Puck Soup - Alex Faust, The Marchand Outrage

Episode Date: May 2, 2019

The boys welcome Alex Faust, voice of the LA Kings and potential new 'Jeopardy' host, about a great many things. Plus, they look at the controversy over Brad Marchand's punch, the rolling Hurricanes, debate diving, look at weird NHL Awards nominations, examine the Vegas GM moves, discuss the women's hockey boycott and remember the legacy of Jason Botchford. Sponsored by Leesa, The Athletic and Seat Geek!

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I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. Yeah, that's about in the middle, right? You're in Puck Soup. Boys, it's Carolina's world, and we're just living in it. I have to say that the more I think about these playoffs, the more I respect the fact that the true lunatics among us are finally being rewarded. Let's take us back to the beginning of the season. when Tom Dundon, Maverick owner, guy who is like, I don't know, I feel like buying a football league this week, is the owner of the Hurricanes.

He hires Rod Brindamore as his head coach. Everybody's like, Rod Brindamore can't coach a hockey team. What are you doing? And then everybody's like, oh, shit, wait, the owner is going to literally be sitting in his office to help him coach the team. And Dundon's like, I'm going to hire Brindamore. I'm sorry, I'm going to hire Brindamore because I feel like maybe we have the right team, but we just need someone to get a, I'm playing harder. Everybody's like, oh, Jesus Christ.

And then they start doing the wacky celebrations, to watch the chagrin of at least two people in the hockey media. And now, lo and behold, they are on the precipice of making the conference final through all of this nonsense. And I like the fact that much like the Columbus Blue Jackets have been rewarded for going all in and their craziness, that the Tom Dundon level of crazy has also been rewarded this season. Yeah, no, it's, uh, it. It's incredible, really. Like, because even at the start of the year,

they were pretty bad because they couldn't get a save and they couldn't put the puck in the net. And it was, you were saying, well, it's the same old hurricanes. And then they, you know, they start playing Curtis McElhaney and Peter Morazek. And those guys are the ones where it's like, oh, yeah, we're just like going to be great forever now. There's no stopping it. Oh, sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Of course.

They're a great story. Like they are, this is, this has been fun. I don't know that, like, I've, there's a part of me that's rooting for the Blue Jackets because I want other teams to see them being aggressive in terms of trading and copy that. I'm not sure what you copy about the Carolina Hurricanes. Like, I'm not sure if the Edmonton Oilers are out there right now going, what if we screwed up our GM search really, really badly and ended up having to hire, hire the old guy. that we didn't want because nobody else would take us.

And yeah, it's so, yeah, I mean, I don't know. You're right. People are going to go, oh, yeah, it's because they rediscovered their love of the game and the fun and the celebrations are the reason that they, that they're here. But it's really more that they've been a pretty good team for years that was done in by goaltending. And they rolled the dice on a couple of veterans this year. And it finally came through.

And that's how goaltending works. And I, you know, there's still a part of me that feels like at some point in this playoff run, we're all going to be like, oh, right, it's Peter Moresik and Curtis McElhaney. And, you know, they're going to run into a Bobrovsky or a Rask or whoever in the final. And it's going to be lopsided. But, you know, this is, this is what the hurricanes do. They, you know, they don't make the playoffs, but when they do, they go deep. So this is, yeah, they go deep.

Yeah, they go deep. This is, this is not bad. If you're a Hurricanes fan, you're kind of, you've, you've, you've, you've, you've, You've paid your dues, so yeah, enjoy it. And there's more than a few of us jumping on the bandwagon along the way. Here are the lessons to be learned, I think. I think the two lessons I pull from this team are one. Don't trade your fucking defenseman unless you're getting a defenseman back.

I mean, their blue line, the vultures have been circling that team's blue line for the last like, what, two years? And they said, no, we're not trading Slaven. We're not trading Pepetia. We're not trading any of these guys. We're hanging on to them. That's the strength of the team. And now look what's happened. It's the strength of the team.

And I think that's really impressive. The other thing, too, is that as much as I myself ridiculed the idea of Rod the bod being a head coach, he ain't exactly a tactician. Everybody that I used to play with this guy that I've talked to is like, no, I didn't think Rod Brindamore would be a head coach. I thought he'd be like a, you know, a guy running a gym at this point, right? Strength and conditioning. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's something to be said for knowing your roster and maybe, you know, finding that guy that is sort of been in the lead. at least somewhat recently can speak the language they trust. I mean, there is... You couldn't find two more diametrically opposed guys than fucking Bill Peters and Rod Brindamore

and it turns out that the Rod Brindamore guy is what this team needed after the Bill Peters guy and I think that's a really interesting little learning curve. I'm not saying that you're always going to get that, but when you see guys like Craig Barrube and Rod Brindamore, guys that when they play and I looked at them and I'm not like,

these are not the next Scotty Bowman, there's something to be said for maybe the communication aspect of the head coaching position that sometimes maybe gets underrated when these GMs are looking to hire the next guy. Yeah, I can't imagine why Bill Peters just didn't think to say to his team, maybe we could start putting the puck in the net and keeping it out at the league average. Like, if we just do that, we'll be fine. Like, there's definitely, you know, it really worked out for Peters in Calgary, so maybe he figured it out over the summer.

But there is something to be said for like, I'm not even a big Bill Peters fan, but like, you know, he also didn't exactly inherit fucking Dominic Hashic, right? You know what I mean? And they really still weren't scoring. They weren't. As much as you'd probably expect them to

until they went out and got Nino Nita writer for nothing. Oh, Jesus. So, you know, and, you know, I didn't, I didn't even think in the first two games in the series, they looked particularly great. There were stretches where you were like, oh, right, like, this is the Hurricanes team from the regular season where they can just look like they, you know, set up a power play at five-on-five. Right. But last night, as we're recording this, I don't know when this comes out, the entire second and third period, it was like, basically when they gave up the tie-ing goal, they were like, Like, that's it. The game's over now.

Yeah. It was crazy. No, and the thing with Brindemore is I've been, for years, I've been railing against this idea of teams that go out and hire the former player to be coach or to be GM, like this idea that out of everyone that you could talk to for a job, that it just happens to be a popular former star player. Exactly, yeah. And, you know, up to the extent that even Carolina, yeah,

I had Ron Francis as the GM, and that didn't work. And, you know, you look around it. Well, he built this entire team, I mean. Yeah. And now you've got that and you're going, maybe it did work. You got Rod Brindamore. They could still end up playing the Colorado Avalanche with Joe Sackick running the team. Like, maybe we're going to go back to that, the golden era of just higher your former star player.

It's worked so well in Edmonton. Like, why would we do it? You know, Phil Housley was such a success in Buffalo. Yeah, hell yeah. How could you not? Rob Blake is killing it in L.A. Ron Hector in Philadelphia,

you go down the list, but maybe, like I was, I was always criticizing this, and yet I loved it whenever it happened, and I was starting to get worried that teams were catching on

to the fact that maybe you should hire the best candidate and not just one that your fans have posters of hanging in their childhood bedroom, but maybe not. Maybe we're flipping back, flipping the switch. Rod Brindamore is going to,

uh, is going to save us all from, uh, teams making good hiring decisions. if you can believe this, the Red Wings hired Steve Eisenman. That's so crazy. Who's that guy ever got? I couldn't be happier.

Carolina fans are way too polite right now for me. I feel like they should be the ones dunking on everybody doing what the Islanders fans tried to do in the first round. By the way, interesting flex for the Islanders fans who in the first round were like, yo, nobody gave us any respect. Nobody told us how good we really were. And now they're like, you know what? Good season, good effort. We certainly weren't good enough to win two rounds. But, hey, what are you going to do?

We were great, except then we weren't. There's a little bit of schizophrenia right now amongst our friends. I'm going to take your word for it because I haven't heard from an Islanders fan in like, I just assumed that everyone in that geographic area had lost access to the internet. Oh, I got it pretty good last night when I retweeted. the pictures of or like you know screenshots of laner guaranteeing a win in game three with with the uh the storm surge with the basketball dunk yep i got in trouble and that's really good that's that's that's a that's a great deployment of storm surge iconography to make your point sir

i just want to applaud that like i said i got yelled at so i took it down because people were being We're digging into Google images of me from like six, seven years ago and stuff like that. And it's just like, I don't need this. No, it's it's schizophrenia for them. And that's understandable. It's quite a shock when you sweep the penguins and then maybe get swept by Carolina in the next round. But I will say this. I will say this though.

I support the theory amongst my Islanders fan brethren. And keep in mind that when I was a child, my father. father was an Islander's fan. He had a cartoon from the New York Daily News on our wood paneled basement wall celebrating their four cup dynasty. It was only I that converted him into being a Devils fan through my dad, can we bond over something please? Incessant whining.

So I say this to my Islander brothers and sisters. I firmly believe that this series would have gone completely differently had you been able to play the games at Nassau and not Barclays. I know, Come on. I've written about how that's bullshit. No, you watch those two Penguins games. You see what happened in that asbestos-filled haunted house.

Come on, Greg. I'm telling you, different series, if they don't play it in Bartley's, Barclays is cursed. It wasn't built for hockey. They have to park a fucking car near the side of the rink to make up for the dead space in the goddamn arena because it wasn't built for hockey. These two first games played at Nassau, at least were 2-1 right now in this series.

That's what I say. Greg. I'm going to need you to grow up here. This is insane, and you know it's insane. It's not insane. It's cosmic. Okay, sure. What were you going to say about the...

You were going to say something before I go up for me. No, I was going to say, like, I don't even think the Islanders... Like I said, I don't think they played badly. Lainer, until that giveaway in game three, like, really hadn't made a mistake that you could fault him for at all. Like, he's given up five high-danger goals in the entire playoff, and three of them more last night. So, like, I don't even think the Islanders are playing badly.

They're just, they, and stop me if you've heard this before, ran into a team with an inexplicably hot previously, just okay goalie. Hmm. Yeah, crazy how that works. It does vaguely. Let me ask you this, because, like, Lainer's been good in this series. He's not the problem, but would you make a goaltending switch if you're the Islanders? No.

Oh, man, that's a tough one. Unless you're going to get Lainer to be your first line right wing. Like, I don't see how that changes with the real problem is for the team. Here's the two arguments for it. One that they mentioned on Hockey Night Canada last night where they said that Lainer all season long, the most games in a row we ever started were four. And now he's up to like eight. Now they had the big break in between.

So it's not like he's necessarily tired. But this was a team that went back and forth kind of all year long. The other thing is I've always felt like any time, If I'm a coach, unless I've got Hasick or Broder or whoever is my goalie, I would almost always make a goalie switch when it's 3-0. Because when it's 3-0, even if you win the game, you're still kind of feeling like, ah, we just, you know, we're still down 3-0.

Whereas if you make the goalie switch, then something's new. You've made a change, you've given the players a reason to think things are different now. And yeah, you might still be down 3-1 in the series, but you're 1-0 under this new plan. And, you know, I do think psychology kind of matters here. So I would think about it, even though I don't think remotely that Robin Leonard is the problem. I agree with that, too. And I think the other part of the psychology that you see sometimes is that when guys get scratched, you know, there can sometimes be that sort of coalescing of the locker room to be like, oh, shit, man, this is wrong.

Or, oh, shit, man. You know, we cost this guy a start or something. Like, there's also that sort of other underlying psychology that goes on when guys don't have their, And you know what? Barry Trots could walk in there and go, guys, I've switched goalies before when my team was down. Last year I was down to nothing. I switched goalies and it worked out pretty well. So, you know, now he was. Switching goalies to the perennial all-star. I switched back to the, like, the Vesena candidate from the backup that for some reason I was, but he can leave that part out and just hope nobody Googles it and just roll with that. Thomas Christ walks out of the room and he's like, thanks a lot, man. Yeah, no pressure. You do, you do have the plot. plausible deniability if you're trots to say, well, look, he had that dumbass giveaway last night. You know, and like, I don't necessarily think it's all his fault or anything like that. But, like, if you're the coach, you can definitely sell it to your team that way of like I have, or to yourself maybe.

But I don't know. I just, I do something different. Maybe whether it's mixing the lines or whatever, just give the team something to sink their teeth into that if they do win. He shook it up by putting Matt Barzal on the first power. play unit a couple of games ago and it worked out. They finally scored a goal. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of those things where they're, it's risk aversion, right? Like, you can't expect it. Like the NHL, that's like the name of the game. And so I can't expect him to do it. And I don't think it would necessarily be a good idea. I don't know that it would be a bad idea either.

But like, to your point about, well, you know, he hasn't started more than four games in a row. When's the last time Grice sat for this long. That's a good point, too. That's true, too. And you're right. I mean, you can make the switch, and he goes in there and gives up a bad goal on the first shot, and everyone goes, you idiot, why would you ever put this guy in? Well, that, and it seems like once you're down a goal to the Carolina Hurricanes, lights

out, game. Everybody pack their shit and go home. Yeah, it's incredible. I was just thinking about this discussion about Barry Trots. I was thinking about if I was a head coach of any team, how many stories I would just make up to inspire my team. Like, if they were in the situation, I would just walk into the room and make up the most fucking fabulous story about being down 3-0 in a series with some rando junior team I invent

out of whole cloth. You just say it was like an early 2000 Predators team. Nobody in that locker room was alive. And everybody's going to believe, oh yeah, I guess you would have been down 3-0 to to the St. Louis Blues in 2002. that makes a lot of sense. And then he's like, and then David Legwan stood up on one good leg and he said, all you got to do is make your mark in one game and then the rest is history.

Mike Dunham stood on his head, 58 saves. He was the backup, you know, all that shit. I would just make up a lot of shit. Sick relatives, like everything. Just to inspire these fuckers and never have to answer for it until they inevitably ask me about my sick relative. of it. I'm just like, who? Oh, one last thing on this series. Your thoughts on the Brock Nelson head pat on Curtis McElhaney in game three.

If Brad Marshand did it, people would have murdered him, like climbed over the glass and murdered him. Because the brain is in the head. Because of Brock Nelson, but because it's Brock Nelson, like, we get to see it for what it is. Very funny. I don't know. I don't find this stuff. I get very old school and annoyed when people are just intentional. being pricks for no reason other than to try to get punched in the head, but it's fine.

It's no different to me than snowing the goalie or doing a face wash and a scrub. Like you're trying, you know, I get that it's like, it's one thing to get under the other team's skin by being better than them and beating them. It's another thing by to just go out and be a prick and hope the referee isn't going to have the guts to call it and try to crank the temperature up that way. Yeah, I don't love it. I didn't think it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, but also, Big picture, who really cares.

But let me ask you this, Sean. What if the goalie was Kujo? Then would a head pat or a boop on the snoop be appropriate, considering it's a canine? That would be slightly better, yes. That would, we would take that. Thank you. Or Felix the cat. You could have gone with that.

That lead goalie, too. Right, right. The Maple Leafs pet-based goalies. Amiel Francis. Any, any... You don't pat eagles on the head, so I don't know if Ed Belfour would have worked, but Buddy LaRoc. Wait a second. Why is every leaf goalie have a...

Maybe that's the problem with the leaves. We haven't given Freddie Anderson like a... Because it's fucking Zootopia between the pipes every... Are we not calling Frederick Anderson the Great Dane? Like, are we not doing that? Because we might need to start. Great Dane, Eagle, Bunny, Cat, Coojo. Or at least convert Freddie Gotee to goal tender.

We could do that too. The goat. He'd be just as effective. Is a sieve an animal? Because that was Vezatosco. Yes, I don't think so. That was something else. Columbus Blue Jackets and Boston Bruins are playing a series,

which means that we're talking about Brad Marshad. All right, let's get into it. I'll hold by tongue whilst both of you tell me what you thought of the punch to the head heard round the world in game two against Scott Harrington. I'm going to reiterate and say, if anybody besides Brad Marshand does it, we're not talking about it. Yeah, I mean, I didn't like it.

I didn't like it either. It's a garbage play. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's not, it's one thing, you know, punch a guy in a scrum. He, he, he did it, you know, he, he literally snuck up behind a guy's back, did it in such a way that it was designed not to be seen by the officials and then, and then ran away. Uh, uh, so I didn't like it. Uh, I understand why people didn't like it. I, it absolutely should have been a penalty. It maybe should have been a fine, but it, this is not a suspension. and the Department of Player Safety is not, they've got enough to worry about without trying to litigate miscalls.

It's not their job to suspend a guy just because the referees didn't see something. There is still such a thing in the NHL as a play that is a bad play and shouldn't happen and shouldn't be allowed and should be a penalty, but doesn't need to be a suspension. Right, yeah. If that happens in a game and the refs see it, it's two minutes and we're done talking about it. Yes.

You know, like nobody, nobody looks. And we all rip on Brad Marshall for taking a stupid penalty when his team needed him out there. Yeah, exactly. You know, that would have, which is we probably should be doing anyways because it should have been a penalty. Right. But like, you know, it also really scanned to me as the kind of shit you see when a guy's frustrated that he hasn't fucking scored in his teams getting its ass kicked all over the ice and that kind of thing. Like, this is a not uncommon play in the NHL. Yeah. And it's, and like, you know, I know that we are all. thankfully, kind of finally in this mode where we're thinking about head injuries and concussions and all of that.

And that's good. And cheap shot kind of sucker punches to the back of a guy's head should be the sort of thing that bother us. But at the same time, part of me hates to say this because I usually cringe when I hear people say it. But I think in this case it's true. If he was trying to hurt him, that play would have looked different. That wasn't an attempt to knock Scott. He was being a dick. He was being a dick.

a stick. I mean, it would have involved a stick if you're trying to hurt. Or it would have involved a lot more of a windup, like, than that little jab. And I'm saying little jab. And if you hit me that hard, I would probably not wake up for a week. But that's because I'm not an NHL player. And, uh, and, and I think the fact that even Scott Harrington didn't seem all that bothered by it, you know, again, I would not mind if the NHL said, we're going to send a message here and, and we're going to, we're going to find this guy. But I also kind of understand why they didn't even want to open that. Am I mistaken in thinking that guys have been publicly warned for this kind of thing before?

Like diving, I know they publicly will call out guys, but has like... Diving is a special case because they have that list that they keep where the first one is top secret and then the second one you get... The other piece of this... Right, but like Brad Marchand is not... It falls outside the realm of top secret. Like everybody knows what Brad Marchand is. He kind of was publicly warned by Betman during his testimony. Exactly.

Which is that was the stupid part. That was the part where, you know, that's Gary Bettman screwing up, not the Department of Player Safety, where he says, oh, yeah, he was warned not to do it. I mean, if you're told if you do it again, you get suspended, then that means it's suspension worthy. So why wasn't he suspended this time? Yeah. It's very dumb. Yeah. So, but it's, and I guess we will get into like, Gary Betman's testifying in front of a bunch of politicians.

I think we can allow him to maybe weasel his way out of a few honest answers. I'm really surprised and pleased that we're all kind of on the same page here, especially Ryan's note that if the on-ice officials had done their job, then this becomes a non-issue, pretty much. I mean, not a non-issue because it's still Marshanned and people would have been like, it's CTE or whatever, because he hit him in the back of the head with his glove. but it wouldn't be as much of an issue. It wouldn't be seen as a miscarriage of justice.

It would have been addressed within the context of the game, at least a little bit. A couple things here. First off, there are two bits of hypocrisy I hate in all of the discussions about this this week. The first is that the politics were so laid bare by a lot of the people going after Marchand. The number of times I saw Nazim Codry's name mentioned within the context of Marchand's actions was nauseating. the two acts couldn't be any more different. And I think it was also a lot of sort of concussion politicking happening as well because this was a very high profile player with a rap sheet

and people knew it would get attention for their politics. I don't understand the idea that if you have the kind of rap sheet that Marchand has, you lose the right to take a minor penalty. Because that's exactly, I mean, that's essentially what this is. It's a minor penalty. Minor penalty for roughing. And it's like, it's the same thing. I mean, the Tom Wilson stuff was always like what he would lay

borderline hit, everybody was up in arms about it. And I can understand that. But there's no, like, there's no discernible, like, trajectory to Marchand's suspensions. He's been suspended for tilt-whirling guys, for hitting guys to head with a stick, for doing a lot of other stuff. There's not, like, one thing you can point to and say, like, oh, if he does X again,

he's fucked. And so, we're all kind of looking for whatever he does to be the next big suspension and trying to elevate it. And this certainly isn't it. Ain't it, Chief? Yeah. And finally, yeah, go ahead. Well, I mean, I'll just, like, related to that, and I know a lot of people maybe don't, don't agree with this. I actually think the Department of Player Safety does this right, which is they don't look at your record when they're deciding whether a play is worthy of a suspension or a fine or supplemental discipline. If they decide that it is, then they look at your record when they decide to suspend you.

And I wouldn't have a problem with the league, you know, if he had, if it had been a slightly different play, if the league decides, yeah, we are going to suspend you. I don't have a problem with the league saying, because it's, you know, I wouldn't have a problem with the league saying, because of who it is, you're going to get two games or three games instead of one because you keep doing stuff like this. But you don't, you know, like I feel like a lot of fans don't understand this. Your track record doesn't mean that like you say, a minor penalty gets elevated to a suspension because you've been down this road before. It's not until they decide it's a suspension that then they look at the full track record. And I honestly think that's the right way to do it. I would say they do understand that, but they just don't care.

They think it should be reversed that if you're a repeat offender, no matter what you do, that should be the threshold that gets you into in front of player's safety for a hearing. I think they do understand that they just think that, you know, for a guy like Marchand, it shouldn't apply. The other thing I'll say is to go back to what Ryan said as well. What Marchand did in this game pales in comparison to what Braden Shen did to Dustin Bufflin in the first round with like a few rabbit punches in a scrum. It pales in comparison to what Zadano Chara did to John Tavaris in game seven, the Leafs Brue. Ruins series. And I can't listen, if you're going to be one of these people that is going to look at this play and say

this is the kind of garbage we need to get out of this game, you can't just be the person who says it when Brad Marchand does it, or Tom Wilson does it, or someone you don't like, does it? You've got to be fucking consistent about it, and it drives mental. Well, it's that, it's like we've all said, like this

was just a minor, and it's like getting mad about a guy like throwing an empty beer can on the ground next to a toxic waste dump. It's like, yeah, I mean, like, he shouldn't do that. But, you know, there were bigger problems here than this two-minute minor. And to go, like, to go all Leafs Homer on you, if you had no problem.

If you had no problem with Zadano Chera punching John Tavares in the face during a scrum, while holding the butt end of a stick, then, you know, this is the same. kind of play. It's bad. You shouldn't do it. It should be two minutes. But that's it. That's all it needs to be. You don't need to suspend everyone who does something kind of stupid and mean during the playoffs because the playoffs are designed to be stupid and mean. Right. And my thing too is like, I want all this stuff to be, like, I want any contact to the head to be suspension worthy, whether it's intentional, not intentional, whatever. It's just so guys stop doing it. And but like that's not the way the rules are set up.

And so you can't go well in this one specific case because we know what Brad Marchand is like, et cetera. Like you can't, you can't just throw the book at this one guy for this minor penalty that would be called a minor penalty in any other situation, any other part of any other game if the refs saw it. And that's the other thing too, is that like it does come back to what the precedents are in player safety.

And, you know, the hewing cry from people all the time about consistency and, you know, what's all we want out of these guys since it's consistency. Well, this kind of play never gets suspended. And like, if you really want consistency, then you don't want them to arbitrarily suspend for a play that doesn't warrant one just because it involves a guy that you don't like. It's just, it was a really, really rough kind of 48 hours in Twitter world,

seeing some very rational people say some very irrational things just because it's Marchand involved. And I'm not saying he's a choir boy, for God's sakes. But man, he was being an asshole on purpose. Pick your spots. But pick your spot. Like, don't. It's, to borrow a phrase from our magafriends, Ryan, it's Brad Barshan derangement syndrome, wherein anything that's even close to being an aggrievance by Brad Barshan gets elevated to being a federal crime.

Yeah. Well, I mean, he shouldn't have obstructed justice like that, right? Right. He should not have. You know, I read A.G. Barr's summary of this play, and it turns out that Brad Barshad was simply trying to adjust his collar for him, which I thought was very... Look, he was mad, and that means it's not illegal. Well, you're the president. It can't be illegal. Is that the second time we referenced Frost Nixon in two weeks?

That's right. That's... It's... See, Frost Nixon will be the Puck's 2.0's version of the Dark Night. It'll just be what we reference on a weekly basis. A movie I've seen once. I wish I could do a Michael Sheen impression from Frost Nixon, but I don't think I can. I find Michael Sheen to be a great actor, by the way. You've got a week to work on it.

You know something, boys. Speaking of consistency, I'm not getting any better at my ad transitions. I went back to the well. Let's see. We still have got a fantastic sponsor, and that is The Athletic. It's a direct-to-consumer subscription service serving sports fans in North America. And the model is simple. There are no ads, no pop-ups, no autoplay videos.

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athletic to subscribe to the athletic, because obviously you should, if you are subscribing to the athletic and you want to, I don't know, re-up, that's a pretty handy link to use, my friends. If in fact you'd like to utilize it. I thought Ryan really unlocked something there for us this week. Good job, Ryan. Yeah, you're welcome, the athletic. A chief marketing officer of Pucksview, Ryan Lambert. So Dallas and St. Louis, 2-2, I thought that was a pretty predictable finish in game four, the fact that Dallas is going to come roaring back, because this looks like it's got seven written all over it.

But let's talk about the triple Lindy of Issa Lindell in game three of the series. What the hell is that? He got cross-checked by a big strong guy, stood up, got cross-checked by a big strong guy again, and then stood up again and got cross-checked by the same big strong guy. And we're only mad at the guy who fell down. Is that right? Am I getting the argument correct? Because he faked the fall and didn't even fake it well. He looked ridiculous. He embarrassed himself. He embarrassed the officials. This stuff is garbage. We shouldn't be cross-checking. I'm all for giving guys penalties for this stuff after the whistle. I'm not saying cross-checking is okay. But I hate seeing stuff like this. I really do. and I'm glad he got one embellishment penalty.

I would have been fine if he got three, and I think we should all look at the clip and point and laugh. And if this is what comes up when you search this guy's name for the next few years, I'm fine with that because I really just can't stand seeing. You know, I get that they don't call a lot in the playoffs. You get frustrated. I get it. Sometimes, yeah, you're going to try to sell a call,

but they're selling a call and then they're sticking your arms out in the air like your Superman and flopping to the ice three times in a row with a big smile on your face. It's garbage. You don't have to like cross-checking to say that that's crap and it shouldn't. We're allowed to point and laugh at it and we should. I just like the idea of a series turning on a triple minor for diving. Good. Pretty unprecedented, I think.

I'm kind of halfway between you guys. I think that I've always I always find diving to be in a interesting tactical move in both soccer and hockey I think it could be incredibly effective I don't think you're doing your job if you're not trying to draw penalties but I do have a problem with people who do it poorly it's like going to see a bad stand-up comedian right like you you appreciate the craft of a Ryan Kessler more when you see an Esselandell try to draw penalty by flop it around the way he did. So I find it to be personally offensive like Sean does

when I see someone diving poorly, but when you see someone who is practiced in the arts of drawing a penalty through a dive, your Marchands, your Kesslers, chef's kiss. Yeah, I'm not I'm not chefs kissing any of it, but if if you have to do it, then yeah, at least put some effort. People who are falling down don't stick their arms up in the air on the way down. So, you know, I don't have some commitment to your craft. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I just, I can't, you know, it's the thing of, if the ref's not going to call the first three cross-checks, then they're embarrassing themselves. Like, the idea of, oh, you're embarrassing the refs.

Like, who gives a shit? The refs. The refs do. So I hope he enjoys not getting any close calls for the next little while because the refs, the fucking obviously, it's the playoffs. They're not going to call anything anyway. There was a cross-checking call on that play. He took a power play for his team off the board.

So, you know, they did call that now. But would they have called the cross-checking if he hadn't dove? I don't know. They wouldn't have. So it ends up being the same. He didn't gain anything, you know? Like you don't, what did you gain by that? Do you guys like the idea that's put forth by a lot of people, including Kerry Frazier,

of if you get whistled for embellishment, it erases the initial infraction. I don't like that because I do think there are times where, you know, you can have a cross check or a hold or something where there can be a penalty and an embellishment. And I think just law of unintended consequences, if you made that the rule, refs would just call even fewer of these things than they already do. But I really do wish that refs didn't use this as a safety net as often as they do. Where it's, you know, I mean, I can't even remember the last time I saw an embellishment call that didn't come with a penalty call attached to it. Right.

I think I would like to see the league lean on them more often to just call one, but I get why they're reluctant to do that. And I think if you say that one wipes out the other, all you're going to do then is just say goodbye to refs calling this at all. Yeah, in college hockey, they've had this rule forever. And it's such a joke how often refs call a dive and an infraction. that like people call it the hockey east special where you will never in your life see a straight up dive and call unless a guy like, you know, just does a huge prat fall like he's Wiley Coyote or something. And it's that much of a joke that, yeah, there's a literal name for it.

And if you go to two games in a weekend, you will almost certainly see one. Like that's how epidemic the calling both is. And then, of course, you get all the morons who are like, how could it be a penalty for a dive and a cross check or a trip or whatever? And it's like, well, because the guy tripped him. And then, like, tripping's the one where I can see that it shouldn't, maybe it shouldn't be possible because he either fell because you were tripped or you fell on your own. But most of the other ones.

Like, like, let's say, let's say you, you know, you get a stick in your skates and then you jump like you just got shot in the back, right? Like, that's, that's, that's. Yeah, maybe. I mean, you see it a decent amount, enough that you can go, okay, you know, that maybe should be both. But I just think, like, if you don't call the initial one, you're only encouraging guys to dive more. The only thing I don't, I mean, I'm not in favor. I think it's two separate infractions, right? But I do think that if you are somebody who feels that diving is an epidemic in the sport, that's probably the only way to get rid of it.

It's not going to be through incremental fines and public shaming who gives a shaming. who gives a shit. It's going to be through costing your team even more than you already cost them when you get caught for diving. But I don't think it's an epidemic. But I, you know what, that you might be right, but I'm just going to disagree. I do think more public shaming would actually help here because I'm tired of, you know, even you watch a broadcast and half the time you see something like this and the announcers played up like it was a smart play. Like, oh, look at him. Look, he's drawing the penalty. What a great. I can tell you, man, I watch a lot of NFL.

If in the NFL you had a wide receiver who every time he was touched, dramatically fell down with his arms flailing and rolled around on the ground, that guy would be humiliated by every announcer, every highlight show, they would show that over and over until that guy was so embarrassed that he never did it again. And in hockey, we kind of do this, oh yeah, it's a smart play. You're trying to draw penalty. I'd like to, you know, I don't know if it would solve the problem. I'm sure it wouldn't because you're right.

There's a lot of incentive to do this stuff anyways. But we need more public shame on this stuff. I'm glad they publish the list. I'm glad they put guys' names out there. It is embarrassing. And fans hate it, by the way. This is, you know, you're trying to sell the game. Fans hate this stuff.

So, yeah, let's embarrass the guys who are trying to embarrass everyone else. In the NFL, they're called quarterbacks. And also, I think to further your suggestion, may have we have them all wear a scarlet D on their jersey. for a diver after their fifth offense. What say you to that? I mean, I don't know. I'm just, every other sport,

I don't know about soccer, I don't follow the sport. Every other sport has no problem pointing and laughing at these guys, and we seem kind of reluctant to do it in hockey. I think we need to do more of it. There you go. All right, we're going to take a dive now into the career of Alex Faust. You know Alex Lambert, right? I do, yeah, college hockey guy.

So he's a college hockey. Please don't with that. And he is also the voice of the Los Angeles Kings replacing a legend to do so. And he also got in some reps during the playoffs for NBC as well. And he's also, and we get into this, the guy who Alex Trebek randomly anointed to become the next host of Jeopardy when he's no longer the host, which is a real thing that happened. And so we get into all of that with Alex. He was a fun guest. I talked to him in Vegas recently, and here's Alex Faust.

All right, Alex, we're in the bowels of Team Mobile Arena as we do this. The bowels of a beautiful arena. What do you think about hockey in Vegas, by the way? Oh, boy. I'm a question out first. You know what? I like many. We're skeptical.

You were? No, yeah. You know what? Because you never know what it's going to be like with an expansion franchise that this is their first professional sports team. Yeah. How are they going to react? What kind of traditions are they going to? to start. And I think for many it still rubs people the wrong way that, oh, they went to the

final in their first year. But I got to tell you, even before that, these fans love this team. Yeah. You know, you go back to the tragedy that happened here right before the home opener. And there was an immediate bond made. And you remember, back in the preseason before that year, they were still packing them in the practice facility. That's nothing new. A lot of people are looking and oh man fans are still going to the practices there it was happening in the preseason yeah of that year so they've they've figured it out long before how to have an emotional connection with the team and i think part of it too is that there are a lot of real people in the stands yeah not a lot of corporation well that was what they did smart with the tickets right like instead of going to the corporations

first they went to the right this the most impressive thing about this fan base that happened so quickly because it usually takes a long time i lived in in virginia for a while and there when you were there, every business tried to get some level of redskins rub. Like some retired guy would be on the name of your car dealership or whatever. I was driving through Vegas the other day and I saw a car dealership with a giant electronic billboard that said, welcome Max for Patchy Ready. And it's just like every single business here, whether it's the strip or over in Summerlin or wherever, like wants to get that like golden nights rub.

For God's sake, I was walking through the Venetian last night. They had a waterfall with a Knight's logo projected on it and shit. Like it's insane. Statue of Liberty. Outside New York and New York. He still has the gigantic jersey. The Caesar's statue as well. It's so cool.

And I can't figure that out if that's just like, if that's a Vegas team thing or if that's a we want to get with the winners thing. Aren't you worried? Because listen, the only skeptical thing I have about this franchise right now is like what happens when they have those three shit years in a row. You know what happens then? That's a fascinating question. Yeah.

Because just like their first year where they come out of the gate and they go to the final, nobody knows what it's going to be like when a team that had success off the bat falls off a little bit. Right. I mean, working for the LA Kings, we're kind of going through that right now. Oh, we're bad for a long, long time. Yeah. And then we win twice, and then what happens when we're bad again?

And how do we regroup there? So it's like, I could see that being a struggle here. But at the same time, they have that foundation, which is great. And I would imagine the same thing's going to happen in Seattle. Maybe not to the same extent, but. No one's going to be as dumb as they were with the expansion drafts. You would hope. You would hope.

I would hope, and I think so. Like, you need another Dale Talon to, like, to, like, facilitate the success of your franchise. And I don't know if that's going to be that because now he's got Quenville there to be like, Dale, don't do this trade, you dummy. Yeah, but everybody's got contracts to protect them and go, oh, we can't let this guy go. Yeah, we're going to fill the right. Like, that's what happened the first time. Oh, we got this big game when we can't have him go away.

Let's just, I guess we can deal with having those two guys leave. Let me ask you about the Kings. Do you think that they fired Stevens so quickly because of the way the LA sports landscape changed? No. Like, you don't think so because you had the Lakers, the Dodgers, everything. at the time the Rams were killing it. Like, it seemed like from the outside they made that hasty decision

because they're like, if we don't do something now, we're going to be completely off the radar. It would have been a convenient excuse. Yeah. And I wouldn't blame them if they went in that direction. But I think it was they were promised a certain style of play that didn't happen. Right.

Because... What would they mean, like winning? Well, yes. But even beyond that, like they've been trying to go, oh, we've got to be faster. We got to be more skilled, like all the right things to say. And then it didn't happen the first month of the season. It was flat, really flat.

And Rob Blake came out and said, you know, the end of season, MediaVille. But they saw it in training camp that something's off here. And if it was apparent to them that early, and if it was apparent to them that, this isn't getting any better, I was a little bit surprised how early in the season they did it. Because usually you give a guy at least Thanksgiving or even up to Christmas to figure it out. And I think in hindsight, the Willie de Jardin move, was more of just to stop you to get through the season. It was like a tourniquet.

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody looked at that and said, well, that's the long-term solution. Yeah. And now they had that in place with Todd McClotland. What do you think they do? Like, I mean, like, so coming into the season, everybody's like, okay, they're slow. Yeah.

And they're old. Yeah. And they're still slow and old. But now they have a coach that's there, in theory, to not facilitate some less level of rebuild, but to take the veterans that are on the team and take whatever is around them contend again. Like, what is the expectation now going forward? Are they going to take a step back for a few years?

I don't know about a few. It feels like a bridge year, for sure. Yeah. Like, it feels like when you're setting expectations to begin the year, a lot of teams would love to say, oh, yeah, you know, we feel we can just, you know, maybe get in the playoffs and make a run. Like, okay, I'm going to set my baseline as a little below that, right? If the right things come together and if Jonathan Quick bounces back, again, the same

things that were true last summer of if you believe that the core of this King's team has another run in them. All right. Well, sure. Then they'll squeak into playoffs and who knows what happens then. But in all reality, it's a bridge year, not only with contracts that they've got to figure out. But there are kids in the pipeline. It's pretty decently stocked.

I want to say there are no high-end guys per se in the pipeline. But they've got a fair amount of just, it's a stocked cupboard. Right. As opposed to one guy, you know, and that's why all the fans were super upset about it. The draft lottery is that you could have had that one guy. And then the question is, can Rob, B Lomarty and package a bunch of B-level prospects together and get like good veteran guys. By the way, I hope quick bounces back too, but I hope when he lands, he doesn't strain his

groin. Well, because that's really the issue here. And that's, you know what? If, if there's a strategy of foot. I'd trade him. Like, he doesn't, you can trade it. But think about it. Yeah.

Think about it. If there's a strategy to try to move him, how hard is it right now to do that when he had such a bad year, when he had another lower body injury? Like, it's difficult now to do that. So even if in your dream scenario, you want to, is it easy enough to do that? And there's actually a legitimate debate because I was in the camp of, well, if you can, it makes sense to, right? Yeah. But now there's a legitimate debate of, well, do you maybe deal Jack Campbell and try to get something back?

Because he's the hot goalie right now, and you don't know what you're going to have. You call up Calgary tomorrow and like, listen, dummies. Mike Smith is terrible. And Ridditch had one good year, he's an anomaly. If you want to win the playoffs, get the boy that wins in the playoffs. That's what you do. Nick Tomorrow, that's what you do. You feel for them because you're like Mike Smith, for a couple of games look like he had all figured out.

No, for one game, everybody was like, here's Tim Thomas Fardue, and it wasn't ever going to be like that. No, they didn't lose. They couldn't score. So, I mean, that's not what they lost. That was not the only thing going on there. But, yeah, it didn't help. All right. Let's talk about you.

So I had the question of who your influences are, but I know you're from Brooklyn, so I imagine it's a bunch of people that I grew up listening to too. Probably. So who did you like? And don't say John Sterling. Well, I was a Yankees fan, but. Yeah, it's so funny that the New York Yankees for a team that's so steeped in tradition, I mean, Red Barber, one of the, if not the greatest baseball broadcaster the whole time. I know Vince Kelly, you know, in a league of his own, but Red Barber was phenomenal.

And he wrote a great book that still resonates today about the challenges of being a play-by-play guy. So, like, the Pantheon and historic broadcasters with the Yankees, and yet they rotate through a lot of guys during the season, which I always found strange. If you go... If you go back 30 years, as a Mets fan, we have no advantages over the Yankees to the point where we lost a World Series of the Yankees.

But I would say that the Mets have had better broadcasters than the Yankees have during those 30 years. I love Gary Cohen. Gary Cohen. So good. On the TV side, you had Ralph Kiner for so many years. I forget who the play-by-play guys was during those years. And Howie Rose on radio?

Oh, my gosh. The Mets were stopped. than that's had better broadcasters. Howie's great. With no disrespect to Rosito who's sort of, you know, your local crazy guy. Holy cow!

Yeah! The greatest baseball broadcaster too if you're on a meatloaf album. So wait, so who was your guy? Was it Gary Cohen? You know what? It wasn't so much Gary on baseball. Like I pulled from a lot of the national guys.

You know, listening to baseball growing up, you pull from those guys. Even to a certain extent, Joe Buck, with the understated way that he called games that I know has rubbed people wrong over the years but I think people look back now and say

well it wasn't the worst thing at the time There's been a reckoning on Joe Buck Joe Buck is now as the gold standard and if you go back four years ago people were chitting all over Joe Buck all the time Joe Buck and you know what speaking of baseball guys Bob Costas and I know he can rub people the wrong way

because he interjects a lot of Rub NBC the wrong way well personal opinions but you know what for a baseball purist and for someone who loves the game isn't afraid to maybe interject an opinion every now and again just a little bit of personality right he called the game in such a spectacular fashion it's a shame that that NBC never had a larger swath of baseball rights right because he was done calling the world series in 2000 and that's

two decades ago this is fascinating to me because as a writer I mean clearly you pull from everywhere yeah and has my good friend Jeff Merrick used to say uh greatness borrows and genius steals uh rare is the writer that will ever admit that when they turn a phrase it's with someone else's writing in mind. When you're broadcasting, are there times when you're making a call and you're like, oh, this is, this is my, this is my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, uh, I'm, I pull from a lot of different guys around the league.

Like, I'll watch different guys and just say, oh, that sounded good. Maybe I'll borrow that turn of phrase. Or, um, you know, I'll, I'll hear a story that they tell in the way that they do it and say, okay, okay, that's a really good way of doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, for, for,

most broadcasters, they'll tell you that you can't copy somebody. Right. But if you try to do some, if you do something that works and you can spin it in your own way, well, it becomes yours, right? Yeah. So everybody's borrowed from everybody else on down the line, but. How did you fall into hockey? College.

Yeah? Like doing college games? Doing college games. And really, I was a late bloomer into the sport, if you want to put it that way, because I wasn't like a huge hockey fan growing up. Well, I mean, the Islanders weren't in Brooklyn yet. Well, they weren't in Brooklyn. New Jersey had wrapped up, I guess, there's.

their dynasty in the late 90s early odds. And suck all the fun of the hockey. Rangers, well, that's a different problem. Rangers were bad for a while. So, like, okay, it wasn't really a great time to be a hockey fan in New York. So I was a baseball fan growing up. But I really got into it in college. And I remember my first college game, Northeastern was playing North Dakota.

And I just love the energy from the fans, even though we're getting smoked three-nothing. They're still into it and they're still, you know, singing and chanting the whole time. And I just fell in love with the sport. I'm wrong, but you also broadcast with tennis be your other sport? Yeah, I guess now. So you couldn't find two different, more different sports than these two sports.

Like, that is to me the biggest dichotomy. Like a sport where it's constant action where you're almost like a radio broadcaster on TV. And then tennis. Yeah, you don't talk. You let the analysts talk. Right. It's like, if you think about it,

it's really easy to do. You just let the other guy talk a little bit. And I'll just say, well, it's 4-3, on-serve in the third set. And it's the sport where you're, you, you pause the most for crowd noise and ambient noise. And in that sense, you can borrow some from hockey, right? Because in a big moment, you just let it go.

Right. You just lay out and let the moment take care of itself. And in tennis, it's such a balance. And I'm still kind of learning the nuances of it, but I got to do Labor Cup last year in Chicago. And it was just so intense for the whole thing. I barely talked. Yeah.

I barely talked. I had a couple stories here or there, but I didn't have to use them. Just the moment took care of itself. It's great. We were on DM the other day, we were talking about the U.S. Open. I never really understood tennis. I mean, I understood tennis.

Like when I was a kid, I remember watching the Connors run in the U.S. Open. And at the time, I'm like, wow, this is a really great story. It didn't occur to me until I started going to the U.S. Open. It was great because it was in New York. And that crowd was there. And, you know, I can watch Wimbledon and I can watch the French Open, whatever. But, like, there's just a certain specific energy to the U.S. Open that I really It's my favorite event.

Yeah. My favorite event to cover. I haven't been to a Stanley Cup final. So once I get there, that'll be my next, that'll be my favorite. But I've been going to the U.S. Open since I was a kid. Yeah. So to be able to work it now is just a total dream come true.

When you were a kid, would you go to all of the day? Oh, yeah. Get the grounds pass every time. I'm a snob. I just go at night. There's energy at Arthur Ash for, for like, specific matches late in the tournament. Yeah. But early on, go during the day, get a grounds pass, roam around.

I mean, now it's, they've invested like, half billion dollars and making the grounds so much better. I remember there are a lot of kind of grimy courts, the outer courts, but now every stadium is great over there. I love it. And the thing I found most fascinating about it is that, like, depending on when you get the tickets, I mean, if you just want to go, you can go. Yeah, oh, yeah.

And then if you want to get the tickets to the primo stuff, like, as long as you're early on it, it's not, like, painfully financially crippling to go. You can walk in with a grounds pass and see who's playing on Ash and say, oh, man, I kind of want to see Serena Williams. played. He got over the ticket office and they're, yeah, we've got seats. We'll upgrade you. But it does seem like it's a constant battle between the judges and the crowd. Like the crowd is always too hyped and the judges have to be pricks of them. Yeah, but that's tennis in general. And you know what? In New York, this was the first tournament that I feel got, there's a relationship

between the players and the crowd to where like, if you're a player, you can whip them into a frenzy if you want. James Blake years ago had had the crowd in the palm was hand, Andre Agassi for years, Pete Sampras for years. Like, of course the Americans are going to be able to do that. But they'll pick their favorite and they'll roll with them. Like, for years, Novak Djokovic has been a villain there. Oh, yeah. And they love Roger Federer.

Yeah. But that's just, that's the crowd there. Yeah. Speaking of villains. So I forgot to ask this before. What's your relationship with Dowdy like? I mean, not any, like, more of a relationship than any other player. Even though you see him like a lot, it seems like a guy.

It's, since I'm relatively new, I think for a while, for all the guys that took a while. I was like, who's this guy? You're not Bob Miller. Yeah, why is he walking around Locker? Why is he on the plane? What's he doing here? So they figured it out after a while. How do you break through that, by the way?

Because you are basically replacing a legend. Just hanging around and not, you know, stepping out of bounds, not asking dumb questions at media availability. Because you're like a new guy in the team, basically. Yeah, yeah. And I still feel like through two years in, like, I'm finally starting to shed that new guy. I'm the new Bob, really. But like with Drew, you know, towards. the end of the year it's like oh what's up fausty and that just it's totally validating for me of like

oh i stayed out of the way i did all the right things and now he knows my name he put a y after your name so that means he's not part of the team i'm part of the team i'm part of the same thing from from copi at the end of uh the first season of uh what's up fausty and like it was a that was a stressful season because they're right on the bubble the whole year we clinch a spot and you know it's i think that finally all right you got through us it got through the season with us that year and even this year like the fact that i'm just around what was the bad year What was the best advice that Bob gave you, taking over the kid? The best advice that he gave, especially when meeting fans, is not just, oh, hey, you know, great to meet you and then walk away.

It's actually ask, what's your name? What do you do? Yeah. How long you've been a Kings fan for? Yeah. Just little simple questions. And regardless of whether, you know, you're actually trying to get to know this person, it makes them feel. feel like, hey, you know, he cares.

And to an extent, like, all the Kings fans who have been so kind to me over the last two years, like, I feel responsibility to give that back to them. It's a real simple trick, and not enough people know it. Because for me, for a long time, it was weird because, like, I'm not necessarily, like, famous. But people know me, right? American Wyshinsky was a thing. It was. It was.

And people knew me from Puck to Adi and stuff. But, like, when people would flag me down, it was always kind of awkward for me to become, like, why? Why would you want to? And then finally it became a thing of, oh, okay, because you appreciate my work. And then it's like, then it comes to the next thing, which is that, okay, if you appreciate my work and you take the time to say, hey, the least I can do is engage you in a conversation and maybe you learn a thing or two about you. You know what? And for me. And not be up my own asshole.

But here's a perfect example. When I was working at ESPN and doing a lot of college troops with Fox as well, I would literally parachute in, do the game, go home. Yeah. No interaction with anybody. None. But now that you're with a team, you're part of their extended family. So it's like it's a much different relationship, even with your television crew, like even with the production crew, that you're with them 82 games out of the year. Like, we had an awful year.

It was miserable to why. If you were watching every single game, more power to you because it was not fun. You're all the shit together. Right. Yeah. But, okay, we got third together. And now we're going to go through it together next year. Hopefully it'll be better.

But if it's not, okay, we'll enjoy each other's company for six months out of the year. And I think that's the relationship that builds up over time. And it's why fans have such a connection to broadcasters with teams. I didn't quite understand that coming into this role of, you know, why do you care about the guy who's calling the game? He's just calling the game, right? But it's their companion for six months out of the year. How long you've been in LA for now? Two years now.

Okay, so what is the misconception of the ballet that you had as a snobby New Yorker that has falling off the way I said. Well, you can get bagels in pizza in L.A. You can't get the same pizza in L.A. You can't get the same. It's fine. It's fine. All right. I'll be my own snobbish self when I go back to New York.

You know, you get a couple of beers. This is the reason why they call a California Pizza Kitchen is to warn you that it's not pizza. That's your answer. You find the hole in the wall place with a guy who grew up 20 years in Brooklyn. He came over here. That's the real key. The key is you've got to find the transplant.

Like if there's a guy that I know is from the city, that is in, like, I'm in the Bay Area now. Like, I need to find a place where the guys from the city, he knows how to make a bagel, and I can trust them. Exactly. The other misconception, traffic in L.A. is not worse than anywhere else. Traffic in the Bay Area is worse than both.

Traffic in the Bay Area is worse than both. Well, that's just because they did a bunch of... They had one way in and one way out, one way north and south. A bunch of assholes designed that city. Exactly. Well, yeah, they didn't know what they were doing. I'm sorry, sorry. Massholes.

I live there for nine years. I'm a proud almost mass hole. Yeah. You're a young. You're a Yankee fan. Yeah, but I love that. city. I loved being through the hearty winters and doing it. No.

Yeah. As a New Yorker there was a little bit weird. All right. Finally, we'll get to the thing that you always get asked about, which is the Jeopardy thing. For those that don't know, Alex was called out by Alex Trebek as being the potential new host of Jeopardy one day and TMZ picked it up and this is where you were thrust into the

zeitgeist. The thing I've read about this in a few places and the thing I can't figure out quite yet, that I don't know if you maybe talked about it or not, but how the fuck did Alex Trebek know you? He doesn't, from what I gather, he just like watching King's hockey and, oh, he's well-spoken, you know, and when asked, yeah, sure, he could do a good job. And then everybody picked it up, oh, he picked the replacement for Jeopardy and, oh, my gosh. So he's, like, a secret admirer.

Kind of, I guess. He's writing your name on his trapper keeper. And then, like, he just gets asked about Jeopardy and he just pulls you. I guess. And you've never found out why this is? No. He's not like a friend of your dad or something. Like, it's just so random.

Yeah. But, you know what, to my understanding, he's a Leifes fan, watches a lot of hockey. Watches it because they're based out there, right? We're there every single night. So I guess if you want to watch hockey and you don't have the package on your TV, watch Kings games. So I guess that's that. I never figured out why it happened.

I'm flattered by it. I remain flattered by it. When that happened, like, what was your reaction to life at that point? It was just like this. That was truly my welcome to L.A. moment. Right. when I see my face splashed on Good Morning America the very next day. And I was in New York at the time.

I was with my family. And I kept getting texts of like, you got to tune in. You were just on the Today Show. What? Like, I felt like I was living an episode of like the Truman Show or something. Are you a Jeopardy fan? Yeah, I'll watch. I'm not like a hardcore I need to watch.

I don't even know the name of the guy who's like one a million dollars. I keep seeing the ads on TV. Right. I've got a job that happens at night so I can't watch every single time. So you're not even Charlie Bucket who likes chocolate before he takes over the chocolate factory. Just like a casual jeopardy. Yeah, exactly. Isn't everybody? But that's fine. I think that's what the show needs. Exactly. The show needs somebody

who's not a super fan. Like, I don't want Ken Jennings to be the host to Jeopardy. Well, and you know what? It amazed me like out of that whole scenario, like, so many people were like, pick me, pick me, pick me. And I'm the I'm the asshole that's basically like, hey, if the phone rings, sure, but it's not. Like, I got a pretty good job right now. Look it.

You know, I'm sure that's, there's a lot of books written about how to pick up women that have the same approach. You know, I believe the 40-year-old virgin had the same theory. Just playing it super casual. If you want to use that, sure. Is this something you'd ever want? Have you ever fancied yourself a game? Listen, I have clearly fancied myself a game show host. And everything I do, I try to create a game show so I can host it.

I mean, James Duffy hosts the quiz on TSN. But have you ever wanted to do that? Were you ever, like, back home and being like... I mean, it never even crossed my mind that would be a career path for me. I always fashioned myself. I'm going to work in sports. I'm going to be a sports play-by-play guy, and that's my path. So, I mean, I've already kind of deviated from where I thought. I thought it was going to be by being in L.A. in the first place.

Right. I never envisioned by age 29 I'd be doing NHL play by play. That was years down the road. And you're also too young to host a game show at this point. Yeah, that's how I feel too. Like, okay, maybe like we'll try something different years down the line. But I want to do a little bit more of this hockey. Because once you're in, you're in.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's hard to do both. Yeah. That's like, I mean, if you get chosen to be the Jeopardy host, it's like someone choosing you to be Shazam. Like, you just got to be Shazam. You can't just turn back. saying, no, I'd like to go back to my job as an accountant at the APM.

Exactly. All right. Well, that doesn't clear that up, but I'm glad that we talked about it. Alex, where can people find your stuff? Well, I guess I'm on social media like every other bozo out there. So Alex underscore Faust on Twitter, if you really care to follow. I don't really post anything interesting. And then Fausst underscore Alex on Instagram, just to keep it confusing. But, yeah, that's about it. It sounds very familiar.

Don't follow me on social, but totally follow me. Our thanks to Alex Faust for joining us to talk about a great many things, including the state of the Los Angeles Kings in a market where there are a lot of other sports and a team that did not do all that well this season. I think it's safe to say that tickets will be available at Staples Center. And if you need to get tickets at Staples Center, there's only one way to do it. That's with our friends at Sea Geek. The ticket industry hasn't changed in a long time. I'm in no position to criticize, so. C minus.

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Use the promo code S-O-U-P that spells soup. One of the series to get to, of course, is Colorado and San Jose. As many of you know, my working theory is that Logan Guter read every press clipping of Nathan McKinnon before game three and consumed them all, maybe even like actually consume them, print them out and ate them. He eats paper all the time.

All the time. He eats paper all the time. And then went out and scored a hat trick. Like I feel like that is Logan Couture like in his every fiber of his being is that guy. And then he goes out and does what he did in game three. That was awesome. That was awesome performance from him. Yeah. Yeah.

That's been a great series so far. I'm really, that's been a really fun series. and I hope it keeps going. I'm all in favor of game seven just to see what kind of crazy hijinks those sharks will pull out. Yeah, I thought, I think I said every series in the second round would go seven games, so that definitely feels like what's going to happen in this series in San Jose, too. There's just really not a lot separating these two teams, given how good the stars can be. the stars and not the Dallas stars.

I was legitimately shocked when the sharks rallied in that game, though. Like the tide had turned so severely towards Colorado that the Nietto goal in the third period was sort of inevitable. And then like, Ketur scores 65 seconds after that. I was just like, fuck. After witnessing games six and seven in the Vegas series, I respectfully declined to prognosticate on anything in involving the sharks. There's something cosmic happening here. I want to believe that there is. And that game, again, was just indicative of the weird Shiddle meter that's kind of going off the charts right now for the sharks. I mean, yes and no, right? Because the sharks were great

all year and would have been better if they had gotten anything resembling average goaltending. They're getting it all of a sudden. And now, like, they're not having problems when teams score goals on them every once in a while. And, you know, I'm not surprised by that at all. They've been, like, ignoring goaltending, like, if you just put up a standee that could be guaranteeing you Lee average save percentage, they would have had an almost Tampa-like season. They would have put up, like, 115 points pretty easily. So, I mean, I'm really not surprised at all that they're...

What you're saying makes sense, but according to... to pundits like Theo Fleury. Oh, yeah. Dick and, Dick and balls, or heart and balls? What was it? Heart and Dick. I don't remember. It's off the charts.

They have all of it. Ball's the size of a dick. The dick, the size of a heart. This is my least favorite time of the hockey year is when we all decide that all of the teams that are still in the playoffs are there because they love each other and they're all wonderful tight-knit group. And all that, like, it's crazy, eh, that we spend all the, this time trying to figure out like who's got the best players and it just turns out that the

like four teams that like each other the most always make the conference final. It's weird. Yeah. If it comes down to the teams that like each other the most, explain how the penguins won back-to-back cups. Anyways. There's a, we'll get to that another time. We don't have time because there's so much news that's broken while we've been doing the show. For example, the Vegas Golden Knights so wanted to keep Kelly McCremont away from the Ebbington Oilers that they promoted him a general manager and promoted George McPhee to president of hockey operations. I think McPhee was already like GM and president of hockey ops. So he just keeps the job he has, but loses one of them.

And as we were talking about during our short little break, it appears as though Kelly McCriman is just the receptionist. Am I reading that right? Yeah, because it's weird how they've worded it. In this new role, McCrimand will represent the Golden Knights at the League. general manager's meeting and will be the point of contact for other GMs. McCriman will report to George McPhee, who will continue to be responsible for all hockey operations decisions and oversee the club's hockey operations team as the Golden Knights president

of hockey operations. So, yeah, that really does seem like a GM calls the Golden Knights. He says, hey, do you want to make this trade? And Kelly McCriman writes it down, brings it down the hall, and says, what do you think, boss? and George McPhee either signs off on it or doesn't. So he's a slightly older Jonah Hill from Moneyball. That's exactly right, yeah.

Slightly older. I mean, I think it's really, I think it's interesting on a couple of fronts. One, is this going to be one of those Ken Holland-type deals where, like, George gets bumped upstairs, but now he still has the fire in his belly and he's going to go be somewhere else, or is it simply that he loves Vegas so much and has done this for so long that this is the logical next step for him. And two, Jesus Christ, how much credit does Bill Foley give Kelly McCremont for all this Vegas stuff happening?

I mean, to do this, to keep a guy is probably indicative that he thinks that he's pretty much the guy who starts to drink over there as far as player personnel. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Or he just gave him a new title and a raise and they didn't actually change anything. Because they didn't want to lose him. Yeah, I would assume that. Maybe by the time people hear this, we'll get some clarity on that. But it really does sound like George McPhee is still the GM,

and he just lets someone else have the title. Which, you know what? If I wanted to be an NHL GM, I would probably rather stay in Vegas and not have to do the work rather than go to Edmonton and have to do the work and also be in Edmonton. Oh, God, right? Yeah, that's... Yeah, I think Vegas is a little bit more set up than Edmonton is right now

to potentially win a couple of next three years. Marginally. You know, I think the little. little bit. I mean, they don't have a generational talent and a heart trophy nominee. All right, let's get to that real quick. NHL Awards. Oh, boy. I'm going to go get lunch. No, no, no, no. I'm not going to make it. I've, I've said my piece. You know where I stand on it.

I will simply say this. I don't understand what the PHWA is doing if they don't make Connor a nominee last year for, you know, finishing like 30 some odd points ahead of Drysidal. But then they make them a nominee this year when Drysiddle scores 50 goals. goals. Like, I don't get it. I know why it happened. It's because there was only, like, two candidates that had any kind of, like, uh, coalescing around them of support. That's, that's the answer. I mean, they just don't get, I just don't get it. If you don't make the playoffs, you can't finish any higher than any of the obvious candidates who do make the playoffs. And last year, there were three or four of those guys. And this year, there were two. That's, that's the answer. I'm trying to pull it up. But maybe you guys know off the top of your head, was there, did he finish like four? in the voting last year? Last year? Yeah, I think he finished fourth. Okay. So there you go. Like, people thought

he was great last year and worthy of consideration, but he, you know, Anche Kopitart, single-handedly dragged Oh, fifth. He was sorry. He was, sorry, fifth last year.

Okay, sure, why not? But, like, he was great last year, but, like, maybe he wasn't. and Connor McDavid. But, you know, Copatar McKinnon and Hall, it was all guys where it was like, hop on, boys,

I'm driving right into the playoffs. And, you know, so, like, I get the argument. But, yeah, there just wasn't anybody ahead of him, like,

that you could make a legit case for. I made the case for Cain, Patrick Cain, getting the guy out of the playoffs thing, but you said, I think you tweeted out some numbers that kind of defied that, yeah?

Yeah, I mean, like, I can try to find it here. on my feet, but it was a thing of when McDavid was off the ice. The oilers were unsurprisingly really, really bad.

And when he was on the... Okay, yeah. Cain on the ice plus 17, off the ice minus 18. McDavid on the ice plus two. Big David off the ice minus 34. And, you know, like

obviously, Kane's worth a similarly large swing, but I would argue that the plus two on McDavid is indicative of just how little help he had, even when he was on the ice. Yeah. And I voted for both guys. I had both Kane and McDavid in my top three, because I don't buy into this idea that you absolutely positively have to make the playoffs. I think it can be a factor, but I don't view it that way.

I land on a different page than Greg does, and so, yeah, I was happy to see McDavid get at least a finalist, even though we all know Nikita Kuturav is going to win, as he should, because it's all about the playoffs. And he had such a, oh, wait, no, he didn't. He was terrible in the playoffs, but I enjoy that you say we're on different pages, when in actuality we're in different books, in different libraries, in different countries. Sure. Based on how we feel about this fucking award.

And I wrote about it this week. If I think if we're really going to, and I will acknowledge and concede that I think, if not most of the voters are on your side, certainly enough of the voters are not on your side that it's kind of a moot point because you're never going to see an MVP who misses the playoffs unless it's like a Merrill Lemieux type,

absolute, ridiculous runaway. And to me, if we're going to do it that way, we should be voting on this after the playoffs. And, you know, it's so strange to me that we say it's all about the playoffs. You have to make the playoffs, but then we don't care what happens in the playoffs. It strikes me as odd.

I feel like we've kind of split the difference in a weird way, but that's just me. Or we could just vote for the best players and leave it at that. It comes down to the word value and how you feel, how you feel about what a player is value to a team. I can't have this. All right, we're not going to do. I'm sorry. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do it again.

I will say this. My ballot was Coutheroff, regrettably. Sid, O'Reilly, Marchand, and Ovechkin was my time. top five. And I feel like... I don't betchkin pick. I feel like... Yikes. Why yikes?

Look what he did vis-a-vis his teammates as far as offense goes, man. He was a... He also did not enter the defensive end. And I hate to be that guy. But like his defensive replacement or like above replacement numbers are so bad that like, like, look, nobody's saying don't go score 50 goals. It's obviously incredibly valuable thing to do. But like, there, there were guys who had much better seasons who did. didn't score 50 goals.

Sure, but no one's looking for him to be Sasha Barkoff over here. Like, his job is to score goals. Right. But I don't know. So was Torrey Krug the best defenseman because he did the thing that he, that he's the best at? And that's all they ask of him? I mean, he's not the best all-around defenseman, if that's what you're asking, which is the parameters of North Stroche.

I can't, yeah. See, you just don't understand. Okay. But I thought, I thought, I mean, I think Marchand probably falls short. just because he's more shand. And I'm, and O'Reilly probably fall short because it's hard to really,

you know, look at the totality of that season and say that he's more valuable than Bennington. But the other two were fine. I don't know. Like Sean said, it was a year where other guys

could sneak in because there was only really two candidates that I think had the totality of support. The only other thing I wanted to mention, I'm not going to get into the Burjaron thing. I understand why it happened. I was really surprised had been gotten to the top three for Norris.

I didn't think that was going to happen. I think that's a reputation-based Yeah, but the notice is always a reputation based. So is a Selke. I mean, that's, yep, so is the Selke. And, you know, it's, I try to make it a point not to get worked up about, like, the finalists. You know, if we see the final voting and we see somebody, you know, didn't, didn't get any support that when they should have, that's, that's one thing. You know, like if we get the Calder voting, we see that, you know, Michael Heiskenen didn't get any votes, then we'll be bad.

the fact that he finished fourth when he should have finished third, I'm not going to get too. What's the material difference there? I'm not going to get too upset about. The one other thing that I'll just say is, I really wish we would start voting for defensemen for the Lady Bing. I don't know how this became a forwards only award. I'm going to, like, I vote for more and more defensemen every year,

and eventually I'm just going to start, like, voting all five Lady Bing votes for defensemen and maybe a couple on, like, the Selke as well just to make the point. I'll be really interested to see what percentage of Buffalo writers put Dulli in first on their ballots, and if it will be anything less than 100%. And then also, next time somebody says that the awards are completely Toronto-centric, point to the Norris, because if they were Toronto-centric, Morgan Riley would be a finalist. And he should be.

And he has a very good case to be. And he has a very good case to be. And also the fact that- Also the fact that Maple Leafs have won like two- awards in the last 60 years, maybe as a tip-off that we're not quite as Toronto-centric on this voting as you might think. Although, you know, Alexander McGilney's Lady Bing was certainly a major, major accomplishment. I might be the only major award he won, which is sad. Did he win the call her? I forget. I don't think he did. No, he didn't. He wasn't a rookie

that year. So the other news that broke as we were doing the show was that the women, 200 hockey women, as far I put it, including Team USA stars Hillary Knight, Kendall Coyne Schofield, and Canada's Marie-Philippe Poulin, have announced they will not be playing in a professional league next season. The statement read, we cannot make a sustainable living playing in the current state of the professional game, having no health insurance and making as low as two, thousand dollars a season means players can't adequately train and prepare it to play at the highest level. According to my friend Emily Kaplan, many players have gone on the record to say they want the NHL to support a women's league with financial and infrastructural resources. And sources told ESPN that the players hope the joint announcement could apply pressure on the NHL to act.

It certainly applies pressure on the NWHL as in the giant boot that just stomped all over that league this season. as the one remaining women's professional league. Yeah, it's wild. And they don't say the word boycott. Or strike or anything like that. Can we just say it sure feels like a boycott? And this is, they don't mention the NHL in the statement,

but I think this is, that's clearly what they want. Because at the end of the day, the WNHL can't, you know, it's not like they're sitting on a big pile of money that they're not sharing. So it's, you know, they can't just open the taps up and send more money down to the players as much as the players absolutely would deserve that to happen. This is, the NHL's got to get involved here. And this is, they've created the pressure point.

Well, Sean, I mean, you're not being fair here. The NHL gives $100,000 a year to this women's league. So. That is true. I mean, what more do you need? No, that should be more than enough for everybody. that's like almost an entire junior player that they that they yeah so I mean this will either it'll either work and the NHL will do the right thing and get involved now that

there's one league and and set this on the right course or it won't and it'll become even more of a mess and and who knows where we go then so I think I think there's money to be I think there's money to be made in women's hockey in a sense that you can create new fans I've talked about it before about how my my first game I ever took my daughter to was a women's game. I don't know if there's money to be made insofar as ticket sales. I think there might be money to be made as far as gear sales. And I also think that the fact that the NHL has certainly embraced the national team players indicates that they think that those stars and their involvement are beneficial to the NHL. So, like, I think there are a lot of reasons for the NHL to dabble

in women's hockey and establish a league. I just want it to be NXT. I don't want anybody who is old and white and making decisions in the National Hockey League currently to have any fucking thing to do with the Women's League. I don't want Colin Campbell to be the commissioner of the Women's League. I want them to pass off and give ownership to the players, to the people running the leagues, to older players who can come back and help run the leagues. Pass it off, make it its own thing, fund it, but don't try to run it. Yeah, it's got the checks and shut the fuck up. Thank you, yes. That's the short form. The abridged version. The abridged version of what I was trying to get at.

Exactly. I completely agree. But do you think it could be successful? Yeah, if the NHL properly funds it. I mean, again, I guess people get mad when you compare it to the WNBA, but the WNBA operates at a loss that is underwritten by the NBA because women's basketball is important to basketball. and the NBA, for better or worse, sees itself as like, we are the global kings of basketball. Like, this is our sport, and we very benevolently let all the European and Asian leagues or whatever play the game.

And the NHL is, I would say, even more of a global powerhouse in the hockey world than the NBA is in basketball, because there are just fewer people playing the sport anyway. And so when the NHL siphons off all the talent in the men's game, they leave very little in terms of leftover talent for the KHL or the Swedish elite league or whatever. So if the NHL is going to say, we care about the state of the sport, in the same way that the NBA does, they have to take an even greater role in preserving the women's game than the NBA does

because the WNBA does have the option. It still doesn't play its players sufficiently, but those players can go play overseas in women's leagues there that don't exist in hockey. So the NHL has more of a responsibility to make sure women can make a living playing this game. Yep. Yep. And look, I mean, the NHL is trails far behind the other major North American leagues,

even though it is easily the number one hockey league in the world. It's not, the NHL's problem is not that it's facing competition from other hockey leagues and it needs to be the best NHL it can be because the KHL or the OHL or whoever is siphoning off fans. The NHL is the undisputed number one hockey league in the world. Their problem is there aren't off hockey fans. Correct. So figure out a way to make more hockey fans. And if I'm coming out, I know that's easier said than done.

But if I'm coming up with a list, I think the top two things on my list are make damn sure you go to the Olympics and invest in a sustainable, successful, whatever that looks like, women's league that will create more fans every game they hold, will create a new hockey fan somewhere. And eventually those new hockey fans will also be. I'm NHL fans, and you'll get some of those precious dollars back in your pocket, even if you don't see a direct profit from your women's league. And to me, it's the big difference between this league and the WMBA is that the WMBA plays in arenas. And if you've ever been to a women's pro game, they're basically high school rings, yeah.

The devil's practice facility and the rink up in Connecticut. I mean, like, the margins are going to be so much smaller that you feel like there's a greater chance. of a success. At the end of the day, though, I mean, I also have to put myself in the shoes of an NWHL fan for a second. Like, if you're a CWHL fan, you feel really fucked already because they folded the league, which is, you know, a joke. And then if you're an NWHL fan, you're like, all right, well, we're the last league standing. And we were the first league to pay our players. We're trying to make it work. We're trying to do the thing. And now you have 200 players, many of whom, you know, are your top line players, your big,

star players saying, uh, we're not playing until we get an NHL backed league, basically. If you're an NWHL fan, you're like, you just fucking killed us. You just knifed us in the chest, like you're fucking Aria Stark and we're the ice, the knight king. Well, you know, so, but I don't think they did. They, if they had done this in September or October, that they would have been knifing the league. They're, they're doing this in May with a whole summer to get this worked out and figured out. Like there's, this doesn't mean there's not going to be a season next year. This, this means there's just not. to be a season under the old terms.

But they literally are saying we don't want to play for the NWHL because we don't believe in the model. Like they're under the current model. They have the opportunity. Right, exactly. They have the opportunity to change the model. They're telling the NHL to get in. Now's the time.

It's not time for the NHL to do what it usually does whenever it's faced with a situation, which is just kicked the can down the road and wait three years to do anything. They're telling them to do something now. And I, you know, I, maybe this is the optimist in me, but I, I think that that will happen and we'll see women's hockey next year and probably see it in a format that has a much better chance of long-term success. One would hope. One more thing, two more things on the agenda today.

First off, Gary Bettman testified in Canada in front of what was it, Parliament. I don't know what you guys do up there. Is that what we hear? Was it a subcommittee? Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is the commissioner getting calls. to listen to questions from politicians, some of whom are asking legitimate questions and kind of holding his feet to the fire and some of whom are sort of grandstanding and some of whom know

the subject matter really well and some of whom don't. So I'm not going to, I don't think anyone should be parsing every answer that Gary Bettman gave in this situation because, you know, this is a situation where he's, I think it's acceptable for him to, like I said earlier, be a little bit weasily. But I don't know. My, my, he continues to deny the link between concussions and head injuries and CTE, which is, I guess, the news from this, even though it's not news. And, you know, his other thing was he, he made some statements around fighting that I, I thought were contradictory. I think, you know, he answered one question by saying that, you know, the reason that that there is still fighting in the game and it hasn't, the league just hasn't removed it entirely, is that it

acts as, I think the metaphor he used was a thermostat, basically saying fighting, you know, fighting keeps players accountable and that sort of thing. He didn't say that in so many words, but it's that old argument we've heard a million times. And then he also later said that 75% of the players don't fight and nobody has to fight in the NHL if you don't want to. And to me, you can't, you can hold one of those positions, but I don't say, how you can hold both. You can't say fighting keeps everyone accountable, but also nobody has to fight if they don't want to. It's, you know, it's, it's unpleasant and unfortunate, but the only way that fighting keeps people accountable is if sometimes you might have to fight whether you want

to or not. And I get why he tried to have it both ways under the circumstances, but I think the rest of us need to be realistic. If you want fighting as some sort of player safety thing, then sometimes guys have to fight whether they want to or not, because otherwise it doesn't work. The police can't enforce the laws if anybody who doesn't want to get arrested can just say, I don't want to be arrested and walk away. So that was the one part that kind of bothered me in his statements. And other than that, I think it was either stuff that wasn't super newsworthy

or was stuff we already knew and should already be annoyed with him about. I think that for all of the talk that we have about the league and hits to the head and player safety and what suspension should look like and yada yada yada, there isn't a single thing in the league right now that does more damage to the sport than Gary Betman refusing to link CTE with head drama in contact sports. It's not a single thing. It's embarrassing. He is on the wrong side of history to an extent that can't even be comprehended right now. and it's embarrassing for the league whenever he says this shit. And I know why he says it. He says it for two reasons.

One, for litigation reasons. And he says it, two, because he believes that you can say the science isn't there because there may be some sort of a signature or some sort of a genetic predisposition for some people to get CTE while there isn't for others. But that being said, and the science is there with him on that, you can't deny that there's the link between repeated concussions and CTE. It is fucking assinine to do it. And it embarrasses me as a hockey fan when he does this shit.

And I thought maybe he'd stop doing this shit when the lawsuit got settled, but he's still doing this shit now. There's going to be more lawsuits. That's why. Exactly. Exactly. And this is Gary Bettman, the lawyer, not Gary Bettman, the leader of the NHL and the leader of the hockey world. Yes.

I tend to believe that he believes this shit, too, though. Honestly, I believe that he thinks the science is there. I can't imagine that that's true. Like, you would have to be, what's the word I'm looking for? You would have to have some real issues around denial or whatever that you need to work out before I would believe that he legitimately is like, I can't imagine why anybody would think. Yeah. You know? He might legitimately believe that in a strictly legal parsing of his statements that he's technically saying something true, that he's technically saying something true.

And maybe when you've been a lawyer for 40 years, that's as far as your brain works on these things anymore. I'll take the over on that. Well, whatever it is. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, this is, yeah, you're right. It is embarrassing, but it's sort of our embarrassment should be baked into our feelings about Gary Bettman at this point. The league in general, quite frankly, like, again, he's just the mouthpiece for the owners and he's saying what is in their best interest.

So, like, it's not... He is, but, man, I hate when we give him a pass that, you know, well, it's just the owners. And if he was an actual leader, real leadership means sometimes going to your bosses, your 30 bosses or 31 and saying, you guys are wrong on this. And you're doing long-term damage. And here's a better way to do it. And I just wish we had more on any number of issues. I wish we had more of that from him and less letting him off the hook because we know that his owners

are pushing him in a certain direction. push back man you're you're the leader of this league and you make eight million dollars a year so push back a little bit let's let's actually see some of that leadership i'm a henchman not a exactly like they'll go oh we'll uh find some like some don't former don't trump lawyer to say exactly what we want to say for the eight million dollars a year and uh and maybe i don't know maybe yeah i'm i'm sure they would ben but you know maybe at some point you don't want to be that guy but uh maybe you know maybe at some point you don't want to be that guy but uh maybe you do. Maybe the paycheck is all it takes. And finally, we want to pay respects to Jason Boshford,

who tragically passed away over the weekend, really young, 48 or 46, I forget. 48. 48. Just to, you know, the thing about Batch is, I see he's a lot of myself in him, in the sense of he was a very combative guy. He loved to get in the trenches and throw elbows when it came to debating topics. But out of every traditional journalist that I think that I've read in the last decade, maybe dozen years, he's the only one who figured out how to graft his stuff onto the web and embrace that sort of bloggy aesthetic and kind of mold and shape what some people were doing with their game recaps on blogs into a more journalistic venture, but also

also into a giant community of Canucks fans that would read the Pravies and read the athletes after every game. It was a really revolutionary thing, the thing that he was able to unlock. And I mean, his legacy on that end is established. He was really ahead of his time as far as as that shit goes. I think this is probably the nicest thing you can say about any sports writer is he was a pure original. Like, nobody was Jason Botchford. And like, I never interacted with him really and I never but like I never really had reason to go into the

provis or the athletes but I did all the time because he was just that good and he I can't remember somebody a friend of mine who's a Canucks fan said it but it's like he made following the last five years of the Vancouver Canucks entertaining

and like what more can you say about a guy than that like he he did his own like his own completely unique new thing and made maybe the most miserable fan base experience of the last several years fun. Yeah. No, that's exact.

I mean, the toughest thing to do in this business, especially if you're a beat writer and you're doing like game stories every night, is like how do I come up with a new or interesting way to talk about a league where, you know, very often, some games in this league are unique and exciting and have interesting things happen, and some of them just don't.

Right. So much of what this league does just blends in and is instantly kind of forgettable. And Batchford was a guy who, you know, the you guys kind of touched on it. I mean, the Vancouver Canucks, with the exception of a couple of players here and there, have not been a very entertaining team over the last few years.

You could have just ignored pretty much everything that happened in Vancouver and you wouldn't have missed all that much. And yet every time I saw like one of one of his pieces come up, like it was an instant click. It was just you would read it and, you know, there's a compliment that writers sometimes pay to other writers, which is that sometimes you read them and you almost feel mad at like how good they are at doing that. And you're like, man, I what am I doing to stay. fresh and keep finding angles and that sort of thing because he was just so good at it and he's he's gone way, way too early. But I will promise you it's years from now, you're going to hear other great sports writers are going to mention his name often when they're talking about their influences

and, you know, how they, how they turned out to be as good as they were because he's, he had that, that kind of impact. Yeah, and you saw that yesterday online, just a lot of people kind of, especially like younger writers talking about how he put over their work. And it was sort of like Bill Simmonsy in some ways of people talking about how they were influenced with the way he covered games and kind of reinvented it. Batch and I had our dustups over the years for sure. But it wasn't the same as like my dustups with like Larry Brooks. Like Batch got it. You know, he knows what this was.

It was like arguing with somebody on a news group. You know, it was a different. kind of thing. And I'm proud to have known him, known him and, uh, and, uh, been a peer of his in some way, shape, or form over the years. Like, he's, uh, he was a really, really, really interesting guy. Again, my bar usually is set at, don't be boring or don't be ordinary. And Jason Bouchard was, was neither of those. Yeah. So, uh, condolizes to his friends and his family. Um, I know my, our, our friends up in Vancouver, the curtain bloggers are taking this really hard, uh, because he was, uh, close with them.

and work with them. So thoughts are with those guys as well. Yeah, it was a very emotional outpouring in the last 48 hours. And just one more thing, Greg, if people are listening to this, if they're not familiar with his work at the athletic, they've unlocked everything. They've taken him out from behind the paywall and all his work there so that people can go see it and check it out,

whether you subscribe or not. And it's going to stay that way. That's a permanent decision. So do yourself a favor, just if you're a fan of great sports writing, go check his stuff out and, you know, make sure you understand what, what this guy was about. Well, we will not. I was going to say the other thing that I think is worth noting is that he really, in addition

to all the stuff of like really adopting a lot of the bloggy stuff, he also really went out of his way to help encourage, like, young writers who, you know, I obviously know a good number of them. And they all said, like, any time I reached out to Botchford, he always had more than enough time, more than enough patience answered every question I had, that kind of thing. And, like, that is, especially for someone from the, quote-unquote, mainstream media, I think there's less of that nowadays. But for someone from the mainstream media to take that kind of time with everybody who reached out to him is crazy. Right.

Indeed. All right. We're not going to leave you on a modula note. We're going to leave you on a frivolous note. The question of the week this week, of course, was tell us what you've learned in the playoffs so far. Just whatever you've learned. Lee writes in, nothing makes sense to me anymore.

I think we could all agree with that. Royce, the voice, says Brobrovsky is going to get paid. Caps should have kept trots. Ooh, spicy. Blues are mentally fragile. And Martin Jones can be sufficient. Well, that's true. Aaron Larson writes in,

Pissing off Don Cherry leads to playoff success. Dude, how great was the word jerks spelled out in T-shirts in Carolina? So good. Lean into it, man. Why not? Right. Not that Kevin Mitchell, so not the guy who caught the ball bare-handed that one time for the Giants.

If we want the standings to matter, we need to officiate the playoffs like the regular season, otherwise let chaos rain. I agree with part of that sentiment. I don't know if the officiating is necessarily why a lot of top seeds are no longer with us. But a guy in a grumpy bear suit writes in that NBC should hire more players from the women's national teams for commentary and studio work. It's a good sentiment. Maybe also not allow Pierre McGuire to work two series. I would offer that. I want one.

You can have one. I'll say this candidly. Sure, I agree. I'll say this candidly amongst friends. When I was in the press box in San Jose earlier this series, someone, I overheard a conversation, don't know who it was, don't care who it was, overheard a conversation saying,

hey, do you know that Pierre's going over to cover the St. Louis game tomorrow after this game tonight? Other guy. What? Yeah, yeah, he's hopping on a plane right after the game going to cover that series. that fucking guy, give somebody else a fucking chance. That's the conversation I heard. Very good.

You can't say he's not a workhorse, though. He's in a new game every night, it seems like. That's true. Robin Hardman says that we need a replay-reviewed debate for every play, so down goes, Braden to Schenzy can channel their inner Lincoln and Douglas. I think the problem is that many people thought I was Douglas in that debate last week, which I didn't appreciate. Wait, am I making an American reference that Sean doesn't get?

Yeah, no. It's like the Trudeau Ford debates, Sean, and I'm Ford. Yeah, that one. Okay. Jared Moore says that any team can beat any team can beat any given team at any time, so don't buy the BS that your team tries to sell when they say that they can't compete unless they're Ottawa. That's a bad take. That's a very bad take.

And then Sarah Ford writes in, and this is a good one to end on because it's so sad, that sometimes losing in the first round is more heartbreaking than losing in the Stanley Cup final. I don't think that's always true. I wouldn't know. She did take her sometimes. That's perfect. That's perfect. All right.

Thanks to Alex Fowse for joining us. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you dig the show, please go to iTunes and leave your reviews. good, bad, or otherwise. Don't leave bad ones. Don't invite that, Greg, please. I mean, yeah, the bad ones suck, and then, but the good ones are great. And if you don't, you don't even have to put words.

You can just put your little clicker on five stars and click it, assuming that you feel like we're worthy of it. I'm Greg Wyshinsky of ESPN. You can follow my work at ESPN.com, wrote a bunch of shit this week. Joe Thornton feature, Cal McCarr feature, a bunch of other shit, too. And then also my other podcast is ESPN and an ice in which we had Bumani Jones on to talk about how Carolina Hurricanes fans dislike him. A guy DMed me this week and said, instead of saying sports.jahoo.com slash authors slash Ryan dash Lambert, I should just like buy a URL. Let me tell this guy. I'm not going to do that ever.

and you can also check out the newsletter on Patreon, which I don't know the URL for, but Google it. You can find me at lambert. That's right. That's not how bitly links work, but okay. Slash-Q-M-47. Yeah, that would be much easier. No, he was saying, like,

Lamberthockey.com. Don't do that. And don't now register that. Yeah, everyone's going to buy it up for me. You're going to have to be Lambert. That's next now, in order to get LERL for your stuff. That's true. All right.

You can find me at the athletic. I had this week, what did I write? I made my case for why we should vote for the Hart Trophy after the playoffs. I did a piece on Monday where I paired each Canadian fan base with one of the remaining teams, which I urge you to read, even if you're not Canadian, just for the Vancouver Canucks joke and then the reaction in the comments from Vancouver fans to that joke.

And that's all that I'll say. And then I've got on Friday, I've got my grab bag coming where I found someone who agrees with me about replay. Unfortunately, it's Gary Bettman from 20 years ago arguing with Stan Fishler about why the NHL should not have too much replay. and basically saying the exact opposite of everything that the league went on and did in the next two decades. So that one's fun.

Gary, in 1925, we had Boots McClure, sat in the epic-deck of MSG. And on every controversial play, we used a series of court sketch artists to quickly sketch what they thought happened on the goal. They would pass the sketches down to the on-ice official. He would look at them all and decide what exactly. happen. That, sir, is the best way to handle reviews on the ice. That's not far off. I got to be honest with you. You're pretty close. Thank you. All right. That's Puck Soup. Oh, also, Lambert and I broke down Avengers Endgame on a bonus podcast this week on the Patreon. Do check it out if you are so inclined. Spoilerific

conversation, if ever there was one, but I think a salient one. All right, that's Puck Soup. Everybody go to the Patreon and listen to the wet mailbag this week, and thanks for listening. Bye. Bye. Bye. It's in goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, It's in tunes.

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