Puck Soup - An Unfortunate Situation

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Sean and Ryan are compelled to talk about how the Ukraine situation is affecting the hockey world. They also discuss Chicago's new GM, Vancouver's plans, and more. Sponsored by Athletic Greens, Betterhelp and Sunday Lawn Care

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We've got sportly commentary to what if you'll come. Mute, but we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet. I'm Ryan Lambert from EP Rinkside. I'm Sean McAnneux from The Athletic. And we regret to inform you that Alex Ovechkin is canceled. He campaigned for the dastardly Vladimir Putin. and everybody is mad at him now for some reason.

Yeah. And this obviously only came to light recently. This isn't something we've known for many years and just decided not to talk about. And I'm glad that this show didn't spend like 10 minutes last week talking about how great Alexander Ovechkin was. Yeah, he's really cool and nice. Nobody here said that for sure.

Yeah. No. You know, it's just, one of those situations where no matter what he said without saying I'm going to beat up Vladimir Putin when I see him next you know like it people weren't going to be happy

with it no so like I don't know what he was supposed to say and it's just kind of funny that this all comes out the same around the same time that people were just finding out that like Paul Stasney had donated to

the trucker convoy or whatever Yeah, which I didn't know about until you included it in the outline. I had to go to Google that. There was a big article. I saw people mention it and like at the time the convoy was going on. And then, you know, he did a big interview about it yesterday. That wasn't good. No, it was very dumb.

I did not hate him in the best light. I read that and it was, he was not smart. We didn't really get into the convoy stuff much over the last month and I don't really want to. But the part that stood out was where he said something along the lines of, you know, people are acting like they were trying to overthrow the government. And if that had been the case, nobody would be donating. That was actually the stated goal of the organizers. You know, I understand that many of the people involved.

would not have supported that, but they thought that they could just go to Ottawa and basically work with the opposition to become the new government. And it didn't work out that way. But that was what they said they wanted to do. So I don't know if Paul maybe his rebel news stories that he's apparently not. He does get his news from both sides of the political aisle, Fox News and Rebel News. That's right. Yeah, he's got it covered.

We should say, of course, this is all kind of besides the point, but it serves a larger point, which is let's not interrogate the political views of our beloved athletes so much unless we want to get pissed off all this time. Yeah, and I've, we've made this point before. If you, the reason that stuff like Paul Stasney and Bobby Orr endorsing Donald Trump last year, And the reason that that resonates and bothers as many hockey fans is that most people in the hockey world don't talk about this stuff. And don't have to. I mean, you're not obligated to. No, I don't think that we should make every NHL player or any athlete, I guess, fill out that political inclination quiz. It's like 180 questions and that gives you the little graph.

Yep. They're all going to be on the like upper right side. An awful lot of them. An awful lot of them are going to be. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, it's, if that would bother you, if you're sitting there going like, oh, man, if the whole league was full of Bobby Oars, I wouldn't support it. I have bad news. Yes, you would because you're doing it now.

And, you know, certainly the, you know, the organizations themselves will. put out statements. And there are people in the in the hockey world that would, you know, not to lift the veil of my own politics, but then I would consider to be on the right side of stuff. And, you know, I don't want to belittle that. But as far as the politics overall, you don't want to know. It would be. And the other point is, just don't turn that rock over. I would argue that hockey media leans pretty left, especially the social media contingent. So if that is the lens that you see the NHL through, you may have a false view of exactly where a lot of these guys are, which again,

if it's just a case of, hey, this is, you know, even, you know, this is how I cast my vote, this is, you know, who I hope wins. This is even where I throw a couple of bucks in donations. I think that's one thing. The old Vetchkin story, to get back to that, is, is obviously, Obviously, a very different level. It's quite different. Because he's been adamantly supportive. Yeah, but it's like, are we like sticking a mic in LeBron James' face being like, so about these drone strikes and you were a big Obama guy, is that right?

You know, like, it, look, no one is saying that what, well, I guess people in Russia are probably saying it, but that what Russia is doing to the Ukraine, or I shouldn't say the Ukraine. That's a force of habit. It's Ukraine. What Russia is doing to Ukraine right now is good. Nobody's saying that except, you know, big-time Putin guys.

And even then, it seems like maybe previously big-time Putin guys are kind of like, uh-oh, I don't know about this. Yeah. So it's really, you know, like I think a lot of these, these Russian players are, like in every sport around the world, are in a really tough situation. Ovechkin, again, like he campaigned for Putin. It's a total, total different case. Nobody should be suggesting that we go up to every Russian player and ask them to give us a cohesive foreign policy view of what their country is doing.

Right. They don't have to answer for that. Yeah. But Ovechkin kind of does. And he tried. They, I guess to their credit, put him in front of the media. But it was a very, first of all, it was a very lukewarm condemnation if it was at all. Nobody would, unless he was like, I renounce the.

But he didn't even come close. Oh, no, I understand. But like, unless he did that, I don't think anybody would have been happy with. I don't think anyone would have been happy. but I think there are lots of documented cases where people do come out and, you know, at least make a statement that should satisfy some criticism. And then everybody, you're right, goes into this performance of not accepting it anyways. But he didn't even do that.

And also, he did the whole thing. Like, he looked like my teenager when I'm, like, grilling them over, like, not panning in their homework. It was this whole, like, I don't want to be here. I am going to say a few things that I know I'm supposed to say and then I'm going to get out of here. Yeah, and like, you know, people have rightly pointed out that a lot of Russian players are perhaps not in a position to strongly oppose the Putin regime or whatever. Because they've got family back home and that sort of thing. And then, you know, like I think Nikita Zedorov was actually pretty forceful in. in saying this is bad,

which is good for him. That's kind of surprising. But then I saw people being like, well, what about Artemi Panarin, since he's a big Navalny guy. And it's like, if you look into it,

Ukraine isn't too happy with Navalny either. He had said that like if it were up to him, he wouldn't return Crimea either. So like, it's a whole thing. But I guess the larger point, with regard to the Navalny thing is

like Russian and like former Soviet block company like the politics of that region are very very Byzantine and labyrinthine and like even even a lot of Western people who pay attention to these kind of things probably really don't have like a good on the ground view of what's going on

so like you know I don't want to say like we're imposing Western liberal values on Alex O'Vey's Mechkin or whatever, but like this is a guy who grew up, you know, what was he, like, five, six years old when the Soviet Union fell. And then, like, he grows up in a deindustrialized, like, country that is very politically undeveloped or whatever. Like, it's, I guess, I guess my point is, I don't expect most American and Canadian people to have, like, good politics. So, like, to have what I would view is, like, the. right thing to say, or what anybody in the Western world would view is the right thing to say for a Russian-born player is, that's a tough one for me.

Yeah, you're not going to get a nice simple answer that fits into your Twitter feed that's going to satisfy you. The thing that's interesting with Ovechkin for me, though, is, you know, unlike a lot of athletes or a lot of people who have strong political views, he has not hidden where he stands. You know, he's pictures of him and Putin all over his social media and that sort of thing. Well, yeah. It's like, and it's not like we've learned anything brand new. It's not like, you know, the events of last week started and everyone, oh my God, I thought, you know, I thought the Russians were soft and cuddly and wonderful. and then this, you know, it turns out they're not.

So I think there's, I think it's completely valid to ask the question of Ovechkin, but I also think it's valid, as some people have pointed out, to say, how come this question was never asked before now? Like, how I remember at the time, like when he announced this initiative that he had where it was the Putin. Yeah, like, and people were like, is anyone going to ask about this? Is anyone, you know, and then a few months later, he's jumping around in a fountain with the Stanley Cop. And everyone's like, this guy's wonderful.

Like, what a great, you know, redemption story and everything. And, you know, when I say everyone, myself obviously included. And there were even at the time, like a handful of voices that, you know, trickled through my filter saying, like, this is weird that you guys are all making this guy out to be a hero under the circumstances. Yeah, I just looked it up. And there's an article from Vox in 2014. Hockey star Axelveschkin takes Putin's side in the Ukraine war. This is, of course, during the invasion of Crimea. And he posted a picture of himself on Instagram that said, hashtag save children from fascism.

And, you know, that's kind of what the... thinking is with this current invasion of Ukraine is that he's trying to denotify the region, you know, and Putin is not Ovechkin. And like, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, well, there are Nazis there. You're not running up. Like, you're using a very flimsy pretense, but there are Nazis there, obviously. And, you know, Ken Campbell had that article. I don't know if people got like all pissed off about it, but he was like, nobody cares.

when the U.S. and Canada and the U.K. invaded two foreign countries in like 2003 or whatever. Yeah, and I think Ken did get a little bit of heat for that. I don't know. I mean, you don't want to turn this into a hold. I would imagine there's hopefully not many people tuning in to this podcast to get our take on a global political situation. Yeah, but the point is that like,

It's just extremely complicated and, you know, the lens through which everybody's viewing this is like... It's extremely complicated when you drill it down. But I do think at a surface level, it's maybe not as complicated as we might want to make it out. And it's valid to ask somebody who has been, you know, very publicly supportive of something if they want to clarify that or want to weigh in on it or want to have any... And I will say that I do think Ovechkin has the right to say, like, no, I don't really want to say anything right now. Like, I think that's an acceptable answer, at least for now, as a situation is breaking and changing every day. But it's not anyone's responsibility to pretend that he hasn't said what he said and done what he's done in the past. And, you know, this is, you know, the thing with getting involved.

in politics is this stuff is real life. You know, it's a lot of times these days we all kind of treat it like it's sports and you just pick a team and you cheer for your team, but it's really not that big a deal and nobody should get mad at you. And it's not. It's this stuff has legitimate in some cases, life and death consequences. And it's, you know, you don't get to then, you don't get to be front and center on it. And then when it goes bad or is perceived to have gone bad, you turn around and say, well, I'm just an athlete.

You don't get to ask me questions. It's not how it works. I think it was on the mailbag for this show last week where somebody was like, oh, does everything going on right now? Like, does that hurt Ovechkin? And it's like, you know, you don't want to look how long it took the Blackhawks to do anything about. Bobby Hall after he said Hitler was good or whatever. I think that was one of those things where he said he was misquoted or whatever. Yeah, he did push back on that and he sued.

But, I mean, there were lots of other things with Bobby Hall. And you do have to get pretty badly misquoted, I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Bobby Orr, everybody was mad for a week. Yep. And now nobody cares. Nobody's arguing now that, you know, Bobby Orr doesn't get to be in, you know, one of the greatest players ever.

Now, I mean, you know, he didn't do all this as an active player, but I mean, we'll see. I guess, you know, I'm certainly not good at predicting how public opinion will go. You know, we have seen examples of athletes who have had their reputations extremely tarnished by some of their political involvement. But I don't know whether this will get to that case. We'll see. but it's again I just you know my

last point just to reiterate it's it's a fair question to ask at this point yeah and again like no one's going to be happy with what he said

no one's going to be happy with anything we said so you know I think I think that's just kind of how it is so let's move on to the like actual international

hockey related fallout from from the invasion of Ukraine here the I-IHF has banned Russia and Belarus from all competitions, until further notice, I think is kind of how they phrased it.

The World Junior Championship will not be held in Russia next year. 2023 worlds maybe in some jeopardy, although I guess we'll wait and see on that. It all makes sense every other major sporting body was kind of doing the same thing. and what have you. Like all the stuff that is used in the Olympics, they're all kind of boxing out Russia and Belarus too. I think that's fine.

I think that all makes sense. I guess it is surprising insofar as the IHF, for obvious reasons, has always been a little cozier with Russia than most other international sporting bodies. Yeah, and they did seem reluctant to go down this path initially. They were like, we don't want to do it. but you kind of made us do it.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's, but that's not the only fallout. A couple of teams have pulled out of the KHL, Dinah Mo Riga in Latvia, obviously, and Yoker it in Finland, although I have seen conflicting reports of whether they pulled out of the KHL or just the current ongoing Gagarin Cup playoffs, which, is funny because the KHL, like, English language account is just like, damn, look at what's going on with a vanguard. That's crazy.

Yeah. Replies are turned off, by the way. Yeah, that was, that rules. That, they are, I think the way you put it was tweeting through it. They're tweeting through it. And it's, what, what? I hadn't seen that they had turned off the replies, because they didn't initially. It was like, oh, good, good game.

4-3 and it was just nothing but Ukraine flags and the in the replies. Yeah. And again, like, what do I expect a social media intern at the KHL to be like, I'm taking a state? No, of course not. Whatever. And then, so as part of this whole invasion thing, the ruble has cratered. The value of a ruble is way down.

And so a lot of team or a lot of non-Russian players in the KHL, who previously were like, oh, I got to provide for my family. Now that the ruble, you know, doesn't, isn't worth as much in getting paid, you know, like a million rubles isn't what it used to be, like as recently as like four or five days ago. A bunch of North American and European players are like, yeah, we quit. I hadn't. Yeah, so I hadn't seen that. So they're.

Yeah, that got reported a couple of places. Shane Prince, Jeff Platt, Nick Shore, and Marcus Granland are. the four names I have seen. And are they presenting it as if they are leaving voluntarily in objection to world events? It does kind of seem. Okay. Yeah. Or it might just be, oh, shit, if I'm only going to get paid like eight bucks an hour

or whatever to play. Whatever. I am taking a big political stand. I don't know. I don't know, like those guys' individual comments or whatever. but those are four players that I have seen are like we're out. Well, I mean, understandable, I guess. Yeah.

I don't. I wouldn't want to be there either right now. And especially, again, if like the value of my contract just dropped like 60%. I'd especially feel like, well, fuck this then. Yeah. Like I totally understood earlier in the week when guys were like, look, they're paying me like 400. grand or whatever. I got to I got to stick this one out.

But now that they're like, now it's more like 30 grand, I'm fuck it, see you later. Like that makes perfect sense to me. Nothing like having that level of ethics and morality where you're like, look, here's the number under which I will remain. We dropped under it, so I'm gone. Yeah, well, again, it is kind of like a situation where you're going, It's a lot of money and, like, it's all the money I have coming to me for next year or whatever, you know?

Yeah, I can't really. Not that these guys are poorly compensated, even in the KHL, but you know what I mean. We'll talk a little bit later about the difference between losing out on a little bit of money in the short term and potentially losing out on a lot of it with regard to the Major League Baseball situation, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, won't we take a break and then come back and talk about like NHL stuff that is actually like fun and interesting? That'd be good. Let's do that. Okay, great. Okay, bye. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Relationships take work. A lot of us will drop anything to go help someone we care about.

We'll go out of our way to treat other people well, but how often do we give ourselves the same treatment? This month, BetterHelp Online Therapy wants to remind you to take care of your most important relationship, the one that you have. have with yourself. Whether it's hitting the gym, making time for that haircut, or even trying therapy, you are your greatest asset. So invests the time and effort into yourself, just like you do for other people. If we've learned anything in the last few years, it's like you keep hearing. It's okay to not be okay, but you've got to be willing to do what you need to do to get yourself back to where you need to be. And if that involves therapy, that's absolutely a strong option that we shall be open to and willing to consider.

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See why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp online therapy? This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp, and PuckSup listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash puck. That's BetterHelp, B-E-T-E-R-H-E-L-P-E-L-P-L-P-C-L-P-C. All right, so now that that's the really unpleasant portion that everybody's going to be mad at is out of the way. How about a different slightly... Less controversial topic.

The Chicago Blackhawks. Oh, Christ. Oh, no, we're in a... Yeah, so they, the Chicago... has hired their new general manager, and it's the guy who was just, like, sitting down the hall, you know, flicking a paper football around, you know, not really doing anything.

And it took them five months to get there. Five months. So this is the take that seems to be popular is that the Blackhawks made a very big public show out of talking to all these different people, including somebody who wasn't even involved in hockey, a Chicago Cubs executive, cast this wide net.

And the Toronto Raptors executive. Did they? Okay. There you go. The Raptors executive, too. Talk to all these people, cast a very wide net, you know,

analytics with Eric Fluski and, you know, some old school in Peter Shirelli, just went all over the map. And then they hired the guy who was already there. And he is going to be their new voice. is going to be a guy who's been there for years and is already as sconed in the organization and culture of the team. Now, that haven't been said. If you're an organization in turmoil, there can be something to be said for having some continuity, not continuity to the cause of

the turmoil, but he doesn't go back that far. It's, uh, I don't. No, no. I mean. Yeah, no, that was just the guys on the hiring committee or whatever. Right. Yeah, all the guys on the, from the 2010 Hawks who got to hire him. You know, it's interesting. He's a young guy.

Yeah. Too young. Anyone who younger than me is too young to have any of the, but, so I, you know, there's, I liked that the Hawks told us everyone they were hiring. I really hope that catches on, that kind of football style, here's who we've interviewed. I've seen in a few places, people have said, yeah, this is what you do. You get as many smart people to come in and tell you what they would do. And then you gather, they're not really, I mean, they weren't really maybe even interviewing.

They were just getting some free consulting work. And then they just hire the guy that they were always going to hire anyways. Yeah, I still don't know that it needs to take five months. Well, it, yep. It seems like this kind of thing happens a lot where, like in Montreal, for example, everyone was like Kent Hughes, like day one, and then two months later, they were like, wouldn't you know what we hired this guy? He's an agent. His name's Kent Hughes. I don't know if you guys, yeah, we know all about him. But the thing that I thought was interesting,

the hiring decision is not interesting because, again, like he was just seemed like he was probably going to be the guy the whole time. Kyle Davidson, opening press conference, Years long rebuild. Absolutely necessary. Could be three years. Could be five. I don't know. I'm kind of surprised they're going that route.

And I'm curious to know what the reaction would be from the Patrick Cain's and Jonathan Taves. You know, the real reaction, I'm sure they'll be asked. Whatever's the good of the team, blah, blah, blah. Remember a couple years ago, then there was kind of the initial suggestion that they might go down, even a soft rebuild. And both guys were kind of like, ah, that's not what we're here for. But the difference now is they've,

they both got one year left on a contract. Right. Duncan Keith's already gone. It's kind of like, here's the quote. Jonathan and Patrick are extremely important pieces to the organization. They're definitely going to be brought into the loop. There won't be any surprises on their end on what we plan on doing with the organization.

Okay. We're going to look more to rebuild. There's some things that we need to fix that are going to take time. So, you know, I guess the thing is, obviously, I'm pretty sure they both have no moves, right? I would assume, yeah. So that's a situation where it's like, okay, we're going to come to you and we're going to say, hey, this is what the plan is. You can stick around this last year of your contract and then, you know, see what you want to do after that, or we can trade you right now. That feels like what they're going to kind of.

Which is, you know, prudently valid, right? Like I feel like we. Totally understandable. You know, even when guys have no move, no trade clauses, that gives the player power over a situation, which they should absolutely use if you've negotiated that in your contract. And then it's yours to use as you see fit.

But that doesn't mean you can't ask them. It doesn't mean you can't go to someone and say, we think it's in the best interest of the team to trade you. Are you open to that? And, you know, If they say no, screw you, then that's kind of it. But there's every now and then you hear this idea that, you know, he shouldn't even approach these guys.

He can't even talk to them about a trade. It's not how it works. Like if this is, and we have to assume that the stuff that Kyle Davidson was saying at the press conference is the same sort of stuff he was saying in his interview, where they were asking him for his vision. That's, that absolutely has to be on the table at the very least. for for anybody who's on the team now, including the core guys. Tough move to make if you're a rookie GM, but...

Well, it isn't, it isn't, right? Like you say, they're in a situation where he obviously, like, he didn't come out and say this after being like, you know, I think we can make this team competitive again next season. Like, that's not what he said in the interviews. So, like, and we've said this before as well, but when you get hired as a GM, on like a team in Chicago or Montreal's position. Why wouldn't you say, you know what, I'm going to need to have this job like six years minimum

really see where this like, like, of course. Of course. Like I say, I'm only surprised by it because I would have thought Chicago now would be more like Philadelphia where it's like, look, yeah, we're bad. We suck. Our roster is terrible. It's a mess. We don't have any prospects.

but also we do need to be competitive next year or else. You know what I mean? Maybe it's different with Chicago where they go, look, we put a bunch of money in the bank the last decade plus. We sold a lot of tickets, a lot of jerseys, a lot of Stanley Cup champions gear. So we're feeling pretty good about our financial situation. We can float for a little while, whereas maybe Philadelphia doesn't have that. And it'll be fascinating to see. Like if they actually do a strip it down, you know, rock bottom rebuild, you know, I know everybody looks at it and goes, oh, Chicago, it's the, you know, it's the arguably the best market in the, in the U.S. And it might be. But it wasn't, 2015 years ago.

Yeah, 15 years ago when it was bad before Cain and Tave show up, like, there were years where Chicago was drawing less than Atlanta and Florida and Arizona. Like, they were in that ballpark. That, that building was half. empty. And it was, that was different ownership and there were all sorts of policies the fans hated. And it was a very different time. But I, yeah, I'm curious to see, like, how they, how that looks. But yeah, you're right. I mean, new GM, if you can get away with it, absolutely, you come in and say, we've got to strip it all down. And the fact that it's the guy who was already on the staff, like, I would hope that that was a major part of the interview where he sits down and says, we got to strip it all down. And they go, great, weren't you like the assistant? What last year when we were trading first round pick for Seth Jones and giving him a massive contract

and going out and trading for Mark Andre Fleury. Like, you know, did you... Hopefully he has like a... Like, he printed out an email that he sent to Stambo. He's showing them some old texts going like, I am against... God Lord! Yeah. I am against the Seth Jones trade.

In pulling up the quote about Taves and Kane, I just saw this headline. Really good shit. Blackhawks notebook, Rocky Works avoids controversy at Kyle Davidson introduction. You know how he did that? He literally didn't say a word, I don't think. I'm like 90% sure. Oh, no. He spoke just once, quote, they asked me for my two cents and I gave them a dollar's worth of advice.

And that's all literally. I believe that. Yeah. I've seen that before. So. But yeah, that's really funny of like, hey, he didn't call anyone a piece of shit on a live mic. this time. Isn't that great? Yeah, man, Kyle Davidson got up to the podium and immediately fired a tranquilizer dart into the neck of Rocky Words and everyone cheered.

Yeah. But yeah, I'm really interested to see what Taves and Cain want to do, right? Because, you know, the classic puck soup trope of they don't want to move because all their stuff's in Chicago. plus they've been Chicago guys for more than a decade now, right? Like, well over. Yep. Their whole hockey lives, I mean, they're going to. Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah. Prolots. Yeah. And so, but also, we saw how much of a hissy fit they threw when Stan Bowman was like, what if we, like, tried not to be as competitive? And they got, and apparently they got insanely mad about that. And so that like kind of forced the whole current era of giving up draft picks to keep a sinking ship afloat a little bit, you know. But now that the writing's on the wall where it's like, yeah, no, this is what the plan has to be.

It should have been the plan three years ago. Do Thames and Kane go on fucking trade me? Yeah. I mean, maybe they do. and that if they do, Kyle Davidson probably has to make a sad face and go, oh, no, but inside he's like, great, you know, because.

Yeah, an extra draft back. Now, I mean, I've said before many times, and it's not really a unique observation. The stripping down part of a rebuild is the easiest thing a GM can do. Of course. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely the easiest job to eat. So if that's what you've, can do for the first couple of years that you're there.

Great. Now, it gets a little more complicated when you're talking about the two most beloved players of the modern history of your franchise. Like, most of your fan base has never seen a player live playing for the Blackhawks that they feel as strongly about as these two guys. Correct. So. Not a lot of Eric Daze. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's going to be tricky and obviously you've got to manage it, right?

You can't let it be perceived that you're trying to push Jonathan Taves out the door. No, you have like if you go, like, like, like if you go to them and they say, well, then trade me. You have to be like Jonathan Taves and Patrick Cain have asked for a trade. Yeah, or at least get them in front of a microphone to say, like we are, you know, we understand and, you know, I'm sure they're not going to want to come out and say, I've asked for a trade, but they'll say, you know, I understand where the franchise is going. And if that means they pursue a Stanley Cup again. Or I'm willing to open the door to them. And if it's the right fit, et cetera, it's say, oh, I mean, we all know kind of how that gets managed.

So we'll see. I'm also interested to see what he does with Derek King as interim coach because King hasn't really lit the world on fire. but at the same time. Again, if I'm a young GM and I'm going to do the rebuild anyways, I kind of want to keep the existing guy in place for another year, let's say, so that I can, you know, I want to slow roll playing the cards in my hand as long as I can if I'm just thinking career-wise. If I'm thinking what's best for the team, I probably want to get a guy right away.

But, hey, let's keep Derek King so that he can be some other guys higher, even though it was kind of, you know, I was right involved in the decision. I don't know. I'm curious to see what he does with that. Yeah. The other thing that makes us interesting is, let's say the rebuild starts today. Doesn't seem like Mark Andre Fleury wants out. Yep. In fact, it seems like he probably wants to stay.

Which, again, his stuff's there. He just moved a bunch of stuff around. It makes perfect sense. He's got three cup rings already, so he can't really. play the and he actually earned one of them so i knew that was common then uh yeah so but that would really man if you're kyle davidson you're really hoping mark on her flurry is willing to yeah like it oh yeah for sure you know can and taves is tricky this one isn't tricky you this is you can probably get some you know something decent for him at the deadline boy you really hope

that he's willing to move let me put this out there chicago currently has zero retained salary transactions. Kane and Taves salary retained? Imagine what you could get for Patrick Kane at half his salary for the rest of this year and next. Oh, my God. Oh, if you're at the deadline. Oh, my gosh. Oh, but even at the draft, like just next year, we'll eat half of Patrick Kane's money.

We don't care. We're trying to be bad. Yeah. Oh, that would rule. Yeah. Oh, I mean, and if it's a legit rebuild. than you don't need the cap space as much. Now, I'm looking at it.

Yeah, he's got, it's a lower base salary and bonus, but it's like 6.9. It's not one of these plummeting deals. I'm assuming Taves is probably around the same. I believe they have identical contract. Yeah, so, I mean, it ends up costing you $3.5 million in real money. Well, maybe more than that. Because also, yeah, if you wait until after the signing bonus is paid.

Oh, then it's... Now you're... Yeah. Oh, my God. 2.9 million based salary. Yeah, so you're paying some money, but you're buying... You're saying to a team, you can get Patrick Kane next season for like one and a half million dollars. Yeah.

An actual paid out money. Oh, my God. Yeah. Or, you know, Jonathan Tate, pick whatever team that's supposed to be good in the playoffs this year that flames out early in the first round and then go to the... them be like, here's the magical leader of all leaders. Yeah. You know, look how great Duncan Keith did in Edmonton. This is, this is even better than that.

Yeah, you'd absolutely be able to get that. But I don't think it's a deadline thing. Fleury, it has to be a deadline thing. Yes. The thing with Flurry is, you know, people say, well, he doesn't, he does, he does, he does not have a no move. He's got a limited, no trade, which is how we wound up in Chicago. But it's basically, the under, the understanding is.

Yeah. He would have to approve any. Like they wouldn't at, you know, at age 30s in elder states. Because when he got traded to Chicago, he, remember, for a few weeks was like, I might not even play anymore. Maybe I'll just retire. So he could pull that card again. If they're like, hey, we got to, you know, we're going to send you to wherever, whatever undesirable location, which could be whatever, you know, he decides in his mind is, it's not where he wants to go. He could just say, yeah, you know what?

I don't think so. I'm good. Yeah. I'm done. Enjoy giving up a first round pick for me, and I'm not going to report. You know, if that's, he's got a no trade even if he doesn't have one. Correct. I do wonder who else might get traded.

Like, do they go, hey, we just re-signed Connor Murphy for four years, but we don't want them. Like, do they trade him? Obviously, Seth Jones isn't going anywhere, but, like, you shop Calvin DeHan at the deadline? It's the De Brinca rumors have been out there. I wouldn't even say rumors, but it almost like. Like people want him trade. Like dumb people, but people want him trading.

But it's people who are like, it's been out there enough that you almost feel like it's being kind of like, put it this way. I'm not saying this is what happened. But if Kyle Davidson as interim GM, looking ahead to getting the full-time job, was thinking that trading Alex DeBrenka would be a good move, he would probably want to float that out through media

and different ways to get the idea out rather than just drop a bomb on the fan base, it would look a lot like what the last few months has kind of looked like. So I don't know. I'm not, again, like, you're doing a rebuild. You think you would keep your good young players, but if it's a five-year rebuild,

then maybe you don't keep a guy who's in his mid-20s. Yeah. You know, hey, it's a legitimate. Legitimate thing, you got to, when you're doing a full rebuild, you got to basically kick the tires on everybody. So, hey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you should.

Give me a call. Tell me who you want. We'll talk about it. Yep. That's going to be. Yeah. As soon as he starts using the word untouchable, then, then it's not really a reason.

For anyone other than Cain and Taves, if they come out and say, I don't want to move, then you're, you should be concerned. your Chicago fan. Yep. How about another team that is very similar in terms of, it seems like they really need to look at some things with their roster. Vancouver, obviously a lot of rumors lately about, oh, they might trade J.T. Miller, they might trade Brock Bess or, you know,

whoever, like, you can go down the list. Connor Garland is another one. That one's a bit weird. well, only because they just signed him, right? And just acquired him and again, like a youngish guy who would seem to fit with the timeline, even if you're looking a few years out. You would think, but, you know, they got to look at everything. But here's what's interesting is I've seen a number of people in the last few weeks.

They talked about this a little bit on 32 thoughts this week, but this has come up in conversations for a little while now. is that they might not want to sell because the Aquilini's have lost a bunch of money the last few years, and they want to create the illusion that they're competitive. That's always a great strategy. Creating illusions. Yeah, well, so the thing that is funny about this. Oh, there's lots of things that would be funny about that.

Sure, I agree. But the really funny thing is, if you look at the NHL.com slash standings, standings, right? It has the Canucks, quote unquote, only five points out of a playoff spot right now. But, you know, Dallas and Anaheim are both in front of them in the standings, and they have more games played than everybody in front of them except Anaheim. Yep. But to get to like a 96-ish-point pace, they'd need to play. Oh, I just had this in front of me.

Let's see. What tab did I put this in? To get to a 96-ish-point pace, which is maybe doesn't even guarantee you a playoff spot. They would have to play at a 116 point pace the rest of the season. Which is like, you know, like Florida is playing at 100. Do we really think if the Vancouver Canucks keep everybody, and hell, even if they, like, make a couple of rental trades to bring guys in, can they start playing for the rest of the year at, at freaking Florida's pace?

Are you kidding me? Like, if you're buying Canucks tickets for April, right, how are you doing it with, like, you know what, they could still be hanging around the playoff picture by then? Yeah, Dom's model has them at 7% to make the playoffs, money puck's at 10% and both of those dropping. So, I mean, 7% or 10% isn't zero, but it's also not something that you necessarily want to build your whole strategy around.

These models need to have like a percentage chance of, being kind of in the race in late March, since that seems to be with these GMs. It's interesting, too, because, like, they have a relatively easy schedule for the next few weeks, but then again, they're the Vancouver Canucks, so, like, nothing's an easy game, right? But then there's a stretch from late March to early April, where they're at Colorado, at Minnesota, at Dallas, at St. Louis, hosting St. Louis, hosting Vegas at Vegas. That's all in a row. Yikes.

Tough for me to see a lot of points coming out of that one for the old Vancouver Canucks. So, yeah, it's not ideal for them. They have some guys that I think a lot of teams would want. I'm interested to see if they trade Brock Besser just because he is just a pending RFA, but he also has arbitration rights and can probably ask for a shitload of money. Like pretty legitimately can ask for it. I guess is a better way of putting that. Like, anybody can ask for a lot of money, but to deserve it as a different situation altogether.

So, yeah, I don't know. Like, I think that Jim Rutherford, like, what he's said in the media is pretty indicative that he's like, yeah, let's get out from under all these contracts. Like, if we can, you know, like, I'd love to be able to do it. I'd love to give myself cap flexibility for next year. But we've seen it before. where it's like, if you tell the Aqualini's, look, we're this close to the playoffs. They go, sounds good. Trade another first round pick.

Because that's the thing. I mean, if they're losing money, you can, the illusion of playoffs doesn't put more money in your pocket. You know, you don't get to like, you know, when the playoffs start, you don't get to have an illusionary playoff game where people come and pay real money to sit in your building. So I think at some point you've got to have a tough conversation. The real thing that people are bringing up with this is that they just want to not have three-quarters empty building the last 15, 20 games of the season. Right. And so they want to create the illusion that, like, look, every one of these games matters. And of course they don't fucking matter.

Like this team is not likely to make the play. They would have to go on a pretty notable run here. Yeah, they matter. The games matter now in the sense that they really need to be tearing off wins to get back. Yeah, like I said, they need to start playing. Giving up seven goals to the devils is not a great way to start. Yeah, that's right. Like I say, they need to start playing like the Florida Panthers.

Frankly, they need to start playing like the Florida Panthers in like October, obviously. but like to even have a sniff of making the playoffs they need to start playing like the florida panthers um i'm not super convinced they can do it um even and that's you know even with i think thatcher demko rocks i think he's incredible um but they they just they just don't have the horses man yeah and like i i just pulled this up but like uh 21 days ago they beat a an absolutely dog shit team, right? I can't remember who it was. But like, a couple of Vancouver guys were like, this is a big win for them. And I'm like, it moved them into like 12th in the Western Conference. And they beat whoever. They beat like Arizona or Seattle. I think it might have been Seattle.

And I was just like, what are you talking about? And they were like, oh, well, they got to, they got to fill the building the next however many weeks. And it's like, oh, okay, all right. Like, that's all that matters. Like, okay, got it. And it was even like, I think last night was one of those nights where they didn't play, but like everyone, they were chasing one. So it's like, the one other thing I'll say on Vancouver that I need help too, that I found really interesting. Yeah, you don't get help in today's NHL because everyone's even, even when you lose, you're still getting points. And yeah, it's, uh, the, the other thing I found interesting from Elliot's 32 thoughts that just went out.

He makes one mention of the Canucks, and I'll read the entire point. Okay. And keep in mind, this is Elliot Freeman who, you know, usually each one of his points is paragraph, multiple paragraphs, lots of good information, lots of stuff in there. This is his entire point. Vancouver's players are sick of the rumors, not that I blame them. They've made it very clear. And that's it.

and I'm really kind of fascinated by that because he's clearly saying something by not saying something. This isn't a guy who writes one sentence or two sentences and calls it a day. But I wonder what that looks like because no NHL player likes being in trade rumors, but what does it mean to be sick of rumors and to have made that very clear to who and how and who was it? And what does that, if anything, does that do to Jim Rutherford's plan going forward? If, you know, if whoever, you know, J.T. Miller is like, stop putting my name out there. Do you go back to him and say, sorry, too bad, I'm the GM of a hockey team and I have to do my job? Or do you all of a sudden try to stamp out any talk?

Or is it, oh, yeah, we'll stop putting your name out there. You've been traded to the person. It's bird penguins. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's how I would personally do it. But, hey, you know what, like. Yeah, we know.

But, you know, this is not a pleasant topic. And I got an even more unpleasant one for you, Sean. Uh-oh. You don't want to hear about this. Do you see this Toronto Maple Leafs game the other night? No, I was watching the outdoor game, so I didn't. Sure, of course. Um, you know, like, I, I, I think,

that was like the, it was a fun game. Like, how do you not love that? That was, and I'll tell you, and this, I'm going to be an old man here, but for, for you kids are there, that's what the 80s was like. Just guys coming in and taking wrist shots from the top of the circle going five holes, like unscreened five hole, just, no, oh man, that was, that was wild. I tweeted it night off, but I was like, yeah, the key to making the NHL. fun again is to only have goalies who suck.

Yeah. Make the Nets bigger or make the goalies all like slightly drugged and, uh, yeah. You can only, you can only have goalies who are on downers. Yeah. It was, like, uh, it is a couple of the stats guys pulled the numbers and, you know, if you didn't see the game, you know, probably 10.7 the final. 10, seven, safe assumption, all four goalies played. all four goalies were terrible.

And they said that like based on expected goals, it was the worst goaltending performance of the stats era. So we're going back, you know, over 13 years. And by far, like almost twice as bad as the next worst is, which was a 9-8 game. Like it was laughably bad goaltending to the point where like a lot of times, and it's happening here too, like we know for both teams, especially the Leafs because they're the team that's going to the playoffs, a game like this happens

and you're just like, clearly they don't play defense. I don't even know that you can criticize the defensive games of either of these teams. It was just that every shot was going in. Like, what are the Leaf supposed to do defensively, not allow shots from the corner? You know, they go right along the red line and still go in. The goal that I was really losing my mind about laughing was the Leaf shorthanded goal. I think it was, I think it was Bunting, dropped it to Marner. Yep.

Yeah, you did the Marner move to Marner, which. Yeah, but like, I don't think I've ever seen a goalie bite that. Like, he was three quarters of the way out of the net on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a Dek by Michael Bunting. Yeah. Michael Bunting like, let made that guy leave his shoes. It was so, it was so bad. And like, I. And, and, and, it, not surprisingly, people in terms of.

are panicking and, you know, this is disaster. This is, you know, it's the same way. And it is. I mean, the first half of the season, Jack Campbell looked like he was going to win the Vezina, and now he looks awful. And if you go into the playoffs with goaltending like this, you're screwed. I mean, we know that they're not going to win with goaltending this bad. But like, I tweeted the night of the game.

And some people kind of took this in a way I didn't intend. But I said that, you know, I can't wait. I think my tweet was I can't wait. to, for all the takes about how a team that just won the most entertaining game of the year by three goals is having an existential crisis. And people took that as like defending the Leafs or saying that they played well or that this was, it was a good thing to give up seven goals. And that's not what I meant. It was more an observation of what the NHL is, that you see a game like that and it's just immediately we all understand that it's a disaster for both teams. Like, do you remember a few, I know you're not an NFL guy, but a few years ago there was a game between the chiefs,

and the Rams, two really good teams. And it was like a Monday nighter, I think. And it ended up being like 54 to 52. It was just insane. Like just touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. And obviously, bad, you know, great offensive skill, but not good defensive games. And like, nobody after that game was like, well, this is why the chiefs clearly are not actual Super Bowl. You can't, you know, they weren't happy that they gave up 50 points, but people were

focused on, holy crap, these offenses are unstoppable. And it was, in hockey, it's just, we just understand intrinsically that you give up goals, it's, it's bad. And like, everybody is, you know, I got everybody tweeting at me saying, like, you can't give up seven goals in the playoffs and win. And it's like, well,

you can if you score 10. How come nobody, how come nobody's take is, man, if the Leafs score like this in the playoffs, they're going to be unbeatable. Nobody says that. And that's because that's the nature of the NHL. We all know that that's not how it works. But it's just, it's funny to me that if the Leafs had lost that game two to one, no problem. But the fact that they won 10 to 7 were in crisis mode.

At least, you know, they were better in the next game. And we'll see what happens if tonight they're playing Buffalo. So they lose that. We'll go back to crisis. But God, wouldn't it be fun to have an NHL where a team won 10 to 7 and it was a good thing? Sure. Yeah. I don't know how you can say that that should be the case, like, given what we know about how

goaltending works or whatever. Well, yeah. Yeah, no, it would be. It's not, I'm pining for how I wish things were not how I think. I'm not making any arguments about how they actually are. And, yeah, I mean, the Leafs are, I actually don't think, at least if I'd seen, I don't think they've announced to their goalies tonight, but I wouldn't be surprised if they maybe let Marazic run with the net for a little bit, although maybe they put Campbell back in against the savers because the

sabers are bad and you desperately want to get his head back on screw. And also, Morazic also sucks. Well, he hasn't played much this year, but he certainly hasn't been great. No. But here's the thing is Jack Campbell last 20 games, he started out, he was so good at the beginning of the year. Yep. Last 20 games dating back to December 1st, 893 save percentage. Yeah, so it's not like, this isn't two weeks. I mean, we all know even, It's not worse lately. Dominic Hasick in his prime could string together two bad weeks

of games and that's just goal tending. But no, Campbell's been bad now for longer than he was good. The fascinating thing, I don't know if you have, it was an article on The Athletic where they had a little table and it was first 20 games, last 20 games. And it's like,

first 20 games, goals against of like 1.7, save percentage in 940. Second half, goals against 3.5, save percentage, 870, like just terrible number. But the win-loss record is like identical because it hasn't really hurt them in the win-loss column. But this is, again, we all look at it and go, yeah, but in the playoffs when it tightens up,

they're screwed. Right. And that becomes, so yeah, to your point, 12-4 and 1 with a 946 in his first 18 games. Okay. And then from in his last 20, 11, 4, and 3, 893. So he's cost them like two points in the standings by being terrible. And to the earlier point, Marazik is 895 on the season in like 13 games. I got to say that if, like, clearly this is not how the Leafs are going to play.

Like they will do the hockey brain thing, which is even if they have to, turn Mitch Martyr and Austin Matthews into checking forwards, they will desperately try to win games two to one. I dream of a day where someone like Shelton Keith gets up in front of the media and goes like, yeah, man, we score 10 goals. We won by three. I'll take that every, you know, you want to let this be a message to the lead. You want to run and gun with us? Fine. We're better at that.

We'll run and gun you. And we don't, we'll win seven to six. We don't care. That would never in a million years happen. Like a little hook would come out the side and yank him. He'd be fired before. Yeah, big trap door opens up and it's. And so I mean, they're going to change or try to and it'll probably affect their

deadline plans and, you know, now they're going to. They're going to trade for two defensemen. Yeah. Yep. But, you know, there's this little part of me that, look, we all understand if they play anything like what we saw a few nights ago. right all sorts of all offense terrible goal tending so so defense we all know that they get to the playoffs they play at tampa bay lightning the lighting will eat them alive an experienced team like that two stanley cup runs in them will absolutely carve them up it's just it's just like okay no matter who they play in the first round Boston Tampa well but how much fun would that's what I'm thinking Florida how much fun would it be if they played Florida like this because Florida like You know, the inexperienced team with also shaky goaltending and lots of offense, that's the series where you're like, you know, if you want to go sicko mode, maybe that's the series we should all be rooting for.

Tampa, Toronto right now would be a bloodbath. I mean, I don't think that series last more than five games. But Toronto, Florida. But the point is, the point is that because of the very stupid playoff format, like, we would not be having a conversation about can the league? get out of the first round, if they didn't have to play the Bruins fucking 14 years in a row in the first round. One of the best teams of the era. Every fucking year.

It's stupid. It sucks. And like, you know me, I don't give a shit about the Leafs. But, like, I just look at the playoff format and go, there are so many fucking, like, made-up fake, like, angles on these teams that we watch all the time and go, oh, they're not. they're actually not that good. But it's only because the Atlantic Division has four of the seven best teams in the fucking league. If we had a format where the Leafs could play an easy team like the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Guaranteed win. But again, but again, do we also not accept that all this shit is so random? Like, it's four games, it's six games. Like, come on, man. I'm so sick of this shit. And also the thing with the Leafs is, you know, I'm joking about the Columbus thing, but they lost,

this leaf team that can't win in the playoffs. Well, they took a Washington team that was supposed to sweep them to six games and lost, you know, because they lost more overtime games. They lost to the Bruins twice when the Bruins were favored.

Two seven game series were the home team won game seven. Columbus, they should have won, but that was the bubble. It was, I mean, that playoffs is weird. And then Montreal is, there's no. Is there a word you would use to? Not that I've ever heard. No.

I don't think anyone's made this way. And then Montreal, obviously, it was a disaster, but this idea that... But also, their fucking number two center got his head kicked in. Yep. So... Yeah. In a seven-game series with two overtime losses, so one more goal, they win that series, and a guy who's like an 80-point, 40-goal score, misses the whole day.

But nobody wants to hear, right? Like, we're at this is... Nobody wants to hear it, and no one's going to want to hear it this year when they lose to Tampa Bay in seven games when Tampa's got home. and because they're an amazing team. This is, I mean, you're, you're, when, when, when you, when your team gets randomly hot for two months and wins the Stanley Cup, you, you get to celebrate like it's real and it's, it goes the other way to. Yeah.

And, and look how well it's worked out for Montreal and Dallas since they went to a cup final. Fantastic. All right. Well, why we take another break and we'll be right back. You know, most of us don't think very much about our lawns. during the winter. I know I don't. I'm looking at my lawn. Right now, it's got like two feet of snow on it. I can't see it at all, but it's out there somewhere. But here's the thing. This is apparently the time of year that we should actually be starting to think ahead and starting to

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less than 15 minutes. And best of all, this stuff really works. And Sunday is offering our listeners 20% off. Full season plans start at just $129, and you can get 20% off at checkout when you visit get sunday.com slash puck 20. That's 20% off on your custom plan at get sunday.com slash puck 20. Uh, hey, we're back. And you mentioned it last segment very briefly, Sean, but there was an outdoor game this past weekend. And I got to say, if Greg hadn't told us we had to record the bonus episode on Saturday morning because he was going to be traveling to Nashville before then, I would not have known there was an outdoor game. These things kind of sneak up on you. They both sneak up on you and also it's like, oh, I guess I do remember hearing about that a little bit.

But that's like, you know, and it just goes to further show that like at this point, the, The outdoor games are just, this is for the locals. We don't have, you don't have to care about this. They are. And it's, I mean, on the one hand, they definitely killed the mystique of the outdoor game when they brought in the stadium series and whatever else. I mean, if they made a billion dollars. They made a billion. And the other thing is if you don't have the stadium series, if you're just doing the Winter Classic, you probably never get a Tampa at Nashville outdoor game.

And it was actually, it was pretty cool. I like that they, they, you know, it's not just the same. It wasn't like, oh, let's do the Bruins and Blackhawks at Fenway again. Let's, let's try something different. Let's, you know, it was Nashville is a cool hockey town. And it, you know, finally get, get Tampa into a national spotlight a little bit more in terms of the regular season. It was good. Like, you know, I will.

be honest, I didn't watch a ton of it because I was busy laughing hysterically at the Leafs Red Wings game. Yeah, that kind of drew a lot of eyes, I feel like, on Saturday night. Yeah, but, but, you know, this was, it was a good game. A couple of fights and real ones, not just like two guys being like, hey, do you want to fight at an outdoor game so that we can be the first ones to do it? But, like, felt like a real game, two good teams, which we weren't sure going in. Like, you know, when this was announced, it was like, oh, Nashville, are they going to, no. good teams, good game. So I don't, you know, I don't mind this.

I think two or three a year is the right number. And the next one we've got is the Heritage Classic, so the Canadian version, which this year features an American team. It's Leaves Buffalo, right? Leaves Buffalo, in Hamilton, which is located geographically in Canada, but pretty much right in between and is sort of split, I would say, split down the middle in terms of fan bases, but certainly both are well represented. That should be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I mean, the stadium it's in is not anything to write home about, but it just should be a cool atmosphere. And yeah, great job by Nashville. They pulled it off really well. And I would like to see it. If you're going to insist on the Winter Classic always be in the same big markets, let's use the stadium series to get a little more creative and get it. some new teams into the mix. I thought that was cool. Yeah. Let me say this, though. You don't want to be a team that hosts an outdoor game. In modern outdoor, and this is a stat I pulled this weekend,

because when Nashville lost, I was like, boy, it feels like the home team doesn't win a lot. Okay. And I was right. They've done 32, not including the Lake Tahoe games. You know, in modern NHL history, they're doing 32. And I'm not counting Lake Tahoe because it wasn't really a home game for either team. Yeah. Really? So in those 32 games, the home team has won 13 times, and that's it. There you go.

Although we're not counting the New York Rangers being the away team at Yankee Stadium because of a least technicality, which is pretty fun. Right. Well, then it's still 13 out of 30. Yeah. They're still below 500 pretty comfortably. And that obviously doesn't include, you know, overtime where you get a point or anything like that. Yeah. I didn't want to really slice it that fine. But yeah, I thought that was interesting.

And I wonder how much of that is just like random chance and how much of it is like, it's like a bigger deal for you in the lead up to it. You've got to get everybody all these fucking tickets and blah. And I think also, like, I mean, how much whole mice advantage is there really playing in a totally new environment? Right. I mean, you've got, in theory, you've got the crowd, although in a lot of cases, including on Saturday, it's not really the case. There were a ton of lightning fans there. Like, those lightning fans, I didn't necessarily know that lightning fans traveled that well.

But yeah, they showed up a lot of them. So, I mean, what's the home? I mean, yeah, you get the last line change or whatever. but that's that's pretty much it so uh yeah i guess i guess maybe we shouldn't be surprised yeah um did you did you like their little outfits that's like a big thing with i i i wrote this in my my monday column like i liked them but i feel like i'm i'm wobbling on the edge of already being sick of this trend like this this kind of started with the bruin's like wearing the bed that like tahoe wearing like the winders yeah yeah yeah

And I'm already feeling like I've got maybe one more, hey, let's wear silly but ironic matching outfits. I did like the, I didn't like the rock and roll guys one or whatever they thought the leather jackets were supposed to be. I did like the cowboy look. Okay. Like the honky talker guy look, you know. Now, is that because I'm a honky talk man? Well, I am coming to your town in a pink Cadillac. So, yep.

But yeah, you know, you don't, you can, you can, you can, you don't have to feel like you're doing the, uh, the, the, like, rock, the rock guy thing. Like, you don't know what a rock guy is. That's fine. You don't have to, you don't have to pretend. Yeah. So I don't know. Oh, God, you know what? I just, I literally just now realized I am now going to have to watch the Leafs do this in a couple of weeks. Oh, I can't imagine. What do, what is, what is Austin Matt? Matthew's going to do. I got it. Canadian tuxedos. But didn't they kind of, I mean, that was sort of what we saw in Nashville a little bit. But yeah, maybe they'll.

Yeah, I guess that's true. But like, they at least had like the sheep, what are the sheep skin collars and everything. I'm saying like, have you ever heard of that band War on Drugs? I have. Okay. So one time I saw. I don't know any of their songs, but I've... Check them out. They're good.

Okay. But one time I saw them at a music festival, and the guy from War on Drugs was wearing blue jeans, a light blue denim shirt, and a blue denim jacket. And I was like, nobody's ever looked this cool in their lives. Yep. That's pretty good. Like, that's what the Leaf should do. It's just like, it's all denim for us.

Denim all the way down. Yep. I could, I don't know. I could see it. It's going to be like, Austin. Matthews doing something wild, Mitch Martyr doing a slightly not as good version of that, and then 18 uncomfortable, like John Tavares has to walk in wearing a costume, and he's just like, I hate this.

That's right. As we know in the NHL, what guys like to wear is suits with a beanie hat. That's right. Yep. They love that. And hold a cup of coffee. Yeah. And then their team tweets out, the drip.

Okay It's a black suit They're dressed like They're dressed like fucking Agent Smith in the Matrix Yeah Except he's got he's got like a pocket square And they're just like could you believe it? Maybe

Maybe it's a pocket square Look at the fit The this is It really is the worst Like Patrick Liney at least looks like he's coming out of a Verhoven movie You know what I mean? But But everybody else just looks like an

extra in Wolf of Wall Street and you're like, oh yeah, nobody's ever looked this cool in their lives. My dad goes to church every Sunday. I've seen him wear a suit before. It's fine. The other big piece of news in the NHL this week that just absolutely blew my mind that this is news. This is from an ESPN story written by a guy named Greg Weishen's guy. Okay. Doesn't sound familiar, but okay. Does he have a podcast or is there? I don't think, I feel like I would know if he did.

Okay. This is the lead of this story. This is the stupidest thing that anybody has ever said out loud. The NHL is adopting in-game face-off win probabilities for broadcasts, a significant leap for the league in data analysis and technology. Face-off probability leverages data collected by NRAP. NHL Edge, the league's puck and player tracking technology, to create a graphic that displays the chances that a player wins a face-off or a team gains possession of the puck. It's the first machine learning stat the league has developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services, whose artificial intelligence can create in-game probabilities in sub-second speed. This is idiotic. This is so fucking stupid. I can't imagine giving.

half a shit about this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The sub-second speed is my favorite, because they then go on to describe all stats from, like, that season. So. Well, it's not, no. So, I'll scroll down here. 70 different data points from historic and in-game stats, as well as contextual data.

the artificial intelligence takes 10 years of league-wide face-off results, more than 200,000 draws from all the players in the league today and uses that data to include a player's success rate based on face-off location, home versus away games, and history against specific opponents. It also factors in data such as handedness, height, and weight. Yeah, all of which, of course, changes at a sub-second, you know, you have to update it. Well, the gimmick is like, oh, you know, Patrice Bergeron just got kicked out of this face off. Here comes David Posternak.

How does that change the likelihood? Yeah. But all of which is to say, face-offs are like so insignificant as to not matter, right? Like just in the grand scheme of things, like obviously situationally, blah, blah, blah. But in the grand scheme of things, whether you win or lose a face off doesn't mean shit, right? Right. Which is confusing to a lot of people, because we always talk about possession and you would think that the thing that gets you possession would be more important, but we've just learned over time that it's not as important as certainly it gets made out to be by. And then, but this is the really interesting thing, or wrinkle about all this is like, okay, here they come.

This guy has a 40% chance to win a face-off against Patrice Bergeron, right? And then he wins it. And you're like, oh, it's like a 40% chance. Right. It's not like terrible. Or like, whoa. You're like, oh, the model's broken because it's it. Right.

Right. Like, I guess my point is what fucking purpose does this serve? Oh, here's the probability that this thing that happens for one second. is going to happen. And then it either does or it doesn't. And you're not surprised because, you know, the best face-off guy in the league wins 55% of his draws. Well, that's it, right? Like, this number is either going to be nonsense or it's going to be somewhat accurate.

And the range is always, it's going to be like 55%, 52%. And you're just going to be looking at it, like, who cares, man? But well, even if it's, even if this like prediction model or whatever we want to call it is right, if it's right, 75% of the time. Yeah. Who gives a shit? It's going to be a neat thing to see on screen. And I get where they're kind of coming from. Like you do see this stuff trickling into other sports a little bit.

You see it in the NFL a bit, although that's much more a sport that lends itself. to this better, you know, when it's as far as I hit probability of this field goal, you know, going in, okay, that's, right. That's an important event. Yeah, that's a lot. That's like, okay, are they going to get the snap off before the, before delay a game? Like, that's how what, like, I don't know, who cares? But we know what the answer is to this of why would they do this?

It's, first of all, it's just going to be something neat to look at on the, on the TV. I'm not willing to go that far. More importantly, it's potentially going to open the door to letting people bet on this stuff, which will be insane. Like I understand that like everything in sports media these days is gambling themed. I'm on a podcast where we're sponsored by a sports book. If people want to drop the occasional wager, I'm not here to lecture them. don't ever bet on face-offs. You really have a problem if you're bet.

If you find yourself tempted to bet on individual face-offs, do not. Like really, really reevaluate if that appeals to you on any level. Sean, did you see uncut gems? I did. Uncut gems. Okay. Remember at the end of the, where he's like, I need, you know, he bets all this money, like an insane amount of money. Yeah.

On the, on who wins the opening tip off? And then he, like, he bets on. on the Celtics to win at the Celtics do win the tip off. And he goes, I would have been really fucked if they lost. Yeah. Luckily, he's not at all, it all ends well. No, instead it all works out great for all how. Here's what I'm really interested in, though.

Like, two things. If this becomes gambling related, and that seems to be, according to Greg's piece, and there were some other ones, that seems to be where they might be headed. first of all, I want to see what the model looks like. Because if this model is actually saying like, you know, Bergeron's an 80% favorite, well, as far as like what numbers it's spitting out. Like if it's saying Bergeron's 80%,

is that the odds you're going to give me? Can I bet 4 to 1 that he's going to lose a face off? Or does, you know, I'm guessing it. Don't start thinking about this because then you're going to start betting on it. As soon as people start betting on face-offs, we're all going to get a crash course in how, subjective face-off wins and losses are. Extremely, yeah.

When you see, like, when you throw down a hundred bucks on Berger ought to win a face-off because you're sick and you see the puck go back, but then somebody else, the winger reaches in and pokes it with his stick and suddenly it pops up on your phone, like, bet lost, you're going to suddenly be like, oh, face-off wins and losses are like often

complete nonsense. So, but hopefully you're not in that situation. please, please, at all seriousness, do not bet on phase. If you find yourself even slightly tempted by this, don't. Please reevaluate. I'm begging. I am losing my mind at this quote.

Lahansky, I'm not going to scroll back up and figure out who Lahansky is, said that with 50 to 70 face-offs per game and up to 20 seconds between a stoppage and play and the face-off, there should be plenty of those storytelling opportunities. If there's a key critical face-off, we want to be able to show a probability for who might win and how that probability might change if someone else took the face-offs. That would be incredibly compelling and really valuable to the viewer. Citation needed. That is...

What are you talking? Who gives a shit? What? Oh, my God. You know what would be cool? And this is what I thought maybe when I first read the whole sub-second thing, because I don't know if you've ever seen a guy get kicked out of the face-off circle. Ryan, but if you haven't, like, he doesn't just teleport out and switch spots in some second time. There's actually quite a bit of, he kind of meanders over to the right wing and

and then he goes and talks to the defenseman for no reason. Yeah. Yeah. Now, if they could, if they actually, among these 70, 70, like, how is there 70 factors? But if they actually did, if they could do something like, I see a guy line up and then he like flips over the bottom hand and goes to the, or, you know, even flips sides and or we see the position. change and that started to update in real time, okay, now I'm interested. Not in that individual phase off, but I want to see how it changes just based on, you know, the, the guy, the point guy comes in a little bit and suddenly does that change the odds? That would be cool. There's no indication they're doing that at all. Yeah. You know, they say they have 10 years of data or whatever.

We'll see. And I get, I understand machine learning. It's this whole idea that sometimes you plug in a whole lot of inputs and you get unexpected results that can still be accurate and stuff that we might say would never. But I mean, I was reading the article and one of the things they mentioned is like we're looking at their face off records at home and away. And it's like, oh, crap. Like, it's here we go. Like I, and I hate this stuff because whenever if you, if you buy into analytics, like you and I both do, if you try to explain that to someone who doesn't, they always go into the whole like, oh, what is it like, you know, on Tuesday nights when it's a full moon or whatever? And you're like, no, it's not.

But this maybe sounds like it would be. It's going to be completely useless and will be cool to see for like the first week. And then we'll all learn to ignore it. Yeah. And entire intermission shows will be devoted to. That's kind of my big thing with this is like faceoffs, again, are not especially important in the grand scheme of things. And they are the most over-analyzed stat in the world.

That, like, shot blocks, I guess, but even shot blocks tell you something, although maybe not what people want them to tell you. With all that, having been said, finally, a way to even more thinly slice face-offs and why they're important or not important. Why wouldn't they do? I mean, I'm sure there's a reason, but, like, I would like to see. not, you know, probably, like, what, give me the shooting percentage on any given shot, including you factor in speed and everything since you've got the puck tracking, like, not in real time,

but show me on a replay, like, show me a great save and then be like, this is actually how great a save it was, because this should have been, yeah, of course. I mean, I know, I know that's kind of expected goals, but expected goals is still kind of a clunky, yeah. Well, it, right, like, like, you could do it all based on how far was the goal. goalie out of position and, you know, you think there'd be some way to do that. That could be neat in hindsight. Like, you'd show me the replay and then, you know, be like this was a 99% goal and he took it away. This data is, in theory, it's going to be really helpful in improving expected goal numbers.

Yeah. In theory. In actual practice, I kind of doubt that it will be, at least, you know, based on everything. I've seen so far. But I guess we'll see. One last thing we should talk about on the show this week is a little something called the Major League Baseball Lockout. Folks, the NHL is free of its ignominious history of being the most locked out sport in North America.

Major League Baseball making a real run at... Well, no, no, we're the most embarrassing. Well, with their first work stoppage in 28 years. Yeah. And I think their first lockout stoppage ever, haven't all the previous ones been strikes? I feel like there was one. Certainly 94 was, but. Yes.

And there was, they missed some camp time. But I had that this is interesting to me. First of all, as a baseball fan, you know, it's obviously big news. We're not a baseball podcast, but it's, it's, it's obviously big news. We're not a baseball podcast, but it does, it does suck. But it's been fascinating for me to watch the level of anger that this is generated among baseball fans and baseball media. Rightly so.

I have, you know, it absolutely should. And it's all being aimed at the commissioner, Rob Manfred, and the owners, or at least a significant amount of it. I'm great with that. People know me. I'm pro player all the time on this stuff. Everyone should be. But it is really interesting.

If people aren't following it, They just announced earlier this week. They had a last minute negotiating session. The season is supposed to start beginning of April. Now they've said the deadline has passed. They're going to lose some games. They're going to, they're starting to cancel games. They've canceled like a week or two so far.

There's talk that they may miss the entire first month. And it is just, it's fascinating to me to see how angry baseball fans are at this and sports fans in general. again, rightly so, but compared to as an NHL fan where we went through this three different times where we lost not just a week of hockey, but half a season, a full season, and then half a season again. And I have actually seen people with takes

along the lines of like, hey, hockey fans, are you starting to rethink the Gary Bettman thing now? Like, now that Rob Manfred is, like, as if that's, like, not being the consensus worst commissioner in sports is some victory. That's really spiking the football like five yards before the end zone.

And the fact that... 20 yards before the end zone. Yeah, the fact that the last time around that we all figured there'd be another lockout, but then there wasn't because of COVID, because they had to get or figure out how to do the bubble and everything. And so they got together and got a deal.

That this is some redemption arc for Gary Bettman. We closed the book. Look, by the way. Instead of a reminder that he is absolutely the worst commissioner. Like, go to a baseball fan now. If you know a baseball fan who's really mad that they've just canceled a week of games in April, go up to him and be like, hey, man, hypothetically, let's say this lockout drags on until the All-Star break and you lose half a season.

Then they make a deal. And in a few years, they lock them out again. And this time they canceled the whole season. And then a few years after that, they lock them out again and cancel half a season. but the fourth time Rob Manfred made a deal before they canceled any games you'd have to give him a break on that right

you'd have to consider him redeemed and just look at the face they make it because they're going to be like if he locks out the players three times he can't still be the commissioner we will have like yeah we would have broken into major league headquarters with torches and pitchforks

and yet hockey fans are like well you got to give Gary Bettman credit he went one for four and only because that fourth time was absolutely forced on them by extraordinary circumstances and we'll probably lock them out again in a few years. People are insane. I get it. We're in the narrative business.

Everybody loves a contrarian storyline. But oh my God, if you're pointing at this to be like, hey, Batman isn't so bad. No, he's awful. And this is just a reminder. The fact that they are this mad about a week of Louis, losing games and we've lost two years worth and we didn't run the guy out of out of the sport is that's the story here not so redemption arc to your point I just went and found the history of modern baseball work stoppages mm-hmm 1972 there was a strike commissioner

boi-cune was was in there I'm not going to get into like what all the thing was the next season there's a lockout boi-cune is still a commissioner three years after that there's another lockout and Bowie Cune is still the commissioner. Then in 1980s, so now it's gone four years, there's a strike. And all of these are like relatively short. Like a couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there. 81, there's another strike. So one year later.

That's the big one. And no, that's only, that's the big one in terms of the history up till then, because it splits the season in two when they have this. weird playoff. Yeah. There's another strike in 1985. They missed two games,

it says. There was a lockout in 19... And that, by the way, is Peter Uvaroth. Yeah. I remember the 85 one because I was a kid and the Blue Jays were good

and I like didn't understand why it shut down for a weekend and then it was like, yeah, it's back. It's fine. No big deal. And yeah, that was in the middle of August.

1990 lockout goes about a month. Faye Vincent is the commissioner. Nobody misses a game but opening day is delayed by a week. 94-95 strike, obviously the season is canceled. And the 95 season is shortened. Yeah. And the reason you will never in your life see a strike in the NHL because that was,

that's what happens when you go into a season without a CBA and the players can then pull to shoot on you at the end of the season. They would never allow that in hockey. Yeah. And then, you know, between 94-95 and now, there hasn't been one. Yeah, because in 94, when they canceled the World Series, even baseball that had that insane record of constant work stoppages was like, all right, we just canceled our championship.

We fucked up. We've got to make sure this never happens again. And for 20, almost 30 years. Yeah, almost 30 years. it doesn't happen. Meanwhile, hockey cancels the Stanley Cup

and a few years later, they're like, ah, we need to lose a season to go from 52 to 50% or whatever it was.

Yeah, I think it was 53, but yes. The really funny part about all this as far as I'm concerned is that like, yeah,

Bud Sela canceled a season, um, or cancels a playoff, I guess, right? Mm-hmm. And then, uh,

he is in that job for forever and everybody hates him the entire fucking time. Everybody's like, I hate this son of a bitch. Oh my God, he sucks. And he makes a ton of other unrelated bad decisions. But there is relative labor peace because the owners have just like completely crushed the players union. Not so much that like they don't have guaranteed contracts like in the NFL or whatever. but like the players didn't really have a lot of power. And then, you know, now this time, like everything is on the table.

In 94, 95, they just wanted like a salary cap or something. And now it's everything to do with free agency. Service time manipulation is a big problem. But yet, not like crazy big issues. It's not like right now they're arguing over a hard cap or something like that. It actually feels a lot to me like the 2012 NHL lockout. where you're sort of like, you should be able to sit down and get this hammered out. But it seems like the problem here that would never be really a big problem in the NHL,

because they're, say this about Gary Bettman, he's good at getting everyone in line behind like the six big market owners who were. After, after 95 he is, yeah. Yeah. Where this lockout seems to be, and I'm by no means an expert on this, but it seems to be, The small market teams are going, we're getting screwed here. And they're not not getting screwed. But I saw somebody on my timeline last night put it very, very succinctly of like, why do you think you should be able to compete competitive,

like financially with the New York Yankees if you're the Tampa Bay raise or the, you know, like shouldn't the Yankees just have a shitload more money than you? They're the New York Yankees. Don't you get it? Yep. You know? And I mean, that's a problem that we did have in hockey and we don't anymore because now the New York Yankees of hockey just have to give money to the Montreal Expos of hockey and then shut up and go away. But it's not like the Yankees aren't doing revenue sharing or whatever.

Yeah. They are. Yeah. But they can spend. I mean, there's a soft cap basically because of luxury tax and all of this stuff. But yeah, it's just, it's fascinating. for me to see somebody getting, again, 100% justifiably torn into shreds. Yeah. Rubman.

Overdoing a little bit of something once that our guy did a lot of three different times. And people are like, oh, so your guy's good now, right? Yeah. Again, like, I've said this before, but there is one halfway decent commissioner in sports. And it's, it's Adam Silver in the NBA. Yep. And, like, even he's not good. He's just, like, not bad.

Yeah. You know? And Roger Goodell, who everyone hates in the NFL, at the very least, you point at the numbers and they're all going up, up, up. Right. And really up, not Gary Bettman up, where it's like, well, we made more money than we did in 1987, so that's good, right? Like, actually up. Yeah. Hey, speaking of, did you see there's a rumor going around?

that the NBA is going to expand to a little city called Las Vegas, Nevada? Interesting. That could never work. No, no. Actually, it might not work in the NBA. Right. That team is either going to go 41 and 0 at home or 0 in 41. And I'm not sure which.

Oh, this was Bill Simmons said this. So, like, it's not necessarily. But Bill Simmons says the NBA will expand to Las Vegas and Seattle. adds LeBron James will be involved at the ownership group for the Las Vegas team Vegas and Seattle Look, say what you want about Bill Simmons I bet you one of those teams will be good

And the other one will just be awful Everybody will expect the other one to be good Right And maybe not so much Because they all went out and got like a bunch of Extremely mediocre players They're going to be the team that brings Ennis Cantor back

To continue his Hall of Fame career But yeah, we're done. That's it. We don't need to do any more podcasting today. Sean, what do you got to plug, brother? I got some pieces this week, including today at the Athletic. You can get my ranking of every 10-game win streak of the cap era. I rank them from the least to the most fake. So this is inspired by this year's flame streak just ending. I went down the list of all 30 of them and told you which ones.

actually were good teams and which ones were teams that turned out not to be good, and they just got hot for a little while. I think this year's flames real. They're going to win the Pacific Division. I didn't rank this year's streaks just because, you know, I only, I'm a sports writer. I only am smart with the power of hindsight, and I don't have that yet for those three teams, but there have been 30, there were like, I think there were like 25 10-game win streaks in the history of the NHL up until the shootout came in and now there have been

30. Weirdly. Yeah, weirdly in the parody era, somehow you can still win. But the longest losing streak according to the NHL has been three games. That's right. Hey, you didn't lose if you lost in a certain way. Yeah, I got a bunch of

stuff this week as well. What we learned, as alluded to, I just did keeping pace because the Islanders finally got to their 50th game. You know what's interesting about that, by the way, is how far out of it do you think the Columbus Blue Jackets are as the second best team, or the first team out of the East playoffs? How far out of it?

They are, I think when I checked last time, there was like eight points. Yeah. So as of when we're recording this, they would need to play at a 117 point pace the rest of the season to get into the playoff conversation. You know what would help the Columbus Blue Jackets? A little 16 game win streak. That's right.

You're right back in it. See it before from these guys. That would be fun. Did you remember it? I'll be quick on this, but did you remember that when the Blue Jackets had that 16 game win streak, they were at 14 wins and they played the Minnesota Wilde who had 12 wins in a row? I didn't remember that. I, like, I remembered it after I saw it.

I was like, oh, yeah. I just, like, that's so NHL that you have the, it was the hottest, the two hottest teams that had ever played in the history of the league, but it's Columbus and Minnesota, so none of us remember it. Yeah. That, okay. Great. Yeah.

It's, oh, boy, what a league. And then, yeah, you know, just my normal stuff, uh, this week as well. So check it all out. And, uh, if you use the code, I love EP, uh, you will get 20% off. Uh, or nope, I'm sorry. you'll get some extra months added on to the end of your annual subscription. I don't know why I said 20% off. I don't think that's ever been the, but anyhow.

Pretty good. Yeah, E.P.Ringside.com, theathletic.com, and puck soup. Patreon, patreon.com slash puck soup. And we're about to go back. Ryan, we got breaking news here. What's that? EA sports has announced that the Russian and Belarus. national and club teams are being removed from NHL 22.

Who do you think is on the NHL 22 Belarus national team? I do not know, but do we need to re-record the podcast, do you think? I'm looking this up. Okay, there is one Belarusian player in NHL 22, and it's Yeager Saraganovich. Also canceled. That's it. Tough break for him. Yeah. There you go.

Oh, I guess more importantly, very slightly more importantly, FIFA is doing the same thing. Oh, it says here. So there you have it. Okay, we're done for real this time. All right. Barring any other video game breaking news. I'm just checking to see if the TechMobile rosters have been changed at all. Doesn't look like it.

We're good. Goodbye, everyone. See you. Yeah. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you're coming. mute, but we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet.

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