Puck Soup - Awards Drama

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

The boys look at the winners of the NHL Awards, including Connor McDavid being unanimous and Kirill Kaprizov being not so much. Plus, Fleury wins the Vezina, the Stanley Cup Final, the Blackhawks scandal, the NHL vs. Olympics, the Kucherov debate, Seattle and Buffalo get their coaches and the best and worst fried foods. Sponsored by Raycon and Keeps!

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That's 1-800flowers.com slash podcast. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, eats and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Part two. Hey, I'm Greg Wysinski of ESPN, your worldwide leader in sports. Last alphabetically, but for us in your hearts, based on the photo.

released yesterday. Sean McDonough's first in my heart, but I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects where we just put out our like 1,200-page draft guide, something like that. It's in the four digits how long this thing is, so check it out. Sean McDonough from The Athletic, I'm not Sean McDonough, so I don't work for ESPN's hockey coverage. You're in Puck's, you're in Puck's, somebody saw Sean McDonough's name on the list, and they thought it was you.

I saw there. A few people said that. that, but just to reassure you, I don't work for Hispanics hockey coverage, which means I'm still allowed to say whatever I want. I don't get a memo from Gary Batman every day. That's right. When does that kick in, Greg? When do you? I'm waiting. You're not allowed to say anything bad about Gary Bettman. What's the start date? I'm wondering and I'm waiting. I guess you'll find out the next time a team gets in trouble for a sexual assault

controversy and you don't hear anything from me for 36 hours. I guess then you'll kind of know that I work for a rights holder. Greg just starts the next episode. And we believe that the NHL has the best officials in the whole wide world. No sport does it better.

You know, we consider cross-checking to be chiropractory, actually. There's much science behind it, right? Yeah, yeah. So it was a really exciting day. I got a glimpse, Emily and I got a glimpse of the announcement that they, before it came out, courtesy of Steve Levy, who walked over to us as we were preparing for Betman's press conference. And he's like, have you guys seen this? And it was the like slickly produced trailer that they made for the big reveal.

And like, it was kind of cool that we both got our own little moments in the trailer of just like, here are your names next to all of the. famous people that got hired. And so that was kind of fun. But, but yeah, like I said, to Bob Wichusin, I felt like I was back in elementary school. I was like last on the list. It's just my lot in life. And that's how it works when you're W-Y, S-H-Y, NSK. Did I ever tell you guys that I wanted to change my first name when I was a kid?

Not my last name, but my first name, yeah. And it was actually related to being a broadcaster at one. point, like, you know, because I was the kind of kid that would do play-by-play while playing like NHL, you know, whatever the fuck on my SNES or whatever. Mm-hmm. I wanted to change my name to Xavier because I felt like that was a really unique name. And also because of Xavier McDaniel, I felt like people would refer to me as the X-Men. You felt like that was unique to separate you from all the other Wischinski's in the

broadcasting group. It's like when it's like when Walt Jr. says he wants to be called Flynn from now on and people are just like, that's not stupid at all. We'll go with that. And to your point, Sean,

like it's pretty amazing that I didn't identify the problem being that I have this indecipherable last name when it comes to pronunciation. And I should just like make it more difficult by saying my name is Xavier. But that said,

like GW. cool initials, George Washington, what have you. XW? Oh, my God. That's basically like graffiti level. Awesome. As far as initials go. Yeah, there's going to be like a single digit total of people who have the XW initials worldwide. Yeah, you get that monogrammed on your luggage and there's not going to be a lot of confusion at the airport.

Exactly. Right now, Greg's like, damn, I just picked up George Washington's luggage. There's freaking wooden teeth in here. Glenn Wesley's walking around. Who the hell has my bag? Yeah, it's a real curse. By the way, I love how you guys assume that I ever check luggage. I never, I overstuff my bag to the point of it being like a hindrance to me where the wheels barely move.

So I don't have to check luggage. I am not a check luggage guy. No, I don't trust it. Don't trust it. I guess I probably did it when I flew internationally a couple of years ago. Well, you have to at some point if you're going to, like, be gone. for two weeks or some shit. Did I?

I don't remember now. No, I've had too many of those Well, give us your address on where you're staying And we'll deliver your bag at some point Kind of shit. Where are you on Skycheck? I'm a big sky check guy. Oh, like when you take your bag to the gate?

Yeah. Yeah. I trust that a lot more. I get like minor anxiety walking onto a plane with a big suitcase because I'm always like there's not going to be any room. I'm going to be the guy trying to stuff the suitcase in the wrong spot. They're going to make me go to the back and then I'm never getting off this thing.

I live here now on this plane. Exactly. Yeah, I'm a big sky checkback because the plane is closer to where your bag is now. Like, they'll get it there. I can see it. You know what I mean? Exactly. So I'm completely fine with that.

And you get to stand in that weird lineup after the flight where everybody, everybody lines up and yet it's not a lineup. Like, you're just getting your bag as it comes off and yet people still, like, all the social rules of lining up somehow apply. It's so weird, right? And then, like, if you're in the back, what are you waiting for? You have to wait for

the first person's bag? What if it's I completely agree. It's chaos. It's fucking Thunderdome. But what about the food on the plane? And hey, why don't they make the entire plane out of the black box? There it is. I mean, fuck, man. We just did the whole, this is short of 10th's fan theater, circa 1990.

Plain humor. The NHL Awards were last night as we do Puck Soup this week. Best show in years. Well, yeah, because it was sort of like in the can and already produced and all done over Zoom. Strongly disagree. I desperately miss the cheesy NHL Award show with a sea level celebrity and skits and all sorts of stuff like that. There was, what's his name? the guy who played Charlie Conway in the Mighty Ducks movies.

He did you, I just, I always think back to the time he went up there and was like, okay, folks, this next joke sucks just so you know. And then he did the joke and then goes, like I said, it was terrible. Like, and it was, it was like a bad pun. And he was just like, somebody got how many thousands of dollars to write this horse shit? Okay. Yeah, I have to agree with, uh, I have to agree with whoever said that they missed, Sean, with you,

because at no point during the award show last night, was there a magician on Zoom botching a trick to tell us who won, if I mistake? Oh, my God. That was that rocked. That maybe is the all-time greatest thing that ever happened at the NHL Awards is when Scott Oaks kid did a magic trick wrong. Oh, my God. Boy, if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about hockey is, like, how it's all about who you know in this sport.

It's like, oh, we need like a magician. Are there any magicians in Las Vegas? Not one. But we do know we have Scott Oak's kid on speed dial. You can't walk down the strip without bumping into a magician in Las Vegas. Yeah, a guy in a vest doing like little card flourishes. There's one every, it's like the trash cans. Disney World. There's one every 15 feet.

And yet, they flew someone in from fucking Toronto to be like, is this your card? And, like, Mark Messier is like, no. What? What a fucking reference? I think you're short-changing, though, as far as that being the greatest moment

in NHL Awards show history, is that deaf leopard putting the Stanley Cup upside down during their set? Was that during the award show, or was that during, like, a concert? No, that was during the... award show. Okay. Yeah, that was, look, that rocked. Like, that art subversive, you know? Some of you have not spent very much time on YouTube watching Alan Thick hosts the awards in the 80s, and it's showing right now.

So this is erasure, and it's not going to be allowed to stand. This is our heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... You're acting like Def Leopard is in any way comparable to Allen Thick driving a mini Zamboni on a the stage, hopping off to begin singing a song that he wrote just for that night and then his amboni, like, shoot off the side and just, like, crash into the side of the offstage area. Let's not act like Alan Thick writing a song as like a bad. He wrote all the good TV songs of the 80s there. They were all really good songs.

Alan Thick did not, like, he wasn't one of these guys who came out for the awards, like, you know, I'm too cool for this, but it's a paycheck. Alan Thick gave you the full Alan Thick experience. It was fantastic. This whole thing sounds like it has real big Vince McMahon singing Stand Back at the Slammy Awards energy. That's right. That's kind of the sense I get. He wrote the theme song to the Wheel of Fortune.

Wow. Do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Different strokes, the facts of life, three's company. He did it all. For those who may be newer to the sport, the year was 2008. and actually it was not the NHL Awards. You're correct. No further questions.

It was Face Off Rocks 2008. Yeah, I knew that wasn't. Whatever the fuck that was. They had Chalka Khan perform there as well, if I'm not much mistaken. Ken Campbell in the hockey news. You know, the NHL really tries, but you have to wonder sometimes if these guys get it. They have a colossal screw up with the Stanley Cup opening night, and then on their website they run a piece gushing about face off racks 2008. Wherever the hell that was supposed to be, as though it was the second coming of the Beatles.

The upside-down Stanley Cup arriving at Idlewild Airport. Hundreds of screaming teen girls. Ed Sullivan going, ladies and gentlemen, the upside-down Stanley Cup. Ken Campbell says you get to watch some dumbass geriatric singer put the cup down upside down and then say, well, never mind, we're soccer boys. What do we know? That was the Defe Leopard explanation for their fuck up. That's cool. I think we're bearing the lead here is that it was the year 2008 and Def Leopard was playing an NHL event. I mean, so was Shaka Khan.

They weren't exactly keeping it current. I think the Shaka Khan thing, I can't speak to the Def Leopard thing if it was the same case, but the Shaka Khan thing. Chaka Khan thing, I remember it being that Batman was a Shaka Khan fan. And was just like, that's cool. Well, like, that's what they did for Crosby that time, right? Like, didn't they get chain smokers or somebody like that right as they were coming up because... He was a fan.

He was a fan. It wasn't chain smokers. It was a similarly not good band, but... It might have been chain smokers. I think it was now that I say that. There was some... They were involved in something because I just remember the Gentilly tweet about it. But, yeah.

Was it chain smokers? Was it chain smoke them before chain poop them? No. No, unfortunately, we didn't get to quite that level of artistry. The chain smoker is, it's the Mika Kiprasoff pick, remember that. Smoking. Oh, that's right. No?

No, I remember that pick. Yeah, it was awesome. All right, NHL Awards 2021, an amazing show, as you said. Kriel Kaprisoff wins the Calder Memorial Troph, in his first and last season before going back to the KHL. Can't wait to see who didn't vote for him, the one person who didn't vote for him first. Yeah, 99 people voted for, so for those who don't remember, the Professional Hockey Writers Association did a voting thing this year where, because none of

the divisions played each other, there was 20 voters for each division and then 20 voters at large. Me, being large, I was at large, along with Emily. And, yeah, one person voted for Jason Robertson overkill Carpsoff. And that one person you know, you absolutely fucking know, did it because of Caprisov being 24 and having played like five years in the KHL. And that's going to be the explanation.

And I cannot wait to hear it. Well, whoever did it. Again, there was that like week and a half where everybody was like, did Jason Rarzan just overtake Carol Caprizov? And then everybody was like, no, no, no. He did not do that, actually. You absolutely do not have to give him credit. That's right.

By any circumstances. Yeah, so that's going to be fun. As we're doing the podcast, the PHWA has not released vote total. So no, no, who's, I mean, has not released, sorry, the identity of the voters, which is something that always happens, and then people parse it, and then point and laugh. Let's see here. McDavid wins Player of the Year from the NHLPA. Mark Andre Fleury wins the Vezina.

This was maybe the only surprise of the final day of the NHL Awards. I think you deserved it, though. Like, I get it. If you wanted to make the case for Ratzelowski, sure. But, you know, I don't think you can look at this and say this is a grievous. Is it a lifetime achievement award? It certainly is. But, you know.

No, I don't think it was a lifetime achievement award, and I don't think it was deserved. I'm not saying he didn't have a great season. No, no, no. I'm just saying that based on his history with this award, I mean, he's been in the league now. I think it's like 17 years. Yeah. And this was the first time he was a not, he was a finalist. Yeah, he hasn't deserved it until this year.

Well, you can argue he deserved it in the first year he was in Vegas, right? Yeah, okay. But didn't he? He missed a bunch of games, didn't he? Is that, that I think is the thing? First year, yeah. Yeah, isn't that when we had like... Yeah, they were down to like their seventh goalie.

Oscar Dankst played... Danksk played the bunch of games. Blast from the past. So that was cool. I mean, I, he beat out Vasilleschi and he beat out Philip Grubauer. Your boy, Connor Halepuk was fourth. Got two first place votes.

Yeah, that sounds right. The rest of the list was Stemian Barlamoff, U.C. Soros, and Mike Smith. Very interesting that only seven goalies are mentioned by the GM. for this award. So there you go. Only seven good goalies in the league was here. Let's see here.

Adam Fox wins the Norris. Thoughts, Lambert? Deserved. Great season. Thoughts, Sean? Yeah, I was mildly surprised, but yeah, he deserved it. I think I'd said on this show

that I expected it to go to headman and his voters would kind of have a higher comfort level with someone more established, but they didn't. So that's, I'm fine with that. Now, I mean, I imagine,

like you're saying, some of your surprise was that he's, he's so new. It's only his second season. I think this is, they said that's the only, only the second time in NHL history that somebody in their first or second season is won the Norris.

And the only other time, it was Bobby Orr, right? So, like, this is not a thing that happens. Had been actually finished third behind, behind Fox and Kail Makar.

And I thought Fox was going to win, but I thought there was an outside chance that Macar was going to win just because he was the more established name. But apparently enough people either saw Fox play or knew somebody who did to vote him first. It's funny that you say Calam Kau is the more established player. He is also in his second year in the league. Well, you have to remember that he also had the playoffs. But he had the playoffs the first year. And everybody was like, wow, who's this kid?

And then he had the rookie season when he won, the Calder. And you're right. Like, yeah, it is funny that they both have kind of the same, you know, amount of experience almost. But, you know, I feel like, I mean, if you asked, hey, tell me about Cal McCar. I'm sure somebody could probably describe who he is and what his game is better than if you were like, hey, describe Adam Fox. Where they're going to be like, I read he's kind of like Brian Lee.

once. Right. Yeah. But good for Foxy. Like he was the best defenseman this year at the regular season, no question. Hamilton, sweet duggie, fourth, Charlie McAvoy, fifth, which made me really happy. I had him very high on my ballot. Shea Theodore Darnel Nurse, Mackenzie Wieger, Chris LaTang, Jacob Chickren.

Chris LaTang was a weird one. That one stood out to me because, like, halfway through the season, they were like, oh, they could maybe trade this guy? You know, they were ready to throw him totally under the bus. And then, yeah, he ends up on a bunch of voters' ballots. And like a bunch is maybe overseeing it. But you know what I mean? I mean, enough to finish.

I mean, let me put it this way. First place votes. Fox, McCar, Headman, Dougie, McAvoy, Theodore, Latang, Chikrin, all received first place votes. Yeah, I don't understand. Who on earth is saying Chris Latang had the. best season. Like, okay, and Chickren, I get it because, you know, he, he, uh, scored a million goals. And McAvoy, I get it because, uh, he had a bunch of different deep pairing partners and all his underlying numbers were solid and the only reason, uh, he didn't score a million

points is because he didn't produce on the power play for whatever reason this year. That, I mean, so like, I get all that, but like, I look at Chris LaTang and go, yeah, I don't, I don't know how you talk yourself into that. Yeah. That's a weird one. And then I was so overjoyed when I saw the results of the Hart Trophy voting because I was, as we are going to be searching for, like, who didn't vote for Kril Kapesov, I am very happy that we do not have to search for who did not vote for Connor McDavid. All 100 ballots had Connor McDavid as the MVP. Shout out to Rob Rossi for the head fake of all time, setting us all up for the Krosby vote. Didn't he not vote?

Isn't that what people figured out? I should say that he didn't vote. He actually, I mean, I don't know if I'm speaking at a turn here, but he gave his vote. He gave his vote to somebody who didn't have one. I don't want to say who that was, but it was a very magnanimous thing that he did. So, I mean, and he let an anti-penguins buy a C-Pen. I was going to say he did deprive us of Crosby getting a first-place spouse. But yeah, McDavid, 100.

for 100 on the ballots. Matthews was second. McKinn was third. Crosby, Marshan, Barkoff, Vasillespie, Drysidal Mark Stone, and Miko Rantanin finishing out your top 10.

Mitch Martyr got a fifth place vote for the heart. He had a good year. I mean, yeah, he disappeared in the playoffs, but now that means we have to pretend he had a dog shit season as well. Yeah.

He was good. He was a good year. Congratulations to him for his first appearance on a heart ballot in his career. Yeah, it's going to be great. That's, you know, for 11 million, that's what you're looking for. The one fifth place. So there you go.

All the reaction to the awards, quite good. It seems like everybody kind of thinks that the voters, whether it was the PHWA or the broadcasters or whoever did a good job and got it right. Well, you know, there's still that lady Bing. that rant is still going a week later. Yeah, that rocks. That is beautiful, man. There are music festivals that don't last this long

and with this much energy to them. When you're talking about the Lady Bing, are you referring to Damien Cox, who now is in his second week? The Lady Bing, the trophy that is for the best player who gets less than 100 penalty minutes. That's what it says on the trophy. We all know this.

Here is my honest answer. writes Damien Cox 52 minutes ago. We really don't need to relocate this. We're doing it. I'm just doing one. I'm just doing one. Okay. Jacob Slavin is an excellent player.

Please keep in mind that Slavin won the Lady Bing. But Trophy combines gentlemanly play with performance. Even if he is ahead of McDavid on the gentlemanly stuff, he is so far behind in terms of performance that it's not even a contest. What is happening? So we're conceding that he was the more gentlemanly player. No, he's saying, he's saying, no, no, no, let's say, let's just say for the sake of argument that he is the more gentlemanly. Which I'm never conceding.

Even if he is higher on the gentlemanly scale. We're not saying he is, but even if he is. Let's put it this way. Let's say Jacob Slavin, gentlemanly scale, 10 out of 10. play like quality of play scale eight out of ten David 10 out of 10 10 out of 10 it's 20 to 18 that's it

I find myself now looking at what Damien Cox is saying and I'm kind of getting the Department of Player's Safety effect like I now understand why he reacted the way he did because he is using the combined with a high standard of playing ability part of the Lady Bing description

and he's saying that even if Jacob Sleafin is a defensive defenseman who never takes a penalty and is higher on the quote-unquote gentlemanly scale, I am focusing on the last five words of the award, which is high standard of playing ability. Because Conner McDavid is a better player than Jacob Slaven. And like, in a twisted logic pretzel, I mean, I kind of understand why he's doing what he's doing. but at the end of the daily. Well, no, no, no, no.

You can understand why he has this opinion. You can't understand why he's on a week two. Okay, I misspoke. You're right. I don't understand why he's doing what he's doing, but I do understand as, hey, listen, I am not going to fucking throw a boulder in this, in this greenhouse here. I am the first person to parse the language of an awards description for my own whimsy.

But, I mean, the lady Bing is for being a. fucking guy who doesn't take penalties and who isn't a dick who hits people in the head. Like, who cares high standard of play? It's not as if Jacob Slavin's a fucking scrub. No, he's really good. He's really good. Yeah, to the point where everybody who decided however many years ago they don't like Dougie Hamilton, now they say, well, actually, he's the reason Dougie Hamilton's any good.

Oh, okay, sure. But there you go. The career he spent being really good, but Jacob Slavon's the reason why, sure. Well, there you go. So Damien Cox still going on and on and on about this. I mean, I don't know. Like, Jacob Slavin wins the award by a hair, and we're just going to pop off. Speaking of hair, today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Keeps.

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Once again, the Stanley Cup final does not conform to the schedule of our taping. As we're doing the show, I am in Tampa before game two of the final. By the time you hear this, you'll know if we have a split or if we have more of the same courtesy of the lightning. I mean, game one was some shitty bounces for the habs. No question about that. But it was also a good reminder that the lightning are a different kind of team than I think that the habs have faced so far. And also, you know, if you want to say it this way, the haves have gotten a lot of really good bounces the last few rounds. Yeah, Tavares's head bouncing off somebody's knee, Mark Schifley bouncing off of Jake Evans.

You know. Yeah. Those kinds of bounces? Oh, good. Yes. Those kinds of bounces. That's right. I got it.

I got to admit that like when Tampa gets it cranked, when they're playing like Tampa, it reminds me of watching Detroit like back in the day, just in the totality of talent on the roster. And granted, they also have Detroit's cat pit, like back in the day, too. But just like it's so smooth and it's so fun. And you get excited when they go on the power play because you know you're going to see skill players make really fucking cool skill plays. I don't know. I feel like they're a really entertaining team. Am I right on that? Yes, that's right.

Yeah. One of the most skilled and highest scoring teams in the league. Yeah, they're pretty fun. They're fun. Yeah. They are fun. But the thing with them is, and you kind of said this already, yes, they're. their high scoring. Yes, they've got a ton of skill.

And when they run up against a team like Montreal, you kind of go, okay, this is going to be the classic battle, offense against defense. But when Tampa's at their best, they can do the defense thing just as well as Montreal. And that's the problem. It's sort of like, you know, if you're Montreal,

you're going, even if we keep these guys to two goals tonight, we got to find three. And that's pretty tough because especially if they get a lead, they can most knights lock it down. They don't always do it. They have had nights where I think they frustrate John Cooper that way. But at their best, I mean, at their best, they're probably the best team in the league.

And if they're at their best of the whole series, then Montreal is going to need a lot of good bounces to keep in it. Yeah, I mean, they're the rare team that can beat you, they beat, they beat, they beat, they The Outers, 8-0 and 1-0 in a series. Yep. There are you go. There aren't many teams that can do that. So they went six against the Panthers, five against the Hurricanes. That's 11 games, right?

Then they went seven against the Allanders. That's 18 games. Half of their games so far in the playoffs, the opposing team has scored two or fewer goals. Like, they're just a really, really good defensive team. And I mean, I love a team. team that can beat you more ways than one. And I also love a team that I think if the, if the habs come back in game two and they play perfect defense and, you know, Price has a dominant game and we go back one, one in the split, I also don't think they're going to lose their shit,

like some of the other teams that the habs have played are going to have lost their shit. I think they know who they are and I think they know how to play. Yeah, there would be no reason for them to panic, right? Like that's what it is. There's, oh, no, we can't figure out how to beat the Canadians, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, no, they, they have it pretty much figured out at this point. They have it down to a science. So. But at the same time, I mean, we, Montreal lost first game to Vegas.

Yep. Four to one. And a lot of people went, well, that's, there you go. That's it for Montreal. And not so much. So, well, I mean, you know, people keep saying that. And like, obviously that's true. But also there's the whole, you know, fact of they lost.

No matter what you think of Chandler-Stevenson as like a number one or even top-six center, like they were so hard up for centers that they were putting their third-line winger in the middle of their top line, you know? So obviously that's a bit of an issue for Vegas just in terms of like, oh, yeah, I guess they have like one center they think that they think is any fucking good. Do you, if Colorn doesn't play game too, is that, does that fit into the injury? motif? No, I mean, that would, this would be like they lose this point or a Stamco's or a Kucharov who does not look like he's close to 100%. Stamcoast injured in the playoffs?

No, I mean, it's never happened. So I'm, you know, I'm talking about ridiculous scenarios here, but Stamco's being injured, you know, that could fuck up the lightning a little bit. It's certainly good. It's certainly good. I did find one reaction to the game one lost pretty amazing, which was that the amount of Montreal-based reporters that were like asking Luke Richardson and whomever,

like, you know, ho-ha-ha-ha-ha-how. Don't do you find it to be a key to get the Philip de No line away from, you know? Basically, the question was, can you play the Philip to No line against Pat Maroon's line, like at all times? without having the last change on the road because every other matchup that they had was bad for them and then like the same thing with this

basically I think the game plan from the Montreal media act of the game was can you play every line that you have against Tyler Johnson's line and not against anybody else and that'll be the key to victory. Right and again this is like the thing that Montreal

kind of did in every round is they got the de no line against who they wanted to get the Deno line against. You know, like no coaches were like, oh, yeah, maybe if we try to get our top line away from the pure shutdown, like elite shutdown line that doesn't provide any offense and all their value is in the fact that they are a shutdown line, which, you know, I'm not saying that's like a bad thing for them.

That's just what they do. No, it didn't occur to any coach that they should maybe get their number one guys away from them. And it did occur to John Cooper. who used that to his advantage. Yes. In game one. In game one.

There you go. I mean, we can't really talk too much about game one in the series because, like, I mean, it's just, what are you going to do? Like, timing is everything. By the time you hear this could be a completely different conversation. Well, the other thing we should maybe mention is that the Canadians gave up a power play goal, which they didn't do. ever. Yeah, I think what, did they give up one to Winnipeg? No, I did.

The last power play goal had been against the Leafs. Yeah, okay. Wow. Oh, right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So this one was at the end. Which is interesting because I have a piece that went up today where I'm talking about

having the 18th best team make a run to the final and what does it mean and what can we learn from it. And one of the things keep coming up is people keep going out of the refereeing is terrible. It's playoff refereeing this 18th. Of course, an 18th best team in the league can make the final when the rest don't call anything and it's rugby rules. But that's not really what's going on with Montreal. And their special teams have been so good. If anything, Montreal should want lots of penalties because they're so good at killing them. And their power play is good is decent.

So it kind of breaks that narrative when you see a team being as ridiculously good on special teams. And they'll need to be that too. I mean, if this is, I think the power play goal was like a late. Was it? Yeah, it was their fifth goal at the end of the game. I don't think it was a five on three. No, I think it was a five on four. But it was way a late at a game.

But, I mean, if that becomes a thing, you know, if Tampa's getting its usual one power play goal a game, then that really tilts where the series is headed. Yeah. And like, I looked at it over the weekend. And, you know, I didn't see in terms of like, oh, yeah, they're really. doing something different on the PK that they didn't do in the regular season when their PK, like, Carey Price couldn't make a fucking save on the penalty kill. He had like an 820-something save percentage, I won't say. Just like, I couldn't believe how bad the numbers were.

And now he's like up to 950. And you go, oh, did they, like, they must have really changed. Not really. Like, they're still giving up a pretty comparable number of chances or, you know, going into game one. I'm sure things are quite different now. But going into game one, they were still giving up like a kind of comparable number of chances. And it's like, oh, maybe Carrie Price just got like insanely hot on the on the PK. And like that, you know, that's a perfectly legitimate way to make it through a couple of rounds.

Yeah. Now, I guess we should touch on the cons might through a quick. Do you see the possibility of Carrie Price winning in a losing effort or are there just too many people on the other side that could win it if the sample was? Here's what I think is. anymore if that's the case. Here's what I think his problem is as far as winning and a losing effort, even putting aside that Tampa's got, I mean, the fact that Tampa's got so many candidates might help him because maybe they split some votes between Kuchar up and Point or whatever.

The only way really in the modern NHL that a goalie can, that a losing player can win the Kahn Smyth is they have to be the goalie and they have to be far and away the best goalie in the playoffs. And Kerry Price, as great as he's been, Andre Vazolevsky actually has better numbers, even before game one and obviously after it. So I think a lot of voters are going to be looking at this going, yeah, maybe I'd want to give it to Kerry Price, but am I going to vote for the goalie on the losing team when the goalie on the winning team has better numbers? Or

maybe I should just cast my vote for Andre Vasilowski and let him take it? Yeah. That'll be interesting. And I also find it interesting. I mean, I think the Kutrov candidacy is really interesting to me because, as we just saw with like the Jason Robertson protest vote for the Calder Trophy, do you think that voters will hold it against Kuterov the whole salary cap gambit and not vote him MVP? I hope not, but who knows? Yeah. People understand that this is how the rules work. I try not.

Like, I don't want to look into the mind of the Khan-Smythe voter too much. You certainly don't. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, like I say, it's, it's, I think he'd be third on their list anyway in terms of, as many points as he has. Like, I think you would say, Vasilevsky, number one point just because he scored all those goals and is Canadian, number two, and then Kuturov, number three. I mean, maybe, but, like, he said. Like, it's fucking Kucherov is... He's been great.

Nobody's saying, but... But, I mean, like, at this point, he's got 30 points in 19 games. That's seven more than point. Like, that's a pretty big fucking spread. I feel like he's pulling away with it. Now that the goal's streak is... Yeah, that's true. ...done and fading, I think Kuchov...

Yeah, Kutrov just had three points. Yeah. Hands down favorite. Yeah, I think he might be ahead of point, but I do wonder if they're going to... If they'll do that bullshit. Yeah, I hadn't even considering. that. That seems like a

I mean, here's, there's, it's a small handful of writers. If you're really mad about Nikita Kuturov

and it's small handful of writers and it's the big name writers and broadcasters. If you're mad about Kuturov, write a big piece ripping the NHL for leaving the loophole

and that might actually change some minds and pressure the league. Don't just do it by snubbing a guy who deserves an award on an anonymous ballot. You're not.

not accomplishing anything by doing that. Go on TV, go on the radio, go on your platform, and say, this is ridiculous and here's how it should change if you feel that way. I guess my concern is that it's not, maybe not the feelings of some of those voters, but it's their feelings on behalf of some of the people they talk to on a regular basis. I feel like some of the agreement that we hear from people about the salary cap situation is by proxy

because the general managers they talk to are pissed off. Oh, well, gee, if only the general managers had some say in how this league. Oh, that's right. They have all of the say on how the league is run.

I don't want to see a postseason salary cap. I don't give a shit. Like I think the playoffs should be as fun as possible. And like I said before on the Kutcheroff thing, when we talked about it initially. Like, to me, the caps from convention thing is a problem when you are playing around

with numbers and manipulating the cap and, you know, giving guys contracts that are all fucked up to get them under a number and underpaying them specifically to do so. If you give up your best forward for an entire 56 game season and you still make the playoffs and then you get them back, I don't give a shit. Like you've made some level of sacrifice to the cap. Yeah, and the other thing we got to say here is that if it weren't a 56 game season, he would have been back before the end of the regular season. Completely.

They'd have to figure out something. So they would have to figure out something. And it probably means not trading for David Savard or whatever. But like, because it was a 56 game season, they were like, you know what? This lines up mostly well with the timeline, man. I had people in my mentions yesterday being like they should have some sort of mandatory thing where like a guy had to have played at least one regular season game before to be eligible to playoffs.

And I'm just like, do you understand how long injury rehab works? Like if Connor McDavid is surgery on October 1st, he's out for six months, are you saying it's in the best interest of the NHL for him to be ineligible for the postseason if he's healthy? Like, what the fuck are we doing here? There are so many bad takes being spawned from this. Like I get to some extent where it's coming from, but there are, for a rule. that has been in place forever and has been used before and is one of many loopholes.

Like, I think I saw somewhere that the Maple Leaf spent as much as the Lightning did in terms of salaries that they had on the books over the season. They used slightly different tricks to get around it because they have the guy who wrote the salary cap on staff to help them do it. Other teams were, you know, every team was significantly, over the 81.5 number. There's different ways to do it. That's the system.

That's how it's set up. And yeah, look, if we find out that, hey, guess what? Nikit Kutra, I've never actually had surgery. It was all a big scam. He just sat at home and played Xbox for three months. And then, yes, go ahead and throw the book at them. But that's not what happened. And at some point, this is just all very sour grapes by, in some cases, people that should know better because, you know, come on.

It's the same It's the same rules Everybody has been playing with forever Complain about the rules if you want But This is we've known this is allowed For years and years and years It goes beyond that too

Because it's just It's the same shit as like Oh well you'd love Tom Wilson Or Brad Marshand Or Gallagher If they played on your team You'd love them And it's like yeah

No that's right And if your team did the shit with Nikita Kutjurav or a Nikita Kutrov level player, you would be like, it actually rocks and it's a loophole that I'm glad they got around. You know, like, nobody would be mad if it was their team. And so, shut the fuck up. Yeah. I mean, yeah, or scream about it until you're fucking blue in the face. Speaking of blue, today's episode of Puck's 2 is sponsored by Raycon.

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Set it and forget it, as Ron Poeel used to say. All right. On to darker subjects. Wait, Ron Poe... Hold on. He's the guy who came up with Set it and forget it.

Ron Poeel, the man with the spray on hair. Yeah. Was also the guy who helped create some of the more famous cooking equipment that was advertised on the air. I think it was maybe like an air cooker or whatever.

Or maybe it was like a crock pot or something. But I think he is the one who said set it and then had the crowd go and forget it. But I'm going to look that up right now. More power too. Just because that's like a turn of phrase that you hear all the time now, you know? Yeah, here we go.

Ron Popiel, set it and forget it. The famous Set It and Forget It line was from the Showtime Rotisserie commercial. So it was a rotissory cooker. And he coined the phrase, said it and forget it. Now, I don't know if he's copyrighted the phrase like, you know, fucking Pat Riley and Three Pete or whatever. Or was it Phil Jackson in Three Pete? I think it was Pat Riley and Three Pete. But yeah, he coined Set It and Forget it.

That's great. Sean, do you have any fucking idea what we're talking about? Yeah. Oh, okay. We have infomercials in Canada. I figured it was maybe his brother Gord Popiel. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's a you in the name, but it's, yes.

Yes. I was trying to find something that rhymed without, uh, for what he said it. Forget it. The phrase would have been in Canada, but I couldn't do it in the moment. It's still very early over here. Very early over here as if we're not only in the same fucking time. We're all in this. We're all in suited and precluded.

That's how we talk. Thank you. I do have to run it through the Canadian pronunciation application. All right. Chicago Blackhawks, NHHL Commissioner Gary Betman said the league has learned of the sexual assault allegations against former Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach Brad Aldrich, quote relatively recently.

And while he found them concerning, he said the league will. wait until an independent review is complete before deciding on potential discipline. This is according to because of the lawsuit filed by an unidentified ex-Blackhawks player in May. Aldrich, a former video coach with the team. The player claims sexually assaulted him at another player during the team's 2010 playoff run to the Stanley Cup championship.

The player referred to as John Doe is seeking more than $150,000 in damages, although that is a placeholder sum that will, uh, no doubt grow when there is a full lawsuit filed. And the big news this week on this investigation was that the Blackhawks CEO, Danny Wirtz, said the team had retained the law firm of Jenner & Block to conduct an independent review into what happened to which everybody said, that's not independent. You're a team paying them. And that didn't really fly off with a lot of people.

I said to everybody before Monday, this is exactly how it was going to play out. There was going to be the announcement of an investigation. And then Gary Betman would then be able to go on the press conference later in the day and say, I will not comment on an active investigation. And that's kind of basically what they did. So the timeline was exactly how the NHL wanted it. But this story has, and I don't mean this hyperboically, I think. reached Penn State levels of awareness and outrage. And you can't go a day now in Chicago

without a prominent person in the media. And now increasingly like political figures, talking about the scandal and talking about how the Blackhawks, you know, according to the available evidence, did something really horrible here in potentially overlooking a crime and then also supporting the continued employment of this person in other places. Yeah, we haven't talked about it on the show. It's like a lot of the, like, people brought it up to me anyway on Thursday after the show had come out, because that's when a lot of the really like stuff where it's like, oh, yeah, there's like some iffy details. and then the really kind of vivid, unfortunately, details came out after we recorded last week,

and it was just like, who, you know, I don't think you need us to say that this is like, you know, again, we have to say allegedly, but if what's being claimed in these lawsuits is true, you got to burn the organization to the ground, right? Like, it's really, like, really, really, really bad. Well, so TSN reported to your burning of the organization to the ground thing. TSN reported last week that the players reported the incident to a guy named Paul Vincent, who was a skills coach with the team. This was before the Western Conference final in San Jose.

and that Vincent shared that information, that incident, what happened with the, allegedly with this guy, with this, with this video coach, with John McDonough, who was at that time the team president, with general manager Stan Bowman, with senior VP of Hockey Aberrations Al McIsaacic and with a sports psychologist that worked with a team named James Gray. And Vincent's gone on the record about this. And he said that he told TSN that he told those executives. to report the incident to the Chicago police, which never happened. So that's who is in the room where it happens.

That is the group that we are looking at right now and saying, what happened here, why wasn't it reported? And then further, why did you support, you know, Brad Aldrich in getting another job after he left the team following the playoff run? And to me, like, McDonough is no longer with the organization. So for me, it all tracks back to Stan Bowman. And then increasingly in talking to people around Chicago, the sense is like there's probably not a way that he wiggles out of this. I mean, that he's going to probably have to pay the price for all this happening.

At least that's the impression. And then the next chapter in this is it feels like every day we're hearing from either an ex-coach or an ex-player saying, yeah, this was widely known in the organization. even beyond the people who were directly involved in the meeting. So at some point, we've got to hear from some of the other people who were in the organization at the time. We heard from Mark Berger-Vant. He was asked about it because, you know, obviously he, with the Canadians still in the final, he's available to the media. He said he didn't know anything about it.

And we should pause there because this podcast does appear on The Athletic. like again props to the great katie strang a friend of the show and a friend in the real life for the athletics been great Rick westhead for tsn has been great yep uh there's apparently been a radio station in chicago that's been on this from the beginning yeah w uh right w b e z was the first to report the lawsuit this is this is you know and and that's the thing like i i'm like ryan i heard from some people saying how come you guys aren't talking about this when it was still in its early stages this isn't a good story for a podcast you don't need to to hear from three dudes offering opinions about this. This is a story for the investigative reporters who are actually going to dig and find out what happened. And that's what's happening and credit

to everyone who's who's been involved. Mark Lazarus, Scott Power at the Athletic, been working with Katie. But yeah, the next stage is, you know, we've heard from Bergervan, we need to hear from Kevin to shovel day off. We need to hear from Joel Quenville. We need to know, you know, were you guys in the loop on this? I mean, Joel, Joel Coenvo, this was on your coaching staff. Did you know anything about it or did this actually manage to escape your attention? And even if it's just a case of them saying, no, I didn't hear, then, okay, you put that on the record. We're on the record.

Mark Berger-Ven has said, I didn't know. So if that turns out to not be true, then that takes the story in one direction. And if it turns out that it was true, then it, then it, goes in a different one. The only encouraging thing from the last week is the level the story's got to, as Greg says, it seems clear to me that the league's game plan here was to stall, hope it went away, do an investigation, maybe don't put any of what you learn out publicly, I just hope that this kind of fades away, and it does feel like we've hit the tipping point where it's, that's not going to happen. This isn't going to just go away, and there is going

to have to be accountability on some level. And from there, we'll see. I don't have a problem with Gary Betman saying, let's see where the facts lead. Okay. Let's just make sure that we actually do that because this isn't going to be something people just lose attention and wander off and focus on something else. And to bet, I mean, I don't want to say the Betman's credit, but like he did say that, at least inferred, that they'll handle it. Like, he did say they're going to handle it.

Yeah, and he said all options are on the table to do that. Right. So it's not as if he just sort of, you know, took out a, sorry, a giant broom during the press conference and swept it away or swatted it away like that fly that was bothering him. But, I mean, that's the part that's tricky for me. I think that I put more faith in the Blackhawks actually taking care of business here on the punishment front than I do the league because, you know, the league, I mean, fucking Bill Peters hasn't been suspended. I mean, still. So I think this might be one of those things that's handled swiftly, locally, even before the NHL steps in. The other thing to say is I don't have a ton of faith that they won't just say this all falls on the guy who doesn't work here anymore.

McDonough? Yeah. It's possible. They might try. Like, that seems like an easy way. Oh, boy, this is bad. But we took care of the guy and it's the guy we already took care of. So, yeah, like the guy says, like, I told Stan to take care of it.

Stan's like, I told McNudna to take care of it. McDonough. Yeah. Right. Yeah, and I guess the point is that it's that it's kind of easy to be cynical about this, because to your point, Greg, like, they haven't done anything about the Bill Peters stuff and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, I am very much in the camp of like, well, I'm going to wait and see on how real the punishments are and that sort of thing. I don't, I'm not ready to put a time.

of faith into any of these organizations to, you know, handle this the right way. But I would be happy to be proven wrong as well. Right. Yeah. It's a terrible, terrible story. And, I mean, the Blackhawks are going to have to deal with this shit in short order because every single member of the organization and every single player is going to be asked about it over the next, like, three or four months. Yeah. Good. Good. The draft trying to talk about your draft, yeah. I think it was Elliot who said, you know, like, this time of year is like when the GMs are the most front and center in, in hockey decision making and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

And so, like, yeah, Stan Bowman's got nowhere to hide, really. And yet, now he get to the point earlier, now he gets to say, well, I can't comment on it. ongoing investigation. ongoing investigation. Yeah. Yeah. So the timing was predictable, I guess you would say. Absolutely.

A couple more Betman things from his state of the NHL press conference. Uh-oh, the Olympics are in trouble. Despite it being collectively bargained with the players in the CBA that we were going to go to Beijing and then the 2020s games. the league seems a little pessimistic that it's going to happen. And so from what I have been able to glean, some of the marketing things have been figured out, although they've been complicated because NBC is no longer a partner of the league. And keep in mind that when they said, yeah, let's go to Beijing and let's go to the next Olympics last summer. They did not think that they would be out of business with NBC.

Like they thought that was going to be part of the equation. So it does complicate things. Not for me, but for the league. So then the other thing that has come up is COVID. And the real problem that both the league and the PA have with not being able to control conditions in Beijing on the ground for their talent, that they're loaning to the Olympics with little financial. you know, recourse. So, you know, what happens if somebody catches COVID there and then comes back? You know, all this other stuff.

There's all this stuff that they now have to deal with with insurance and protocols and everything else that has really complicated the process. And, you know, shock of all shocks, the IOC kind of is kind of busy, like trying to put on the Olympics in July and not being communicative. and the NHL wants to put out a schedule at the end of July, and they're finding it difficult to do so. If they don't know if there's going to be an Olympic break. And so time's running short on whether or not we're going to go to Beijing.

And two things about that. First of all, people have read into the announcement that the All-Star game is going to be in Vegas as they're not going to the Olympics. They're going to do both, folks. If they go to the Olympics, there is still going to be an All-Star game because money is the thing. Yeah, they're going to make up all the money they've lost. So that is going to happen. So don't read too much into that.

And then the other thing is, I've really felt bad because I'm doing a column on this or this week. And I asked, well, I asked a couple players yesterday and thankfully, you know, made some news for other people to write about, which is kind of what happens in these Zoom calls. But I asked Victor Hedbin about not going. And I didn't realize this until I researched it. He's never been to the Olympics. He was famously left off the 2014 team in Sochi for Sweden.

And so Lambert, what's the line from the Simpsons episode with the Valentine? You can see the moment when his heart rips in half. Yeah. That was me asking Victor Hedman about not going to the Olympics. He didn't know Betman said that yesterday, that the league was, like, was, like, pessimistic about it. Right. And I just watched him go from this, like, four or five questions in a press conference of just, you know, talking about game two or whatever. Yeah, I'm just going to put my head down and, uh, yeah, I just like, and then he's like, where what?

It was not, it was not good. I actually had one of the Tampa Bay writers DM me. They were like, what did you do? Yeah. It's like, I'm sorry. He's going to, he's going to be like a minus four tonight. constantly staring into the middle distance Montreal scores goals

it's going to be all your fault it's going to be all my fault I apologize at advance I again it's hard for me not to look at this cynically because this is the NHL and the Olympics we're talking about but like why is it that the NBA can go to

Tokyo and there's no fucking problem with that like a bunch of guys are opting out but for LeBron it's specifically because like he wants to promote space jam 2 or whatever the fuck. And other guys is like, oh yeah, the NBA season was like a huge grind, so I don't want to play more basketball.

Like that, it all makes sense. But there's no, the NBA's not going, we're really worried about COVID. Whereas the NHL, an organization that has repeatedly been like, we hate the Olympics, it does nothing for us. It's stupid. It's like, ooh, geez, COVID. I don't know. I mean, you know, like, how do I not look at this cynically?

Well, knowing the politics of the NHL, it's probably because half the front of the league office calls it the Wuhan flu. So that might be one issue with it. You know, I think that's a good question. That's a good point. I do wonder, though, like, I don't know how many NBA players go and play in the Olympics. I imagine that it's much more a ton. But yeah, it's much more now than it was, you know, 20 years ago when we just were getting started with NBA Olympic participation. Let's put it this way.

NBA Olympic participation started before NHL Olympic participation. That it did. Right, with dream team and stuff. But I mean, just as far as like how many internet, but I meant more like how many international players are now in the NBA. Like there are probably more NBA players on like Australia or whatever the fuck than there were, you know, 20 years ago. So Ben Simmons. I remember.

I think he's not. I remember in the Olympics this year, but yeah, probably not. I remember one of the years that they went to the summer games that I covered. and it may have been Rio, I think it was Rio. They were on a, like a yacht. They were on like a fucking cruise ship. Yeah.

So I wonder if it's just like there's, they've got a certain number of guys, but maybe the NBA can control it better than like the NHL can where every, I mean, the NHL populates the Olympics. I mean, I got to imagine in a way that the NBA doesn't. I mean, there's got to be like, what, fucking like 150 guys, maybe 200,

guys that play? Well, yeah, there's more players, but, and, and maybe some of the international teams have more guys who play in Europe, uh, and stuff like that. But yeah, you know, most teams are made up entirely of, uh, NBA players. Now look, now look, here's my thing. I hate the IOC. Um, I think the NHL has been completely right and saying that they don't get enough of that out of the Olympics and that's on the IOC. The idea that NHL.com can't play a fucking video of Sidney Crosby scoring the golden goal is insane. Like, what are we even doing? If you can't get that bare bones fucking level of promotion from loaning your players to

someone else's business venture, like, what are you doing? So I completely understand their struggle with the IOC and I understand why they don't want to go. Like, I completely get it. That said, you can't negotiate this into the fucking CBA and then like, let go. That's what I'm saying. It just sucks. Like, like, again, my, when they, when Betman was like, like, because that wasn't even something I was thinking about because, you know, all these guys are vaccinated or, you know, a good percentage of them anyway, are vaccinated and that sort of thing.

And it's like, I should have known they were going to try to figure out a way to fuck the players out of going to the Olympics. Absolutely. I should have known. Yeah. It's like the X-Men partnering with Magneto. You know at some point he's going to do some magnito shit. Yeah. apparently my understanding is the the CBA basically says that the league promises to do everything

it can that it reasonably can which always sort of left it open for them to say it's not reasonable and yeah I I came away from that press conference I think more pessimistic on this than most because it happened twice there were two questions and both times Bill Daley gave a sort of it's not looking great but we'll see where it goes type of answer and both times Gary Betman jumped in after the answer was over to add his own two cents, which he didn't do on any other questions. He's happy to let Bill Daly take any other question, but he jumped in twice to give a more negative pessimistic answer. I think that's a pretty glaring sign about where this might be headed. That's so funny, especially because, you know, like, the reason

they pulled out of the South Korea games is because, of all this stuff, like, you know, all the concerns about we don't make any money off it, blah, blah, blah. The reason that everybody for years has been like, well, they'll definitely go to Beijing is because they want a piece of that China money, right? Like, they want to establish the sport more in China. And now it's like, I don't know, like this kind of short-term view of like, well, look, we got to get back to normal and blah, blah, blah. and it's like, did you want the like billions of dollars from China or not? Like you get to choose that. Right.

Like, it just seems like it's not a good business decision at some level, you know? But the other thing to say is, again, like they were always going to try to do this. It felt like. So, right. Here we are. All right. Outdoor games. We're going obviously to,

do the Winter Classic in Minnesota that was postponed. No outdoor game for Raleigh this year, but we are going to do an outdoor game in Nashville, which is awesome between the Predators and the Lightning. And then there's going to be a heritage classic of some sort, they said, in Canada somewhere at some point. Yeah, you got to make the money back. I'm surprised there aren't seven. I'm surprised they're not like, you know what, there's actually four outdoor games in Raleigh this year. They should fucking do one for every team, right?

Like, just do like 64 outdoor games next year? Yeah, why not, right? Right, yeah. Everybody gets one and that's fine. Like, just because, yeah, they're trying to make all this money back and... Yeah, honestly, you could probably sell it as it being like, you know, we're still in the pandemic and we're going to have outdoor games. So everybody can be safer. Yeah, it's safer.

Yeah, I mean, why not? You could have sold it like that. Sean, what was your initial reaction when Dave Haxstall was announced as the Seattle Cracken's first head coach? Surprise. That's right. Yeah, we're not, I wasn't even aware that he had been a candidate or someone they were talking to. I mean, look, this is why you interview people to get insight that maybe you can't get from just looking at their resume or their track record. But yeah, if we had sat down and started making a list of guys we thought we were going to get this job,

I think we could have got real far down the list before Dave Haxhill would be somebody who would have been mentioned. I mean, he's been in Toronto the last couple years viewed as kind of the defensive, the penalty kill guy. And Toronto was better defensively this year. But, I mean, I never heard anyone in Toronto say, oh, boy, they might lose Dave Haxthold in the offseason to a head coaching job somewhere. So I guess clearly he nailed the interview. Clearly, he really had a vision that he was able to sell to Ron Francis. And good for him, I guess. That's how the process goes.

The funny thing about, oh, he was in charge of X, Y, and Z. You always hear that about some guy who gets hired kind of out of nowhere. Oh, well, he was in charge. this GM that nobody's ever heard of, he was in charge of the draft, and they drafted these three guys who were like borderline all-stars. So clearly he knows what he's doing. And you never hear that the other way. Like, oh, they just hired this guy who he was in charge of the powerplay,

and famously the power play sucked shit last year. So, you know, like, wow, Dave Axel, a defensive genius all of a sudden. And it's like, yeah, I don't doubt that, like, people are saying, oh, he was in charge of the penalty kill. But it's just so funny that any time, oh, look how good the Leafs defense was. They almost got out of the first round this year. Yeah.

Okay. I do like that he grew a goatee, though. He looks like the manager at a Dick Sporting Goods now. And I think that's a good look for him. It's a different vibe than what he had with the Flyers. He looks like a 2007 baseball manager to me. I'm getting real like Mike Lowell vibes off this dude. I know that he was a manager in 2007 or whatever.

I mean, it's interesting that there's been so much talk about the, hey, you got to fuck up once and then you're a good coach thing. And like they cite Bruce Cassidy, who famously spent like, what, like 17 years between coaching gigs and, you know, DeBoer, you know, Mike Sullivan. There's Laviolette. Lovillet. There's examples of this. And, and maybe it applies to Haxstall as well. But, yeah, big surprise. And, and I don't. know. It's, I was trying to remember how we felt about Galant getting hired in Vegas, and I feel like it was a happier, more excited vibe because he got boned in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. I remember being like, oh, that, you know, that Florida team that he got to the playoffs, it wasn't that good, and they lost immediately. So I was like, I mean, yeah, this is, this is the kind of hire an expansion team makes. then obviously like over the next whatever two and a half seasons in in Vegas it was like oh yeah no this was a great hire but at the time I think there was a reason to be skeptical of of

of Galant even you know just even with the understanding that the the what they did in that first season is like not repeatable but I don't know like I think let's put it this way like the thing they're saying about haxtole is well look I mean you know he made the playoffs two of the three years. He was the head coach. And it's like, what happened to the other two years? Like,

he was, he was the head coach for three full seasons, missed the playoffs once, and then got fired in another one. So it sounds like his track records worse than 50-50, if we're running it that way, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So, I don't know. It was, I guess I was just maybe expecting a current head coach to be like, you know, it would be super fun to do what draw glant did. and leave their job and then go to Seattle is what I thought might happen, but it didn't happen at all.

Well, that's the other thing, though. It's like, Gallant kind of fucked everybody's expectations about what a modern NHL expansion team should be able to do. And, like, that's why I said, oh, yeah, no, there's no way Galant's taking this job because people will be like, well, you'll go to the Stanley Cup final next year, right, that's first season, right? And he's like, no, that seems impossible. I think Galant is, it did fine for himself. Don Granato Head coach to the Buffalo Sabres Sure

I love to take four months To hire the guy who was already the coach Yeah On the one hand They did Seem to get a little bit better under him I liked some of what he said Philosophically

It seems like he was A voice they needed after the Ralph Kruger experiment, especially maybe for some of the younger guys. At the same time, it's potentially a bit of a tough sell as an organization. If you're trying to shake off this image of being the league's worst run, losing his team, bringing back a guy who had like a 400 record or whatever it is, it seems like a dicey way to do that. But we don't know what other options were available.

I don't, you know, there's always going to be guys who want every job because there's only 32 of them. But I don't know that necessarily the best and the brightest candidates in the whole league were lining up to go to Buffalo. So maybe it just ended up being a case of let's stick with what we know, give them a shot. It probably does around from there. It probably does reinforce that they're one of the thriftier teams in the NHL. There is that as well. Which is weird. I thought they could just drill another well

and then have as much money as they needed. I seem to remember that. You know, it's... I was thinking about this the other day because that movie Rookie of the Year, people were talking about it on my timeline for some reason. And it's like, oh, remember? Yeah, like, there was a time when the Cubs were like

this beloved team nationally with the understanding that they were like a huge embarrassment and they sucked. You know? And it's like, shouldn't they just lean into the whole Like, oh, we're like the lovable losers. Like, isn't that what they always said about the Cubs? The same should just do that.

The same should just do that. Yes. Just be like, we're actually, look, we know. Like, act like you're in on the joke, I guess. Because this thing about, oh, we need a coach who can get us to compete for the Stanley Cup. And it's like, you know, maybe Don Grotto six years from now is that. But the roster isn't that. And so you just got to kind of be like, look, we get it.

We get why you're mad at us. We get why you want us to sell the team. And we agree with you. That's the way to do it, right? I'll go you one step further. I think they should lean into the rookie of the year thing. Bring back Jack Eichols. Say that the tendons in his neck have healed in a very unique way.

And now he can move his neck faster than anybody else in the league. Just like that kid could pitch faster and rookie of the year. Yeah. Do you think they picked a national league team in that movie just so they could get all the stuff about him batting? in there. Like that, that's a good bit. That'll kill five minutes.

Wow. I never thought about that, but you're probably right. That's it. That's why it wasn't the Cleveland Indians. Again. Right. Yeah,

that's right. That's funny. So the other coaching thing we should talk about is, I don't think it's happened yet, but it sounds what's going to happen, is that Andre Turini. Sounds like he's going to be the next head coach of your Arizona Coyotes. was a team Canada coach, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, junior coach and I think had been an assistant on Team Canada. So, I mean, we're often saying that the NHL tends to just recycle the same guys in and out. And hey, wouldn't it be cool if some occasional fresh set of eyes got a chance? And that's what we're getting here. there you go and he wants to go coach in Arizona

yeah which again is an organization that probably right now isn't exactly having people banging down the door but yeah it's

it makes sense as a hire all right Andre Tarini set in the world on fire all right anything else to talk about before we get to an overrated underrated

I'm trying to think I mean I guess yeah that's That's all the, like, that is all the jobs filled, right? Like, we're now, we're now done for, for coaching. So no. John Torrella. No John Torrella.

And the one guy that, you know, I'm not shocked. He's hasn't found work, but it's got to sting a little bit as Bruce Boudreau because he had kind of been public on some of this. I really wonder if he winds up in Toronto now. That's what everybody's been saying to the point where it's like it either is 100. 100% going to happen or it's going to come out that the Leafs were like, absolutely not. We don't. Yeah, never interested. Yep, yep, that's possible for sure.

I did hear something on Lane Lambert, who's Barry Trott's longtime assistant who gets mentioned for these jobs a lot. And there was a thought that maybe he would end up in Seattle because of how long the process was taking there. But I heard, you know, you hear this from people, and it may not be fair, but it kind of is the impression. I guess he leaves after these interviews. but apparently like there's a thought that he is he's a great assistant you know what I mean like

that is a guy who is a perfect assistant coach can be an assistant coach can help out the head coach but just for whatever reason has never made the impression that he's going to be a great head coach and I I don't know I couldn't say the specifics on that but that's the vibe that that he leaves in multiple times that he's interviewed for places so oh you know what we we haven't talked about all the teams that got eliminated since we lasted the show. We can quickly do like Islanders and Knights Corner. Sure.

Well, the Islanders, we talked about briefly on the bonus episode. If you haven't heard the bonus episode, by the way, it's a great one. It's a Seattle Cracken expansion draft that we created some really unique rules for. And actually, a bunch of new people signed up for the Patreon just to hear that episode, which is always a good sign. But we mentioned that the Islanders have conducted a thorough and it. you know, comprehensive review of their season. And it sounds like Lambert,

they decided they needed more offense, maybe. Well, no, Barry Trotz actually said the opposite. They asked him... Wait, he said they don't need more offense. Yeah, he said,

they asked him if, you know, if he thought they needed a little more offensive pop, and he said, you wouldn't be asking me that question. If we'd won one nothing, instead of lost one nothing. And it's like,

well, first of all, they still, even if they win one nothing, they still only scored four goals in the last three games of the conference final. But second of all,

that isn't what happened at all. So, in fact, they lost one nothing, and they got shut out twice in the last three games of a conference final. And if I'm looking at that roster, I'm going, yeah, I think it's probably because they don't have a lot of good offensive players. They have, like, a bunch of guys

who are perfectly okay, and they have very few, like, difference makers. Right. Right. And then the Vegas Golden Knights got eliminated, and I didn't really spend much time listening to their postseason laments. Did they say anything interesting? Are they just come out and be like, yeah, we're trading for Eichael?

I don't know, but like they did. There was like this kind of feeling that permeated the whole thing where it's like, yeah, we're bringing Flurry back and we're going to pay $12 million for our goaltending again next year. Rock on. I don't know. It seems crazy to me. And it was interesting because there was a story that Flurry was willing to sign an extension at a lower dollar value to stay. But that extension would be for the year after next year.

Next season, he's still locked in at a $7 million hit. So that's it's a tough situation. It's one of those nice problems to have like, oh gosh, the older goal. we thought we would be able to push out the door just won the Vezina. Oh no, now we have two really good goaltenders. But it is curious to see how it goes. If ever there was a time to sell high on a 36-year-old, right? Like, Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Right. Right. All right. Let's do a little overrated, underrated, and the show. We got one from the Patreon mailbag this week from Set the Stun. Overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite fried foods. I imagine this is sort of a deep fried, things you'd stick in a basket maybe and drop into the hot oil. Are they assuming that three podcasters would eat a lot of fried food?

Never, never, never. How about favorite salads or favorite? No, this is good. Okay. Overrated fried food. Mozzarilla sticks. No way. Come on, really?

Yeah, yeah. So I think because of the problem with mozzarella sticks is there's a high level of danger that you're going to get ones that are not good or that they've cooked the cheese out of them. And I don't like that. And then also the other variable with fried with mozzarella sticks is it's got to have good marinerar sauce and a lot of places don't have mariner sauce. That's a really good point. Yep, that's true. Yeah. So I'm going to say I'm going to say mozzarella sticks are overrated.

Wow. that's crazy I guess that I have to go with fried plantains just because I don't personally like them but hmm

interesting yeah I don't like and that's different than a plantain chip right that's just sort of yeah yeah okay all right I'm going to go with the the fried onion

the blooming onion those things are gross Wow. That's too much fried. I hadn't considered it that way. Like once you get into the, I feel like the first five minutes you're sitting with that thing, you're feeling fantastic about it. And then you just feel terrible.

Then you get to minute six. And A, you feel bad, but B, it kind of gets gross in the middle. It's not nearly as good as the outside part. They should do- You need to order it for a table of like 30 people. Yes. Because anything less than that, you're going to be. hitting some deep regret.

It is a solid delivery system for a really good sauce at like Outback. That shit's great, but you're right. I mean, there's, there's only so much that you can consume before you start really regretting life. Yeah. You know, they should, they should like with muffin tops, you know, that whole thing. Like you can buy just muffin tops. You should be able to buy just like the outer layers of the bloom and onion. Yeah.

underrated obviously I know this has become you know big bacon guy energy or whatever the fuck you say kind of food because it's it's become ubiquitous but I still think fried pickles are underrated I totally agree with you they're unbelievable I love they're unbelievable like if they are on the menu it's a hard sell for me to not get them yeah I've I've gotten them I don't know if Alamo draft house does them I think they do but the other draft house house that I used to go to, like the other, like, fake movie draft house that I used to go to in San Jose did them really well. But a great snack, a great delivery for a condiment, and also super tasty, a fried pickle be underrated. I'm going to go with a churro. You can't get them everywhere. But again, when they're on the menu, they're usually quite good. And obviously, like, you know, there are places like Disney World where it's like, well, you got to get the fucking churro. Like, what are you doing?

You know? And I, they're great. You walk around the entire place just eating churros. We went to one, we went to, Ruby and I went to Disneyland once where it was like International Churro Day. And the whole point, they give you a map of where all the churros are. You go to from churro, churro to eat it. And it's fucking tremendous.

When we went to Spain, they're just like on the menu in every cafe. And they come with like a, you know, basically like a hot fudge dipping sauce. Yeah. It's good stuff. Game changer. I'll go with when they're done well, any type of good fried hash brown. Oh, nice. Is a key piece of a good breakfast.

And you can have the McDonald's version where it's just like one flat piece or any of the chopped up versions, any of them. You know, too soggy, that's gross. That's no good. Not crispy enough. No, you don't want that. but when it's done well, that becomes the star of the breakfast once the bacon's done. I like that answer a lot because I feel like it's a food that's taken for granted. Yeah, you never go like, hey, you know, that place over there, they've got great hash browns.

But even if it's a breakfast place, but when you get good ones on the plate. And the thing, and I think we talked about this before, is a lot of places, you have no idea what you're getting with your breakfast potatoes. Like it'll just say you're getting potatoes. It could be anything. You don't know what the format is. You have no idea. You're spinning the wheel. And it's a key piece.

Favorite for me. Now, normally I would say something like McDonald's French fries because those are really like goat fried food. But if I'm being honest, to kind of go towards where Lambert was going with his recent answer. The bignet. Mm-hmm. Covered in powdered sugar. Yeah. Freshly fried, New Orleans style.

Oh, man, that's some good shit right there. Pillowy goodness. And I would say a bignet might be my favorite fried food. Yeah, really, really good. I was considering along very similar lines, just fried dough. Hard to beat it for, you know, the same reason. Like a funnel cake. Yeah.

Yeah. But I have to go with donuts. Sure. I love donuts. They're so good. Oh, you like donuts, do you? Well, how about all the donuts in the world? Yeah, I would be like Homer in that sketch.

It's one of my favorite Homer noises of all time, because when they start shoveling the donuts in his mouth, he just goes, hop, hop, hop, hop. Oh, yeah. Over and over again. It's good. I'm going with the chicken wings. Come on.

Absolutely. It's quite possibly my favorite food, period. Good. And they better be fried. Don't, I don't want to hear your oven baked or whatever way you're doing them. Deep fried, crispy, bright orange. Now, here's the question. Here's the question.

If you have six of them on your plate, how many of them are wings and how many of them are drummets? You see, I'm going to give you. you some important advice. I'm a flatty guy and my wife is a drum fan. Oh, a drum major. And that's the only reason the relationship works. You need to figure out this information early on. This is like a first date question. You get a basket of wings and if they're reaching for the same kind you like, there's no right or wrong answer on which kind you like. I mean, there is, but there's no right or wrong answer, but don't wind up in a pair with somebody who who likes the same. kind as you. It's if we, we get the basket, we divide them up, everybody's happy. I'm,

I'm tragically disappointed because my, my son has started getting into wings now and he's, he's with me on the flatty side, which is not good because it means now I got, I got another hand reaching into the basket for, for my wings. Right. Not good. You got to get the restaurant to come over to the table and tell, tell them that there's a rule. Yes. Yes. That says, you know, You can't eat all the flats. You got to, you got to. And Sean's like for somebody else. What?

What? We're not going to the movie. Less than a week from season two, folks. Yay. Oh, my God. I'm like, oh, did you, did you see the, did you see the SNL sketch that I tweeted out yesterday when they did the Sopranos the early years as the CW show? So they did the Many Saints of New York trailer drop.

the young Tony Soprano movie that it's coming out. And I don't remember this seeing this, but S&L did a sketch called Young Sopranos that was based on the Carrie Diaries. That was the prequel to Sex in the City that was on the CW. And it's all about the Sopranos characters in the 1980s in high school, which again, doesn't fit the timeline. And they acknowledged that in the sketch. Very, very funny sketch. Kate McKinnon doing E. E.E. Falco, probably the funniest thing.

But I tell you this, because Tim Robinson plays the Maloney. line the principle in the sketch. That's funny. Of, of, uh, of, uh, overseeing, uh, baby Tony Soprano and, and young pussy and all these other people. It's really, it's a very funny sketch and, uh, highly recommend you track it down, especially because our boy Tim's in it. Um, favorite.

Oh, wait, least favorite. Sorry. Least favorite for me. Okay. So, um, normally this is where I would say fried green tomatoes and go on yet another screed about how tomatoes ruin everything and especially. sandwiches. But I hate to report to you that the movie's so good that you can't.

That Jessica Tandy is an American treasure. No, I hate to report to you that although it is a brilliant food and concept, fried mac and cheese balls are not good, beyond overrated, a least favorite. Yeah, that's a good call. My answer in a completely different direction. Anytime it's like all fried Snickers, fried Oreos. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, you've overstepped. Fried fried candy bars, completely agree. Fried Oreos are fucking good.

I disagree with you on that one. They're not so much better or even, I don't think they compete with the standard Oreo in terms of goodness. Okay. Like why do it? You know what I mean? You have evoked what I would call the scallop clause. And the scallop clause says that if a form of food exists... If you kill a scallop, you become the scalp.

No, that's not that. The first rule of scallop club, no. It is that if a food exists in a form that is basically perfect, that all other forms of that food are therefore imperfect. An Oreo on its own is a perfect food. there's no reason to fuck it up and try to change it or make it better. So I will agree with you if you evoke the scallop clause that the fried Oreo is a least favorite.

Greg, there's a big button on my desk right now. It says, scallop clause. I'm evoking it. Okay. So you pulled the scallop lever like Conan pulling the Walker, Walker, Texas. Yeah, I was thinking more like the big gold button on America's Got Talent or whatever the fucking thing is. The X-Fad. I don't know which show they have the big gold button on,

but one of those shows has a big gold button. Your chair spins around like on the voice and you see a scallop in front of you. That's right. Yeah, that's, speaking of Oreos, by the way, one of the new varieties they have is like called Moka Chip or something along those lines. Unbelievable. It's like a 10 out of 10 if you haven't tried it. Moka Choka Choka Chippa Lala.

Lady Oreo. Hey, can I get just a freaking coffee Oreo? Right? Yeah. I mean, come on. What happened? All right. Sean, least favorite.

Yeah. First of all, I'll just say I agree with Ryan. I almost had fried desserts as like my overrated. It's frying for the sake of frying. Mine is just, I'm Calamari. I just don't like it. So it's my least favorite. I understand other people like it.

That's fine. Go ahead and get one for yourself. But I'm not eating. a fried rubber band. So, no, thanks. Interesting. I like Calamori a lot, but I understand that your thought,

and a fried rubber band is really actually a really funny way of describing it. That's what it is. All right, that's Buck Soup for this week. Thanks, everybody, for listening to the podcast. You could read my stuff on ESPN.com and follow the work that Emily and I are doing throughout the postseason, including over on Daily Wager on ESPN2, where she joins me when we're on site together to make picks and was successful in her pick for game one whilst I was not.

So boo on me. Ryan? Yeah, I mentioned earlier, Elite Prospects. We put out our big draft guy. We, I had nothing to do with it. Okay. But we put out our big draft guy that's like over a thousand. pages on, I think, the top, like, 200 prospects, something like that.

The high-end guys, they have, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten pages of analysis of their games and that sort of thing. So really in-depth, really, really good. I was reading through it yesterday. I got maybe 20 pages in, and I was like, I might have too much information about the draft. So, E.P.Rinkside.com, elite prospects.com. and if you sign up with the code I love EP, you

get three months for free on top of an annual subscription. There you go. Right on. Find me at the athletic. I've got my annual bandwagon guide to the Stanley Cup

final where the other 30 teams, if you're trying to figure out which of these two teams to cheer for, I try to nudge you in the right direction and I get some of I got a post up both the haves today and then other stuff on the way. And you can listen to me with Ian Mendez on the Athletic Hockey Show podcast on Thursdays. There you go.

All right, everybody. That's Puck's here for this week. Thanks for listening. Much appreciated. Thanks for supporting the Patreon. And, yeah, we will talk to you next week when maybe we'll have a little bit more clarity on this whole, you know, Stanley Cup final thing. Enjoy all the holidays, whether you're in the U.S. or in Canada coming up. Very exciting times, and we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, everybody. See you. Bye-bye.