I did. So this is number four on the travel shirt. Do you know how helpful you would be at a crime scene? if you're in the background and they were trying to get the date right? They're like, what shirt does? Oh, he's got day four. They wouldn't be able to tell what year it was because I wear it every year on the,

and honest to God, when I take this off today, this goes back in the closet until next July. I don't wear it again until next July. Wouldn't that be amazing to a mistrial that came out later that you've worn it every year? So the lawyers are like, dude, that could have been from four years ago. You have no idea. There is. Like, I'm not lying. there is pictures of me in Italy 12 years ago with the same gray shirt on.

I love that so much. When people ask you like, hey, what makes goalies weird? This is the best example of what makes goalies weird. This guy has allocated shirts for a two-week stretch every single year, and he will wear him in the same sequential order. The thing is, too, is I do laundry on the road. So I pack light. Like, I pack for seven or eight days, even though we're gone for three.

weeks because I do laundry on the road. You just cycle it through. So that's how you travel light. You're efficient, and I like efficiency. You're efficient. Both you guys travel a lot. I saw Muddy this morning, Brian Moodrick, and Muddy sounds like he's ready to call some Habs games this year on many other things like he always does.

I wouldn't say it's hockey weather right now, clearly. We've got a beautiful week of weather going on here. But, you know, this seems to happen every year. Noodles, we always talk about it. You talk about how crazy it's going to be at the draft, or crazy going to be July 1. And for the most part, it was this year. It was great.

Tons of activity. And there's always a little bit of carryover for a week or two. And that applied with, you know, the offer sheet and the celebrini signing, the Bidard signing, et cetera. But then it just shuts down. And that's kind of the spot we're in right now. And I don't really have a read on what is going to break the league back open. I don't know if you think it's going to be Hughes.

or McCar? Is it a Larkin deal? Is it the Cottergochier signing? Like, what's next on the docket for you? I had a beer with the GM last week, and he said, this is the dog days. They're all, you know, everyone was in Edmonton doing the Hulankan tournament there, keeping an eye on the prospects for the future. And then the next 10 days, quiet, and then after that, it ramps back up going, kids, keep in mind, there's still some really good players out there that don't have deals. So it's almost like GMs are waiting them.

out going, well, you're asking for $3 million on July 1st, can I get you for two or one on a one-year deal and fill out my roster here? I think we are going to see if it's, if you laid it out, Hayes, free agency and then some trickle factor afterwards, we're going to see leading up to training camp more action here. It's going to, and it might take one of those things, whether it's this huge thing. I'm worried for many. I think he's gone, man. I don't know.

I don't know how you guys. feel about it. Yeah, that's quiet around there. I feel like if he wants to push the envelope here and ask for $20 million, he can do it. And what are they going to do? They're going to say no? They traded so much to get him. He could essentially call his shot.

If he wants to do a three-year deal, line it up with Jack and say, we'll shop ourselves around after that. And in the meantime, I'll make $60 million. Well, I should backtrack. I don't think he's 100% gone, but it's got a little bit of a smell to it where it's like the longer it goes, I don't think that's better for the organization. Again, now they are pretty tight to the best, but he seemed to like it there. I just don't know what you're waiting on.

And the same thing with McCar, like that should just be a blank check. You slide it over to the agent and say, what does he want to fill it out at? But the longer this goes, you know how it is. Like, do you imagine if that was McDavid, Matthews, like a Canadian, you know, a Canadian player, like a Canadian team player, because it's south of the border, because those markets are a little bit quieter, it's not as noisy around them. You're right. And I've had it, you know, suggested to me that maybe McCar and Hughes are playing chicken right now

because they both feel they should make about the same, which I think is reasonable. It's fair. You know, I think you can make the case for both. McCar is certainly going to Colorado and saying, look what I've done for you. I want a cop. I want Norris because I'm, you know, arguably your best player right there with McKinnon. You got to pay me as the highest paid player in the last. league or the highest paid defenseman.

But Hughes equally could go to Minnesota and say, I don't have the same track record, but you're more desperate. You know I might leave. No one thinks McCar is leaving Colorado. So it's not like McCar is going to play that card. And I don't know if there's collusion with agents. It would just, you don't want McCar signing for 18 and then Hughes for 21. And they're like, wait a minute.

I wonder if that's what's going on here. There's a scenario where they're not sure. which guy should go first. But, yeah, the Hughes stuff, that changes a lot because Bill Garron, I would think, plays it out for the year. I would think you've already paid the premium to get them. Yeah, yeah. You know, you believe in your team like you should.

They were a great team last year. Yeah. Do you just let it play out and let them walk? Or if he gives you a definitive answer, I'm not signing with you. Do you think Minnesota could trade them? You might have to. Like, the only thing that we have for somewhat recency bias, or at least a little bit of a track record is,

look at the Stanley Cup champions. They pivoted. Rantanin was like, hey, I'm not going to extend. Okay, move on. You have to have that, you know, the ability to adjust on the fly. And I think Minnesota's different than Carolina than Toronto, than Evanton, you name it.

But I still, you know, I think Garen has another ace up his sleeve. Now, he might say to Hughes, I want to get you done, and I'm trading for large. like we're going to have a hell of a team here and that's that's possible but keep in mind there's only enough money to go around like you you've got to i know the cap's going up but you've got to take care of some of these players and and with mccar i think that's just a matter of time he might be waiting exactly he might be saying what does hughes get and put another million on top of it and and and i'll sign type of but i you could almost you could almost look at it this way

if you're if you're mccar you almost want hughes to go first and what you want him to do is say I'm going to take advantage of Minnesota the same way Carill Capri soft did. I'm going to extract as much as I possibly can. And then whatever we thought McCar was going to leave on the table. Let's say McCar, I don't know, if you looked at him and said, McCar's going to be generous to Colorado,

he's going to take $16 million, right? And Hughes all of a sudden signs for like $19.5. McCar could go to Colorado and say, I want 17 and a half, and it looks like I'm being generous, and I made myself another million bucks per year and I maintain a good, you know, it looks good optically on me. Like, I would want Hughes to really push the envelope first if I was McCar.

I agree. The one thing that I keep thinking, and I don't know how you guys feel about it, but do you feel like these are going to be short? Like, I don't see either one of these guys going eight years. Like, I think it's like... The world seems to get done now, right? It seems to change very soon. Like September 1st, it changes.

Yeah, I do believe, you're right. So it changes. I don't even think it can be eight. I think it goes to seven. But I think at the end of the day, you might see three-year deals. You might see what McDavid did, that type of stuff. It's like, okay, I'll give you my year plus an extra two type of thing to see what the landscape looks like. Because I think we are going to see, this is kind of the muddy middle right now.

You're seeing salaries escalate. Like I, you know, and I know you're going to call me a goalie hugger. But like you look at this Leo Carlson making 18. And Connor, Hellebuck's making 8. At what point, like, what's the next goalie that's going to be a $15, $16, $17 million, you know, goaltender? Because we balk when somebody gets five or six. So this is kind of... A goalie plays 45 games a year now.

Well, you're right. You're right. That's a fair comment. But I think what we're going to see is the escalating salaries, it's going to take a few years to cycle through where your top guys are going to be at those salaries. and, you know, unless you're locked in, unless you're, I think, what does Timmy Stutzla have left? He's got five, five years left at like eight, you know? Those guys, dude, they got those deals done.

Sanderson. The Suzuki's and the Stutzlers and the Sanderson's and the Coffields, like those two markets in particular. Like, they're, those guys are going to be 100-point players, and there's going to be players in the league making 10, 12, 14 million more dollars than them. Yeah. Tim Stutzel. We'll assign until 2031, making 8.3 million. million. The Sanderson one is wild. Like that, there is not, there is not eight more defensemen in the NHL that you would take on

your team before Jake Sanderson. And he's going to make $8 million till 2032. Think about that for a second. That's going to feel like $4 million in a few years. Yeah, it will. Now, now the caveat to all of this is you got to have the success. Montreal had the success last year, you know, creeping up, starting to do some things. Ottawa, what are they going to do this year?

I know Kachuk leaving, Eklan coming in, I don't say there's questions around them, but I think they just need to play hockey. I think they get rid of the noise there and just play hockey. Well, like Brady rolls through town pretty quickly. I know.

Which I think is helpful for them. You know, because, again, the Leafs didn't fall apart because of the anticipation of Marner coming to Toronto. But Vegas didn't. get here until late January, I believe it was, where Brady and the Panthers are in town on October 21st. So, like, three weeks into the season, he's there.

You get over it. Like, you're going to have to gut through it right then. And it's going to be crazy. Like, we played the clip earlier from their podcast, and he's excited. Like, of course he is. What's he going to not be excited and pretend that he's not a panther? Like, I get it. I understand why he's jacked up.

But you know that market very well. that is going to be, I can't think of a, like, that's, I don't think it'll be John Tavarous levels because I just don't think Ottawa was like New York. Like New Yorkers are just a different breed and they were just waiting to get them. You know, like I don't anticipate it to that level, but it'll blow the marner return out the water. Of course. Like, it won't even be close to that one. That one was kind of like conflicting a little bit in the building. Well, it's different, too, because there was a trade involved as opposed to a free agent.

That's the difference. And, you know, players move on and all that. But this was literally a trade. Like, I'm done here. We're going to move on. You can get some assets for me. And they did. But at the end of the day, like, that's a trade compared to a free agency.

So it'll get noisy. But I think you look at it. Like, I literally, and I'm not lying, last week started to look at my lists because, there was a lot of movement in this offseason. So you're going, oh, that guy plays for, you forget that San Jose made some moves, you know, nurse and Truba coming in. That kind of piqued my interest because the Salabrini deal, you're looking out, okay, what are they spending, what have they got for a team?

And so you start to look at some lists and look at teams and go, hey, that team's looking all right, might need to add X, Y, and Z. I think that's where it comes back to the original comment, Brian, is we are going to see that third wave of the summer, I think, probably within a week or two. of this guy, you know, signs a deal? Or do you think, Frankie, it's going to be PTOs? Like, do you think you see, you know, some, that Roslovicks and guys? Now, remember what happened with Roslubik?

He signed for like a million or a million half with Evanton, went in and had a good season. Now Toronto signs it. But you're going to see players like that who are good players, maybe either signed PTOs or low one-year deals. Well, now's the time usually, there's a player that says, I'm just going on a PTO. Don't have a deal.

I'm going to go to camp and I'll earn it. Right? And sometimes there's something like cooked already because the team doesn't have the salary cap to actually sign the player today. So they got to buy some time, put someone on waivers. But there's just not a lot of preseason games for a true PTO to go in there and like have enough runway. Guys would go in and play six of the eight games or six of six games and earn a contract.

It's different this year. You kind of, you got to know what you. you have before training camp. It's a totally different landscape. Yeah, it's good point. I mean, the days of a kind of unknown players showing up and having a great camp and making the team. I don't know if it's possible anymore. With the salary cap being what it is, obviously, but you mentioned it. There'd be guys who would play six preseason games, you know, and have like 12 points and they'd make the team. Yeah. Where's it that? Brandon Perlini. Remember that guy would score like eight goals in the

preseason? He'd make the team out of the gate. And then they're like, realize they can't defend or something like that. Generally, eventually comes back to Earth. Yeah, like a lot of times that does happen. But, you know, you mentioned Rosavik there. You talk about a guy who just is not like slipping through the cracks of, you know, chatter and conversation. I'm not suggesting that he deserves, you know, a ton of buzz. But the Leafs brought in so many new pieces.

And a lot of them, like fundamental changes. Like, Bobrowski first. foremost. Radish, McKenna, new coach. You know, you were talking earlier, Frankie, about Sizzins and Bluger and do Hame. But then Roslovick is here too as a guy that likely is going to get top six minutes. And I was looking at their schedule last night for a couple of different reasons, one of which I'll mention to you guys in a moment. I'm curious your take on it. But I was just, you know, kind of studying the least schedule. They start with back-to-back Montreal Islanders at home, then Ottawa on the Saturday night, and then Nashville.

So four games at home spread out over. They could go out west, don't they? Well, that's what I was going to get to, noodles. They go through Western Canada and through the Colorado, Utah, Vegas trip. Like, by the end of October, they're through both of them. And then they go through California before the end of December, I think it is. Like, basically their last 40 games, I looked it up, the last 40 or 41 games. They have three games that aren't in the Eastern time zone, and they're all in the central.

They go to Winnipeg, St. Louis, and Nashville on different trips. If they can survive the first 45 games, stay healthy, Bob plays well, Stolars plays well, because we're going to have a lot of travel and back-to-back and stuff. It's going to challenge them early. But if you can get to January 10th and you're in a playoff spot or close to it, they are set up to be very comfortable down the stretch. Yeah, it's funny you say that. I'll come back to Roslavik in a second because I want to get to the schedule.

I was looking at that same thing too because I was going through scheduling. And do you remember it was last year, which is crazy because they didn't make the playoffs and then they intentionally started, you know, guys were dropping off and all of that. But they hadn't done any travel by like January, by I think the Olympic break. It was like they hadn't even gone out west once or barely. They're in Chicago or like it's the exact opposite this year. It's like they do all their travel early on and then come home and stay in the Eastern time zone and travel within. Yes, it sets up if they're in a good spot to be favorable for them.

So they have to make, hey, early or at least survive the initial pushes of those ugly travel because travel does catch up to you. And that's where you've got to be healthy to get through it. I agree. I think it is ugly for them early, but if they can, that might also, you think about it, Brian. I think it's smart noodles. I think it's smart that they have all the travel early on because of this team specifically. Think about all the new faces they have. Right?

Like the whole bottom six is all new guys. There's new guys on the back end. There's a new goalie. If you're at home for the first three months of the season, you're not doing the team dinners. You're not on the bus. You're not on the plane. Like you kind of stay in your own little cocoon a little bit. But you get on the road all of a sudden it's like, hey, we're doing a team dinner here, we're doing this there, we're doing a golf trip there.

Everyone gets to know each other. You build a little bit of that. So by the time you get home, like everyone's, everyone's, it's a bigger group. It's not as, I don't know, it's not as individualized. I think it's good based on how many different faces there are this year. I agree. That's the one thing that I was going to point out. And it's so true.

Getting on the road, that's where people say, hey, we can do some team bonding. Well, there's no better way to do team bonding on a team that has, how many new faces do you think they're going to have when it's all said and done? 12? Yeah, I mean, I think 8 to 10 for sure. Yeah, like for sure. Depending. I mean, are we all in the belief, like, is Morgan Riley on this team to start the season?

I would think so at this point, Noodles. I mean, what is changing between now and the start of the year? I mean, a lot of teams have built their team. You know, I guess it's possible. possible there's a trade on the table that the Leafs don't want to accept right now that they're willing to accept in a month, you know? Yeah. Like you mentioned players contract negotiations.

Yeah. There's a chance it's the opposite way where a team Riley's willing to go to is like throwing a second round pick, you know, or whatever, we'll do it. But we're not, you know, like that is possible. But, you know, Radish and Andre on defense, Bob and Nett. There's going to be six new forwards at least, I think. You know, like that's like nine, there's nine new guys on this team when it's all said. Eight or nine, like eight, like we're talking the 18 guys dressing every night.

So half your roster. Half your roster is turned over. And especially if you have Bob starting. And then like you say, Radish, Andre, you know. That's a lot, man. Like that's a lot. Like I didn't even mention Nick Paul when I was doing my spiel. There's another guy.

Well, he's playing. Like, I could see, depending, let's look at that. You know, Joe's laid out that bottom. You know, I don't know if Lorenz makes it in or Joshua, but Blugher's playing. Du Hame's playing. Maybe they puts McEwen in because they want some toughness. Maybe not. Maybe he doesn't start with the team.

But, you know, I look at it. I think there's at least eight or nine new faces right away. and then, you know, you got a new coach, you got a lot to work with. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. Like, if it's bordering on too much, it's understandable why it was, you know, last year went the way it went. Yeah.

And they had money and they had guys coming off the books in certain areas. And, you know, they had to fill out a roster. But it's a ton of movement. It had to be done, though. Or else there was no chance you were going to be able to compete with Florida and Buffalo and Montreal and Ottawa. Like there's, if they made, if they made three changes, maybe right back where they were last year.

That's, you had to, you had to roll the dice and, and make, like, big sweeping changes across the board. Yeah, and it was clear, and it is clear with the roster that they built, is their, their intention is to make it back to the playoffs, like to make it back to, like, it's not, hey, we're blowing it up. Now, you could still do, you could still infuse younger players, McKenna, Cowell. Guys like that, you can still infuse as you have guys pushing through.

Maybe already plays games because, you know, the goaltenders are, you know, Bob will be 37. Stollars, we don't know, he's had health issues the last couple of years. I think he'll be healthy and be fine. But at the end of the day, we'll see some young guys that potentially push through. But it's clear with that roster, they're like, we wanted to change our bottom six, we wanted to add to our group, and we want to go right back with a healthy group. try and make the playoffs and push up against the Atlantic. Big time.

Big time. Well, we'll see. We still got about a month until they're in town and in camp, and there will be more activity between now and Labor Day. But summer's flying. It always does. And noodles, great seeing you. We'll see you again soon on a daily basis.

Yeah, looking forward to it. We look forward to you packing away shirt number four. This is going like right back in the closet. That goes right into the Frank Costanza cruisewear closet. But I'm telling you, this is, I don't know why people will get so frustrated with that. Like, that's what vacations for you. You're not supposed to put a show on in vacation. No, totally.

Yeah, send a vibe out of relaxation. I love that vibe. Exactly. All right, buddy. Good seeing you. Chat soon. There he is. Jamie Noodles McLennan.

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