Puck Soup - Bad Contract Court

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

The boys play prosecutor, defense attorney and judge in Salary Cap Court, ruling on questionable contracts for players ranging from Shea Weber to Brent Burns to Mitch Marner. Plus, we debate the June NHL Draft idea, the shifting of games to empty NHL arenas, the 2011 Bruins reunion, Gerard Gallant to the Devils, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and perfect movies, a mystery about "Back To The Future" is solved and an bit of nostalgia about wrestling theme songs. Sponsored by Raycon!  

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wyshinski of ESPN, the home of the NFL draft, which by the time you probably hear this, you'll know whether. it was great or maybe not. I'm Ryan Lambert.

I don't know anything about the NFL. Sean McAnew from The Athletic. I can't wait to watch the NFL draft and see some kind of normal sports. I'm a little too excited for this. I refuse to believe that you don't know anything about the NFL, Ryan, because you live in Boston, and I have to imagine that it's 24-7, gronk to the bucks. Yeah, but like, where am I seeing this? I don't have cable.

I don't, I wouldn't watch like a fucking New England sports roundup show. Like, there's no, there's no, there's no, I saw that the trade happened. I don't know anything beyond, I don't know what they got for him. I don't know what this actually means for anybody. Is Gronk still good? I don't know. I thought he retired. Apparently he didn't.

None of this matters to me. I just assume that everywhere you go, like, if you're, if you're, walking, your sweet pup, people are like, you know, just coming up and just, you know, talking about gronk. Like, that's just how I picture Massachusetts as a whole, to be quite honest with you. I swear, this is 100% true. I know more about gronk as a professional wrestler than I do as an NFL player. I have to give credit to Marissa and Gemmy, who was on ESPN on ICE this week, former Boston Herald writer, because I believe she is the one who suggested that whoever tackles gronk first in week one gets to win the 24-7 title.

I think that's how it works. They'll get the belt off him before that. It'll be a classic, you know, Montreal screw job type of a situation if worse comes to worse. But there's no way they're letting him go on an NFL game as the 24-7 champion. Oh, yeah. You got a perfect belt. Yeah, he got for biddy walks out on week one and throws the 24-7 belt in the trash.

That's exactly right. And what? Yeah. We wanted to start the show with, uh, with, a quick discussion about perfect movies. James Gunn, the man behind Guardians of the Galaxy, Slither, and the baffling sequel to Suicide Squad called The Suicide Squad, which is coming out at some point,

had a threat about perfect movies. Now, one of this perfect movie, what, what you just said about the, they're making another version of a movie nobody liked and just changing one word in the title? Well, they're making a sequel to it. You see, like, Harley is going to be in it. And if he's smart, Viola Davis will be in it because she's arguably the only good thing from the first Guardy, the first suicide squad. But yeah, it's a sequel to suicide squad called The Suicide Squad.

You comic book guys are out of control. Like, just make a movie. It's too much. And then the movie can be done. Like, that's, oh, all right. I, listen, I completely agree. And it, no, it's fine. And it all, I have to, my biggest problem with it is that it brings.

the genre movie naming convention. Everyone knows that the sequel is just you add an S to the end, like aliens. It should be suicide squads. Suicide squad. Suicides squads. I think before I interrupted Greg, you were trying to say suicide squad is the perfect movie. I think that was the point. Listen, hey, listen, it might be the perfect trailer.

It got me to watch that piece of shit. But, no, James gone amongst his picks, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which then had people out of the woodwork again to point out the thing of the submarine. Yeah. No, no, no, no. The thing about how Indiana Jones doesn't do anything in the movie. Like, the movie happens whether or not. Yeah, but I mean, like, that's not true, though.

They were digging in the wrong place in Egypt. We all, like, they would not have found the chamber without Indiana Jones. But otherwise, that is a correct take. Other than the fact that it's wrong, it's right. Right. I mean, not only that, but also at the end, I mean, he and Marion are there, right? And if, like, if he doesn't say, hide your eyes and she gets her face melted too, so at least he did that. Sure.

Anyway, my point is that's... And he chose not to blow up the arc with the bazooka, too. Anyways, it is a perfect movie. Wow. One of the, one of the choices that he made was back to the future where he said, and I quote, back to the future could seemingly could be imperfect. And then in parentheses, why don't mom and dad remember Marty, but I would still argue it's a perfect film because there are reasons why this could conceivably be the case. I have to admit that as someone who has seen Back to the Future on numerous occasions, that never occurred to you?

Never occurred to me. Yeah. Or it never, it never imprinted on my brain that that was something that people bring up about the movie. like, oh, perfect movie, save for this fact. Like, and that never, has, did it occur to you? Like, all the times you saw it? I mean, I have to say, I have to admit that it, like, it was pointed out online, like, I saw it online, however many years ago.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's fucking weird. But, um, Sean, was that ever a thing that you, I didn't think he could see that. No, so, I'm sorry, what the complaint is that they don't, the parents don't recognize him. Like what? They don't realize that their son looks exactly. Exactly the same. They don't go like, oh, you have, yeah, that you bear an uncanny resemblance to Calvin Klein. To Calvin Klein.

Right. Right. To the guy who thrust us together. But that was like in the 50s. It's not like they've got photos on their phone that they could just call up. But that seems reasonable they would kind of have forgotten what, I don't remember what people look like that I met two months ago. Yeah, but you, like, if it was. this guy you met who introduced you to your wife. I think you might have a more strong.

And who, you know, dressed like he was from a different time and played Johnny B. Well, maybe they don't know he played Johnny B. Good, right? That was while they were both outside. And also in their reality, you know, he is the original writer. It was written by a white man. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then Marvin Barry stole it. So, but here's the thing. Bob Gale, who is the screenwriter for Back Hill Future, actually chimed in on this. And this is why I bring it up because I found this would be fascinating. It's a pure COVID-19 quarantine fairy tale of all these discussions happening. And then someone who has no time on his hands being like, I'll chime in to the Hollywood reporter.

This is what Bob Gail says. Bear in mind that George and Lorraine only knew Marty Calvin for six days when they were 17. and they did not even see him every one of those days. So many years later, they might still remember that interesting kid who got them together on their first date. But I would ask anyone to think back on their own high school days and ask themselves how they remember a kid who might have been at their school for even a semester or someone you went out with just one time. If you have no photo reference after 25 years, you'd probably just have a hazy recollection. So George and Lorraine might think it's funny that they once met someone named Calvin Klein, and they thought that their son had some resemblance to him, but it wouldn't be a big deal.

And also, he wasn't even in the yearbook, as Gail points out, too. So there's no, like, record. That's completely the correct take. That's great. And also, like, what are they supposed, even if they were looking at their son going, he looks like that guy, what are they supposed to do? Like, they're just, are they going to look at each other and be like, oh, my God, our son was a time traveler? Or are they going to be like, yeah, those people look kind of the same.

Like, that's... Now, it's entirely possible that George McFly does come to that conclusion, being that he's George McFly. True. That's also true. What if her son is a time travel? And then she just shoots it down. But, yeah, I, one, did not know this was considered to be a flaw in the film. And two, I'm happy that it is now canon, courtesy of the screenwriter, that we fixed it.

So we close the time loop. The anomaly has been fixed in Back to the Future Beat. By the way, back to the future perfect movie or no, I guess would be the question. I mean, it's fun. It's really like, it's one of those things where it's very difficult now to go, oh, that is like, that's not a good movie. And do I think it's a good movie just because it came out when I was three years old or what it? I don't know. I have no way of knowing that.

anymore. If we divorce, like, the movies that we saw as kids from the perfect movie debate, because our perceptions might be warped, I would say, I would say the most perfect, like, entertainment, not perfect. Like, there will be blood, right? Sure. Well, I just read that that movie actually isn't good. Oh, yeah.

There's a woman in the Guardian the other day. A woman in The Guardian saw it for the fourth time, and she kept falling asleep. if then explain why Daniel Plainview's character was terrible. No, Ocean's 11 was a perfect movie. Like, it is perfectly plotted. Every performance is on point. It's endlessly entertaining, endlessly rewatchable. I would put, if we're talking about like paragon's of perfection

amongst pop culture type films, like Back to the Future, then Ocean's 11 as an adult is probably the one I would put up as being perfect. Yeah, see, it's tough. because I, like, I just want to say, like, Jaws and Jurassic Park or two. But, again, I saw those movies. Right. As a kid. And so, like, you know.

But those are two great answers. Yeah, they're great. But do I think they're, I mean, I've seen Jurassic Park probably 300 times. Does that mean, like, like, I think that probably skews my perception a bit, like, the fact that I wore out a VHS copy of it within a year. Sean, outside of the Don Cherry story on CBC, what was the perfect movie? That was my answer. Fuck, I'm sorry. Yeah.

My perfect movie, and again, this is, well, I was a teenager when this came out, so I think I'm, I'm kind of okay. The Fugitive. Love that movie. Oh, that is a great fucking movie. Great. That's a good. Had the single, like, people kind of forget, like, when that came out, the train wreck scene was like the single biggest, craziest action set piece, stunt thing that, of like any movie that year. And, but then it, like, it uses that to, like, trick you and sucker you in and then becomes, like, a pretty smart movie with, like, great performances and an actual ending.

And, you know, no sequels. Like, they did the offshoot with the cops, but there's no, like, it doesn't end with, like, a question mark or something. It's just, like, here's a story, beginning, middle, end. Everything's great the whole way through. It's, uh, that's, that's a fantastic movie. The ingenious thing about it, too, is that it's this incredible. chase movie, right? And then they

sort of like inject an incredible who done it movie inside of that while the chase is still happening. And also, and have like the, you know, the bad guy be hidden in plain sight through the movie at a time when that

wasn't every movie. Like now, like in a post six sense world, every single movie has to like have a little twist of, oh my gosh, it was that guy the whole, like, but where back then, And you were like, oh, crap, that's, I can't, they're actually going to do that. And to link it back to Raiders, like, another example of why, I mean, Harrison Ford didn't have a lot in his bag of tricks, but, but the dude could hold together a fucking movie like no one else.

Yeah, he's one of the grace. Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, I mean, his qualities as a movie star. I mean, one of the most charismatic actors of the late-old century. If I had to pay one thing for a movie star to be able to do, starring in a movie is pretty high on my list. But hold on. He's like, he's like Bogart, though.

Like he's not, you can't ask him to do much outside of his lane. That's my point. Like, like, ever hear him try to do a fucking Russian accent? Yeah. Ain't good. Well, you know what? I mean, Tommy Lee Jones is kind of similar. So you get both the guys and put them in the exact right lane.

And it's, and it's fantastic. Oh, man, Tommy Lee Jones, so fucking good at being that exactly that character. I don't know that I've ever seen him be anything besides that character. I had granted, I haven't seen a lot of his early work, I guess, but like, no country for old men. He plays basically the same guy. Just older. Yeah, just older. And men in black, same deal.

Men in black is sort of like a parody of that, you know, of like if you put that character inside of a sci-fi concept. No, I agree. And I'm not trying to show. Like, I love Harrison Ford. I think Harrison Ford. I don't like him. You think he can. I mean, I don't.

I love, I love him when he. was denying his Han Solo-ish life for a long time. I think that's put on so that people won't fucking talk to him about it. You know what I mean? Like, because otherwise, you end up being just like every question you get for your entire fucking career. And he's been in a million great movies. So it's not like, it's not, but, you know, like, I think even if it was just Indiana Jones, I don't think he's walking around going, I hate being Indiana Jones. But because I think he, listen, I think he loves being Indiana Jones. I think he's never run away from Indiana Jones.

Well, that's what I'm saying. But there's not, there's not the obsessive Indiana Jones fandom like there is for Star Wars. And so if you go like, oh, I hate talking about being Han Solo, never talked to me. Like, that just prevents people from doing it. And you can just, like, go through your life. Right. But, I mean, at no point did he ever probably go to, like, Steven Spielberg and be like, you got to kill me after Last Crusade.

I don't want to fucking do this anymore. That's true. It probably never happened. And he was going to try. He wanted out after fucking empire. That's why they froze him. They didn't know if he was going to be back. That would have been more narratively interesting if they had, if the carbonite had killed him.

But sure. It would also have been more narratively interesting if Lando and Niemnub died in the Falcon when they blow up the second death start. But that's true. Got to leave. Hogan must pose, as they say. Oh, yeah, hockey. So, holy shit. They want to hold the draft in June.

How about that before the season's over? Really stupid. It's insanely dumb. Like, the thing has been pointed out. And I think Pierre LeBron pointed this out, but this is true. Like, when Betman suggests things, it's not often to get negative feedback and then be like, oh, the error of my ways. It's usually to be like, here's what we're doing. Get ready.

Yeah, it's a trial balloon. It's a little disturbing that this might be the thing that they actually do. But I understand. And I wrote about this on Thursday. Like, there are reasons to do the draft in June before the end of the season in theory. What are they? To get it done. Okay, I'll say what they are.

That's a great question. I'm open to doing something creative and this is such a bizarre situation. I don't think anything should be off the table. But, like, I keep looking for what we gain by doing the draft in June other than it fills some time and we get to have some hockey to talk about. when we otherwise wouldn't. That's a primary reason is the, hey, we got nothing else going on reason. But there are other reasons. So, like, one of them is that, so if we have a truncated off season, right, like, doing the draft in June would be proper ramp up to it, proper time to research.

It wouldn't be shoved into a perilously small window of, like, September and October, or even October before we restart the season. There's the issue of European players. So if you draft a European player in June, you've got some runway to figure out where that player is going to be next season. Could be in your minor leagues, could be on your actual roster, who's to say, if you do it in the end of August or September, they might be already spoken for as far as what they're doing in 2020, 2021.

And so you lose that opportunity to put them into your developmental program. And then Elliot pointed out, Friedman pointed out, that there are a lot of scouts and executives that are working the draft who currently would not have a contract for a late summer event. So their contracts are up like usually after the draft is held in June. And so he said there's one team that has like 30 guys whose contracts are up after the draft in June, like on its original date. Now, I'm sure there's probably ways to fudge those numbers and extend those deals or whatever for even in a small, like window. But that's also a consideration too. So there's some issues there.

All of those, to me, are dwarfed by the, holy shit, how do we possibly seed these picks in a proper way? And holy shit, who wants to watch the NHL draft if there are no trades of players during it? Right. Yeah. No. Because that's the problem, right?

It's like all there are a million, not a million, but there are probably three or four guys notable players who would get traded Johnny Godreau probably number one who would probably get traded at or around you know in the lead up to the draft who now well you know Calgary Flames are going to be in the playoffs and they can't trade Johnny Godro for like futures and just not have a first line wing so where are you going to do and and that kind of thing like yeah you know half the fun of the draft more than half the fun of the draft more than half the fun of the draft, especially after the first round, is guys getting traded. So what the fuck? Right. And it's, but it also serves a functional thing, too, like, as far as the trades.

I mean, obviously, you're making trades to move up and down the draft board. You're making trades to improve your team. But you're also usually making trades for salary cap purposes. I mean, the two biggest trades that we had last year, the Suban trade and the Marlowe trade were both completely cap-driven. And if the cap's going to be. flat and we're already looking at some semblance of Armageddon when it comes to these rosters to take away the opportunity to sell off your players with picks because you might need them for the playoffs or you don't have the opportunity. Like, it's fucking insane to me. Well, I guess, yeah, I mean, I take that point and it's a valid one. The counter argument

would be that holding a draft in June does nothing to say that you can't then make the trades in the off season, whenever that is, maybe the off seasons in September, you can still trade your players that you need to trade for cap reasons or for whatever else. You can still trade them for futures. You can still trade them for picks in the next draft, which in this case now would be 2021. All that you lose is the ability to trade a guy for picks and then get the pick right away and use it that day. Like it's basically, we're making these GMs take the marshmallow test here and they can't like open their presents right on Christmas Eve they have to wait a little bit and and uh but that does matter like psychologically for these guys that there probably is a case where it's like hey am I

going to trade this guy I don't know but uh we got we know who we got this prospect we want we think we can get them yeah I'm going to pull the trigger versus uh if it's if the timelines get too far out in the distance and the other thing too is the certainty of knowing where that pick is that's that's biggest thing. When you trade for a 2021, a 2021 pick, you don't know what's going to, what any of those teams are going to be. But like now you'd at least in theory know. But that's the other problem with this is that.

So there's two different models that I've heard were talked about with the GMs. One is we hold the draft in June. Maybe we don't even know if we're playing again. We're just going to use points percentage from the teams at the pause and go from there to which one of the GMs, God bless whoever it was, said, so what you're saying is there is a chance that a team could win the draft lottery and then win the Stanley Cup if we expand the playoffs

to which Betman said, ah, maybe, I don't know. The chances are very small. And then the other thing was, what if we do find a way to restart the regular season, which the NHL is apparently hell-bent on doing, and then hold the draft

in between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the playoffs? So you take a few days, you hold the draft, you come back and start playing the championship hockey, give the boys a little bit more time to get their sea legs under them, yada, yada, yada. And then obviously have a little bit more certainty and an equitable way to figure out where these teams should draft versus, you know, the points percentage argument wherein, you know, the Winnipeg Jets could win the lottery and then get into the playoffs on an expanded playoff format and then win the cup in the same year. Yeah, I mean, look, if somebody, like, I saw people being like, it would be unthinkable if that were, like, who gives the shit? If you win the cup and win the draft lottery, you, you know, like, you know, like, you know, Colorado could have done it, what, like two years ago, right?

Right. Some playoff teams do have lottery picks. And not, and it's not only that. It's also the idea of, like, well, you know what? If you're like, you know, the team that was seated 20th and you win the Stanley Cup, fuck. Good for you. Fucking who cares? Like, it's not like you're actually, if you were, you know, the 20th best team in the league over 75 games or whatever number they end up at,

and then you, you know, just get on a P.D.O run and win the Stanley Cup. Like, that's not indicative that you're necessarily good. Well, yeah. Oh, man. And the next season. And how awful would- This impassioned defense of the 2012 L.A. Kings from Lambert. I had no idea you were a fan.

How awful would it be for the NHL if an elite prospect came in and was playing on a team that was actually halfway decent right away and didn't have to waste three or four years of their career waiting for the Red Wings to get back in the playoffs? Yeah, that would be. Yeah, awful. We'd all hate that. One of the things Betmans talked about, by the way, is with the draft lottery. He talked about this last night as we taped the show with Ron McLean. Good to see those two hook up again. I've been, Sean, don't you miss the interrogation sessions on hockey night between Ron McClain and Gary

It's not the same. It's not the same when they're doing it like I need Batman to be able to reach over and awkwardly grab Ron McLean's forearm And like squeeze it as he's asking a question. And you're like, dude, we can see that. Like you know you're on camera right now. Like it's, yeah, I love that. Like Ron McLean was never better than in those in those sessions where he would just hold Betman's feet to the fire about the economics or about expansion to Quebec or shit like that. Those were great. And I felt like he was one of the few people I've ever seen really get under Gary's kid. I did one of my YouTube breakdowns like a couple months ago on like the first time that happened. I want to say it was like the 97 All-Star game. And McLean starts asking him about how scoring rates have dropped. And Betman's like, well, yeah, but what about the last few weeks?

what are the rates then? And McLean's like, I don't know. And he's like, yeah, they're back up. So, ha, ha. And it's like, you're watching this literally 23 years in the future going, like, that's it. Like Gary Bettman was like, no, it's fine. We fixed it in 1997. And then like, spiked the football.

And it was very proud of himself. Classic. But they, oh, yeah. So anyway, one of Betman's fixes for the draft lottery is he said they've considered reinstituting. the sort of fail safes in the lottery, wherein you might be only able to move up a few spots. Remember how they used to do that? Now you win the lottery for the top three picks.

It used to be you win the lottery. You could only move up a few spots. He talked about that, which to me is hilarious, because the reason that they did that initially and got rid of that was to help prevent tanking. But I guess he just looks up the Red Wings this year. He's just like, fuck it. We can't prevent tanking.

Yeah, I mean. It's going to happen. Again, the way the draft lottery works is, we all agree Detroit has the first pick, and then what? Right. Right. They were so fucking bad this year. Like, worse than, and here's the thing. Up until maybe last year, they didn't think they were tanking.

So, it's fine. Let them have the first pick. I don't even think they intended to tank this year. Oh, I don't think they, I think Stevie wise smarter than that. Oh, no. I think he didn't set them up to win, but like, did they ever think they'd be this bad? I think they're the Tommy Wisu of hockey. They set out to make a good movie, and then they made the room.

Yeah, the draft idea in June is bad, and hopefully this is a trial balloon. The draft idea thing, and if people haven't read Pierre's piece, you got to read it. Because I really do, I come at this with an open mind. I'm trying not to, you know, it's chaos out there. If the league wants to come at me with crazy ideas, I'll hear them out. Now's definitely the time. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm going through it and I'm like reading the arguments on both sides and the arguments on both sides are terrible.

Because like one of the first arguments for doing it that is presented is Jim Nill saying, well, like we've, we've, all these prospects are fresh in our minds right now. And if we wait until the fall, it's going to start getting all hazy. I'm going to forget. Dude, write it down, man. Like, make some notes or something. It's, it's, you know, like, we're going to get to October and, like, Eisenman's going to be up there. Like, who was the kid in the, he was French, I think? I don't know.

Al something. Yeah, I'll take it. Yeah. But then the other argument that came up was one of the, because Pierre quotes a bunch of executives who, who hate the idea. And one of them is like, well, but we draft based on what happens in the playoffs. I was just going to say that. I was just going to say that. Like, the, like, the, like, the number of.

GMs whose jobs are going to be saved by this stupid draft because they don't fucking blow it, or they do blow it, but they get to go, well, look, I didn't get to see those four extra Memorial Cup games. What am I supposed to do? We didn't have enough defensive depth in round two, and that's why we lost game seven, so I'm going to draft an 18-year-old who won't play for five years. And then the other thing, of course, is like they're going to go, well, look, what were we supposed to do? We thought we were going to be in a position to pick fifth, but they moved. all the rules around for the lottery. We picked seventh. How did we know?

Like, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be so many fucking excuses. And, you know, it's all, again, as we've said it a million times, to make GMs go, look, sure, I did a bad job. But there are reasons that I did a bad job that you didn't think about. And they're just going to trot out every conceivable one now. Right. And then also, we're on a five-year plan. So you have to let me build up our coverage and stuff.

And this year didn't count. The reason why the NHL. This is. It's a freebie. The reason the NHL draft to me has never resonated on the level like other drafts have, and I think baseball has the same problem. So I'm basically saying not like the NBA or the NFL, is that very issue, is the immediacy. Like if the jets suck last year, the New York Jets, and it's because of their offensive line

and because they don't have a deep threat receiver, they go into the draft this week and they're like, okay, if there's an O lineman, we're going to take him, he's going to play next season. Or if there's a wide receiver, we're going to take him, he's going to play like next season. The NFL draft is the best. Like that, not even the first round. Like, teams tonight are going to, well, not tonight, but this weekend, we'll pick guys in like round four that will start for them. Yes. And it's, it's, you know, and the NBA, you get that for like the first 10 picks and then it sort of can be all over the map.

Whereas the NFL is just like seven rounds of this guy could start or he might never even make the team and we're not really sure. And you're right. Like baseball is the worst out of the group because You never like you could you have guys that are like the Connor McDavid of baseball prospects and they still he's not on a major league roster for six years. You won't see them for years and years and the NHL is you know it it it can have especially the last few years it seems to be moving back towards guys making the league right away but it's is certainly you're not seeing anyone. It's still only like five guys that are.

Yeah. And also, I think the other deal is that like even though for a lot of Americans, you know, we're not necessarily watching these kids in like the Memorial Cup and stuff like that as much as Canadian fans are. I mean, I still think that there is much more of a recognition of who they are and what they do and watching them in World Junior and things like that. Like baseball prospects, like, unless you're watching, you know, Oklahoma versus Nebraska and ESPN 10. during the regular season. Like, who the fuck are these kids? No one knows. So at the very least, hockey has that going for it. I just wish that there was that more immediate help aspect of it outside of the top five guys that would make it even more compelling. Well, price, the way the cap's going, you know.

They're going to have to bring in a lot of guys on ELCs. The other big holy shit news in the last couple of days, holy shit, they went from trying to play games in North Dakota to trying to play games in four different NHL arenas. So goodbye, neutral site games, by the way, I was talking to somebody with the league yesterday, and they're like, it really never was going to be a thing. No. It never really got off the drawing board.

And I'm like, well, you know, I literally said thanks for the content. Like, thanks for not popping those balloons so quickly. So we had a good run of, you know, waiting for. Chris Sununu to tell us why Manchester, New Hampshire is petition. Oh, the best thing I heard this week, by the way, and I can't tell you where I heard it from, but it's fantastic. Apparently, there was a residence inn in Manchester, New Hampshire that upon hearing that the NHL may have been considering holding games in New Hampshire, called the league

and offered up blocks of rooms in the residence in like it was a wedding. to NHL teams so they can put their players in the residence in. That is the greatest thing I've heard this week. And kudos to the residents in, man. They're going for it. Yeah, the Lipschitz wedding is not happening. You know, it's quarantine. But if you can get blocks of NHL teams at the wedding rate.

I'm trying to think that might be the one that's like right next to the arena too. That would have been great for everybody involved. Yeah. So that was that was hella aggressive. But yeah, no hoisting the Stanley Cup. uh, in, uh, Grand Forks or, uh, Manchester or Saskatoon. Instead, it'll be an empty arena that looks exactly the same, but it will be closer to an NHL market. Like that's the thing. Like this, oh, we're not going to do neutral. Like, dude, if you put,

if you put it in an empty arena in Edmonton, that is still a neutral site game. Like there's no, the Oilers aren't gaining some huge advantage other than, you know, maybe being able to see their families, but it's, they're not like, if it's going to be empty arenas, it really, from a, just purely from a fan's perspective, I know the logistics and organizing it and everything is a huge challenge, but just from a fan's perspective, one empty arena is going to look pretty much the same as any other, unless they let the oilers, like, decorate it however they want. That might be cool. Yeah, that was why I was excited about the college arenas, is because they were a little bit smaller. You could have maybe controlled the lighting better. You could have controlled the aesthetics better. But I mean,

at the end of the day, the NHL is right in the sense that, like, you still have to make room for all that staff and multiple teams. You have to have a practice facility in order to have multiple teams on site to be able to practice while the games are going on because you're going to structure them like you do the World Cup or, you know, international tournaments or you're going to have like three games a day. And then you have to have the facilities for the broadcast partners, too, because you're going to have multiple national TV, local TV, local radio. Like those people. I was one of the facilities. I was one of the facilities. I was one. I was one of the broadcast partners. I was one. I was one. I was one. I was one. I was one. I was one. I was one. I was. I was I'm wondering if they would do that by like having them, like they used to do for soccer on ESPN or whatever and just have them call it from a booth like in Toronto or in. Now, my favorite call-out from a booth thing of all time was, do you remember during this? I think this was, it had to have been the, the, the, the, what was it, what was it, 2013 lockout? Yeah. Because I don't think the, was the KHL around during the initial, the, the, the last season? No, yeah. I don't think it was.

You're thinking of the Barry Melrose calling you're like... Barry Melrose and Steve Levy calling KHL games from Bristol. Yeah. That was something, man. I remember I watched that first one and I was like, I don't think I could do this anymore. It was basically like them trying to call the game, but every two seconds it would be them stopping to make fun of some guy's name. Yes. Good shit.

Good shit. Yeah, no, I, to me, like, you have a good point, which is that you know the national TV people are going to be. there. But the local radio guys might have to just like get together in some guys' basement and watch it off the TV. But that's what I'm saying. Like why do the national TV people have to be there? Yeah. Like in Canada, we've had, we've had broadcast done that way. So it's, it's, yeah, I don't, I don't even know, you know, I mean, I guess, yeah, maybe the real big national guys, but do you? But they're, I don't think you do. Who cares? You don't need them, but they're paying so much money that they'll be there. Like, without question.

Batman sets up interesting last night too, which is that he said that, like, they basically have all their money from the broadcast partners. So if the playoffs don't happen, then it would be credits against the money that they're owed for next season. Right. Which has got to be fucking brutal. So, you know, fulfilling the broadcast obligations part of this financial equation of potentially throwing your players into the middle of a pandemic just to get them back on the ice is part of this equation too. And we should say everybody. now is 100% convinced that this is going to happen. Like, nobody's like, well, maybe everybody you talk to is like, yeah, of course they're

going to play these games in like July or August. 100%. Yeah. Right. So that's it. Which, again, it's a little insane because you still, I mean, you still have to have the NHLPA sign off on it. And, you know, we talked to Don Fear a couple weeks ago and he's just like, yeah, you

got to have testing. You got to be able to isolate. You got to be able to do all these things to keep our guys safe. Now, at the end of the day, he's saying that, but is the totality of the NHLPA saying that is the question? Like, do these guys actually give a shit about coming back and getting tested? Or do they just want to play for the cup? Because that's the, no one can, no one can accuse NHL players of not want to have a 40% pay cut. Correct.

That's a take part of it too. And again, like you are literally talking about people who by and large will always put their own health and safety at risk to achieve on ice success or financial success or or whatever drives them. So it's hard for me to square the idea that these guys are going to be like, no, I can't come back during this pandemic. I might get sick when they, they, you know, allow people to elbow them in the head. Yeah, but you know what?

You don't like that, that bad shoulder, you don't bring that home and give the bad shoulder to your family and spread around your community. Like, I do think that for at least some of these guys, the calculus is going to change a bit from, you know, I can grip my teeth and play through my bad ankle, but do I want to risk, again, not just my health, but potentially everyone around me. Yeah, the only people who are going to be willing to have coronavirus are the ones who are like, well, you know, the last five years of this contract, I'm only getting paid one million a year. So I'm going to maybe, yeah, it's fine. I'll get coronavirus take the hit. I think you're going to end up. Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say, like, Ryan says, like, it is true that it feels like we've suddenly developed this consensus that this is going to happen. But there's still a lot of time between now whenever they'd start up. It's not going to take much more than, you know, a flare up here or we learned something new there to change the, you know, change of the decision making again. So I know hockey fans out there are, you know, we all want to see hockey again under the right circumstances. And if it sounds like they're moving towards something that could pass as that, then that's good news. But there's still a ways to go before we get there. And even as much as it feels like a sure thing now, I'm not convinced that it's going to still feel that way not too far down the road. I do find it interesting that much like every other issue that sits before the NHLPA,

this one's going to be completely drawn down the age lines. You know, like older players with families, with, you know, older parents are probably going to be like, I don't know, man, I'd like to get tested and kind of sit in isolation to make sure that I don't bring this home to my family. 21-year-old guys that live alone and just have been playing call of duty for the last two months, they're just like, let's fucking go. B. You know, I guarantee you. But yeah, like Sean said, I mean, you, there's no determining any of this until we know about local and federal restrictions on travel, on mass gatherings, on essential businesses. You could start yelling about the stuff until, you know, you're blue in the face or blue in the tooth. Speaking of Bluetooth, today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Raycon.

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It's fine. Like, you know, I'm sure it was entertaining. What I didn't need was half the NHL media being like, Brad Marchand just said Patrice Berseron smells bad. Can you fucking believe this shit? It's like, yeah, no, I mean, it's guys shooting the shit. I can indeed believe it. But the, the, uh, pointlessness of, of live tweeting a Zoom call was trumped just 24, 48 hours later by people live tweeting the Alex Ovechkin's, uh, Wayne Gretzky.

Wayne Gretzky, NHLD. Look, I, I joked that, that it was a new low for hockey journalism to, to be live tweeting the Bruin Zoom call. I earnestly believe that people be like, Gretzky scores on a wrist shot to go up two to one is like the saddest shit I've ever seen in my fucking life. Like, get a grip. It's still better than doing the prospect games.

And also live tweeting practice. Practice, yeah. Still better than that, too. The thing I always say about that is, look, it's part of everybody's job, right? Like, you know, if you're the guy who does the Bruins for whatever, like the athletic. Nesson. Nesson, yeah.

You have to be like, here's what's going on with the Bruins every single day. But my thing is and always has been at the start of the season, you sit down, you figure out, okay, fluto's going to tweet about practice this day. Joe Haggerty is going to do it the next day. And Matt Porter is the day after that. Just go down the list like that. So entire feeds are not people just going, a goal by Patrice Bergeron. Yeah, no, we know.

Yeah. Eight updates telling me which goal, each goalie just went to. Like they're cracking a mystery. Like, oh, he's in the starters net. That could indicate. Just nail it down. Just nail it down before the season. And then that way everybody's life is 5% easier.

because then, like, you know, if it's Fluto's Day, Matt Porter doesn't have to do it. And he can just do other stuff that day and, like, actually work. Wow. Crazy. I feel like it's always Flutus Day. Like RUZEV day. RIP, by the way. RIP, what a king.

So the Gretzky-Ovechkin thing did raise, like, 40K, which is pretty cool. Yeah, great. And I did love the video of Ovechkin celebrating his own goal, like he had just scored it on the ice. which was fucking great. And honestly, without question, a glimpse into the life of Alex Ovechkin

that we rarely ever get because whether it's a call of duty killer, whatever, that is definitely the fucking reaction. Someone did DM me last night because I made fun

of the Gretzky thing. And he goes, you do need to watch part of it because every time a goalie made a routine save, Gretzky said something along the lines of, man, this goalie is too good. And it's like,

boy, fucking encapsulation. Oh, it's tremendous. The Bruins Call I loved. I was so incredibly entertained by the Bruins Call for two reasons. One, it never clicked before to me, and I know this is blasphemed me to Boston fans, that they remind me very much of the 86 Mets. Like, they are just this, there's a few, a couple, like, Hall of Fame types, a lot of

really good players in their prime on that 2011 team. and then just like a slew of knuckleheads that played important roles in that team. And I just, I love that team. And it's very hard for me to love anything from Boston as a New York sports fan. I mean, obviously. But I do genuinely love that team. That might be my favorite cup winning team as far as a collection of guys and how they played. And, you know, the perfect foil for a Vancouver team that had a bunch of deplorable people on it.

It was, it was really fun to see that group together again. And then the other thing was it was like being at a class reunion and seeing everybody kind of just dropped back into their roles that they played when they were like seniors in the sense that you have two guys on that call with big personalities and Tyler Sagan and Brad Marshan. And like Sagan was quiet the entire time because he's 19 again. And Marchand was just getting fucking pummeled by other guys with chirps without really giving it back because he's 22 again. But here's the other thing. It was fucking fantastic. Here's the other thing that did, and this is going to be a very old man take. I recognize that right up front.

But I think part of the reason Tyler Sagan was quiet is because Tyler Sagan plays for the Dallas stars. Like he's doing a Bruins thing, but he's not a Bruin anymore. And I think there's this element of it where it's like, hey, I was part of this team. I love it. But also, like, I'm on another team right now. I can't be front. Versus, like, it cracks me up how Malan Luchich is just, like, fully embracing his, like. I think he just for the night is still a Boston Bruin.

I think he's just like, I never went to the Kings. I never went to the Oilers. This is, I never left. He is just Bruin. Like, he's more Boston Bruin in these things than like half the guys who are still on the Boston Bruins. And it's a very interesting dynamic to me. Just see this guy who like very clearly, he's like, you know, you mentioned it's like

a high school reunion. Like he's the guy who was cool in high school and it just didn't work out. And this is his one night to be that guy again. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a really good point. And in some way,

Sagan is kind of like that nerd in high school who became like a dot-com billionaire. Right. Like high school was fine, but I've gone on and done other things. Right. I've moved on to bigger and better things. And plus he's probably got some of that nerd rage too because of the way the Bruins treated him and fucking traded him.

Like, you didn't want to leave Boston. But they made the decision to fucking. fucking deal him. So he's probably on that call also thinking, not only am I somewhere else, not only am I, you know, making close to $10 million a season and have moved beyond this team from being like a child grunt on this team to being a superstar on my own right. I'm also contributing to the Zoom call for an organization that fucking treated me like dog shit. Remember that time I was late for one class and I got expelled? Yeah, I don't really, I don't really want to hang out here all that much. I don't, I think he was late for one class and then they stuck a

truant officer at his door for the rest of the season. The Kamala Harris method, we call that. Wow. But it was really funny. And hearing Puck Soup favorite Gregory Campbell, chirping Marshan with double barrels about his hairline and then also how shitty his clothing line is, the line of you make $60 million, you don't have to do this. It's just fucking, it's tremendous.

It was a tremendous. entertaining call and I was happy to witness it. Although the part where this is a part that no one's really talked about because it was so fucking strange. There's a part where Tuka Rask openly wished that his daughter grew a cock is what he said. So he would have a son. It's literally a joke that he made on the call. Okay. Cool. I think people were so aghast by it. They didn't really know how to process it. Which again is very much high school class reunion. There's always that friend of years that says the inappropriate thing and you don't know how to process it. See, just kind of continue the conversation.

You just like, he, he still remembers like two weeks ago when Zanonotara said that he farts too much and he was like, oh, if I ever get the chance, I too will say something border line inappropriate and people will laugh and then sometimes, you know, sometimes you overshoot the runway. That's his jerk store comment, right? That's the easy way to just drop that. The other hockey thing is Gerard Gallant. interviewed with the Devils.

The Devils apparently have been talking to other coaches as well. Elaine Nezradine had to do the classic, who is it, Joe Sacco, who was the coach of the avalanche when they were openly courting Patrick Watt? Yes. To be the coach. Had to do the Joe Sacco thing of being like, I'm the coach until someone tells me I'm not during a conference call yesterday, which is really emasculating. But I don't, as a Devils fan, I like Gerard Galand as a coach.

I don't know if I like him as the coach of a rebuilding. Devils team be quite candid with you. Yeah, I think that's... Look, it's one of those things where, I don't know, go out and get the best possible coach you can and figure it out from there, I guess. I'm not going to knock the devils for looking at a coach who's good because they tried it with the...

Well, this guy's really good at, you know, bringing along the young talent and blah, blah, blah. How'd that fucking work out, right? No. And, you know, Jerry Galant has had some success with younger guys and, you know, he had some of those young guys in Florida that have turned out pretty well. But, yeah, when you say, like, oh, you know, they're rebuilding.

To me, if you're rebuilding, you don't stay away from Gerard Gallant because you think he's not going to help your young guys develop or whatever. You stay away from him if your plan for rebuilding is to finish last for the next couple years and get a few more high draft picks. But I don't think that should be your plan because you've got to number one. one picks. You've got two guys who are going into their prime. Those are your guys to build around.

You want to be better than people think you're going to be. And Gerard Gallant is the number one coach as far as making teams better than we thought they would be. He's the guy. So, yeah, go grab him if he's available. The other thing to say about that is, you know, like, okay, yeah, let's go get this. Let's stick with Elaine Nazardine. Let's get this guy who's like a really good development guy in the AHL or something.

And then four years from now, you're like, fuck, we need a, we need a coach that can bring this team from rebuilding to being good. I hope someone as good as Gerard Gallant is available. Yeah. It's the Jeff Gorton, Artami Panarin line, which is like we might not be ready to have Artami Panarin on this team, but there's not going to be in our Timmy Panarin around when we need them. Yeah, so just get them now. I mean, that's a fair point. And, you know, there's obviously like other coaches, LaVuette being one of them. that are out there that I think are intriguing as well.

If you were at Galant and you were offered these three options, which one do you take? Dallas, Detroit, Jersey. I mean, just from a team perspective, I take Dallas, but if I had the history in Detroit and the relationship with Steve Eisenman, and I'm assuming both of those are good, which maybe isn't on an assumption I should make, but I'm assuming he liked it in Detroit.

I'm assuming he gets along well with Iserman. That's probably the situation that feels a little too tailor-made to... I think pass up on. In Dallas, you have an owner that spends. You have a GM that really hasn't necessarily proven that he could build a championship team quite yet. They're very good, but they're just not a championship level team. You have a couple of specious contracts, which we'll get into. And in Jersey, you've got two guys to build around, but who knows about one of them,

in the sense of what Hughes will end up being center wing, good average, who the fuck knows. And then you have meddlesome ownership and you don't know who your GM is. And then in Detroit, you've got incredible ownership and arguably the best GM in hockey. So I think I would pick Detroit just because of where the bar is set and also because to work with Eisenman.

But then, I mean, you know, if you go to the rep, this is the only thing. Because on its face, the Red Wings is the right answer. But if you go to the Red Wings, you're going to have to deal with some really bad players for three, four more years. And granted, like, you know, three years from now, you can hide Justin Abdel Kater at the bottom of the lineup or even scratch him on a pretty regular basis. But, like, he's signed for four more, I want to say. Franz Nielsen signs for two more after this one. The good news is, like, the Red Wings are about to turn over.

if I'm remembering right, like 90% of their roster. I think everybody is either an RFA or a UFA except for like six or seven guys maybe. Yeah. And so like... They got a ton of picks. They got a ton of picks. They've picked high already. You know, I think that's a good position to be in.

But, you know, just there are a bunch of guys where, you know, you're going to have to be like, well, the veterans have to get their playing time. And you're also going like, but the veterans are fucking bad. So like, I think, I think that's a bunch of. not an ideal situation for a coach, but I guess it's better than, better than, you know, like you said, going to New Jersey and who knows what you have here. All right. All right. Now it's time for the crux of the show.

Sean, as per usual, had an incredible idea that we'll just steal and, you know, repoprogate for the show. It's salary cap court. Or do you like contract court? Which do you prefer, Sean? I think I called it salary cap court. Or because at the end of the day, I think fans don't really, we don't care about somebody's contract in the sense of, you know,

how many dollars are actually going into their pocket. It's the cap that we're worried about. It's, that's, that matters when you're, uh, if you, if you, if you're a baseball fan or you cheer for a team that it doesn't have a cap, it shouldn't really matter. You should just want the players to get as much money as possible. Only we had electric tax. In a cap world, uh, you got to worry about, you know,

know what's the cap, how many years are left. So the concept here was that this is something I've done a couple of times at the athletic and we pick some new players. The idea here is you take a contract and none of these contracts are good. And with the obvious disclaimer, we're saying good and bad from the perspective of the team. Okay. So is this a good contract for such and such a team? No, none of these contracts are what we would call good. But they are, there is, to me, a difference between a contract that's a little dicey and a contract that is capital B bad. You know, Brent Seabrook has a bad contract. There's other guys where there's no debate. It's a bad contract. Some of these guys are a little borderline. So we're going to kind of put, make the

case on both sides and then we'll figure out is this an actual bad contract or is it maybe just one that's not perfect, but we can let it slide. All right. Let's begin. And the idea here is, is we looking at the contract going forward. That's all we care about. If it's, if, if, if, if, if there were a few years earlier on where it looked good, that's in the past, we don't care about that. This is from this day forward, what's left of the contract, good or not good. I appreciate that. As someone who's going to have to be a defense attorney here, I, I, I, I feel that's divorcing some context from some of these as far as why their contracts were, were signed. Well, you can have the context of why they were signed, but we're not going back to litigant

gate was this, should this have been signed six years ago, it's starting, you know, from today, when you're looking and saying which teams have bad contracts, you know, the fact if your cap situation is screwed but it was in good shape four years ago, that doesn't really matter one. No, yeah, that, yeah. All right, the first one we're going to talk about is Brent Burns of the San Jose Sharks, an alternate captain, right defense, signed a contract on November 22nd, 2016. for eight years and $64 million.

That's a $8 million cap hit through 2025. Limited no trade protection throughout the contract. And we begin with Constable Ryan Lambert for the prosecution. So the argument against the Brent Burns contract is very simple. He was 32 years old when it began. It's eight years long and it has an A.AV of $8 million. It also has one of the most limited no trade clauses you can possibly have because he submits a list of just three teams he can be traded to every summer. So he signed it three years ago.

He's 35 now and yet he's signed for another five seasons. It's a classic case of a team having an elite player on the wrong side of 30 and rather than accepting that it should trade him or let him walk, it decided to do whatever we got to do to whatever we got to do to retain him, and even if that means signing you until you're 40, right? In doing so, Doug Wilson gambled that Brent Burns would continue to be roughly an $8 million player on average over the life of the deal, but that means maybe getting more than that value over the first two, three, maybe four years. It hasn't worked out that way. In the first three years, Brent Burns, among defensemen, has ranked second, second, and seventh by AAV. By wins above replacement, 260th, 16th, and 54th.

For a combined $30 million in salary and bonuses, the sharks got less than three wins above replacement over three seasons, and that's about the same as defensemen like, say, Carl Gunnerson. and Mark Pissick. You know, that's just me picking two totally random names. You can talk about the value of Burns' offense, and clearly, like, that's why they gave him all this money, right? But the fact is he really only gets that

because he takes a million shots. But what you've got to think about is this. A shot from the blue line is significantly less valuable that is, like, less likely to go in the net than one from below the circles. and that's not where Brent Burns shoots from. He's firing away from the blue line, and in doing so, possibly, you know,

costing the shark's value in terms of on a per shot basis, instead of if he had deferred to one of the many very highly talented teammates he's had over the last three years. And the other thing to say about it is this. He signed this deal coming off two seasons where he scored a combined 56 goals every time he shot the puck. And that's, or sorry, he scored 56 goals. But that's because he shot the puck 4.1 times per game and had an 8.3 shooting percentage over two seasons.

Since this deal went into effect, he shot the puck 3.7 times per game and more importantly had a shooting percentage of 4.7. So we're supposed to look at these last three, these were supposed to be the good years where he was supposed to provide excess value. Now he's 35. He's not going to get any better. The sharks don't seem like they're going to get any better anytime soon. And that's in large part, albeit not entirely, because the Burns deal was bad on day one. I should mention that one of us is going to be the prosecutor. One of us is the defense attorney and one of us is the judge just to set the thing.

Yeah. And we did mix it around. Ryan's not going to be the prosecutor on all six guys. Yeah, we're all doing every job twice. Yeah. That was a pretty strong case. Thank you. Your Honor

Case for the defense Your Honor While my friend across the aisle Has spent copious amounts of time Arguing why defensemen Shouldn't shoot the puck News to the great Ray Bork and Nick Lidstrom

I imagine who I don't think necessarily were shooting from the circles I have to say that Brent Burns Unparalleled ability to pump shots on goal makes this contract worthy of admiration. I mean, in the previous three seasons before, admittedly, a very disastrous year for the sharks, in which I'll remind you, they had to fire their coach. Brent Burns had a 0.92 points per game average and 952 shots on goal.

Your Honor, I would argue those are outstanding numbers. In fact, he's only. two years removed from being a Norris trophy finalist. We are to look at the numbers this season and say that Brent Burns is somehow over the hill. We're to look at Brent Burns as numbers this season and somehow say that he is no longer a player that can play on an elite level. I defy you to say that about a man who was a Norris trophy finalist but two years ago. The contract itself, while on the surface, may not look good, is essentially a five to six year deal at eight. million dollars AAV. His salary drops to 6.5 million base in 2020, 2020, 23, then down to

5 million the following season. I recognize the fact that this contract does contain draconian trade protection, but I will argue that a man who owns as many snakes as Brent Burns does will eventually want to go play somewhere where there's more like woods and shit. Compare his contract to Eric Carlson's. And I would argue Brent Burns is not overpaid, but rather one of the greatest bargains in the National Hockey League. The defense rests. Wow. Jeez, you know what?

You guys both making good cases here. And I want to point out that you both seem to have put more thought into your cases than I did in any of mine. So apologies in advance to any of the players that I'm supposed to be representing. Boy, this one is a tough one. And I got a rule. I mean, I got to give a guilty or non-guilty here. And I'm impressed with both sides of the argument. Before you rule, before you rule, just keep in mind, a man's life hangs in the balance.

Oh, yeah. We should say if any of these guys are found guilty, they're going to be executed. Yeah, they get executed. And I do still hold a personal grudge against Brett Burns because one time after an All-Star game, I was in an airport. And I ended up sitting across from him and his family, including two very young children, while waiting for a delayed flight for several hours. And both of his kids were like immaculately well behaved. And it just drove me insane because I'm sitting there going, if my kids were here,

they would be crawling everywhere. And they were both just like sitting and politely reading books and stuff. And so I'm still holding a bit of a grudge. I am going to say, while I did appreciate the arguments on both sides, this guy is 35 and there's five years left on this deal. I think this is a bad contract. I think this is one of those where you could argue that maybe on balance overall, it looks a little bit better because he did have a couple of good years at the beginning. But we're talking his 35 to 40 seasons on a guy with a lot of mileage who's already showing signs of significant decline. line. I don't like these next five years. I wouldn't like him if Chan Jose was looking like a

cup contender. I definitely don't like them on a team that is going to struggle. I'm saying bad contract. I don't like that, but we'll move on. All right, the next one is- Take him away, toys. The next one is Tyler Sagan with Greg saying it's a bad contract, and Sean saying, it's fine. 48.5 million. What does that number mean to you, Your Honor? Well, can I plea bargain? It's 40 from under this shit.

Talk them down to substandard contract. 48.5 million of the $78.8 million that Tyler Sagan makes on his contract with the Dallas Stars will be paid in the first four years. The first full year of that contract is this year, Your Honor, and what do we find? Tyler Sagan, literally shitting the bed. The kind of shit, you don't even try to wash the sheets. You try to just, yeah, literally. He, don't fucking talk. It's not your turn to talk.

Objection, Your Honor. He can't fucking talk. That's true. Shitting, shitting the, strike literally. I withdraw. Shitting the bed. The kind of shit where you don't even try to wash the sheets. You just throw the sheets away and then go back to Tart.

and get new sheets. And that's in the first year of this contract. His worst offensive number since 2012-13. Uh-oh, maybe giving him $48.5 million of his deal in the first four years was not the motivating factor you thought it would be. Only three centers have made more than his $13.5 million base salary this season. Three, is Tyler Sagan the fourth best center in the National Hockey League? That's absurd. That's crazy talk. And hey, I thought Texas was of tax-free state, buddy. Why do you need $13.5 million based salary at any point during this contract that Tyler Sagan? So overrated, tattooed pretty boy, bad contract.

Yeah, I don't know. That's pretty convincing. All right. Here's the thing with Tyler Sagan. Yes, this year was not. A good season for him. He did not have the level of production that we're used to. But the level of production we're used to with Tyler Sagan in the previous six seasons, he's been one of the most consistent players in the NHL. He's been between 70 and 80-something points for six straight years. Now, is this year the start of a decline or is this year a weird outlier? I would argue we can kind of write this year off. It was a very strange year in Dallas.

There was some weird stuff going on. The coaching change. The team starting off poorly, getting hot. This is one of those years where I think you're going to look back and say this maybe wasn't representative of everything that this team could be, let alone the individual players. Tyler's against 28 years old. If this guy was 32, then yes, one bad season does raise all sorts of alarm bells. But when a guy's 28 and you're talking, unlike a lot of the guys that we're talking about in this, Cap court thing where we're going to be looking at guys who signed contracts on the wrong side of 30,

getting rewarded for the past instead of what they can do in the future. Tyler's again signed this deal when he was 26. He's 28 now. He's not in his prime as we know it for forwards, but he's not far removed and he should be a fairly productive player for most of the life of this deal. You look at the comparables. Yeah, you can look at the number, but it's really, it's the cap hit percentage that you want to look at. If guy signs a contract two years after somebody else, of course the cap number is going to be higher. He comes in under guys like Anzicopitari,

comes in under John Tavares, under Evgeny Malkin, way under Jonathan Taves. He comes in. The closest comparable for him is Stephen Stamco's, who was a guy who we all acknowledged took a bit of a discount to stay in Tampa. And is probably not a bad comparison

as far as being a guy who's not in that conversation of being the very best centers in the game, but it's probably down in the next tier, a guy who's a number one center on most teams in the league. I think right now, nine in change for a number one center is not awful. And I think over the life of this deal, assuming Tyler's thinking back to being a consistent 70, 80 point guy, it's going to look better and better as more guys sign. I don't love the deal. I'm not going to sit here and say it's some sort of discount or steal, but I don't think

it deserves to be considered a bad contract in the same breath as some of the truly awful deals that are out there. I have to say that I tend to agree with Sean on this one. It's a situation where I think this could become a bad contract. All this stuff about, you know, oh, he's getting all this money up front. Like, who gives a shit? It doesn't matter because it's about the A.A.V. and so

I think this could become a bad contract in the last three, four years and obviously the fact that there's a no movement clause is not ideal but yeah I mean when this deal expires he's going to be 35, 36 years old and that's he's going to be up there

but he can be productive until he's 33 and if you're only dealing with the last two or three years being kind of onerous at a time when the cap will be probably, hopefully for the league significantly higher. I tend to think that this is not a bad contract yet, but it certainly has that potential. So your ruling? My ruling is that Sean is correct.

Yeah, I'm like a fucking public defender over here. I'm taking L's. All right. Next contract is the Matt Dushane. contract that he signed with the National Predators last year. Matthew Shane, for those who don't know, a 29-year-old center, seven years, $56 million, 9.82% of the cap. And lo, it's me again on the prosecution and Ryan on the defense.

Your Honor, David Poyle hates giving out trade. protection on his contracts, yet he did so for Matthew Shane, but only for the part of the deal where you don't want someone to have trade protection. Nothing like a 34-year-old center with a bunch of miles on those tires with a no trade clause. But my biggest problem with this contract, simple. Matt Duchain isn't a star. He's not excellent. He's not a top five player. Matt Duchain is and always shall be pretty okay. His best offensive season, Your Honor, was when he was singing for a supper

for this very contract. Now that he has it, what will come from Matt Duchenne. And I argue, Your Honor, that at 29, what will come are diminishing returns through 2006. Your witness. So a lot of the sticker shock on the Matt Duchyne contract boils down to context.

Wow, you might say. An AAV of $8 million sure is a lot, and it is in certain respects. But most of these respects do boil down to that context. He entered the season tied with his teammate Ryan Johansson and the Sharks Logan Couture with the 14th highest cap hit among centers in the league. That, however, lined up more or less with his position among centers in wins above replacement over the last three seasons. Oh, no, I'm sorry. The last season, he put up 3.2 wins above replacement.

That's comparable to elite center, Nathan McKinnon, and elite scoring wingers, Johnny Goddrow and Brad Marshand. Keep in mind, he did that, though, with the Ottawa fucking senators. a terrible team. And he was one of maybe, what, three offensive weapons on that team where, you know, a team could, the other team could really hone in on his line and try to shut them down. And he scored like crazy. More to the point, though, is that $8 million now is less than 10% of the salary cap. And it's basically the cost of a typical waiver pickup, plus whatever Kevin Hayes,

who's 14 months younger, got from the flyers this summer. So even if we're not counting Duchenne's hot hand in Ottawa last year, this is a guy who's been remarkably consistent production-wise throughout his career. 0.74 points per game over all 11 seasons of his career. But only two of them have seen him dip below 0.64 points per game, and neither of those have happened since 2014. By contrast, Kevin Hayes' high in points per game is 0.77. And his average is worse than all but those two low-scoring Duchenne seasons. So put simply, just because a contract isn't an incredible value doesn't mean it's bad. The market bears what it bears.

And this summer we saw what, you know, top six forwards get. The market for Duchenne was that this AAB wasn't going to, it was never going to be a steel. But it doesn't have to be a steel. It just has to be fair. And if that's the market rate for a guy who's going to be this productive for, you know, based on his age, he can be productive. He'll be a little more than 35 years old when this deal ends. And, you know, that trade protection that Greg talked about, oh, you don't want, it's only seven teams that he can say no to. So the idea that, like, you're not going to be able to do anything with him if you need to trade him at the end of this deal.

I don't agree with that. I don't buy that. So I think this is a perfectly reasonable contract for a player who, you know, like Greg said, he's not a star, but he's only the 14th highest paid center in the league right now. And that number is going to keep going down. So I think for a guy who's like a low-end one, you know, the Preds did as well as they could have. All right. I feel like we should point out that. I want each of these cases to be viewed as like an independent on its own thing because

Oh, you don't like legal precedent. Yeah, well, because a lot of what Ryan just said is very similar to what I argued for Tyler Sagan. So in theory, I should be very accepting of that argument, lest I reveal myself to be a hypocrite who was saying things he didn't believe about my last case. but I'm going to say for a couple of reasons, I think this is a bad contract. And the reason I say that is, first of all, I don't give a lot of, I acknowledge that when you sign guys in UFA, you're going to play a premium. But as I argued, when I went through this exercise with John Tavares in one of the columns I wrote last week, I'm not sure that should really affect our thinking that much. I mean, if you go to what you know is the most expensive car lot in town to buy your car and you overpay, you still overpaid.

It's true. It may have been the only place you could have gone, but you still overpaid. And I look at Matthew Shane as a guy who is at that age where, yeah, you know, we, this isn't Tyler's again having a bad year in your one of a contract, but he's been consistently productive in a 70, 80 point range, the entire. rest of his career. This is Matthew Shane, who has peaked as a 70-point player, comes in, signs a big deal, and tops out at like 40-something in year one. That worries me. I don't think he is a number one center. I think he's one of those guys who, if he hadn't been the third overall pick in a draft, we probably wouldn't, we would probably view him as like a solid number two, real good number three. And he's getting paid to be a number one by a team that was desperate

for a number one, but I don't think he is. And so that's, that's the main reason. I I'm going to rule that it's a bad contract. And my secondary reason is I'm starting to feel bad for Greg for losing all the time. And I realize Greg is the judge on the next case. So I kind of want to butter him up a little bit and make sure he's not too cranky. So for the second time as judge, I'm bringing the gavel down and saying bad contract. You heard here first, folks. Matt Dushain, a solid number two.

A number three center, Matt Dushain. Yeah. A really good. He scored 60 points a year forever. Oh, it sounds like somebody's trying to win out appeal. 60 points forever being three 60 point seasons in like 11, just for the record. Shea Weber is currently in year one, two, three, four, five, six, six, seven, eight. Is that right?

He's year eight of a 14-year deal, of course. Please remember all you kids out there that this 14-year deal was the product of an offer sheet given to him by the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Predators matched in 2012. 13.1% of the cap at the time of his signing, a annual AAV of 7,8,857,143. A nice round number currently makes $6 million in salary. Oh, it does drop a bit towards the end of his deal. In 2006, I'll only make $1 million against the cap because obviously he'll be playing that.

Well, it won't be against the cap. I correct myself. Shut the fuck up. I'm the judge. Probably get these things right. Ryan is the prosecutor. Sean is the defense of the Shea Weber contract. Your opening statement, Ryan Lambert.

When Shea Weber's healthy, there's little doubt as to the value. Hold on. As the judge, I'm allowed to interject. Did you write these out like an essay? Of course I did. I feel like he did. I definitely did. Why wouldn't I?

All that. It's not an oral exam. All at all, Your Honor, in summary. I can't believe it took you two fucking things where I'm pulling out like exact numbers. But no, my question is, did you actually write out the paragraph? Yes, of course I did. Are you reading from a script? Yeah.

Okay, that's, no, I wrote shit down too. I did not write at a paragraph. Well, that's why I've won more cases than you. And I'm going to win this one too. Please continue, Constable. All right. When Shea Weber's healthy, there's little doubt as to the value. he shockingly continues to provide to the Montreal Canadiens.

The problem is he's missed about 25 games a season on average over that time. And much like peak Brent Burns, a lot of his value comes from the fact that he scores goals at an incredible rate. The marginal values of those goals over, say, what a good forward might score, is questionable. To put it in basketball terms, Weber is an elite shooter on long twos, but his points have a less effective value than guys who, shoot well closer to the basket. Unlike Burns, Weber scores because of his shooting talent and not because of shot volume. His average career shooting percentage is 8.2, and that's in line with Brent Burns's two-year peak. And so we can say, yeah, that could

hold up over time, at least to some extent. The real problem with this contract is that Weber still plays heavy minutes, but seems to be losing a step especially defensively as time goes on and is probably still only getting those minutes because of who he is and the reputation that he scores, that, you know, him scoring creates a lot of chances and that Montreal really doesn't have anybody else to take over from him. Problematically, his having lost a step negates a lot of the offensive value that he legitimately creates, all of which is to say, Weber seems to be getting old in a hurry between the injuries and the fact that he's basically Alex Ovechkin, contributing almost nothing but

goal creation. It's a valuable skill, but Weber is the same age as I, of Etchen and signed for not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six seasons after this one. The odds are that he's going to miss more time, get worse, and eventually be a net negative player. The Habs didn't sign this contract, but they willingly traded for it in pursuit of a cup that's never going to come with Weber and Kerry Price as the centerpieces of this team.

First of all, the defense concedes that Montreal will never win a cup, and we would like that entered into the record as evidence. But all of that said, look, Shea Weber, we put aside the trade, put aside P.K. Subin, put aside how we got here. Like we said, this is, we're looking for this moment forward. This is obviously one of those contracts that in the context of how it was signed, you look back. It overall, maybe will like how this deal worked, but we're only looking for right now. And the reality is right now, yeah, Shea Weber. is 34, I think. He's at that point where productivity is going to drop, durability is going to drop. And yet, when he is on the ice, he's still a real good player. Talk to fans in media in Montreal. This guy is still a presence. This guy is still easily their most important defensemen and probably their most important skater on the team when he plays. Now, durability is an issue. I'll concede that. if he misses chunks of time, then obviously that hurts his value. But also purely from a

cap hit perspective, if he misses chunks of time, you then have access to the long-term injured reserve, which means it doesn't hurt you as much cap-wise as it could. Montreal is a team, even though they've got this contract and the carry price contract, which I ruled in my last column, was an outright bad deal. They're still in pretty good cap shape. This is also a contract that from a Montreal Canadian's perspective should be relatively painless as we go

in terms of being something that they can get out of. They will probably get out of it just by nature of him retiring. We can all look at the backdiving nature of the deal and figure out that he's probably not going to play for six more years.

But even if he does, he can be traded. There's no trade protection. There's no, no movement protection. There are no more signing bonuses from here on in. It's pure just pure salary.

And the big thing that hangs over this contract is the cap re-capture, which could be completely devastating to the Nashville Predators. But that's not our problem today in CapCorp. We're only looking at this from the perspective of the Montreal Canadians or whichever team might acquire this contract. And those teams would not be paying cap-recapture penalties. I believe Montreal is now, as of this season, clear of any penalties they would have to pay. It's the Predator's problem.

it's unfair, it's a stupid rule, but it's an argument for another time. I think right now the Montreal Canaanans have a guy. I was looking at the Corsica player rankings. They had Shea Weber as the 15th best right shooting defensemen in the league this year when he's healthy. That puts him right there on the first pair for an average team. I think seven and change for a first pair defenseman, maybe a little high, not terrible, no trade protection to worry about, no crazy signing bonuses. something that should be in a contract that six years is way too much to be left on a guy this age,

but he ain't playing six years. And even if he is, he'll be playing them in Arizona or somewhere like that if Montreal decides they need to do that. So I don't love the contract, but I don't think it's a bad contract. I think it's manageable for a team in Montreal's position. Good arguments on both sides. I think the first thing you have to do in considering this contract is think about, the origins of the contract. Is it a bad contract because it was an offer sheet deal?

You obviously have to study precedent on this one, the case of Burke v. Low 2007, Dustin Penner offer sheet, 8.45% of the cap. Could be seen as a bad contract, but is it a bad contract because it was matched or is it a bad contract because it didn't achieve its aim, which was. acquiring the player and scaring off the team from matching it. It's an interesting debate to be had, but perhaps a little immaterial to this decision. I agree that Shea Weber is a better player today than I ever thought he would be, because I thought he'd be broken down by this point.

Ultimately, I think the contract is judged on the implications of the contract when the team has to get out of it. and as the defense pointed out, the Montreal Canadians have no blood on their hands when Shea Weber does in fact retire before his salary drops to $1 million. Because of that very fact, and because the overall cap hit, is quite manageable for a player

that could still be considered an elite level defense and when healthy, I'm going to say good contract and rule for the defense. Wow. good contract not just not guilty on

charges of being a bad contract but you're giving him actually a little extra boost if you've got a guy signed in perpetuity and he retires and you don't get hit

by any cap recapture penalties but someone else does it's such a stupid rule I still I would renew my prediction that the predators will never pay a cap

recapture on that contract because there's no way the NHL is going to let them be like 20 million underwater because of a contract. It may not be a, it may not have been a good contract when they matched it. But CapraCapture and those rules insofar as what it means to Montreal may have flipped the script on it a little bit. I rule for the defense. Oh, boy, here we go. Oh, Lord.

Oh, and Ryan gets to be the judge on this one. By God. Uh, Mitch Marner. Oof. Mitch Marner. Mitch Marner has a six-year deal worth $65,000, $65,358,000. Great. Six-year deal.

No move in the last two years. For the prosecution, down goes brown. I'm the prosecution on this one. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I'm a Leafs fan. I'm a Mitch Marner fan.

I love this kid. He's all sorts of fun to watch. He's one of the best young players that this team has had in the 30 plus years I've been watching them. This isn't about is Mitch Marner a good player or not. This is, is Mitch Marner's contract good or not? The problem with Mitch Marner's contract, and we all know the whole soap opera that went last summer, the Leaps paid not just top dollar, but really above and beyond. anything that had ever been done for this sort of player before.

And when I say this sort of player, I'm talking about a guy who is a winger. I'm talking about a guy who is still has several years of RFA status to go. So this isn't Artemi Panarin. This wasn't an unrestricted free agent. And this isn't an elite two-way center. This is a guy where there is an established market for what wingers get in this league. and Mitch Marner surpass that by a pretty significant margin. And when something like that happens, I think there's, you're looking at a bad contract unless one of two things follows.

The first is that the player emerges as a legitimately elite top of the position sort of superstar. This is the Leondracidal effect. When that contract got signed, we all went, ooh, that. That's too much for a guy like that. And then Leon Dressiddle emerged as a legitimate heart trophy candidate. Now, Mitch Marner, we've only got one year to work with. But he had a pretty good year. He missed some time with injury.

He was good. Mitch Marner had a good season. Mitch Marner's not getting any heart trophy votes this year. Mitch Marner is arguably only the second or third best forward on his own team, let alone being the second or third best winger in the whole league, which is where he would need to be. you to justify this contract. That's one thing that has to happen. The other thing that can happen is you get a contract like this, and this happened a little bit with recital as well, it has to

reset the marketplace. So Mitch Marner signs for $10.8 million, and everyone goes, wow, that's a lot for an RFA. But then the guys who follow signed for similar amounts, and we start moving up. And then you look back and you say, okay, that reset the marketplace, but it makes sense now that we look at what other guys are got. And I would argue the marketplace needs to be reset. Young players like Mitch Marner should be making more than they typically have made. Older players who are signing deals when they're 28 or 30 should be making less. We all agree that's how it should be, but how did it actually turn out? And of course, we know that, right? The RFA is after Mitch Marner, Braden point, Miko Ratonin, comparable guys did not end up resetting the marketplace.

They ended up taking deals that were right back in that $8 million range that guys like that have typically had. And so when you look at Mitch Marner's comparables, you're looking at guys like Mikhail Ranton, similar player. He took a $9.25 million cap hit on a contract of the same length. Look at Nikita Kutura. This guy wins at MVP, $9.5 million playing wing, playing the same position as Mitch Marner. It was an overpay. It was an overreaction to the William Nealander situation. It's a situation that is creating significant cap problems for the Maple Leafs.

They went much higher than they probably needed to because they didn't want to play hardball with a local kid who was playing hardball right back at them. They've ended up with a deal that sits as a very obvious outlier as far as what younger players who play wing are getting. And through all of that, by the way, they only ended up. up buying two years of UFA status. So it's not even like you can look and say they saved a ton of money down the line because he's going to hit UFA when he's still pretty close to the prime of his career.

I get why they were doing it. I love watching the player. I'm happy he's under contract. I'm happy he's not sitting at home. But if this is CapCourt, we're looking at just purely on the cap hit. Unfortunately, at least so far, this has been a bad deal, if only because the market did not follow along after it was signed. Your Honor, market-smart, the money is nuts, let's be real. But the Leafs got the term that they were looking for, extending Marner one season beyond Austin Matthews,

to avoid a calamity of contractual stress and strain in 2024. It's a contract that gobbles up two seasons of unrestricted free agency. Now, it certainly wasn't signed with the idea that the salary can. be flattened by a global pandemic. We can all agree on that. So this is a win for the Leafs because they were doing the thing that hockey fans have begged their teams to do and that the prosecution itself said it's an admirable aspect of the contract, which is to sign dynamic young players to big money deals

rather than throw that money at aging assets like the Leafs used to do for decades. They have a Stanley Cup window. Mitch Marner helped prop it open the 12 best points per game average in the last two years in the National Hockey League, sir. The defense proclaims this Mitch Marta contract to be not guilty. This is a tough one because I agree with pretty much everything that was said on both sides. You know, young players are improperly valued. They are undervalued in this league. It's a situation where, you know, is Mitch Marner worth more than, say, a Matt Douchain?

Yes, of course he is. Of course he is. Absolutely. Yes. And that's even, you know, taking into account the different positions and the different circumstances and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, if you're judging a player just on what he brings on the ice, Mitch Marner is a more valuable player than the vast majority of forwards in the league. With that having been said, Sean's point about it not resetting the market and now looking like a huge outlier does make it a problem,

especially because the Maple Leafs have these other cap crunches because they did what most smart teams should do, and they went out and acquired a shitload of high-end talent. the problem is that they paid top dollar for every single one of those guys. And you can do that as long as you have a pretty solid foundation of lower-end players, and I'm not sure the Maple Leafs do. That's not really Mitch Marner's fault, though. But what I think ultimately is the deciding factor in this contract is the fact that, you know what? They only got them for six years, you know?

If this was an eight-year deal, I'd feel a lot of. better about it. But I don't. And so for that reason, I cannot say this is a good contract. Well, shit. All right. Last one. Drew Dowdy of the Los Angeles Kings.

Man, I can't. This is where I've been anticipating what the defense is going to be on this one. Because it's got to be epic. Drew Dowdy. Can we just do the peek behind the scenes here, which is originally we had this says five guys. And then I think it was Greg threw Doughty's name out there. And because we'd already done five, we were like, okay, well, everyone should do each job twice. So it fell into place who had to do what. And the reaction when Ryan found out that he was the defense,

I can't, man, I want to hear this paragraph. I am giddy with excitement. It is, it is, it is, It is pretty epic. All right. So to set the scene, Drew Dowdy signed an eight-year, $88 million contract. On July 1st, 2018, full no-move clause,

the first four years of the deal, modified no trade for the last four years of the deal. Dowdy makes a base salary of, he's got signing bonuses for the first four years. His base salary doesn't go below $11 million for the last four years. This is a very lucreliven. contract, Drew Dowdy, eight years, $88 million, Los Angeles King's defenseman. Oh, by the way, he's 30. Yeah. Please, Mr. Goes Brown, the prosecution. Please, Mr. Goes Brown is my father.

You can call me down. All right. Look, when Drew Dowdy signed this contract in 2018, he was coming off a season where he was the runner up for the Norris Trophy. Now, we can argue whether he should have been, but he was clearly still very much in the conversation of, uh, the very best to the best defenseman out there, and there was the Eric Carlson situation looming. So you can maybe understand why the Kings felt they had to, to borrow a phrase from the last case, reset the marketplace. And this deal kind of did in that Carlson went and gotten the same number. But the first year after he signs this, the contract hasn't even kicked in yet because it's an extension. So he plays his first year, 2018, 19, we see a drop in his.

play. He suddenly is not playing like a Loris candidate anymore. Now year two, which is year one of the actual contract, even worse on a team that's even worse. And yeah, you know, maybe there's some crossover in that. Is are the King's bad because Drew Dowdy's bad or is Drew Dowdy bad because the King's team around him is no longer a cup contender? It's probably a bit of both. But this guy has turned 30. He's got seven more years left on. a contract that has full no movement protection for the first half and then then turns into a modified no trade. This is a contract that right now requires Drew Dowdy to be a Norris conversation type of

player. It doesn't have to win every year. It doesn't have to be a finalist every year. But he's got to be in that conversation as among the best defense and in the league. The last two years he has not been. And those are the two years since he signed the deal. He's got seven more years to go. Now, have there been defensemen who have played well into their 30s, well into their late 30s and still been elite guys?

Yeah, there have been a few. Most defensemen do not do that. And we're betting against aging curves if we think Drew Dowdy is going to suddenly resurrect himself as being an elite Norris candidate. The reality is this is a classic case of a guy who was great for a long time for one. team, helped them win Stanley Cups, and then when it was time for his big UFA contract, he got paid based on the past, not based on the future. This was a reward for what he had done, not for what he was going to do in the future. I get to some extent why the Kings felt they had no choice.

You can't just is one of the most popular players in franchise history. He has a lot of leverage, but he used that leverage to get a contract that is at the very top of the food chain as far as defensemen in the NHL and will be for a very long time and he's not there anymore. He may not even be all that close anymore. This is bad today, and it is going to get much, much worse as it goes for the LA Kings. All right. Well, look. Mr. Lambert for the defense. The first thing you're going to say is when you're rebuilding, you have to have some expensive contracts on the books to make sure you hit the cap floor. So let's just get that out of the way.

the kings saw that they needed to rebuild and they were like, well, we got to throw some money around. In those cases, you might as well make it a guy who's beloved by your franchise, won you two Stanley Cups and was briefly, if perhaps wrongly, considered one of the best players in the world. Hockey's a sport that still values veteran leadership and things like, quote, unquote, knowing how to win. if you're bringing in a ton of young players, guys like Dowdy, who have won at every single level of competition of competition in, you know, he won world junior gold, he won Olympic gold, he won World Cup gold, he has two Stanley Cups, he won a World Championship silver, and he'd probably have a World Championship gold if he wasn't so busy getting the Kings into the playoffs every couple of years. So, look, with this contract, he gets to retire as a king. He gets his number up in the rafters. He probably is a hockey hall of fame or all that shit. People like that.

And so all I'm saying is I'm trying to plead this down from not the worst contract in the league. That's it. Plead it down to what? What charge are you tried to plead it down to? I'll take one of the five worst in the league. This fucking thing stinks. I can't. What are you going to say?

Does the prosecution agree to this plea deal? No. No, well, I mean, look, I'm here to get a guilty. So if one of the five worst contracts in the league gets me a guilty plea, then yes, I will, I'll take that plea and we'll throw this contract. We'll give it life in prison instead of giving it the chair if that's what's being offered. But it's a bad contract. All right. There you go.

The ruling is life in prison. No chance of parole. but he's spared from old Sparky. There you go. Salary Cap Court. I think we did some good today. We really exposed some truths

on this podcast today about these contracts. In the limited time we have left, there were two other topics. I felt like we should just combine them and do overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite on wrestling theme songs.

What say you? Great. Sure. Okay. Because there was an awesome thing that BT Sport put out, which was the World Cup of wrestling theme songs, where they did four different groups, like World Cup groups, which, by the way, I am so fucking bracketed out that this format was so refreshing.

Yes. To see kind of like the European pool version of a bracket. Fucking brilliant. But, okay, so overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite wrestling theme songs. I'll go overrated first. I'll just say it. The NWO theme song is overrated, and I'll tell you why. Although it did help set the vibe of arguably the most successful stable in the history of wrestling,

I would argue that I got more chills and had a more visceral reaction to Hollywood Hulk Hogan using Jimmy Hendrix's voodoo child than I did the NWO theme. The voodoo child theme to me was like the Pokemon evolution of the NWO theme. And I always like that theme better. So I will say overrated NWO theme. Yeah, I mean that's wrong. I think a lot, let me put it this way. When I sent this to another friend of mine who's a big wrestling fan, he's like, I think Robert Rood's entrance music. Glorious?

Yes, glorious, is one of the five. best in the history of wrestling, to which I say, agreed. No, it isn't. It's good. Oh, fuck off. It's good. It's fantastic. It's good.

Is it one of the five best theme songs? It's not even the best theme song in WWE today. It crossed over to a arena anthem, though. I mean, like, it's, that's so epic it is. Yeah. Well, again, like, it's not even as good as Shinske Nakamura's. So I don't know what we're really talking about when people say, say it's like one of the five best of all time.

It's great. It's, again, good theme song, very good. It's not that good. Big fan of the fiddle, are you? All right. It is, it's so tough with wrestling theme songs to separate them from the performer. And like, yeah, you're like Bobby Rude in NXT, as I understand it, was like a big star. And then he comes over to WWE and everybody sings a long theme song.

It doesn't work. And he's, yeah, I'm going to say overrated, overrated. overrated as a wrestling theme song because I hear this one mentioned a lot as like one of the very best ever and I think there's a difference between being a great, being a good song that plays when a wrestler walks to the ring versus being a good wrestling theme song. And so I'm going to say my overrated is whatever the Randy Orton song is called. Because I guess that that's why people might like that as a song. but it's just it's slow it's kind of this plotting it's a little too dramatic it doesn't have like the big punch of you know this is a you know that some of the other songs have if i had to listen to a song on my ipod i probably put that above a whole bunch of theme songs that work better in pro wrestling but i don't know i just i think people are liking the song more than liking it for what it's supposed to do which is get people out of their seats in uh right a pro wrestling environment so i mean that's my pick

underrated, I'm going to go with Kane's theme song. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. And like, when, when that, when before he kind of, his character became more of a fucking kind of comedic thing or he became mayor of a town, whatever the fuck. Like, that song combined with the red lighting, combined with the fire, combined with the mystery of the who's this disfigured monster behind the mask. All of that shit fit together so well. And that theme song is so, so fucking good as far as like, you need a song that's going to really like strike some terror in you, but at the same time, be good enough to distract you while a giant plotting man walks to the

the ring very deliberately. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And so I always love the cane theme song as underrated. Yeah, it's great. For me, I think it wasn't even on the bracket and I was a little surprised by it,

but a perfect, again, like tying the wrestler to the to the song and that kind of thing. A perfect encapsulation of that is the post, like, being the freak in the basement kind of a guy, like the rock and roll mankind theme song. With the car crash and the handclaps and the big guitar riff. That like, that like ugly kid Joe kind of sounding song? Yeah, exactly.

That sounds great. And again, it's a perfect encapsulation. of what that era of McFoly's career was all about, where it's like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to like almost die every single, every single night. It doesn't matter if it's hell and a cell. It doesn't matter if it's Sunday night heat. I'm taking an insane bump.

And you're going to fucking love it. And that's what it was. It was awesome. You know what I'm amazed didn't catch on is just, and it was a McFoly thing when he was, when he first came in, having a different song as your exes. song.

Yes. That was cool. After you've won the match. And in fact, the fact that he came out to like this psycho crazy music and then when he won, it was like this very soft like almost like what I've done. Yeah. Yeah. That was a really cool gimmick.

I'm just amazed they don't, you know, it'd be an excuse to have two songs for everybody. And anyways, my pick for underrated is, and this is going to be a little dicey because I'm actually going underrated as opposed to a song that I think is a great wrestling theme song. I don't think this one's great. But I think it's better than people give it credit for. And I see it show up a lot on, like, worst theme song lists.

And I'm going to push back on that, partly because I'm Canadian and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a mark for this guy. But the, uh, the WBrett Hart song, which was just pure, like, first of all, it had the great opening moment, which is like, that's 80% of a wrestling theme song is you, you got, you have to hit with something that's. Yes, absolutely. The guitar, and then it can, and it was just, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of, people at the time, this was back in the era, we had like Sean Michaels had this crazy, kitsy song with lyrics and a lot of other guys had that. And this, this was just this methodical guitar riff that was just, you know, no lyrics, no fancy gimmicks. But it really fit the character well of like, all right, it's, when Brett Hart came out, it's time to get serious.

It's, you know, we're not doing gimmicks. We're not doing a bunch of fireworks and stuff. Like, it's, it's, it's stuff's about to get, get real. And it worked with that. And it worked with that. And it also has, like, when you hear it, like, when he's coming out, it had this kind of thing where there's like this whaling guitar that worked pretty well, but they then took that concept and perfected it with the Rock's theme song a few years later where, you know, he'd be up on the turnbuckle, like, right at that moment that it hit. And you're sort of like, okay, that's the DNA of how they got to something that worked a lot better. But I still feel like it gets, like, disrespected as a, as a, you know, crappy, like, oh, it's just some guy playing the guitar. I think it actually worked really well for the character and gave them a building block that they did better things with afterwards. Favorite is tough because I have a lot of favorites, but I would say, like, a few off the top of my head. The Brood theme is one of my favorite songs.

I think it's awesome, and it fit well perfectly with what's going on. I don't know that there's ever been a higher ratio of, like, theme song quality to what they actually used it on. To stay of quality. I think, I think, um, um, uh, Vince McMahon's no chance in hell is, is perfect for the character. Absolutely. Uh, and I also always really loved the fact that Kurt Engels song worked both as a celebration of an Olympic champion and then a signal that here comes an asshole that you're going to want to boo. Yep. Uh, is, is a really amazing, malleable theme. But to go back to Sean's point,

if you're looking for a theme song that basically is the reason why there is affection for a talent, I think you have to go old school and you have to say that the best theme song in WWE history was the demolition theme song. Because that song hits and those guys come out in their S&M gear and it's the fucking coolest thing you've ever seen. then you realize they're just a couple old guys that can't really do anything except like punch but the whole point of them coming out to that song through them taking off the masks is the fucking coolest thing you've ever seen when you were a kid

demolition theme song I would not have been high on my list but that's not a bad it's a good the all time highlight for that song is the year they came out as one and two in the Royal Rumble and people just lost their minds and then you're like oh right these two guys are just going to like punch each other and then it wasn't a very good team they were like Like, they couldn't really work that well, but, like, the theme song and the, whatever the...

Of the Road Warriors. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. But, uh, but still fine. Like, that theme song for me as a kid was like, that was what probably, like, kids in the 90s felt about the NW. Like, when you heard that theme song, you're just like, oh, fuck, it's on. My favorite, um, is one, speaking of arena crossovers. It's the game.

Triple H. Oh, yeah. Like, there you go. And let's put it this way. It's so good that people think it's. a motorhead song. It was written by the WWE composer for Motorhead, but it is not written by them at all. And so, like, everything about it is perfect for Triple H. It's perfect for Motorhead. And again, like, if you were just at an arena and you didn't know anything about wrestling and that song came on, you'd be like, damn, this song kicks ass.

Motorhead's cool. But, you know, it's a wrestling theme song. It was always supposed to be a wrestling theme song. And that to me, like, that's the mark of a song being so, like, a song so good that you're like, this couldn't be a wrestling theme song, but it was one. I literally thought that was a Motorhead song until just. Nope. Me too, actually. Wow.

Yeah. Again, proof of why it's so good in the first place. So I actually had a different one in my back pocket because I assumed we would have already touched on this one, but we haven't. So I'm going to use what I think is in arguably the greatest wrestling theme song of all time just in terms of – and again, this is not – it's not a great song, but it's a great wrestling theme song, has the perfect opening, fits the character perfectly, everything. The Stone Cold Steve Austin – Absolutely. You know, the glass break right there is, you know, iconic. And everything that went along with it, you know, just fit him perfectly.

You know, you hear that song, you can see him, like, marching down to the ring while the crowd goes crazy. And it's just, it's perfect. Even though it's not great, you know, no lyrics or at least in most of the versions. Is it just Razor Ramon's theme song sped up a little bit? Yeah, it actually is. But it worked perfectly. Sometimes you make a small change to something and it becomes pretty much perfect. So I'm going to say that one because to me it's everything else is fighting for second place as far as this particular genre of music.

Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good choice. Least favorite for me is an easy one. I hated this song. And I hated it specifically because, again, like, you go back to the original NWO theme. I find that to be overrated, but it's an effective song for what it does. When Eric Bischoff came to the WWE, he had a song called, I'm Back as his theme. Yeah.

It's terrible. It's like supposed to kind of be his no chance in hell. And instead, it's just like, there's no real theme to it. And it's just like this guy kind of like, blah noise when he's singing. It's fucking terrible. And to go from him strutting out in his leather. jacket and an MWO T-shirt, you know, to the NWO theme, to this fucking hacky shit song, was a real downer for a guy who I think is a real effective character.

So least favorite of all time, the Eric Bischoff on Backsong. Mine is, it's the Xbox. Like, by... The Xbox DX Remix one? Yeah, the theme from Xbox. Oh, yeah, it's terrible. By Connecticut Yankee? Yeah, that shit sucks, dude.

Because, because, like, they had to, like, do it, like, the DX team, so it begins with the fucking Connecticut Yankee guy going, X-PAC! Like, you used to do it a fucking surge commercial or something. It's not very good. It's terrible. That's a great choice. Thank you. By, mine, I think, is from pretty much the same era, is the big show theme song.

Oh, come on. this crappy, like, you've got this seven-foot-tall, 400-pound, whatever guy that you steal away from the other rival Federation. He's supposed to come in as this like unstoppable monster. And because whoever the dude who does the theme songs for the WW, I guess, was in like a little blues rock phase, he's, you've got this just awful. It starts with like the, it doesn't have a good beginning. It's just somebody saying the name of the character. It sucks, and it's a big part of the reason why he never got over to the degree that he probably should have and was always kind of this perpetual mid-card presence because his songs sucked. You know, my theory on that was that they were trying to make that theme song sound like the Roseanne theme song.

Right, which is really what you want when you're just paid millions of dollars to bring a guy over. Because it does seem like kind of a sitcom theme song, right? Like, you know, you fucking, you do your little vignette at the beginning of the show, and then all of a sudden, well. It's exactly. Now he is in a sitcom. It was a long play. It was the long play.

All right. That's awesome. Great job out of everybody on that. Great job out of us on the salary cap court. Big long fucking show for your ears this week. Hopefully you've got your Raycon earbuds in, and you're feeling. the comfort as you listen to this epic fucking two-hour podcast. Yeah, that's the show.

Read me at ESPN. Listen to ESPN. Go ahead, Ryan. Yes, I have for Pucksu Patreon. I got a newsletter on there. We do multiple bonus episodes. We're doing a bonus episode this week. So check it out.

Find me on The Athletic. This week was, had the, went through which birthday produces the best starting six in NHL history. I took a look at all these contracts that are expiring on July 1st, and obviously that's not going to happen if we're in the middle of the playoffs. But what if it did? And all of these guys just became free agents in the middle of a playoff series.

And today I have a post where I rank the top 10 prospects on your favorite team. I don't know who your favorite team is, but I'm pretty sure my list is accurate. So that should give you a sense how much I've got going on in the old list of topics. and yeah go go check those out let it never be said we didn't give you another two-hour podcast thanks everybody for listening take care see you bye sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons we've got sportly commentary to what if you commute but we also cover movies TV shows it's and tools it's your weekly bowl of hoggy and nonsense