Puck Soup - Bill Camp, Conference Finals

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

The boys welcome actor Bill Camp to the podcast, a.k.a. the voice of NHL documentaries, an Emmy nominated performer from "The Night Of" and someone who's in the new "Joker" movie. Plus, a complete breakdown of Round 2, more officiating controversies, Ken Holland takes over the Oilers, Sean takes a Blue Jays quiz, Brad Marchand vs. the media, predictions for the conference final and your picks for the Conn Smythe! Sponsored by Leesa, The Athletic and Seat Geek.

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It's in tuit It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nonsense Part two I'm Greg Wysinski Senior NHL writer for the Worldwide Leader in Sports And the company creating Avatar sequels Through 2025 ESPN

Again, I I just Ryan and I'm from Yahoo. I don't have the gravitas, apparently. I'm Sean McAnew from The Athletic. We might also be doing Avatar sequels at some point, but they haven't rolled it out yet. Oh, do you mean because of your dramatic pivot to video with the P.K. Suvan documentary you guys just put out this week? That's a thing that works, right?

New and exciting layers of P.K.'s life. Did you guys know he donates to hospitals? He seems like a great guy. according to all the PR I see about him from his personal brand. But seriously, actually one of the funniest, you're in Puck Soup, one of the funniest things about that the athletic put out, which was finally crafted, by the way, Armicantei and a Real Pro, the predators refused to participate in it,

which I can't really wrap my brain around. So cool. What a great sport. I mean, like, is that, here, I'll just say it, is that an indication that P.K. Suban is getting traded? Yeah. Yeah, clearly. We've been saying it for like three months apparently.

Like all of a sudden, it seems like they're retconning it into, we've been talking about P.K. Subban getting trained for months, haven't we? It's like, I don't remember any of that. But if you say so. I think I said it before in the show. Like, Suban to the Vegas Golden Knights is the single most obvious and greatest trade that could happen, which means it never would. Like, how fucking perfect is that?

Like, he solves so many things for that. them, they could probably kick, you know, a few shackles over to the predators, like Riley Smith and something, Shea Theodore or some such. It would be a perfect trade, wouldn't it? I don't know if I'd give up both those guys for B.K. Suban. Coming off a down year and he's, what, 29 now? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, someone clearly isn't thinking about the children's hospitals in Las Vegas, because they're the ones who benefits there. They're the ones who benefit. And he's turning 30 in four days. So, yikes.

Oh, yeah. I should really stop shit-talking, P.K., because I'd love to go to that 30th birthday party. I'm just put that out there. Malcolm, if you're listening, can I be your plus one to your brother's party? That's all I'm asking. The playoffs are great.

They continued last night. I want to start, though, with the Dallas-St. Louis series and get that out of the way. Here's the thing that I learned this week. Did you guys know that Laura Branigan, the singer of Gloria, is dead? Like, she died a long time ago? No. Because, okay, because here's the thing. I found that out in time, in case you were wondering,

as I'm writing the story about them making Gloria, their victory song. Laura Branigan still has an active Twitter feed with a blue checkmark, and there was a woman, throughout the playoffs who was tweeting pictures of herself in a Branigan St. Louis Blues jersey.

And I mean, I didn't really scrutinize it. I definitely retweeted a few of them, assuming that this was Laura Brandigan and being like, wow, how awesome is it that this artist is getting a second wind in her career? The song's taken off. It's probably on the iTunes charts,

just like it used to be when songs were featured on the Ryan Murphy hit show Glee. And then I come to find out that this woman is actually her manager and that Laura Branigan died, I think, in like 2004. And I'm going to guess that roughly 92% of the people that have seen these photos on Twitter think that's actually Laura Branigan and don't realize that she's dead. Yeah, I guess at least it's not like a Harper Lee situation, right? where she's being clearly exploited by people who do not have her best interests in mind.

And also, like, Laura Branigan was actually a Nashville Predators fan or something. Yeah, that's true. What if she was, like, a diehard Detroit Red Wings fan back in the day and just fucking hated the blues? And now look what happened. Like, she doesn't even have a say in any of this. And the lesson here is don't die, I guess. I just hope she doesn't have like any, like, family that's listening to this podcast and hearing this news for the first time.

Like, that would be a really terrible way to find out. That she's dead. Like, grandma, that's why grandma hasn't been sending any more birthday cards. That would, uh, that'd be rough. It was very distracting because she was wearing the Branigan jersey. And one assumed that was an indication that was actually Laura Branigan. Um, so that's, that's the weird part. buying a custom jersey of your dead client.

Greg, you'd be the expert here. Is that a jersey foul, Greg? Well, here's the thing. I'll be quite honest with you because, Ryan, you know me so well. The moment I did see the Laura Branigan jersey, I said to myself, well, that's a foul unless it's the provision in which the team bestowed the jersey on the dead Laura Brannigan. Because if a team gives you a jersey with your name on the back, then you are a part of the team.

I don't know if you knew that. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I guess my concern here is that this is her client. So even if she, the client, received the jersey as a gift. Uh-huh. Right. I don't know. Like, I'm not going to wear like a jumpsuit.

Elvis got, if I'm Colonel Parker or whatever that guy's name was. You know what I mean? My client, Laura Branigan. Yeah, Paul Hammond's not wearing like tap out shirts that were given for free to Brock Leslie. Yeah, he's not wearing a Benoit jersey. But here's the thing about it. Like, it's not a foul if the team gives you the jersey with your name in the back. So if the devils ever saw it fit to give my dad a Bob W.

jersey instead of him having created one for himself, then that wouldn't be a foul. But unfortunately, my dad has one that the team did not give him that says Bob W on the vac. So it is totally quite a foul. Where do you stand on wearing your own name on the back of a jersey, Sean? Yeah, I don't know. It feels fun if you're a little kid. I don't know where exactly the cutoff is. I don't get too worked up about what people do with their jersey.

as long as they're not being completely stupid about it. But, yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't play for the team. So past a certain age. Like, one of my all-time favorite random hockey discoveries came from a little kid wearing his own name on his jersey, which was when we, I was breaking down the, you guys remember the Gary Lehman, Denny Savard fight or not fight? Oh, who among us doesn't know? Where they were, were they, under 50.

They dropped the gloves and they waltz. around for three minutes. And during, and it's, you know, it's this, it's this classic kind of funny, weird blupert clip. But during the clip, uh, because it's Maple Leaf Gardens, even a small child standing up blocks the camera. And this little kid stands up wearing a Leaf jersey that says, uh, Derno on the back with the number eight.

And there's no player who ever played that. And there's, you know, that's not a number that anyone on the Leafs is wearing. Uh, and, and anyway, one way or another ended up, uh, actually, uh, actually, trying to get to the bottom of what that meant and discovering that it was an eight-year-old Chris Derno and he went on to play in the NHL. He actually played for the avalanche and had like a bit of a journeyman cup of coffee occasional kind of type NHL career. And yeah, his hockey night Canada debut was standing in front of the camera during this semi-famous

moment and blocking the view of everyone who was trying to laugh at Gary Lehman. Who was the player that? that got photographed at like a Sabres game and then grew up to be a player. Remember that? Patrick Kane. It was Patrick Kane. Wow. There you go.

The stars of tomorrow in the stands of today. That's the way to be. I'm a saga for that. Anything like any picture of a little kid with an NHL player where that kid grows up to be in the NHL, I'm all over that. I love those. I love you're an Islanders fan, in which case it's actually really bad to do that. Yes. Not only that, but you find out your dude's a fan of that.

Menace fan too if memory serves in that photograph. All right. Listen, Dallas and St. Louis, the game seven was not great because it was so one-sided for most of it, but super fun to see Ben Bishop rise from the grave and play as well as he did. But I mean, this is the uncomfortable thing about being on the road during these things is that everybody starts gossiping like a bunch of ladies getting their hair. air done. The only thing I heard about Ben Bishop for the last 72 hours was that everybody in the league thinks he's a giant wimp and a guy who is constantly like, if he has a hang nail, can't play. That's the thing that's out there about Ben Bishop. I don't know if it's true or not, or if it's just because of what happened to him, but that's the perception. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things

where if you're a goalie and you have a bad groin and maybe if you're a six foot seven goalie and you have a bad groin or a bad knee, the impact of that injury maybe hurts you worse, and then, you know, because it's a dumb sport for idiots, everybody's like, what are you,

gay or something? Like, okay, dude, we know. We get it. I don't know what his reputation is in the hockey, like the upper levels of the hockey world, but certainly among fans, I know he's got the reputation as being a guy who also, tries to sell things on the ice.

And, you know, we saw it a couple times in the series where he got, the one where he got kind of slashed in the back that, I mean, that looked like it would have hurt, but he went down pretty hard. And then, of course, the big controversy in Game 6, where he takes one off the shoulder blade. And, you know, you wonder if that maybe might have played into an extra second of hesitancy on on an official's part to blow that dead because you got a guy who potentially has a reputation for milking those kind of situations.

We're going to talk about the officials a lot probably today, unfortunately, but let's start with the baseline question, which is bouncing around. It's a theory that Elliott Friedman put out and a few others have put out. Do you believe that the officials have gotten more gun-shy because of what happened in the Vegas series? I think for those specific plays, I think so, yeah. I think, like the Charlie McAvoy hit, yes, I think you could make the case that it was, A, the officials were kind of victimized by a weird rule that we all learned that there is no such thing as just a run-of-the-mill major for a check to the head, which doesn't make sense and probably should be fixed. But also, yeah, I could see them maybe sitting there going, all right, we're trying to decide between two and five because there's a match penalty, so they do still have that option. If we err on the side of the higher penalty, we could wind up like the other officials who kind of lost their, their playoff work because of it.

So let's go the other way and go too. And obviously, I think most of us thought that that was also the wrong call. So I don't know. Yeah, it's a tough job. But yeah, I suppose it probably is having at least some sort of an impact. What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. I feel like too, I don't know where I would have seen it, but I feel like I saw something

about they told somebody after the game or something like that that they didn't see they saw that it was head contact but they didn't see the full extent of it and it's not something you can review so well and it's and it's something where to call a match penalty it has to be intent to injure and i know i know people will say well any any hit to the head is intent to injure but it's it's not i mean in theory at least in theory if you You can hit someone in the head directly and injure them, and it's still not a match penalty if it's just a hit where you were going for the chest and you caught the head instead, which is bad. Like that's, but this is one of those things where, you know, there's been a few of these in these playoffs. I know we're all bitching about the officiating, but there have been a few cases where it's the rulebook is the problem, not so much the official.

Same thing with the puck that went into the netting. you know, the officials blew it by missing the puck going out, but then, you know, people are mad that the play continued and it wasn't reviewed and overturned. Well, that's what the rule says. Well, change the rule if you don't like it. Yeah, let's just get into it then, because as we do the show, last night was game set between the sharks and the avalanche.

The offside overturned goal thing in the second period was a huge moment in that game. And I think you're right. Like the prevailing thing for me, Sean, from that situation was for the umpteenth time, in these playoffs. There's a conversation about the application of video review, but there's also a conversation about the absurdity of the rulebook, which I think is the core problem in a lot of these situations. And like last night,

we're all watching it for the press box. None of us can even recall this happening before where a guy on a change gets whistled for being offside on a play like that. And we're all kind of like, okay, but he's, you know, if he's not necessarily on the ice, right? Like, if you can't get. a too many men penalty for simply standing there. A lot of people are saying that, you know, that's too many men.

But he's not, he doesn't, for the purpose of too many men, he doesn't exist anymore, but for the purpose of the outside, he does. That's, but that's what I'm talking about. That's insane. Yeah, like, either you're a non-playable character or you are. Like, it's, it's like, that's the part that people can't wrap their brainstone is that like, we know from all of our experience and watching Too Many Men situations that, that, that, that Landis Cog is like invisible at that point.

and yet in this play he's on the ice and he's offside. And his head was a quarter inch off the ice too. Yeah, so a couple things, though, because first of all, like, yes, he is no longer part of the play because he's at the bench. But if that puck goes over to him and rattles around in his skates, he is part of the play. And it would be too many men at that point because he goes back to being the sixth guy. So, I mean, you could argue that, you know, he is part of the play in terms of being on side or offside.

to me there's there's like three levels of this there's the rule book question which i i agree this is we can probably debate where the problem is but this is a very hard one to explain to anyone who's not a hockey fan why why this guy kind of blinks in and out of existence but but sean hold on like not only is it hard to explain to a hockey fan but i i could not fucking believe how long it took the league to put out a statement last night like this is the controversial play second period game seven and they wait until after the game to put out a statement and me and lebrunner are sitting next to each other in the press box like texting all the NHL people that we usually taxing situations and they're all being like we're working on it yeah but those statements are so useless anyways all they do is just repeat whatever the ruling is they never give any i don't think they knew i don't think they knew what the fuck to say like i think it took them a time to figure out what the fuck to say so i mean here's here's so problem number one is the rule problem number two and and we probably don't want to get into the whole thing all over again is just like is this even the sort of play even if we accept that this guy is offside and he's part of the play is this even the sort of thing we were we want to catch with offside reviews like is this is this something that if you'd shown it to people in 2016 when we were just bringing review in because we thought it was going to catch mat duches plays and you said does this goal need to come off the board i don't think there's a single person who says yeah we got to make sure that those goals don't count but but here we are so so there's that piece of it too and and you know the whole the whole the whole play debate and why are we worried about somebody having a toe in the wrong place on offside,

but there's all these other rules where we could worry about it and we don't, we don't care, we just keep going and play hockey. But the third piece of it, and Ryan kind of touched on it, but I haven't heard, like, it's almost like we've kind of skipped by it, is whether he actually was offside. Because I haven't seen a view that definitively tells me he definitely doesn't have his pinky toe touching the blue line. And I was under the impression that that's what you needed. Like you need a clear, no doubt about it.

This guy is, you know, and maybe there's a view I haven't seen. Maybe the league has a view they haven't shared. But I see this fuzzy thing of a skate next to a blue line that maybe is touching and maybe it's not. I don't know how you consider that conclusive and overrule it. So, you know, dumb concept, dumb rule. And they didn't seem to execute on. Maybe wrong. Even how their own rule is supposed to go.

So I don't know, man. I would be seriously pissed if I was a Colorado fan or even just a hockey fan because this is dumb that we keep doing this. Yeah. For me, it's one of those things of like, if you can't explain this rule to a child, it's probably not a good rule. And like, you can't explain this to me. I'm a 36-year-old man. Like, you can't explain why this particular play. Like, offside rules are kind of nebulous and that kind of stuff.

Well, you see, Sally, if his skate is touching the line, the linesman will lower his arm for the delayed offside. But his skate then reverts back to the zone. And then we'll never have this problem again. Like, Jesus Christ. Listen, I am, as you know, a fucking staunch advocate for video review. As everybody who's listened to this podcast in last month knows, I am on one side.

I am, you know, one guy on the Lost Island, and then, you know, Sean is the other guy on the Lost Island to use that parable. And so, even I, review advocate, agree that the offside review calls have gotten fucking bonkers. And, like, there's no point to it anymore. Like, they don't, A, they don't have the technology to do it, which I think is the biggest issue. Like, why are we trying to do this thing where we're using a? camera across the ice that obviously doesn't have the definition to really tell where the fuck Landiscag skates are to determine whether or not he's on or offside. You just can't do it. And why do we care? Like this is the part I don't get. Whenever it had no material impact on the

play. This clearly had none at all, right? Like there's no there's no Stan was a player who is even thinking about Landiscag at that point. It's not like, you know, there's a defenseman who even has to think about him. But like, you know, the argument that I've made before, because, you know, then, I'll say, like, why are we reviewing this in the first place? And people will say, there is a rule, it's black and white, we have the technology, we have to get it right. You know, why are we worried about where somebody's pinky toe was? Well, because we have to get it right. So my question is, how come we're not reviewing offensive zone face-offs when they lead to a goal? Because there's very clear rules about who's allowed to be where and where you have to

stand, and there's lines on the ice. And if your toe is in the wrong place, how come we're not pulling those goals off the board. I know the answer. It's because Matt Dushain wasn't 20 seconds ahead of a face off. Exactly. And the thing is when you ask people that, their reaction is because that would be stupid. Why would we ever do that? Why would we care if somebody's toe was in the wrong place on a face off, 20 seconds before a goal? But we're doing the same thing with off sides. Like, if we're so worried about a Matt Dushain play happening once a decade, then maybe there's some way that we can we can do this. But 90, like 95% of these are things that have nothing to do with the play, even if it's on the rush. So what if the guy with the, the guy was half an inch offside, it didn't affect

anything. It's just a team getting a get out of jail free card. It's just. And the thing that the thing I can't stand. The thing I can't stand the most is that like, like, at least with goalie interference, it's a situation where if there is goalie interference and the goalie resets, then that resets the play. There's no longer goalie interference. why don't we have the same standard for offside where if the zone entry is is fucked but yet the next minute and a half is spent in the zone where the other team has ample opportunity to clear where they had to put like 40 seconds back on the board yeah oh i fucking hate that you know because the other thing is then if the puck goes out and comes back in well i mean why does that even

change anything if we're saying that the play was outside it it makes no sense i i would get rid of it entirely because this is not, you know, go back, like I said, go back to 2016 when we were all, you know, there was the Matthew Shane play and then there was that one in overtime between Tampa and Montreal, because it was Montreal, it got all sorts of attention. And everybody thought, yeah, we got to have this in there so that we'll catch the guys who are three feet off side. Go back in time. Show them these plays. These goals were taken off the board and ask if anyone has a problem with any of those goals. Nobody does. It's just a random get out of free card, get out of jail free card for some teams. And it makes no sense, especially in a league where

there's not enough offense to start with. Exactly. That's what I was saying here. We're so concerned about we got to get back to when every game in the playoffs was seven to five or whatever. And then we're like, but also, you know, we got to get some of these goals off the board. I mean, that guy was a quarter of an inch offside four minutes before it got scored. So, you know, like, it's so And they're still getting them wrong sometimes. Yes. Yeah. Like they missed one in the Boston Toronto series. They legitimately missed a guy being offside and, like, what are we doing?

And like, I don't want to get into the whole penalty debate again other than to say, I can't fathom how you could look at what offside has been the last three years and say, you know what, let's let the same people who came up with this and think this is good enough do a way more subjective and hard to judge section of the rulebook. Like I can't imagine how we look at this and go, we want more of this in the game because this is going really well. Well, I ain't going down that rabbit hole again, but I do appreciate the fact that Ryan's right where they're like, we need more scoring since people can bet on hockey.

Also, Landis Cog's skate was the length of a pubic hair away from the blue line. So I mean, we should really wipe out this goal. Maybe we need one of these. I keep saying we need it to happen in like overtime of a game. seven, but maybe it's not that. Maybe it needs to tilt the over-under and cost the wrong people a lot of money. One could argue it already did last night. Over-under was five and a half that wiped that goal off the board. So there you go. I don't know. I would do it. To go back to the netting play, everybody was like all mad because why, how come, you know, that rule says it has to be

immediate. I actually like that. I would rather save the offside if we insist on having these stupid things have the same wording. It has to be immediate or else. just keep playing hockey. Sorry, guys. Somebody's toe is in the wrong place. You don't get the, you don't get to just quit on the play. Keep going and play to the whistle. To speak to your earlier point, though,

I can't remember another postseason where every single game, there's seemingly as a pop quiz about the nuances of the rulebook. It ain't just like, here's a controversy of play. What do you think of it? It's a controversy to play. Oh, and subsection 12 of Rule 35 says, like, what the fuck? play, a controversial play that materially alters the, like, outcome of the game. Yeah, that's insane.

I mean, the netting play, the offside play, the McAvoy play, many of the goalie interferences play, the one play where it was the continuation of a shot or some shit, remember that one? Man, oh, fucking live, there was so many things. The kick-in goal that went off the goaltender. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like, it's literally feels like someone is administering a pop quiz to the hockey world on what the world books is.

But the thing is, and this is the one time you'll probably hear me, not even so much defending the officials, but like I said, a lot of these calls are them calling the rulebook. And you know what? We dump on the reps all the time. We, you know, I did it myself with the Cody Eton call. I think it's completely justified to criticize these guys when they get it wrong. But I think we should also point it out when they get it right. And that the Ben Bishop play in game six where he got hurt and they counted the goal, they got that exactly right. That was 100% the right.

That was 100% the right call. And if they had missed that call, like if they had blown it dead as St. Louis is putting the puck in the net, that could have changed that series. That could have cost the St. Louis Blues the series. So it's a split second call and a referee who was standing 10 feet away got it exactly right. And I feel like we should at least mention that if we're going to bury these guys every time they get one wrong. Right. And I think there was a certain kinship between that play and the McAvoy play where people looked at the play and said, okay, this should be a match penalty for whatever. And you're like, no, no, a match penalty looks like this.

There's intent. It's worse than this. This is not a match penalty. You can make the argument, this is a hockey hit got wrong. And then you look at the Bishop thing. You're like, well, this, they should have stopped play because of the severity of the injury. Like, no, man. Like, when we see play stop, it's because of there's being a Pavelski situation or a guy that gets knocked out or some shit.

Like, this is not that. You can't have a rule in the rule book that says, if the other team has the puck and is about to score in the defensive zone, anybody on the defensive team getting hurt, immediately stops the play. Yeah, it's insane. But it's not anybody. It's the fucking goalie. And so put that rule in. And like, let me be clear, I'm not,

Ben Bishop wasn't faking on this one. Like you get hit in the color bowl that. Even though he stayed in the game, you know, this isn't a guy faking. But yeah, but we are, I mean, we already have this situation where we have a rule where if the helmet comes off the play stops,

which you have to have, of course. And we see goalies shake it off all the time. Like, goalies absolutely take advantage of this any opportunity they get. You know, we saw Tuka Rastu, a few nights ago. They just dropped the helmet off and, oh, it's automatic whistle, plays over. So if you don't think they'd be doing that with injuries, I don't know, you're more, maybe I'm too cynical here, but, you know, we're going to see a lot of goaltenders rolling around.

The only way you can do it is if you had a rule that said, we automatically below the play dead, but the goal he's got to come out for the rest of the period. Brian, do you think they should have... Ryan, do you think they should have was down? Yeah. I mean, like, it wasn't... It wasn't the thing where he gave up the rebound and they immediately batted it into the net. Like, there was a pass after. Yeah, it was three seconds, though. It wasn't like they were setting up and going back and forth on the point. Like, it was, well, three seconds. That's a... Three seconds is not that long a time, man.

Get a whistle up to your mouth and blow it dead. It is. Goalie is writhing around on the ice in obvious pain. And the play in your mind. It's also when I'm time to get your puck on the stick then, you know, like play some defense, guys. It's, you know, the rule is, the rule is there for a reason they called it exactly correctly. Then change the rule and get used to seeing a lot of goaltenders rolling around on the ice. They don't let me do that, though, Sean.

All right. Not yet. I hope you like flopping goaltenders because we're going to. going to get a whole lot of them. If you fucking seen any of the playoffs, if you look at a goalie wrong within four inches of the crease, they're going to fall down like you stabbed them. Exactly. And they don't get an automatic stoppage when that happens.

So you think that problem's going to get better? I agree with Ryan is that I'm surprised they didn't whistle it because of the way they treat goalies. But at the end of the day, I mean, the play has to continue. That's not a severe enough penalty where, unless you have a fucking. at all. I mean, I'm sorry, I meant, I'm an injury. Like, unless you have it a fucking MRI machine on the ice to figure out exactly where it hit him and how hurt he is, like, you don't have any concept of what he's going through at that moment. The only reason I was surprised is that from watching it on TV, the nature of the shot for a second, I, why?

I thought it could have hit him in the throat. And that is one of the situations where, you know, they will immediately stop it. But at the same time, the referee was standing 10 feet away. So maybe the referee just guessed. 10 feet away, never fuck up a call. That's true. Tim Peel. Right.

I mean, now we're mad at the referees because he could have hypothetically been wrong, even though he was exactly right. Like, this is getting silly now. Like, these guys have to go into some alternate universe and get the calls right there, too. Like, he was exactly right. He hit him in the collarbone. He wasn't hurt badly enough to leave the game. The ref got that one exactly right.

I agree. I think he did too. I just get to position. possession back if your goalie's hurt. And no one can conceive on how hurt the goalie is at that moment, too. And I think, you know, I hate to play. I'm playing right into the fucking Down Ghost Brown Playbook now to be like slippery slope, but it is a slippery slope.

Like, if you give the benefit of the debt at all times to a goalie, like he can literally just stop play whenever on every fucking shot if you wanted to. Okay. Sure. And then they'll be marrying dogs, Ryan. So Pat Maroon scores. His kid is very happy. That was a beautiful thing.

The Blues advance and the Sharky's advance. And I'm happy that Colorado lost because I feel like their best years were ahead of them. Like they didn't need to win this year. No. I think they're going to be fine. They get the fourth overall pick. Yeah, the fourth overall pick. Everybody in the team is like 23.

So we get the sharks, the Blues, which I think is a really good. good Western Conference Final. Who do you like? Who's your, who's your pick in that Western Conference Final? As long as Martin Jones doesn't turn back into Martin Jones, where I think it's, I think it's pretty smooth sailing for the sharks. Smooth? I mean, I think it's going to be a long series. I think the Blues are a tough out with Bennington, but like, I agree with you, though. No, right. I mean, it'll be a long series, but in much the same way, I just kind of thought it was smooth sailing for the Blues in this series. Like, they should be considered, the favorite and they'll probably win and it like being the favorite doesn't mean you win in five

games being the favorite means you don't you win yeah exactly yeah right right yeah i mean i i can see that i'm i'm picking st louis largely because i am already way too excited about a san jose boston joe thornton stanley cup final and so i'm i'm just assuming that there's that would be so good and so much fun that there's no way we get it so I'm kind of sticking with my beginning of the playoffs bandwagon pick and going with the blues. But, yeah, it's, I mean, it should be a great series. You know, it's, you know, we wound up with, we'll get into the East later, but we wound up with two real good series. You know, this is going to be, it's going to be fun next few weeks.

I picked the Blues to come out of the West before the playoffs started, but like what the Sharks have done is, pretty fucking impressive, like to do what they did against Colorado without having Pavelsky for the majority of the series. And, and they've got this kind of now cosmic thing going on where they're getting shit like the game seven calls that we saw. So there's something going on there too. Plus, I think they figured out how to win with Martin Jones, which is to, A, never allow a shot attempt on the rush.

B, in the words of Gabe Landiscaug, swarm the net around their goal. goaltender. That's not to say he didn't play well in the winning moments of game seven last night. He was really good. But I think that they have reduced the liability of a Martin Jones in these series in a concerted way. And I think it's helped them overall defensively because they did a real fucking number on McKinnon's line in that series. So I'll take the sharks in that series too, I think. Yeah, I just, the key to victory for the Blues do not let it get to a seventh game. because the sharks have magic powers in game seven and I don't. We'll get screwed by the officials.

I do not necessarily want to know what horrible thing the hockey gods have in mind for a game seven of the conference final, especially against the St. Louis Blue. Oh, I got to mention this one other thing just because it just made me laugh because I wrote a thing on Tuesday where I basically did a whole post celebrating the history of goaltenders giving up really horrible goals because that's just something I like. I'm into goaltenders giving up goals. You're fucking sadist. And the thing is I put it out, it was on Tuesday. That was just kind of where we had it scheduled and we dropped it out there. And I didn't even really think anything of it. But immediately I get all these responses from blues fans who are like, no, screw you.

Not on Game 7 day. I'm not opening this. I'm not looking at it. And the thing is, in the first type of goal that I said that I love is those long distance bounce goals like the Vesatoskola one. And sure enough, with 15 seconds in regular. Jamie Ben from Center Ice bounces one right in front of

Jordan Bennington and I got so many replies from Blues fans who were like dude I would have come to your house and Merge if that had gone in because every blue I swear to you 90% of blues fans watching that play unfold thought that was the winning goal for sure like they they were just

so so used to expect the worst bounce it over his shoulder and that would be the end of it they're an underrated psychologically damaged fan base absolutely I mean, we'll talk about one later in Edmonton, but that blues one is a real underrated psychologically. 52 years. There it is.

All right. Moving on. The East is fun. So I think we're all on different pages when it comes to the jackets. Because, Ryan, I know that you don't think that the all-in thing was worth it to lose in the second round. I kind of think it was just because of the previous levels of success for that franchise. and shooting your shot seemed like the smartest decision

at the deadline. But I understand the counterpoint which is that what's the fucking point of mortgaging that much treasure just to go out in six in the second round? Yeah, I mean, it's not just the entire draft that they traded this year, except

for I think their fourth round pick. It's the fact that they don't now have a pick in the first two rounds in the next two drafts. They don't have a second round pick in 20 in the in three drafts from now. They don't have a third round pick I think this year or next. You know, like you can just go down the list and be like, oh man, like if you look at the top of their cat friendly page, you're like, wow, they do not have a lot of picks early on for quite a while. And, you know,

I know they have a lot of young talent on that team and some guys that are still, you know, coming into the into the program the next couple of years and all that kind of stuff, but it's a lot of high draft picks to give up. And I'm not saying it's not worth it because maybe they hit some home runs with their later picks and then you don't think about, well, we didn't have our first round pick as much, right? Right. But right now I'm kind of leaning toward, I get why you guys did this and I'm glad that somebody went for it like this. But if in, in three, you're not, three years we're still talking about, and this Columbus team has never even come close to winning in the second round. Yeah. Like, then you go, well, I guess I don't see the point then, especially if it keeps John Tortorella in that job, which I think is maybe not.

I think that's maybe what kept them in the eight seed all year is. He plays to the bubble. Yep. Yeah. Always has. And I agree with pretty much everything Ryan said, but there's just, like, they just had the best playoff run that they've had in nearly two decades. And I'm not even talking about where they, how far they went, because obviously they, you know, they fell well short of winning a Stanley Cup. But at some point, as a fan base, you got to start making some memories. And you got to start having some moments. And they got a few of those this year that they haven't had. And I think there's value in that. And I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, this drum before, I can't get on board with this idea that every year one team wins the Stanley Cup and everybody else failed. Because I think that's a miserable way to sell your lead. 97% of fans are supposed to feel bad every year by the end of the season. No, they're not. It's, you know, obviously the Stanley Cup is the ultimate goal, but you can have a year where you don't win the Stanley Cup and it can still be a great year and it can be a year that

makes new fans or maybe brings back some of those lapsed fans and there's value in that. You know, if you're Columbus, like, you know, at some point you've got to win a round. And they did that. They did it in one of the most memorable upsets that we've seen in recent history. You know, we always say when you look at a team like the Panthers or even the hurricanes and you say, well, the attendance and this and that, people always say, yeah, but they don't win. Well, eventually you got to win. You got to win something.

And it's been almost 20 years for these guys. I get, you know, the argument might be that this wasn't the time to do it. But part of the reason people were saying it wasn't the time is because you were just going to get crushed by the lightning and that didn't happen. And I don't know how many new Blue Jackets fans did we make this year. I don't know. Maybe not many or maybe this is the start of something. But I don't mind seeing a team go for it. And I don't want to sit here and say that it was a failure just because they didn't win the cup.

Even though you're right, they are going to pay for it down the line. And maybe the timing wasn't exactly what it should have been. The best way to make a new fan is to live and die with your team in the postseason. That's like the best formula to create a hockey fan. And sometimes you've got to live and not just die year after year after year, because that's not how you build a new fan. I like your thought on the winning the cup and everybody else is a failure thing, but would you agree, though, that there are teams that can be failures if they don't reach a certain plateau of the postseason?

Like if the sharks had lost last night to call them, Colorado, I would consider this season of failure based on their investment and based on what's going to happen this summer. I agree totally. I mean, there is, you know, there are teams that just making the playoffs is a victory. And then there's teams that go out the first round and it's a disaster. It depends on the context, depends where you are. But if you're, you know, how many years have we all been making jokes about the blue jackets

never went in around. Well, that's on the table now, at least. Like, they got that moment, at least, and then they got it in one of the most spectacular ways possible. So I, uh, it's, it's, you know, that's worth something. And, uh, the thing I said all along was that they needed to get to the Eastern Conference final, you know, the, the extra, the extra four home dates. That would have, that would have put it over the edge, yeah. Yeah, like, I, I, I think this is, I think this is one where you can make the. argument that it was worth it. But where it very definitively becomes worth it is if you make the conference final.

And they, you know, they had to go up against, I would say, two of the three best teams in the league this year, maybe even the top two. And that's not necessarily fair to them, but also, you know, they were the eight seats. So that's what you get. Yeah. I just come at this, like, my, my, as a sports fan, like, I grew up as a Blue Jays fan. And the Toronto Blue Jays, they won two World Series in my lifetime. And then they went 20 years of just doing nothing.

And they lost so many fans, you know, just people like me. I was a lifelong fan. I could name every single player on those 80s and 90s teams. I couldn't name anybody from like 2012. And then they made the playoffs and we got the bat flip. And they didn't win the World Series. So was that your failure? You know, they gave up a lot.

They made all those big offseason trades, kind of had a bluejackets type push. And they didn't win. So was that a failure? Yeah, you know what? No, not at all. I would not trade anything for that moment. Another five years. Well, the Blue Jays haven't.

I still, you know, I still, give me that moment. Like, you have to have some moments as a fan at some point or else you don't, you know, you're not just going to pull them back. And like I say, I get the idea that maybe they should have kind of held off and maybe next year was the better year or the year after. but I also think it's maybe a no-win situation because it's like, well, you can't lose two franchise-type players for nothing. Yeah, right. So, like, and, you know, frankly, if this team misses the playoffs or whatever, probably the coach gets fired.

Maybe the GM gets fired. And so, like, there was also, like, the thing of, okay, well, this is a guy trying to save his job. I get that. Yeah. And I also think that they've got, I mean, they've got. some stuff on that roster. I really like a lot of players on their roster. I really do.

Dubois is going to be great. Like they've got Worenzky and Jones in perpetuity. I think Corpusole is going to be. So good. I think Corpusallel is going to be an right goalie. Like it's, I had we had John Davidson on the other podcast and as he was, you know, packing up his bags from New York and said,

he said, you know, we made these deals at the deadline because we thought we could. Like we thought we had enough in reserve that we thought we could part with some assets to do this thing. And, and I mean, Believe of them or not, but I do think that the Blue Jackets are still in pretty decent shape, although obviously there's no way to replace a franchise goalie and a franchise winner, yeah. Well, no, I think there's a way to replace Bobrovsky, but Panarin is a replacement. The Bavrofts has the best percentage in the league over the last seven seasons.

He's arguably the best goalie in the world. He's also over, he's also like 31. Like at some point, it's going to start. But by that, like, the Bruin should trade Patrice Burr, like, should be fine. letting Patrice Burr's birth are on lock. All right. And look, I'm fully in favor of trade everybody on their 30th birthday. That's, I think, a pretty decent way to manage your franchise over the course of a long enough period of time.

But with that having been said, like... Bit of a bit of a Logan's run outlook on life there, Brian Lambert. But like, you're playing a game where most guys are washed at 30, or if not washed, getting close to it. And you've got to maximize their value and all that kind of thing. Lambert, how well do you know the 1992 Toronto Blue Jays? You know, zero. Ah, damn. I thought we could do an impromptu roster game with you and down goes brown.

Where would I know anything about the 1992 Blue Jays? I collected baseball cards like a motherfucker back in the day. It would just be the same results as all the other quizzes. So, I mean, it wouldn't really. Oh, shit. There it is. So, it's. So, yeah.

And then I get all the hard ones right. I agree. So I think we all agree with the blue jackets. It was the right idea of maybe just the timing wasn't there. Speaking of the timing not being there, I was supposed to do an ad during the last segment. And I did, because I didn't realize we were, I didn't realize we were done talking about the, I didn't realize we were done talking about the sharks and avalanche. So I'm going to do it now.

The athletic gentleman is a direct consumer subscription service serving sports. fans in North America. The model is simple. There are no ads, no pop-ups, no autoplay videos. Instead, readers subscribe for authentic in-depth coverage written and now spoken by journalists who know the league-wide news inside and out. You can get all of the league-wide news from NHL experts like Pierre LeBrun, Katie Strang, Craig Custens. Go on down the list. Lots of good draft content going up there these days. So if your team isn't in the playoffs and you're already looking ahead, you can sink in there, as well as local coverage for every team in the league.

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Less than the price of a cup of coffee. as well as audio content and video content that just launched this week. So subscribe right now using promo code soup. Download the athletic app from the app store. Come experience the athletic story is told in a whole new way. And to put a cherry on it, I don't know what the fuck you're doing if you don't have the athletic subscription during the playoffs. Like every team has the best beat writer, you know, for the most part, working for the athletic now.

And it's great. And like if you're someone like me who's looking to figure out what the hell's going on with the opponent in a series. because I'm like, you know, I mean, it's the best resource because not only is it the shit that's happening now, but then you dip into the archives and figure out what happened during the season. And if your team is out, they're already doing a ton of stuff on what the off season is going to hold. Who's going to get traded? What are they going to get traded for?

All of that kind of stuff. So it's the only reason not to subscribe is if you don't have a couple hours to get lost reading a lot of really good stuff because it is a great segment. Or you've committed your resources to the Patreon for Puck Soup. I mean, there's that too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There is that. All right, Sean.

Starting lineup for the 1992, Toronto Blue Jays, let's start with the easy one, first base. Okay, so let's go around the. Second base. Fugs Bonnie. Yeah. Okay, so they go around. The catcher was Pat Borders. There was a little bit of a cartoon situation, but World Series MVP.

First base was John Olerud. That was the year before. He won the batting title. Robbie Alamar, shortstop. Who's shortstop that? They didn't get Fernandez until the next year. I'm going to, was that, was Manny Lee still there? Damn right, it's Manny Lee?

Third base would have been, that I think was Kelly Gruber's last year. Damn, oh, absolutely. One of my favorite food jays in all the time. The outfield was obviously Carter, White, and, uh, this is the tough one. By the end of the year, it was Candy Maldonado. I don't know if he started like the opening day. That is correct. Katie Maldonado played 137 games, so I would say that he played the majority of the games in left field.

And then Dave Winfield as the DH, and I believe the opening day starter would have been Jack Morris. How deep can you go on that rotation? Jack Morris. Jack Morris, Juan Guzman. Dave Steve was actually on that team, but I don't think he was the starter. He counts, yeah, sure. Let's a Jimmy Key. They traded for David Cohn.

I think they had Stottlemeier and David Wells. as well. Pat Hankton, I don't think came in until he didn't start. What a fucking, what a fucking, look at this sound of this bullpen. David, David Wells,

Dwayne Ward, Pat Hankin, and Tom Hanky. Hanky, good Lord. Yep, bullpen was fantastic. And yet it was Mike Timlin who got the save

on the first world series inducing the fun team that was. Yeah, it was, it was Mike Timlin and Joe Carter playing first base. Ryan,

the only reason I know that shit, I collected a lot of baseball cards as a kid. I collected more, like, the baseball card to basketball and hockey card ratio was probably like 80 to one. I was a huge baseball card collector when I was a kid. Yeah. That's the only reason I know this shit.

Did you get really way too into the error cards where, like, there'd be like a line in the wrong place, and you're sitting there looking at, like, you're like, you know, you got like your broilie Jones with a line over the L, and you're like, this is going to be worth a lot of money someday. Absolutely. especially if it was a good player. But then, you know, there were times when, and Don Ross was famous for, like, flipping their images on cards.

And it got to the point where I started to wonder if it was like the cabbage patch kid effect, where they're just like, like, the cabbage patch kids, they didn't make enough of them to create demand. And the error cards, I'm like, they're clearly fucking these up on purpose in order to create a buzz about their sets, right? Like, there's no way. There's no way that Ripkin card gets through without someone noticing it says fuckface on the bottom of his bat.

I don't know. There was a freaking coffee cup on Game of Thrones this week. You hear about this, Craig? I can't believe that shit. Somebody should tweet at that. That's crazy. There was, and I'll tell you, there was a great post on, like, Masha Blood,

or one of those sites that did a thing of actual other fuck-ups on Game of Thrones. Apparently, there was another scene where you could see a visible laptop, a cord coming from, like, one of the character's legs. I remember, I remember there's a scene where you can very clearly, like, you know, was one of those things from Twitter, where you can very clearly see Jamie Lannister holding a Tim Horton's cup.

Did he roll the lid to see if he had won? You know, you play Roll Up the Rind to win, you win or you die. Such is the game. There was also that infamous one where the dude was wearing a full, like, denim outfit in the background of one of the shots. That was an actual thing that happened. way you would have got Canadians. The Canadians wouldn't have been mad about the Tim Horton's Cup, but anybody rolling up the rim and actually winning would have been such an unrealistic plot point.

We just saw this. We can deal with. We can wrap our head around the dragons. So wait. It's fine, but anybody winning more than a muffin in Roll Up the Rim, no way. Sounds like the Tim Hortons roll up the rim is akin to the McDonald's Monopoly promotion in which everybody wins like free fries, but no one actually wins anything of substance. Yeah, except isn't there like, aren't, people, isn't there like a whole insane community around the McDonald's Monopoly?

I think I read a thing about that. Yeah, like on eBay. And there was this whole scam, right? Where like somebody who worked there was like shipping off the winning pieces. Yep. Yeah. I have to say Wendy's recently did one for March Madness that, like I won, I think every time I got something from Wendy's.

And it was always just like, you know, a free large drink, a free sandwich, free four piece nugget, but that's more than I ever got years of playing McDonald's. Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand why they make it so hard to win these things. Like, in theory, if you win a large fry, you're going to certainly come back and buy a fucking soda for something too, right? It would always be like a free large soda with any purchase. And I go, well, I'm going Wendy's anyway.

I'll just get the soda. Right, exactly. It's, yeah, it's incentive at the end of the day. You don't have to give me a boat. You just give me like a free, a free drink. All right, real brief, we didn't touch on the whole totality of the Eastern conference final. Boston, Carolina. I'm picking Boston to this series.

I just think they're playing out of their minds right now, and all due respect to Carolina, but like, I just think Boston's a little bit better. Yeah, I would agree with that. My favorite twist of this is that this is somehow now like a referendum on Dougie Hamilton as a person again. Oh, yeah. There is.

There was a big article on one of the local sports websites that was like Dougie Hamilton still doesn't know why he was traded. It's like, I mean, he does. He definitely does. He's not going to tell you, but the answer probably has a lot to do with, I don't know, his tendency to go to museums, maybe, something along those lines.

And that's everything I've ever understood it from, you know, what people have told me is, like, he just didn't fit in with the culture. And that was a brilliant team that was obsessed with culture and all that shit. Yeah. And there was also, I think, a money component, too, at some point, right, where he was asking more than they wanted to give him or some shit? Or was that just a cover, cover story? Yeah, I feel like they offered him whatever they were, like he ended up taking with Calgary.

So who knows, but yeah, no, it was definitely like a culture thing first and foremost. And then, you know, the other thing is that, of course, like, they, one of the local sports talk shows had a guy. Era. Yeah, had a guy from one of the Carolina Papers on and hung up on him. instantly because they were like, he has a southern accent? Like, making fun of his accent. It's like, this horrible city has the worst

accent you could possibly imagine. You take 80 calls a day. Yeah, what if we package Noel O'Chari and Zedano Chara and maybe we could get Connemick David back? What do you think? You think they maybe have to

throw in dry-sidal to make it more fair? And they're like, oh, that's a great point. horseshit. The craziest part of that story is that they decided to make fun of his accent instead of ridiculing Luke Decoq's name, which is pretty an upset, I think, for Boston Radio. I don't think it was Luke to, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, Chip Alexander's got the the, the, the, the kind of gentleman, Tom Wolfe tying a kind of accent. Well, and I do want to say he did make a mistake by due declaring that he thought. Just before we go up, Dougie Hamilton, Do we all agree that he should be awarded the Konsmite Trophy right now for doing the head pat in the handshake?

The head pat, dude. It kicked ass. It was so good. It was perfect. All right. So a bunch of jerks versus mass holes. It sounds like Ryan and I like Boston. Sean, you like Boston. You know, I do like Boston. I'm picking Carolina partly. Partly, this is me doing my George Kostanzi, go against whatever I think is going to happen strategy.

And partly, again, just there's no. way they're actually going to give us that Boston San Jose series that we all want so badly. So I'm going the, I'm steering hard in the other direction. And I'm saying we're going to get the, we're going to get the blues and hurricanes. Because the two things, the two things we can't have are the Joe Thornton series or, and I kind of hope we don't get this one, is the Carolina San Jose series so that everybody is making shark nato jokes for the entire two. weeks, which will be funny for about the first seven seconds. Nobody's even going to watch. The ratings are going to be bad.

Like anybody gives shit. Readings are good these playoffs so far, though. People are digging the upsets. Is St. Louis, Carolina, the demonstrably worst cup final on the table? Yeah. It has been unbelievable for

quite a while. That seems like it could be a lot of two-one games to me. Yeah. I don't feel like there is a, like, it's probably the worst of four pretty good matchups. I don't feel like that's a bad matchup.

One of them is fine with me, honestly. I think the problem is that Boston, San Jose is clear. That's like fucking Avengers end game in this scenario. Like it is the marquee of marquee matchups, not only for the Thornton thing,

but like, give me, give me Brad Marchand in a series against the sharks. St. Louis Carolina and we just turned it into like the Rod Brindamore revenge.

And like people got to ask him, like, any payback on St. Louis? And he'd be like, did I play for St. Louis? Like, I don't. Even I don't recall that. He's like, yeah, I can't believe they offered me up and the Scott Stevens compensation that time.

I would take, it's the Brad Marchand versus Logan Guter matchup that we all want in our hearts is really what we want in that series. And it would be fucking glorious. Fucking glorious. All right, well, there you go. Okay, so that's the whole playoff bit. The guest this week is Bill Camp. If you don't know Bill Camp, you probably seen Bill Camp.

He was the theme of the Met Gala this week. Is that right? Yeah! That's right. Who Among Us didn't love when Lena Dunham showed up dressed as Bill Camp? So he was on the night of. He got an Emmy nomination for it. He's been in a ton of different movies. But mostly he is the voice currently of all of the NHL documentary stuff. So Quest for the Stanley Cup, Rode a Winner Classic. Question for the Stanley Cup right now is on ESPN Plus in the U.S. in YouTube.com slash NHL in Canada, chronicling all the teams that are in the playoffs. It's a seven-episode run that goes through June 14th.

You can catch it on ESPN Plus. Really good dude. We get into some hockey stuff. He's a big Bruins fan. And then we also talk about some of his roles, including getting thrown off the roof by Jason Bourne and being in Ryan, the Joker movie. He's in the Joker movie.

Oh, yeah. All right, here's Bill Camp. Bill, you are the voice once again for the Quest for the Stanley Cup show for the NHL and all of their various Ross Greenberg documentary things. The thing I always like about you doing this show is it always makes me think of the old NFL films vibe, you know, turning on ABC in the middle of the afternoon when I was a kid watching an NFL film was production. Was that ever an influence for you? Oh, man, that's such a great compliment.

I can't tell you how, like, you know, like that's sort of the really I'm very flattered yeah I mean I don't try and be like that but absolutely that's that influenced me because I had the same the same thing as a sports fan you know turning on and listening to those

those you know those docs those mini docs that I can't even remember that guy's name now I feel embarrassed but yeah Was it waterfusel? Was it Warnerfusel? I want to say. Was the guy who did them? I forget if that was the dude's name or not, but that's the name kicking around

of my head. But it's always good. And like you need that sort of, you know, voice of God kind of overseer when it comes to these sort of documentaries. And I feel like you really, you really capture that. That's cool. Thanks. I really appreciate that.

How did you get hooked up with the NHL in the first place for doing these things? I think the first thing I did was in 2013 and that was with Ross and that was that was Road to the Winter Classic that was the first one they did I think it was I can't remember I think it was Epics

and it just happened to be the Bruins it was the Bruins and the Havs I think it was that year was the first year I did it and they contacted my voiceover agent Stephen Rcierge, and he's got a number of guys in his stable that do, you know, long-copy doc stuff, which I'd done before. And Ross asked him, you know, who he had.

Because Liev is in the same office than Liev, I think, was like, no, I guess, you know, enough. Or, you know, Ross was looking for something different. It was a new deal with the NHL and hockey, and so I read something, or they listened to some, I think they listened to some demo stuff I had done, and, you know, Ross gave it the thumbs up, and that was the beginning. And, you know, it's just been a great privilege,

and the wicked fun ride since. Did you listen to any of Leav's old stuff from the HBO version of the show to kind of get the vibe, or were you just looking to do your own thing? you know I've known Leah for a very long time so I kind of know his cadence anyways but yeah

you know any smart person who's this is my opinion if you're going to do that stuff he again like that NFL films guy but in a totally different category obviously in a different

almost vocal genre Leav is so good at what he does. I'm amazed at what he does with just, you know, 24-7 and hard knocks and anything he puts his voice down for. So, yeah, I listened to some stuff he did and knew I couldn't copy him, but he has a great rhythm. He's got great phrasing.

He was reading, I think, for the same guys that were writing the copy that I was doing, Steve Turner and Aaron Cohen. So I kind of got a vibe also because really that's the most important thing, right, are the words that I'll be saying. So the way those guys, the way they write and their phrasing and their rhythms and the stuff that they put down,

it was good for me to listen to and it's just an added plus to listen to Leev to it because it's so subtle and yet it's so powerful. powerful. Oh, yeah. What's the, what's the, what's the, what's the turn around for you on doing one of these things? So I will actually, it varies. Like tomorrow, um, I have to be in Atlanta. So I'll go to a studio, probably, well, I'm shooting tomorrow in Atlanta, so I'll go there later. These guys have taken all of

their footage, right? All of their incredible, which is really the highlight of the show, right? It's all of the access stuff that they get with Ross's teams at the different venues and in the locker rooms and sometimes at home and on off days, but mostly action and that incredible stuff. So they edit that and Steve has written a script. And so I'll probably walk into a studio down in Atlanta at about 7, 7.30 p.m., which is generally a little later than a couple hours later than what I do is here in New York. and then I'll just walk into a booth I'll have a swipe at it just looking at it and reading it Steve will come over and he and I will

be asked for a while because he's just an awesome guy and to be good pals and then Ross will come over and he'll have a putter in his hand or something and we'll talk some more whatever and

I mean really Greg it's that much of a black It's just it's such a blast for me and then and then I'll you know wander into the booth and I'll start reading and you know Steve will Give me a couple of notes and Denny from the NHL and Ross will be in the room in them in their little you know Engineers room listening as well with Steve and the engineer Keith and you know and then There'll give me a couple things to do and I'll either do them or not and we'll move on like you're Either I'll take their notes well or good enough and then we'll move on. Or I won't be able to do it at all and then we'll move on.

Are there times when you're doing this where you just can't seem to get the vibe right? Absolutely. Oh, yeah? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we'll be more in the beginning because it's like anything sort of, you know, vibe you, you fall into a pocket with. right and and sometimes i will uh i'll just have a too slow energy or i'll have a too fast energy or i'll get overdramatic on the open sometimes there are words and phrases but i'll just

you know it's the actor's nightmare in the booth or even anywhere else where you just like you say something too many times, and then it raises its meaning, and then you're just making the Kafka of all. And I can't even say the words anymore. And then the brilliant thing about it is that we can go on. We'll go on to the next segment, and then we'll come back and do it, and I will have sort of established myself remotely. But that was pretty much, you know, that happened more often in the first year or two.

Oh, yeah, for sure. It's kind of like, we just have a great time, you know. We have a lot of laughs and get it done. It's awesome. What did, I was going to ask you, what did the Bruins mean to you? I know you're a huge Bruins fan. What have they met to you through the years? So, just to give you some information,

to set some groundwork, right now at this moment, I am at my house, my apartment that I share with my wife and my 12-year-old son. and I'm looking at a circa 1971 trash can that has a big B in the spokes and an illustration of Bobby O'R on it. And then I have, I got a lot of, like, blue sweatshirts, pants, T-shirts, hats. My wife buys me a lot of that swag, but, you know, they've been my teen since I was about, When I first got turned on to hockey, was in Massachusetts where I grew up, and they were broadcast on a USBK TV 38, which was a U.HF station. Oh, wow. And, yeah, so really, you know, they've always been my team.

And I got back into really following them. I would say around 2008. Oh, yeah. You're in the rest of Boston. I sort of like peripherally would keep sort of an eye on. Like, you know, if I happen to glance at the four days or if I, you know, haven't had ESPN on for some reason, because there was a period where I didn't watch a lot of television. I was sort of here about stuff.

And then fortunately, I got back into them. I was in Connecticut working in Connecticut. And I started, I just turned around the television and they had like, they had those, you know, 60 minute, those replay games. It was like two in the morning and they would replay the game that had happened at seven. But they do it without commercials and they cut some boring stuff or something. And so it's like you get it in an hour. I don't know what it is. So I started watching the ruins again.

And then I was like, this is. an awesome game. I love this game. I love this team. It just sort of made me feel, I don't know, what is it, nostalgic or it was like I started to feel the excitement that I felt as a kid, all that juicy stuff, which is really quite pure stuff. And I liked it.

And I thought, well, this makes me feel good. I'm going to stay with it. It was interesting because I think there was that great sort of reawakening in Boston about the Bruins around that time. You know, when Tim Thomas is there and Chara's on the team. And it just seemed like the entire city, like something was unlocked in that city for that incarnation of the Bruins team, and it's kind of stayed that way since. I think I totally agree with you.

I think I was so fortunate to have sort of thrown some attention towards those games and the team again at that time because then it was, what, a year later or something, they won the cup or two years later they won the cup. And I had a three or four-year-old son at that time so I could so I can remember vividly in our living room. I had on my or shirt and he had on a Bergeron shirt. Oh, wow. As a four-year-old. And he was like, he's not like a big hockey.

He's a swimmer, you know, but he goes with it, you know. He goes with it. And he's seen a bunch of games with me. but he it's just vividly when that when they beat the Canucks and we were standing there

and I was going nuts and he was going nuts with me but not really understanding it was a vivid memory that's you know burned burned into my hard wiring now it seems from what you're saying

not only from what you're wearing but also your trash can and by the way very AJ soprano move having the Bruins trash can yeah Yeah, it sounds like Bobby Orr was your guy, right? So what did Bobby mean to mean to you?

Yeah, so he meant a lot to me. He was, I mean, how could he not? He was, I watched that guy, all that highlight stuff that you see on YouTube if you go on and look at it. I watched all that stuff in real time because I was, I was literally, like, planted in front of our television going up every night that they televised the game. And they televised a lot of those games. And so I was just to know of him. But, you know, Don Marcotte and the chief, Johnny Bucchick, those are many guys, really. Mostly Johnny Bucchick, because he was a winger.

I was a winger. He was an assist guy but could also score goals. And I was more of an assist guy as I got a little older. At first, I just wanted to score goals all the time. But I just couldn't quite have a shot. I worked awful hard. So it was the chief and Don Marcotte, really, and then probably Bobby Orr.

Bobby Orr was just in a different, you know, it was like that guy was, he was in a different, you know, universe. It was like watching an alien play almost because he was. Right? And so it was like Daniel Day Lewis in the acting world. It's like,

that guy's an extraterrestrial. I don't really believe what he's doing as a human. Right. It was jaw-dropping. You know, you've seen all that stuff. Oh, yeah. Like, it's a new day. You know, not to be too pop psychologists here, but, you know, you wanted to be the goal score.

He ended up being the assist guy. And then in the acting world, you know, the world is split up into the lead guys and guys like you that do all the heavy lifting and the hard work and the fourth line stuff. Can we draw the parapherstall? a little between your acting and your hockey play, sir? Absolutely. I wanted to get into... But I'm happy about that.

I'm grateful to even have that because I love what I do just like if I was playing if I was playing with David Bacchus right now and Sean Coralli and, you know, those guys, Johansson. If I was playing on the bottom six of any team, let alone the burns,

I would be a happy man, and I've, you know, more than happy. It's a privilege. And so also in my profession, I get asked to participate in some pretty wicked stories, directed by some pretty great people, you know, written by some great people with some amazing actors that I can be there to support. So absolutely you can make that comparison. I'm going to bug you about your acting in one second, but I wanted to ask you about Marchand, because he's been in the news this week.

He pissed off a reporter. He did this whole thing. What do you think of Brad? I mean, I feel like when you look through the Bruins lens, everybody loves him. Are you able to take a step back and take a critical look at him? Or do you think, you know, the outsiders who criticize the guy are kind of off base? You know, I didn't, I sort of, I didn't really hear what happened. I heard, like, he gave one word answers.

Yeah, he kind of knows. No, yeah, no sold an interview a couple times, but I just mean in general. I mean, the face licking, the agitation, the pest thing, the Ken Lindsman stuff. I don't know about that, you know, it's like, do you play the game? Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's, you know, the guy, the guy, you know, he's a great player. He's a great player and stuff happens on the ice. And, you know, I, it would far be it for me to like know what's going on.

and drive Marcian's mind. I love the way he plays. I love the way he gets into other people's heads. I play against guys like that, and they drive me nuts. And it affects my play, and it takes me off. Not that I'm any shakes of a good hockey player, but it throws me. And so especially guys that are really highly skilled.

And then, you know, I'm getting burned left and right, but that doesn't, you know, I don't know. I think the guy, I just sort of, yeah, I'm going to, I love him. Yeah. I think that's a default ruins. And then I think there's a part of him. I don't know. I don't know.

No, I feel you. He's in it. And then he also has to have his relationship because he's got to have a relationship with the media. I don't know, you know, what his motivations are. And again, for Vietnamese, for me, then, like, say what I think they are. But I think he's a great hockey player. And, you know, like, everybody, maybe they say something wrong or what, but.

I think it's a typical Bruins fan response. Yeah. Right. Like, you live with the other stuff because the guy pops in 30 goals and does a good job. I think that's the default setting for Bruins fans. All right. Let me ask you a few career things. a lot of people that are listening to this probably know you from the night of on HBO which was huge for you

I mean nomination that whole bit um you've worked on both that and the leftovers and I wanted to get your your take on prestige TV and the difference is working in that medium versus in film so so there are two different forms obviously um and and with a film uh you know the thing is is that both of those Both of those television shows, and the one I'm working on now and the Looming Tower, those were long form, right? Those were eight to ten episodes or something. So we got to spend, let's say, a network television show, a little more time working on stuff, specifically with scenes and digging a little

deeper and trying more things as one gets to do on a movie set. so there's a gratification when working on a movie set because you don't feel so rushed you know for time obviously money is time and both of those things but it's a little less on a film

you really get to like you know possibly explore more in the arena if you will of the set I don't know if I have a preference for one or the other oftentimes

times with a long-form television. What did you call it, prestige TV? Is that because of the prestige TV? That's your, that's your, you know, it started, I think, probably with Sopranos and then went to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The prestige TV is your, your, your, your, high-minded television shows that people look at and say are every bit as good as the films being made today.

Well, the advantage to that is because, is that you also have a long, a long form. I'm going to start something in Germany in August when I finish with the thing I'm doing now. Well, the thing I'm doing now, which is based on a novel, I'm not really positive how much I can talk about it, so I'm going to be sort of cryptic with it. I know. I think it's fine, but, you know, it's an HBO show, and so it's 10 episodes, but it may do with the leftovers thing that did, which was, we're telling the story of the novel in eight episodes. as opposed to, which is an eight-hour movie, or a 10-hour movie, as opposed to doing a two-hour cramming of a 400-page novel, right?

400-page novel. There's that advantage, which was, you know, amazing. And then, because also there are so many awesome writers out there, then they're going to, and we have the best on this show, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane. Then we can go off and, After that story is told, it's the kind of story like leftovers where then you can just stop, you know? Yeah.

If it's Dennis Lehane, are you shooting it in Boston? No, no. But it's, you know, it's the possibility of being going on endlessly for years and years. Right. I think quite three years. Yeah. Yeah. A night of is still sort of pending.

or I don't know that could be done, but, you know, a film, you're sort of obligated and forced to tell something within the two-hour format, which is a problem. But then there are also great cons to it as well. Yeah. Or pros of.

Speaking of film, what was it like getting thrown off a roof by Jason Bourne? So listen, this is an interesting story. I don't know if you've ever talked to that, He would tell you this. So we were up there on that roof, and I volunteered to let Matt throw me off. You know, to the stunt guy and Paul and the producers.

And I said, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Because the stunt guy came over to me and was like, this is what's going to happen. He was the guy who's done that James Bond movie Casino Loyal, or high fall or whatever the last one or prior to the last one and I said sure sure and they rigged me in and then they said no you can't do it and so Leslie well we had so the stunt guy actually did the fall off the roof but I did get to like get harnessed in and Matt held me off the roof and so I had

I had Jason Bourne like screaming in my face with a galac at my forehead. After he kicked my ass for like an entire elevator ride up to the thing, which he did a bunch of different times. And I lost like a 300 pair of glasses, like these special glasses. Like the guy I'm playing wears. Rims with glasses, you know, that like bend and stuff and they'd gone out. And, of course, they have like more money than God on those movies. So they got like two pairs of these super expensive glasses for me that look great.

And this was like, take one. And Matt and I came into it and he chucks me against the wall. And I'm like, boom. And then the glasses fly off and they go down like this crack in the elevator. Two floors down and they can't find them. I don't know. It was awesome. It was great.

It was really, you know, tremendous. All right. Last one, and this is a completely selfish question. How great is this Joker movie going to be? It's kind of bonkers. I think I have not seen this movie. I think it's going to be pretty pretty great, like spectacular. You know, I know it's going to, you know, it's not going to be at all what you expect.

I can't say anything other than that. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be fantastic. Joaquin Phoenix, I think, is, you know, it's amazing. Yeah. He's like, he's like, you know. He lives it. Yeah, he lives.

He lives it, man. He does live it. Yeah. Yeah, and for this movie, I mean, it's kind of like, really, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to go for it. So when you listen to Orr talk about, you know, playing back. back then with those guys and and of course that guy in particular because of all of his knee problems and like no car ledge but then playing like every other shift you know every half shift

maybe and then having to get out of bed and go and then get it together and you know give another amazing performance you know wakene gives everything all the time so and he's He's such a physical actor. You know, he just, you know, embodies these people he's playing. So, you know, kills it, crushes it every freaking scene that. I mean, I'm in the movie for, who knows, like two minutes total. I don't know. But that guy, I think, is in every scene of this film.

But I don't know. Don't quote me on that. But, of course, it's the Joker, and it's the Joker, and it's Joaquin. and it's a brilliant script that Todd wrote, and it's, you know, the rest of the cast is so killer. But that guy's so special, you know, Joaquin Phoenix. And since I saw him for the very first time, it's just, you know, I'm marvel at what he does.

Awesome. Our thanks to Bill Camp for joining us on Puck Soup. Hopefully you enjoyed that interview with one of those journeymen players in Hollywood. Seen him and everything. You've seen him in everything. If you know him, you know the face, you know the voice, you know the whole thing. Maybe you've even seen them on stage in something like The Crucible. And if you want to see The Crucible or any of Arthur Miller's plays, there's only one place to go and that's with Seekek.

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I'm kidding. I just go to musicals. But I also go to hockey games and comedy shows and all other things. And I use Siki to get all those tickets because it's the easiest way to shop for these tickets. In fact, it's the way I'm going to use, it's a manner in which I will use a ticket app to get tickets to. the New York sports teams when they come through the Bay Area to come see the Mets Lose. Best of all, the listeners of Puck Soup get $10 off their first Seekkeek purchase when you use our promo code soup.

Seekeekeek supports this show. Please support Seekek. That's $10 off your first purchase of concert tickets, sports, comedy, whatever you want. Use the promo code soup on the app and get $10 off your first Seekkeek purchase. During the interview, we were having a brief discussion of Charlize Theron, both Ryan and I saw long shot recently and both really liked it. If you're looking for a good rom-com to take your lady, but also a movie that has come jokes.

Yeah, I was going to say, Seth Rogan style humor abounds. Yeah, it's solid. And also, like, not necessarily, like, there's sometimes when you see a political comedy, I'm thinking specifically of the distinguished gentleman, the Eddie Murphy movie from years back. Not familiar at all.

Yeah, exactly, because it wasn't good. He plays, he goes to, it's like a Mr. Smith goes to Washington kind of deal. Not good because it didn't feel genuine. I feel like this also had a little bit of enough behind the scenes of the way that the Secretary of State operates and yada, yada, yada, that you feel okay about the politics of the whole thing and the inside of it. It was really funny. And Shirley is, what a fucking treasure. I mean, is there anything this woman can't do?

I mean, granted her scenes in that Fast and Furious movie were probably shot on a soundstage and she didn't interact with any of the cast. That's fine. It wasn't really that good. But she was awesome as Furiosa and she's awesome in this movie. And Ryan and I both give it a big thumbs up from your friends at Puck Soup to go see this movie. It'll be great, I think, hopefully. It will be. We both saw it. It is very good.

So. I'm bummed that the Avatar sequels aren't coming out for a while. Disney displayed its slate of movies that are going to be coming out. And it's going to be a rotation of Star Wars movies and Avatar sequels through like 2027 or something. Yeah, I'm very optimistic about where society's going that they're planning that far out. I do not share their enthusiasm. Well, you know. Guys, tell me this, okay?

I'm one of the, I think I'm the only one based on the box office who never saw Avatar. Should, like, should, do I need to see? No, it sucks. No, you don't need to see it. It's very bad. That was the impression I was under. It's not good. Okay.

Yeah. Not good. Because I was in, when I, when we had the kids at Disney World, they have this whole Avatar land now. And we went in there and we were looking at stuff and my kids are like, what's that? And I'm like, I have no idea? And like, this lady comes up. She's like, have you not seen Avatar?

And I was like, no. And she's like, well. the premise of the movie, and I was like, no, no, I didn't, I didn't ask to, like, that's, it's okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, would not know it. No, it's, it was, it was a great cinematic experience because of the 3D at the time. I mean, that's, that's for sure, right? That was why I saw it, yeah, and, like, it did a good job of, like, doing 3D technology in a way that, uh, really hadn't been done before ever.

And that, and, you know, did the typical James Cameron shit of, like, he, personally invented all of the 3D tech that was used in the making of the film. Like, he's an incredibly impressive guy and filmmaker and all that kind of stuff. But the movie itself, ooh, not good. Okay. I'll say this about two things. First of all, I really find it funny that people point to the lines at Disney World or Disneyland, or Disney World, I guess it is, for these Avatar rides being like, well, you know,

people say there isn't anticipation for these sequels. But look at the lines of these rides. I'm like, yeah, that must be why Tomorrowland was such a huge hit. You know if you're going to base the film's potential success on how long the lines are. I can't wait till the fucking T-Cups movie comes out. And then the other thing, too, is that it's just like, I don't know if these movies are going to be good, but I do know that when people bet against James Cameron, they're usually wrong. Like, the Titanic thing will go down in history as one of the greatest fuck you's in the history of pop culture. Like, everybody was predicting this movie was going to.

going to be trash and then it was going to bomb. It was going to be a money boondoggle. And then it comes out and it is like the biggest hit of all time. And I just, I will always cherish that moment where, you know, the king of the world moment for James Cameron of people saying that you're shit and then you put out your, your art and then everybody's like, ah, fuck, it was great, wasn't it? Well, I mean, it wasn't great. But it, I mean, like, it made a ton of money. Like, everybody, my age sought 40 times in theaters and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um, There it is. All right, let's briefly talk about a couple of other things here. The Oilers hire Kent Holland. So I saw that our friends in the Oilers media are really optimistic now because Ken told them that he had a great culture in Detroit and that that culture could come to Edmonton. You have to respect Jersey and all that. I thought that his introductory press conference was fine. I think he said a lot of good things. I thought he said a lot of good things. I thought he said a a lot of weird things. Like, let's let the young players percolate in the minor leagues for several

years instead of putting them right in the lineup because in 2019, every young player excels and you put up in the lineup straight away. And I also feel like there wasn't enough lip service paid to how fucking heavy the lift is going to be for this guy to try to reshape this roster that Peter Shirelli left him. Well, I mean, look, the Red Wings very famously got by on, well, we can just keep, you know, Gustav Nyquist in the, in the, in the, A HL until he's 25 years old or, you know, that kind of thing. And that works when you have, I don't know, let's say, two, three, four Hall of Famers on the roster. I don't know that that works when, you know, your second best right or left wing is still Milan Luchich somehow.

That's the real issue I have with all that optimism of like the culture. and because oilers people like media guys have been saying for months like the oilers don't let kids be in the HL for long enough and that kind of thing and it's like in some cases that's true in other cases um you know like the idea that you would just blanket apply that to every like because they got I mean these are the same people who got all excited for kailer yamamoto when he had like two goals in the preseason or whatever and They put him on the roster through their sheer enthusiasm. I don't know, man. Like, I think you've got to be pretty, I don't want to say naive,

but, like, it's in the neighborhood of naive for sure to be like, hey, all this stuff Ken Holland did right in, like, 1999. That's what he's going to do in Edmonton. And all the stuff he didn't do right every year since then. I don't, I've never, like, that's, that doesn't look like anything to me. You know what I mean? Like, that, doing Westworld shit with it where he's just like, I, I'm, the Justin Abdelcator contract, I mean, that's not analogous to anything at all in Edmonton.

It's like, get a fucking grip, dude. And like, the other, the other thing I want to say real quick, and then I'll let Sean talk because I've been talking for a while, is all this stuff about, like, it's actually ageism to say Ken Holland's not good at his job. And it's like, no, it isn't. What the fuck are you talking about? Hope he sees this one, bro. Like, but it's not, it's not ageism to say he.

It's a little age as to say that he's, he, like, the game has passed him by. Why? Why is that age as to say? I mean, it, it, it's not age as to say about Peter Chiarelli. And is that because Peter Chiorelli's younger? Or is it because Peter Chiorelli more demonstrably had, has had it pass him by? I think the motivation for it is because these guys are older. I mean, the same thing was said about Jim Rutherford before went to Pittsburgh.

I mean, it's, I feel, I agree with you that you're, that you can't, like, using ageism as a, as the fucking Captain American Shield to deflect all criticism to Kent Holland is bullshit. There's like a touch of it, don't you think, in the criticism of Kent Holland? No, I don't think that. That's what I just said. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's very reasonable to point. out that with some of these guys, Ken Holland, Rutherford, Lou Lamarillo will be another one, where to counter the enthusiasm for, look how many cups they've won, look how much success they've had by pointing out that this league really has changed radically in even, you know,

not even since the cap. I mean, even the last five years, yeah. So, you know, the fact that somebody won a cup in 2002 doesn't necessarily tell you all that much. I don't, see, I don't mind this higher. And I certainly think it's a better hire than what the other option seemed to be, which was either Keith Gretzky, which I've never seen an organization so aggressively float trial balloons before of just constantly feeding his name into the media to try to gauge whether they could get away with hiring him. I wouldn't have been a big fan of that. I wouldn't have been a big fan of Mark Hunter. Even Kelly McCrimman for reasons he kind of got into, I wouldn't necessarily have been as high on my list as he seemed to be.

So I, you know, going with a more known quantity like Ken Holland, it feels like a little bit higher floor, a little bit lower ceiling maybe. But maybe that's what you need because you have a once in a lifetime franchise player who could potentially, you know, if you screw this one up and you're doing the same thing two or three years from now, it could, it could be become a problem by that point. So I kind of view this as, I mean, it could be. be a mess. He could come in and try to do everything like he did in 2002, and he could come in and talk about the culture and then keep all the same people that the Oilers already have, and it could all be a disaster. It could also be a situation kind of like when Lou Lamarillo came to Toronto, where he was the perfect guy for a few years there to guide the transition, to be the veteran voice in the room. I want to see if Ken Holland is going to bring him. I want to see if Ken Holland is going to

bring in like his version of Kyle Dubess or his version of whoever that the next, you know, the younger, uh, fresher set of eyes. If he starts building out a staff that way to the point where you go, you know what? Even if Ken Holland only wants to do this for five years, we know who the next GM's going to be because there, there's a plan in place. Then I think it's, I think it's going to be okay. You know, Lou Lamarillo lasted three years in Toronto. But I think it was the right three years, you know?

And then, and then it was the right moment to move on when it was. I could see that being, you know, if I'm an Oilers fan, that's kind of what I'm looking at saying. Maybe that's what you're hoping we get here. And it's not just the old-timer getting up on stage and playing all his greatest hits from before you were born. And that's the end of it. The guy they should have hired is Bill Zito, but they're not going to hire him because he's American. He is the best guy out there that's not a GM. He doesn't have GM experience. He's the assistant GM in Columbus. And apparently, by all accounts, the guy really run on the show there. So I think that would be the best choice. But I understand what they pick Kenny.

And, you know, the only reason that I think it could be good is if what should happen happens, which is that he firewalls his operation away from all the old boys network guys. They're obviously not going anywhere. The Oilers are never getting rid of fucking Paul Coffee or Kevin Lowe or Craig McTavish. So the best you can hope is that you create enough space between your operation and their input or their influence that you can work autonomously. So the two reasons I like this for the Oilers is one. I think Kenny Holland is one of the few guys that could walk into that place and be like,

fuck you, your opinion means fucking nothing to me. I'm Ken Holland, motherfucker. Which would be great if, you know, fly on the wall time to hear that. And then the other thing is that the primary task ahead for Ken Holland is to get this team really fucking good within about two years because otherwise Connor is going to lose his mind. And so if you bring in a novice GM, who might not necessarily have the relationship with other GMs around the league,

it might be tougher to make the kinds of deals that Ken's going to have to make with the limited assets that he has. But if you have Ken Holland, who's worked with these guys for the upwards of two decades, maybe just maybe it's going to be easier to move some of these pieces

and change around the roster a little bit. So to that end, I kind of like the idea of him being there, even if I like other guys that were up for the job a little bit more. Yeah, that makes sense. I think, you know, if Mark Hunter comes in and starts firing old-timers,

then I think you can imagine how quickly that would potentially go bad in certain segments of the Edmonton media. So, yeah, maybe. It sounds like, I mean, it sounds like Hunter is going to end up in Seattle, though, huh? Maybe, potentially? Potentially. Yeah. I mean, we'll see.

He's, you know, from all accounts, he's a, you know, he's a bright guy and, you know, a hockey lifer. I don't know that he's done enough that I would want to hand him the keys to my, to my whole team. And I think his draft record in Toronto is getting pumped up by people who maybe haven't looked at it beyond Mitch Marner. Yeah, and pumped up by people that used to use them as a source all the time. I do like this new paradigm that we're in where the GM becomes the president of hockey operations. Then the assistant GM is the GM.

Everything's kind of shifted up of space, it seems like, in the last few months. Yeah. It's a pretty good deal. Brad Marchand finally The Little Ball of Hate Treating our friend Kyle Busackas like an asshole After the game six victory And then being a prick in the locker room

To the rest of the media I whatever I mean like he's Marshan He's putting himself over It is what it is My take on this whole thing was that You know I always thought if I put myself in that situation

If I played that rule If I was Kyle Or if I was you know Brian Boucher after a game Put in a microphone on somebody's face. I would say two times out of every 10, there's going to be a guy that hates me that comes up to me in just like no sells an interview or calls me an asshole on the air

or something. Like, I always assume that's going to happen. So in this situation, I'm not surprised that Marchand is a prick to somebody who he thought was a prick to him. The two takeaways I have on this one is this. I know people have taken a run at Kyle for trying to joke with Marchand before a game. The world is split up into two types of NHL players. those that play along with us and those that don't.

And Marchand, every fucking time you talk to him and you need something out of him for a story or whatever or a quip or whatever, he plays along. So the idea that he didn't play along in that moment should not be on the reporter because it is well established that Marchand's the guy you can fuck around with. And then the other thing, too, is that in talking to some people about this, and I might write about this on Friday, the real issue isn't Marchand or any of these guys, Brent Burns or any of these guys that are kind of pricks of the media. the issue is the people watching them being pricks in the media.

The issue is the other guys in like the Bruins locker room that are like 21 or 22 that see the way Marchand treats us. Oh, I don't know. Oh, dude, it gives them carte fucking blanche to pass it to every generation on how you don't have to be better about your interactions with the public. I fucking guarantee you that. I don't know, man. Like, one thing I've really liked in the last couple of years, is that more NHL players are just like, oh, when that happened, I was like, holy fuck.

And that's just like the quote that gets in the story or whatever. Yeah. Like, I think that's great because it's so much better than, well, you know, I was just going hard of the net. And I was just fortunate to have my stick in the right place when my teammates got me the puck. And yeah, just fortunate to be in that position and glad we got the win. Like, I want guys to have a personality. and it's like, again, I'm a big NBA fan, and like, Joel Embed is an asshole, right?

And his schick, you can say his schick's a little tired, and I kind of agree with that, but also, like, you get guys like Yana Santa Tocompo, who's one of the biggest sweeties in the whole world, and, like, he's posting funny videos on his Instagram and all that kind of stuff. And, like, nobody's looking at Joe, nobody in the NBA is,

looking at Joel M. Bede going, that's the guy I want to be like. And nobody is necessarily looking at Janus and going, I need to be exactly as nice as Janus, because then I'll get to be in commercials and all that kind of stuff. Like, Joel M. Bid's in commercials. So it doesn't, it doesn't, I don't think it redounds to, okay, well, you know, they're going to see two guys in the league who are well known for being elite players, being dicks to the media, and they're going to go, now I get to be a dick to the media.

I think everybody's different. And, you know, in much the same way, in any other workplace, you can identify, well, like, that guy's good at his job, but he's a prick. Like, you're not going to go, and I should also be a prick if I want to be as good at my job as him.

Because Patrice Bergeron's the nicest guy in the world, and nobody's like saying that he's you know everybody's just trying to be exactly like Patrice Bergeron because he's the nicest guy. Right. Like I think guys that want to be prex are going to be prex and if guys don't want to be precks, they're not going to be. Yeah. I mean, I hate when stuff like this comes up because we can't win because if we ignore it,

then we're letting guys get away with it. if we talk about it, then it's the media being interested in the media and it's more navel-gazing and all of this stuff. I'll just say this. Like, this whole thing with the pre-game interview that somehow excuses this, that people immediately found and started circulating because, of course, you have to be a contrarian on Twitter and show that you're above this stuff. And, you know, if people haven't seen it, you know, Kyle makes a, you know, Kyle makes

a joke to him, but it's not just some random joke that he pulled out of nowhere. Kyle was making a reference to a joke that Brad Marchand himself made the day before. Yep. Where he was asked about like, hey, we saw you stomp on a guy's stick. That was interesting how you were trying to cheat in overtime. What was the deal with that? And he made light of it and said, yeah, no, I think it was the other guy was just trying to dull my skate blade with his stick. Okay, fine. That's a good soundbite. You're playing it off as a joke. That's cool. But you can't joke about it. And then the next day, in get all cranky because somebody makes the same joke back to you. And,

and, you know, and don't give me this about the sanctity of the pregame warm up. Like, oh, he was about to go out and play a game. What the fuck is that? Who said,

nobody said that. No, he's, he's minutes away from game time. You can't joke with him. Yeah. People said that. People said he's minutes away from game time.

Such, such a, fucking brainworms in this sport, man. But like, yeah, and the fucking brain worms. Because, like,

it's not as a Pierre McGuire doesn't fuck around with these guys and joke around with these guys every single time he talks them before the game it's a constant thing and but but here's the thing so he he was being a baby if that really was what upset him but but fine let's let's give him the right to be a baby about it then just don't do the postgame interview you know it's that simple hey brad do you want do you mind do in hockey night canada yeah actually i do mind i've got a problem with kyle i don't want to do it great patrice will you do it sure and and then off we go and and nobody's talking about it It's a non-story.

But he didn't do that because he didn't want it to be a non-story. He wanted it to be a story. He basically went on live TV and tried to embarrass a guy who was just doing his job. And that's just such a dick move. I'm sorry. It's not, I know it's not the end of the world. I know at the end of it will probably won't remember it a week from now. But I've just, like, I'm at a point in my life where I've got no patience for people who act like that.

Even if you think incorrectly that he was somewhat justified in being unhappy, like, you know, we've all been to a restaurant and had a waiter get our order wrong. You're justified at not being happy about that, but if you stand up and decide you're going to try to embarrass this guy in front of everyone, you're being a huge asshole. There's no reason to behave like that. And that's, you know, that was Brad Marchand tried to embarrass this guy. He failed because Kyle handled it perfectly. Like, he absolutely, he realized what was happening.

He kind of played into it. it but didn't escalate it. Like, he found the perfect balance. And it was Brad Marchand who ended up looking like an idiot. And, you know, it doesn't matter. Like, no, he's, he's a good player. He's, he might win the Khan-Smith. And, you know, we all move on. I just, you know, I have no patience for this stuff anymore. Like, this is just, don't forget it just for the sake of it, because you can get away with it. These kinds of things come up. And they're usually handled behind the scenes. They're usually like a player grabs you after a, you know, locker room, uh, availability and, and just you, you, you, you, you'll fucking light, you, you'll light you up occasionally. I mean,

it's just how it works. But like, you know, I doubt that there was a single conversation between Marchand and Kyle before this one went on television. Oh. And, and, and, you know, just, again, just say no. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, biggest win of the season. He still, there was a part of him that felt it was important to make sure people knew that he was mad at somebody in the media by trying to embarrass him in front of a million people watching on TV. Like, it's just, screw that guy. Honestly, it's, it's ridiculous. All right, question of the week. Give us your Khan-Smife leader at this point. Patrick H. writes in Joe Pavelski's grandmother. Did you see Joe Pavelsky's grandmother on Twitter yesterday?

Yeah, that was good. Oh, what a fucking sweetheart. Just adorable. that's when I knew he was in. Jeremy Tuck says Joe Thornton's beard. It's starting to resemble the Stanley Cup at heightened color. That's pretty good. That's good line. Let's see here. Matthew Lopner says between Tuka, Hurtle, and Slavin Turbo for me.

I think Tuka and Hurtle probably your clubhouse leaders for the cons might at this point. Michael Holmes says Logan Couther for me. Carlson is an outsider because of his point total so far. If he steps up for the Western Conference final and the final, then maybe he's got a chance. Rask for Boston, Schwartz for the Blues, Slaving for the Canes, just to hedge my event. I think Vlasic might have a better claim at the con than does Carlson, but that's just me. John Fisher says puck luck might be the leader for the Khan Smyth. Yeah.

Yeah, bad penalty calls. And Jen Fitzgerald says, Ben Bishop, without a doubt, he carried the stars through that last game. They had no chance about him. Jen making the case that, and this is a classic think piece, that a player that didn't advance in the playoffs should still be able to win the Conn Smith. That was my argument, the year jiggy one, because I thought Gabrik deserved it for having played three great rounds. That was my hot tag. I don't think two rounds is enough, but yeah, like Eric Carlson a few years ago with the senators would be another one where. I like that.

We're on the same page. A player that maybe goes deep into the third round and is demonstrably the most valuable player of the playoffs can win the Khan Smith, which I know you probably think that's off-brand for me, considering my feelings about Connor McDavid and the Hart Trophy. I wasn't going to say anything, but all right. It's a totally different award.

It's a totally different award. All right. That's fuck soon for this week. God willing, next time we talk, it will not be about the officiating. I'm Greg Wysinski. You can listen to my other podcast, ESPN, and I with Emily Kaplan. and find my stuff on ESPN

and I'm on Twitter at Wichinsky. I'm Ryan Lambert. You can sign up for the Puck Soup newsletter every week. $4. If you just want the newsletter, $3 if you want that plus the $5 bonus episodes and you can get it all

on our Patreon. You can find me on the athletic this week. Thursday's post is the annual all playoff bust team, a full roster of everyone who has let us down. And then on Friday in the grab bag, among a bunch of other things, I've got a YouTube breakdown of the play that is largely responsible for the Ben Bishop rule we saw this week. The infamous Alexei Kovalev slashing incident in which he died during a game against the Nordiques, got a goal taken off

the board, and then miraculously came back to life to help the Rangers win the game. Miraculous player. All right, that's Puck's due for this week. Thanks for listening. Everybody check out the mailbag on the Patreon, and we'll talk to you soon. Take care. Bye. Later.