Puck Soup - Dan Barbarisi

Episode Date: March 16, 2017

Greg and Dave speak with author Dan Barbarisi, whose excellent new book "Dueling With Kings" chronicles his amazing adventures playing (and winning quite a lot at) daily fantasy hockey. Plus, Greg gets a nasty letter from Devils coach John Hynes's "personal brander" or whatever; the boys debate the Hart Trophy race; looking at the issues in the U.S. women's national team vs. USA Hockey; the Winter Classic at Citi Field; looking at the Top 50 fast food items and why millennials have to stop eating Frostys; monkey movies vs. movies with monkeys; the Puck Soup mailbag; and just in time for the big tournament, it's Puck Soup March MuteUs, the Tournament of Annoying On-Air Hockey Commentators. Sponsored by Seat Geek and Harry's Razors.

Today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Seekek, the smartest way to find hockey tickets this season and postseason. We hear at Puck Soup hope that you are living in a city in which a team is vying for the Stanley Cup, having qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs. I'm a Devils fan. I am not in that situation. But there's nothing like being behind the glass for a hockey game, be it the regular season or the playoffs, for the biggest matchups of the year. And with Seekek, it's never been easier to get the guaranteed Ceeke. you want for a great value. Why I love Seekkeek, why I use it to get my tickets for games and concerts, pretty easy.

Because you get the best deal on every ticket, because Seekek price compares for you by searching multiple ticket sites. Prices can vary depending on where you shop, but Seekek will always find the lowest available price and your tickets are backed by their 100% guarantee. So you can shop for tickets on Seekkekeek with confidence. And here's one way you can shop for them. You download the Seekek app, you go to the Settings tab. You click Add a promo code.

Enter the promo code S-O-U-P. That spells Soup. And Seek-Eak will send Puck Soup listeners a $20 rebate off their first Seek-Eak purchase. Again, download the app, Settings tab. Click Add a promo code. Enter the promo code, Soup. And Seek will send you a $20 rebate if you made your first ticket purchase. The playoffs are almost here, people.

important games, and you need to be there, and seekeek will get you there. Download the Seekek app today. End of the promo code soup. Enjoy the show. Now entering nerdist.com. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, eats and tools.

It's your weekly bowl of hoggy. nonsense. I'm Greg Wichenski of Yahoo Sports Puck Daddy blog. I'm Dave. And you're in Puck Soup. Now, occasionally in our line of work, Dave and I write things that are controversial. Now, usually it's angry kids in Canada working out there, what I assume is middle schools, computer lab. Wait, Columbus is in Canada?

That was going to be option B that are yelling at us about things we wrote or guys in Columbus or Trump supporters or in the last 24 hours for your boy it's been Bobby Ryan fans who are angry that I wrote a story about all of the Islamophobic

and anti-Muslim stuff he supported on his Twitter feed before the quote here I am flapping the air quotes like Rodan's wings in a Godzilla film. Quote, quote, unquote, negativity drove him off of Twitter. And then also the Canadians got mad at me for sticking up for the Carolina Hurricanes, who I don't believe should relocate just because they have shitty attendance, having missed the playoffs for seven years, being about nine points out of a playoff spot,

and it's a Tuesday against the Islanders, and there's a blizzard up and down the East Coast. They should probably relocate, though. You're terrible. You're a terrible American. Just saying. But sometimes we get feedback from people in the industry about the stuff that we write. Hold on.

I'm going to do the thing, in quotes, in the industry. Whoa, a Gail Force wind. In the industry, end quote. Regarding the things that we write. And so I wrote a post about the New Jersey Devils who are just warmed over dog shit this year as far as being a hockey team. team. Just a terrible team. And terrible to the point where they can't even lose, right?

Like, they picked the year where there is at best a great number two center available in the one or two spots of the draft. Whatever center they draft is probably better than their number one center now. I talked to a scout about the draft this year, and he said that either Nolan Patrick or Nico Hesher would be a really great number two

and a great team, but some shitty team will pick them and make them their number one. And that's exactly what's going to happen. Let's go devils. Let's go devils. So I wrote a piece about John Hines, who was a guy that I liked when I talked to him a few times over the last two years. But a guy who I think you need to fire probably to feel better about your team going in the next season. But you disagree. That team is bad for two reasons before John Hines.

One is Llamarillo, who just fucking took the train and just fucking stepped on the gas and just ran it off the fucking track. And then Ray Sherro, who I don't think is a good GM, I've said that a million times, but there's only so much he can do with the shit salary he was given. Even the shittiest teams can be better than the devils are, though. Like their possession numbers the last two years are god-awful. They don't score. They don't shoot. His offensive system, I believe, is shittier than when the devils didn't even try to score. Dude, their team last year was trotting out Jordan Tutu on the fucking.

power play. At least that in the act. Just, I don't going to get any quarrel from me that they're a bad team. But I think that you need, he's got it. He's not a good coach for this team. They're just going to stay terrible. I think that's your goal, great.

I think he's gotten more out of this team than anybody else. I completely disagree about that. This team is regressed. Yeah, because they. With Taylor Hall added to it. Yeah, but they traded their best defenseman to get him. And now they can't keep the puck out of their net because their defense is Their defense,

first of all, they play Ben Lovejoy 20 minutes tonight. I will not have you besmirched a good name of Andy Green. They traded their second best defenseman to get

Taylor Hall. Fair. Thank you. But still. Points. Points. Points. Is,

what was I going to say? Corey Schneider's having a bad year. He had a bad first half and he's continued to not play all that well. He gave up four goals. I completely agree. But that's the point is that

the only thing that can, that can spare this team from being as horrible as they are under John Heinz is, is Corey Schneider, as was the case last season. But who are they going to get?

Who's going to coach a team? Who's going to take this rag tag group of awful hockey players and turn them into... I'm going to guess some other fucking guy Ray used to work with. Right. Some other dude.

Probably coach the penguins finally. Dan Bilesma, ladies and gentlemen. Another guy you hate for doing for a reason. Dan would do himself well to just sit and collect some millions after he gets fired by the sabres because he's got that long-term deal. All right, listen. Point being is that I wrote a story.

You can agree or disagree with it. That's fine. But I wrote a story that was founded in fact. that used stats that was not hyperbolic despite the author and the byline that just kind of spelled out how bad this team was

and making the case that I think John Hines should pay for it with his job, although I don't think he will because he's raised buddy. Now, the feedback I received was interesting. I had a lot of Devils fans that were nodding in agreement.

A lot of Devils fans that were sort of saying, well, you know, it's not necessarily his fault, just much like what Lozo just said. And then I had one guy who reached out to me on email. And if I don't want to use this guy's name because I just don't want there to be any escalation over what we're going to do here. So I'll leave his name out of it.

But I will say that he has presented himself as a representative of several NHL coaches, including John Heinz. Including John Heinz. Okay. All right. So I gave this email to Lozo. The conversation begins how? on March 10th, 2017, at 735 p.m. So this guy, this was in his craw.

He didn't do this during normal business hours. All the email says is, please give me a call when you have a chance. I represent 10 NH, capital H, capital C, head coaches. Now, at this point, I say to myself, this could easily be someone trying to sell me solar panels. Like, I get these emails all the time. In your defense, this guy's job title and his signature is, I swear to God, this is his job title. Chief personal brander.

Yeah. This is, at this point I'm thinking to myself, this is a guy who has somehow entered into a contract with a toy company to make inflatable coaches that you can hug and give to your children. Like you get those emails all the time. You get those like, PR pitch emails where it's like, hey, I saw your story on blah. You'd be interested in talking to this expert on blah, blah, blah. And I'm just thinking, God, I just thought to myself how big that that Brudeau would be. Right.

They're flying above Macy's on Thanksgiving. Right, because this email, like, what was the subject on the email? I can't tell what that was. I don't remember. But anyway. But please give me a call when you have a chance. I represent 10 NHL and coaches is very innocuous, very just sort of like, hey, what's up? So Greg writes back, what's this regarding?

And here's where the fun starts. It's regarding your unfounded trash talking and slamming of my clients, plural. If you don't have any inside or corroborate. information about any NHL capital C coach. He writes like a lawyer who's doing a CBA, then please refrain from making stuff up. If you're a Homer NJ fan, quote, who likes alcohol, parentheses, per your Twitter headline. So right away, this guy has chief personal brander in his title and he doesn't know what a bio is. He calls it a Twitter headline.

So this guy's either 22 or 75. I can't tell you to go to 75. Perhaps you shouldn't be writing blogs when you're half in the bag about anything devil is related. Now, here's... And then he signs it. Thank you for your understanding. Yeah.

He called you an alcoholic drunk and then said, yeah. Thank you for your understanding. And, and also here, he changes his signature from chief personal brander to honorary lieutenant colonel Canadian Armed Forces Military Police Academy, which I take as a threat. Yes. It is clearly an indication that if you continue to harass my, my client's brand, you're going to get fucking shot. Totally different.

It's a, it's a three-part signature from where he works and his title there. and then he switched chief personal brander out for the fact that he owns a gun. Right, exactly. That's not an accident. To bring you into my world for a second, I do receive a lot of criticism, you know, in life from readers, and that's fine.

I do two things on Twitter. My avatar is Joel Hodgson, Crow, and Tom Servo for Mystery Science Theater 3,000. I do that as a tribute to my favorite show of all time. By the way, 20 classic episodes on Netflix you can watch right now. Very excited about that. Watched Puma Man this morning. But also I put it up there as the first rat trap, if you will, for people who have really nothing to offer rhetorically, who will then go after my looks and, unfortunately, sometimes my robot puppet friends.

So that's the first layer of, is this person I'm speaking with on social media an idiot? The second layer of it is the fact that I keep in my bio, the last line is, by the way, did I mention I love booze? because that is also a honeypot to catch the idiot flies that try to engage me in arguments because when they realize they have nothing to offer, they immediately click on my name, they go to the bio and they try to pick out something that they think they can throw at me. Your bio is basically like the thing in Indiana Jones where he has to get through all the stuff to get to the stone or whatever. Exactly. And nobody learns how to kneel and they get their heads chopped off. Or they don't know how to throw the pebbles in the middle of the chasm to find the,

Invisible Bridge, which, by the way, was a thing in an Indiana Jones movie, a fucking invisible bridge. Well, to be fair, that movie was all about like a 250-year-old man hiding with a grail at the end. All right, but granted, I went to CCD, okay, and I remember a lot of shit about the Bible. I didn't remember no of Invisible Bridge. What's CD? CCD was Sunday School. Did you have that way you grew up in Jersey? Yeah, but no, CCD was like school.

That wasn't Sunday school. Wasn't CCD like a Catholic school? No. That's what CCD was. No, it was like a Sunday thing. I definitely did Sunday school. I don't think we ever called it CCD. All right, fine.

I don't know. So Greg writes back to this guy. Just to make sure we're all on the same page. Any email we received to this account, this is the Puck Daddy blog account. Any email we received to this account is considered on the record unless otherwise requested. Thank you for your correspondence. So Greg's basically saying at this point, look, buddy, I could use this. Yeah.

Maybe you want to make twice. Maybe the best decision now with regards to your client would be not to continue down this path. Yes. To then make your client look bad. Because there's really nothing that distinguishes this guy who could be an agent or something from like some dude who's just mad that you said the Columbus food jackets aren't that good. Or a guy who built a fort with John Hines as kids in the backwoods of wherever the fuck USA. But it's from like a professional like website account type thing. So, all right.

So Greg says, this is on the record, just so you know. So he writes back, who are you anyway? This is after two emails to me. At this point, this is the third email he has sent to him after he has read his article and initiated the conversation. Although, you know what, to be fair, though, he is emailing the Puck Daddy blog account. So maybe, oh, no, you signed your email twice. Yeah, no, there's really no. And he went to my Twitter page.

Yes, yes. I'm pretty sure he knows who I am. Yeah. Who are you anyway? Which is also the best Twitter insult ever when someone sees a tweet that they don't like and they reply to you, who are you? Yeah, like when Jose Patista did it to Steve Simmons in Canada. Well, that was funny. That was great.

When like you're the guy who's actually the object of the criticism and then you come back, that's pretty good. At this point, the single worst email correspondence I ever had was with a guy named Gair Joyce, who's an author in Canada who writes about a lot of junior hockey. and I'll publish it in a book one day. It's great. It was when I first started Puck Daddy, and it got into this weird place of like, you know, I could take my dick out and slap more GMs with it

than you'll ever speak to or some shit like that. I mean, it was like that kind of conversation. Well, I mean, it was back when it was only like a 24 team league because then it's easier because like they're more concentrated and together. They're not spread out. I mean,

I don't know what the physics are. I imagine it's kind of like when a child runs past a banister or a picket fence and sticks, sticks his handout and just goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's more efficient that way. Okay, so who are you anyway? Anyone who's worth anything in the NHL would completely agree with my note to you.

There's no place for biased journalism in sport singular. That's all sports journalism is, by the way, is biased journalism. Yeah. Especially from someone who makes themselves publicly proud to share that they, quote, love alcohol. There we go again with it. And again, have a great day. That's how he signs it. Have it great.

It's like the guy who yelled at me about something I wrote about fighting. He basically said, you're a dumb fuck. You should change your name to dumb, dumbbozo. And it ends with like all the best. So it just occurs to me that a guy who puts it out there that he has military training and he's going after me for drinking alcohol, I'm pretty sure this is Elliot Ness. Oh, and also he changed his bio again now that I see it. Oh, okay.

Okay, so he went from, God, this guy said, oh, man. He went from Chief Personal Brander at his company to Honorary Lieutenant Colonel on one line, and then Canadian Armed Forces Military Police Academy on the second line. And then in this email, same thing, honorary lieutenant colonel, and then it says just Canadian Armed Forces. So I feel like he thought, like Police Academy makes it sound like he's Steve Guttenberg and he doesn't really know what he's doing. And then he just shortens it to Canadian Armed Forces.

So pretty sure the fourth email would have been Canadian Armed Forces, Canadian Mount of Police Parentheses I know Marines parentheses I can kill a man with a fork Graduated second of my class in sniper school Know exactly where your window is to your apartment All right so the bottom line here is that

Well I don't know what the What the point is I receive you anyway I received these emails and I said to myself Like In the world of public relations And dealing with PR people every day And dealing with communications

people every day. There's a certain finesse that I think is involved in that industry. And this guy felt like a bouncer. He felt like he was trying to. But like what is his end? Like you're going to read this email and be like, I got an email from this guy who's the chief personal brander of the Canadian military armed forces police academy. And you know what? Great job, devils. Right. Well, yeah. Like it's like if you dare, if you dare talk to my client again, about my client again like that. I'm going to send you yet another email that you can use for public consumption. And I'm going to really read your Twitter bio and take out things.

Yeah, like I'm okay with people that like don't drink because they have like, you know, issues with drinking. Like Bobby Yor that one time when I made a joke about how he did we never have to buy a beer in Canada. And he ended our interview because I didn't realize that alcohol is not something he ever dabbles in. But like does he not dabble in it because of like an addiction thing? I don't know if it was his own issues or if he just saw a lot of people that he loved, you know, fall down that hole. Bottom line is that I was able to recover the interview with the help of some of his handlers and apologize profusely for making a bad joke. But judging people who enjoy booze, like that's weird. You know what I mean?

Like that's, I don't know. Yeah. Well, anyway, so there's that email. I wanted to give you a peek behind the curtain as to what happens when I write controversial things. I would have to say, my friend, that was a bit of a close shave. You know what else gives you a close shave? What that what? Wait, wait, wait, Harry's? That's right.

What do you love most about shaving with Harry's? I'm gonna tell you what I love most about shaving with Harry's. I like the way the razor goes over my face and removes the hair. Well, I'll go one better. I like the closest to the shave. I like the feel of the razor in my hand. And I am a fan of all the accoutremon you get with Harry's as well. You know, I love the shaving cream they give you.

I think it feels real nice. I love all that other stuff they give you too This is the bottom line Harry's razors include everything you need for close comfortable shave And it's just for two bucks a blade Compare that to the four bucks or more you pay at the drugstore And I know that feeling Do you know where I used to have to go to get razors before Harry's

Uh, Fleet Street Costco I would get a giant tub of mayonnaise Oh, here we go with the mayonnaise And I would get a pair of pants for $3 but then I'd have to get a bunch of razors because whenever I would go to a drugstore, I would be stunned by how much it'd cost me.

But Harry's is not like that. Well, I mean, to be fair, if you're saving money on shaving cream by rubbing mayo over your face, you could probably skimp there. Yeah, and after all my mayo, though, I need more blades to get that position cut from my fourth chin. No, no, no, no.

You mix the mayo with your stubble into the egg salad and you serve at a barbecue. Oh, sounds delicious. Yeah. Five German engineered blades, lubricating strip, flex hinge for a comfortable glide, trimmer blade for hard to reach places.

I don't know about you, but that's like right where my nose meets my face is where the Harry's gets in there for me. I have a lot of trouble with those little stubbies in there. For me, it's when I have to lift up and get my leg like strip. Oh, sorry. Now here's the deal.

Harries is so confident in the quality of their blades they want you to try their most popular trial set for free when you sign up, you just pay a small shipping fee. It comes with a razor handle of your choice, five-blade cartridge and shaving gel. Love that job, by the way. To redeem your free trial offer, go to harries.com. I said backslash in a parody of the forward slash.

Harries.com slash that you would use in an internet address soup right now. It's harries.com slash soup. And you'll send you a free trial offer set with a small shipping fee. I use it. I like it a lot. It makes me feel very important when I get that box in the mail. And I open it up and there's Harry stuff in there. It feels like someone gives a shit about me, Loza.

Do you have some stuff you want to talk about? It feels like someone out there is thinking about my needs. A little lonely? I mean, we can talk about that because when I get mail, I feel like they just want me to give them money. Harries.com slash soup. Please go check it out. I highly recommend it. It's great stuff.

The Hart Trophy race is a giant cluster fuck at this point. Wrong. It's Connor McDavid. You know what? It's not going to be Connor McDavid if he doesn't win a scoring title. That's stupid. And if the oiler is finishing a wild card. I'm really concerned right now.

Why are we holding the oilers to some sort of standard where the wild card isn't good enough for a guy to win the... They're the fucking oilers. Because it's the perception of what? Of a strong finish versus a stumble of the finish. As you know, recency bias has always infected the heart trophy voting. I know it's a problem for you, but it's reality. It's a six-month season. How can people not keep a six-month window in their brain for more than two seconds?

Well, unless, that's how Corey Perry stole the fucking heart. That's how Corey Perry stole the heart. You're absolutely right. Because he had 20 goals and 21 games. And you know how Corey Perry stole my heart? Tell me how. For looking and acting like the bad boy from Grotty Kid, William Zabka. Williams.

Zabka? He doesn't look like that guy. He's a fair-haired asshole. Yeah, but he's like pale. Like Billy Zabka had like some color. He didn't. You're misremembering it. Are you thinking of Pat Morita?

No, no, no. Pat Marito was the guy that moved with Ralph Machio. No, that was his mom. Wait, where does Pat Marita? Pat Marita's Mr. Miyagi. Oh, I've never seen. Williams' badca is a fair-haired bad guy, just like Corey Perry. All right.

To me, the race right now is Sidney Crosby. Wrong. Connor McDavid. Correct. I'm not, this is in no order. And then who's the third guy right now? Is it still Brent Burns? Nope.

Or is it Brad Marshand? Nope. Who's the third guy? Connor McDavid. So it's Crosby. I like Kucheroff better for the third spot than any of those other. Well, I do too, but the problem is, and I don't know if you agree with this rule or not. They're only going to be a wild card.

You got to be in it to win it. If they make the playoffs, great. If they don't, his name is removed from the conversation, correct? Wrong. You think an MVP that doesn't make the playoffs should win the heart. Do you think an MVP? All right. I just, I know.

I just realized how I said that. I have to be your bowl. I can get a good look at Cindy Crosby by sticking my head up his ass I'd rather take his coach's word for it Do you think a player that is most valuable to his team Can still win the heart if his team doesn't make the playoffs I think if they barely miss you

I got it like okay Look at the other sports right now Okay Mike Trout Yeah you shouldn't have one That's baseball? That's a baseball guy All right I think he's from Jersey too isn't he Jersey The Angels were so fucking terrible

I don't care how good he was He shouldn't have won the MVP Should have been Mokey Betts Yeah the NBA Which is amazing because they have ghostly apparitions that help them to win games in the outfield. Yeah, but that was, Greg, that was, that's not happening now. That was 20 years ago. Doesn't that, really?

Oh, yeah. Are you trying to tell me Tony Dan does not have the team anymore? No. Hey, Angela. That's the Eagles. Oh, right. He was the guy that trained the donkey to kick the football. He was our first two sports star before Bill Jackson.

Okay. Lozo asked if I wanted to have a talk about MVP as in the show today, and I emailed it back and said, I was tired of talking about monkey movies And then we had a brief listing of all the greatest monkey movies It's Ed And by the way, the name you were trying to pull was Dunstanchecks in That's the monkey in the hotel movie

Stanza hotel monkey movies Now do you can't Because here's a thing like is any which way but loose A monkey movie or is that a Burt Reynolds movie with a monkey Or wait, I'm sorry, a Clint Eastwood movie with a monkey I could say it's neither of those things actually Um Yeah

If it's like a chimp orangutan I feel like you know You're, because thinking about it, Planet of the Apes is a monkey movie, and they have all the different genres. But is that a monkey movie? When I think of a monkey movie, I think of a funny, a funny monkey movie. He's got to be like running out. He's got to be running a hotel or something. Yeah, like fucking monkey shines.

The horror movie is not a monkey movie, but not a monkey movie. What about? Congo? Yes, monkey movie. hilarious. No. Lost in Space with the cartoon CGI monkey. That's not a monkey.

That's an alien. No, but isn't that like just like a, but still, it's a monkey. No, it's like, it's fucking Guardians of Galaxy rules. Like rocket raccoon is not actually raccoon. He's an alien. No, he's a raccoon that's a genetically enhanced raccoon, but he's not like an actual raccoon. But he was still a raccoon at the start of the genetic enhancing situation. That's still a raccoon.

I just realized Matt LeBlanc was in like two movies in three years that had a monkey in it. I finally figured out where Matt LeBlanc's career went off the rails. And had a monkey on friends. That guy, that guy's done the monkey trifecta. Monkey on TV. Monkey in a movie. CGI monkey. I thought the monkey

Transpector would be either you You win a Tony in a play with a monkey Or you do an album with a monkey So it's And you get your monkey EGAT You got television movie CGII So that's a twig

Neal Simon's the odd couple With Matt LeBlanc and Bubbles Remember those commercials back in the day When they were just monkeys Doing the famous movie scenes They were like they were like on TBS Right it was on either Yeah it was TBS

And it was like They would always use a banana for a gun Yeah It was amazing like Thalmond Louise and stuff. And it would like, they would, you know, I don't know if it was the peanut butter on the lip thing like they had a Mr. Ed, but they would always have the lips kind of moving. Oh, they were shot. Yeah.

Kind of like it would be, Jimmy Stewart. I'm a monkey. Those monkeys were treated very well, I'm sure. Mary. By the president of TBS. But, okay, recency bias. Recentcy bias. Ed Dunson checks in.

Congo. MVP, most valuable private, probably be the gold standard for monkey movies. there's probably there's probably a monkey sports movie for every single genre right right there's monkey movies and then movies with monkeys in them like trading places for example movie with a monkey in it oh so this is like becoming like a hockey like a hockey thing this hockey movies the movie yeah absolutely so was a tooth fairy a hockey movie yes see i would have said no why it's about hockey it's a tooth fairy movie with hockey in it it's about it's about it's about it's about but it's about a hockey player it's about a hockey player yeah like

their replacements is a football movie. Correct. The movie where Warren Beatty dies and comes back because he's a piece of football player. Not a football movie. Oh, all right. You might have sold me on that. The idea that it's not a hockey movie. It's more like heaven can wait.

It's the heaven can wait of tooth fairy movies. Right. This is a good podcast. It's fucking absurd. This is a really good podcast. So Cooch... But here's my problem with Coutheroff, right? Oh, the recency biased thing.

Russell Westbrook in Basketball lost Kevin Duran over the offseason is averaging a triple mother-effing double for the season. has that team single-handedly in a playoff spot and it seems like people have gotten bored of the idea that Russell Westbrook's going to win now it's like it's going to be LeBron why not LeBron why not James Harden here's my problem with a triple double for a season okay that's a great point here's my problem with Coutheroff we know what you know what Coutheroff's had down the stretch in these big games we score all these points what braiding point goalie you know what Jeff Carter's not had all season Jeff Carter if Jeff the Kings make the third-back If the Kings make the playoffs, Jeff Carter should be a heart trophy finalist. No one else in that team scores.

Kuturov's got all kinds of other guys scoring goals. But you just said they don't have a goalie. The Kings have the third best goals against average, but by the time Quick came back. That's defense. It's not goalie. It's the puck's not going to that. Jeff Carter.

Jeff Carter is a better heart candidate than Nikita Kuturov. Oh, my God. That's true. Why? Because he's white. Nikita Kuturov's Russian. Oh, I see. So the pro.

the pro-Canada guy. Once again, we're shitting on Russians around here in the National Hockey. Balkin's not top 100. Kuturoff's not top three. Ben Bishop and Vasiliski were terrible up until the last, like, month or so. And my point is that Vaselowski has played extraordinarily well at the same time Kuturov has had his best offensive stretch. Kutraultz, again, he hasn't built these numbers in the last two weeks. He's been doing this all year.

Yeah, he's not Brad Marshang. Oh. This is, this is, this is stupid. No one can remember anything that happened. Everyone's like, here's the thing. It's the fucking biggest cliche in hockey. Two points in October. The same is two points in April.

It's like, well, aren't two goals in October? Nope, nope, that's different. All right. It's all about closing strong. Well, it's not. Listen, one more awards thing before we get to our guest. Bradmore shit. Christ.

Who do you give the Vezna to you right now? Oh, God. Now, the finalists probably are going to be Babrovsky, Dubnick, and who? Holby? Probably Holpey. So do you give it to? He's got wins.

Do you think Dubnick's held on? Do you think Bob has caught him? Or do you think it'll come down to... Because here's the thing. It doesn't come down to the writers, this one. It comes down to the general managers. Those fucking dummies. And so who are the GMs going to look at and say, yeah, that guy?

And I think it's going to be Dubnick because you're going to end up with Brobrovsky and Holpe splitting the vote in the Eastern Conference. What's Barovsky's a percentage out? 929. He's like 929 and I think Dubnick at last check was like 931 somewhere in the neighborhood before I was heading into Wednesday night or Tuesday nights games. Oh that's

tough. I think I'd still go Dubnick but I'm open to Barbrowski winning it. Holpe Holti's been great but I think there's the perception he's not been because he's struggled a little bit here and there. I think it's a two horse race. It's more just in relation

to those two guys than like not being as good as he was last year. Wasn't it fucking crazy to think that like the capitals could I mean provided that they write the ship could win the president's trophy but won't have anybody that will be like the favorite to win their individual award

yeah they don't really have anybody trots won't win trots already ovi's having a non-o v season holpe is probably behind those other two guys backstrom might get into the final three he could get into the selky final three backstrom yeah maybe that's where you you do it but he's not going to be the favorite

not as long as petrease burseron is drawing breath on this on this beautiful earth that got created that guy who invented two-way hockey right all right our guest today is daniel barbariisi now you may not know the name but you may know the book it's called dueling with dueling with kings high stakes killer sharks and i was promised killer sharks that we never actually got to killer sharks fucking guy promise you bring it a goddamn tank of killer sharks it even bring his book and the get rich promise of daily fantasy sports. Now, Daily Fantasy Hockey is something that we know a lot of you guys play. It's super cool, super fun, and we get into some really interesting stuff with Daniel, or Dan, we call him Dan.

Daniel Barbarisi about Daily Fantasy and hockey. And the fact that he is, as you'll hear at the beginning of the interview, literally the spitting image of Jason Biggs from American Pie. The picture I got of him for the thing is he's very big zian in the photo. It's a good, it's a good Big Zangle. It's a real good chat. We know you're going to love it. When we come back, we'll talk more puck, including... Bracket time. It's March Madness. That means that everything that has a podcast or a pop culture hook has to have some sort of bracket.

I think illegally we can't say March Madness. Oh, I think that's like a trademark thing like Super Bowl. You know it's time for the big tournament. Right? Is that what you say instead? No, no. The big one is Mayhem. March Mayhem. March Mayhem. Which may be trademark two now that I think about it.

Yeah. March... Wait, wait. What did we... What did you end up thinking up? Hey, guys, you need a new television for the big game? God, it's the worst, isn't it? Do you need a television for the 63 games that will take place over the course of the next three weeks in the tournament that features college sports athletes playing with a round ball, putting it into a hoop? And come on down the Best Buy.

All right. Here's Dan. Dan Barbariisi is here. He is the author of Dueling with Kings, high stakes, killer sharks, and the get-rich promise of daily fantasy sports. But more importantly, he's a spitting image of Jason Biggs, as we found out in the other room. I should tell you that as soon as we left the other room here at Yahoo, we were talking about how Sean William Scott was on the podcast, and there were two boys that were working in the sports department

that were convinced that we were talking to Jason fucking Biggs today. Oh, were there really? But it was not Jason Biggs. It is Dan with the fantasy sportsbook. But have you ever used your resemblance for nefarious purposes? Oh, like a hundred times. You don't know his stories? No, tell me one.

Oh, they go way back. So in the late 90s, you know, kind of pre-internet times, we would go out early 2000s, late 90s, go out to bars and people would be like, are you Jason Biggs? And, of course, all my friends would say, yes, he is. And girls would love it. And guys would, like, buy me drinks. And so I'd memorize, like, two or three basic facts about him.

So, like, you know, because then nobody knew to get. There were those smartphones. It didn't matter. So, you know, I knew he was from New Jersey. I knew he was a Giants fan. And that was really enough to kind of be off to the races there. So, and then one time at Yankee Stadium, I think we were seniors in high school. Basically, they ended up putting me on the Jumbotron because a couple kids came by.

And they were like, are you Jason Biggs? And my friend was like, yes, he is. And they're like, can we get an autograph? So I start signing autographs, and a bunch of kids show up, and it turns into a line of, like, you know, 10 or whatever. And I'm making this autograph up as I go. It was probably totally inconsistent. And then it actually gets put on the screen for a little while. And I assume that people thought it was actually Jason Biggs there signing autographs.

I cannot confirm that in any way, shape, or form. But how did you sign it, though, like with a squiggle so it's not to be overtly counterfeit? I was basically trying to do the most obscure, you know, signature. I think there was a J in there. I think there was a B in there, but beyond that, it was, you know, it could have been like Charger Banks for all I now. It was not the best autograph. Don't fucking apple pie.

Jason. Exactly. It was that kind of thing. When we were in Columbus for the draft one year, I was hanging out with the guys in the fourth period magazine. And one of their boys, uh, bared a dark room dim light resemblance to Roberta Luongo. And so that was our, our key. Because no one in Columbus, no one in Columbus looks like that. Swarthy.

Yeah. And so we used that as our skeleton key to every party. And Blue Jackets fans were super uninformed. Well, this was, when they had the draft, it was like 07 or something like that. So it was early in their incubation period. They don't know anything about hockey. But he would just like smile and, you know, occasionally he got like, what's it like being a goalie? It's like, oh, it's tough.

Got all these bucks flying at you. I don't know what to tell you. Are you familiar with the butterfly? Because I am. It got us into the vodka and models party where the Russians were. So I mean. All you need it then. Yeah, exactly. It's all you need in life. All right. All you needed in life, sir, was daily fantasy, apparently. Let's talk about this for a second because one of the things that I found amusing about you promoting this book was that the New York Post basically fucked you fucked you

and they said you quit your job to play daily fantasy where that is not exactly the most accurate depiction of what you did. No, so yeah, I was the Wall Street Journal's Yankee Beat writer for years, you know, flying around the country with the team, all that jazz. And then I discovered the whole daily fantasy thing and I was like, whoa, there is a book here. There's a crazy story here. I got to get into this. thing and like totally delve into it and tell the whole story of it and get inside it. And I was like, all right, what's the best way to do that? I got to become one of these pros and become one of the players. Okay. Well, I can't do that while still being an active sports writer at the Wall Street Journal.

So I said, can I get a book leave? And they were like, no, we can't let you write a book about like professional gamblers and being an average gambler while being an active sports writer. I was like, all right, well, if I have to quit my job to write the book, I will quit my job to write the book. But it's not gambling, right? It's a skill game. Full disclosure.

Yahoo Sports does have a daily fantasy game and we know how they call a gambling Northskill. Yeah, I don't know how I can go down that road with the Yahoo thing, but of course it's a form of betting. Come on. Yeah, I... Obviously. I offer no dog in this race as far as like what.

And I was going to say a dog in this fight, but then I thought about Michael Vic. Just a dog in this race. So I'll just go like, I don't have a Greyhound in this. Oh, that's a Greyhound race. I don't have a drunken Chinese man on a tricycle. Well, no, that doesn't work. because of revenge in the...

Should I just run away from this right now? Is it... I offer no insight onto Yahoo or Daily Fantasy. But like... No, but the gambling skill thing is hilarious, though. I mean, it's like poker. It's not a lottery. It's not random.

I mean, if you're good at this, you will win over the guys who are bad at this over time every time. But are you going to necessarily... It's like, again, it's like poker. Are you going to win every hand? No. Are you going to win every night

of playing Daily Fantasy? No, even if you're the best in the world. But over time, you will be much better than the guys who are bad at it. By a magnitude of... It's not a... It's not a scratch-off ticket, but then it's not also... No, it's not a guaranteed result.

It's not a bunch of guys playing Magic the Gathering either. It's clearly some form of gambling. Right, yes, absolutely. So how do you get good at it? Because I'm curious as someone who may or may not have participated in online daily fantasy at times. So when I started doing it, I was a baseball writer. And I thought that being great at baseball, you know, knowing a true experts-level

knowledge of baseball was going to make me good at daily fantasy baseball. That was the absolute opposite. sucked so bad. And basically it was because I was not following the math of it, not looking at it as a kind of essentially a game, and I was looking at it as a sports game, and it's really a math game. And instead, when I started to become good was when my mentor, this guy beat by

Majib, who's awesome, Canadian, not surprisingly, he said, I want you to start from scratch. Let's make you great at Daily Fantasy hockey. And I was like, what are you talking about? I know nothing about hockey, as I was just just saying, my hockey knowledge begins and ends of the 94 Rangers. And he's like, any dickhead he'd be a knowledgeable guy about hockey. Well, he did say, he's like, you know what?

Listen to this podcast I found. He was basically like, it's not that hard because the competition in hockey is way less than in baseball, and there aren't that many good stats available. Right. And so he's like, so the variance is much higher. And he's like, I think I can make you grade at it. And it's actually good that you don't come in with any preconceived notions like you did with baseball.

So then he started training me intensely, you know, I was flying up to, you know, Kitchener, Ontario. What's the training like? Are you like shirtless? Oh, totally. There's totally a montage scene in the book, by the way. I do actually reference that song specifically. Nothing's going to ever keep a coursing down. Joe Esposito, right? Joe the Bean?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I would train with him. He would go over my stuff. We were sitting in big Archie Bunker recliners next to each other, like, drafting things, and he's like, no, you're screwing up. It's the other Nash. You don't want Riley Nash.

I'd be like, oh, okay. And I was like, why are there so many brothers in hockey? What the hell? I love the fact that he, at one point, he's looking at an entire hockey reference page while pulling a plow through the Canadian snow to put on fire. Oh yeah, any Rocky references gold, I mean, man.

But yeah, but it really was like training. And so I would, you know, be losing money and just sucking at it. And he would be telling me like, no, your lineups are getting better. You're starting to understand this. In terms of what makes you better, it's understanding game theory and correlation and how to stack lineups and that kind of stuff. What did you, what was your nut to start with as far as like how much money you were going to commit to doing this? I was going to commit to as much as it would take to tell the story. And I really hoped it was not going to do.

be 20, 30, 40,000 in the hole because you guys know my wife, and she was not having been very happy with that. And she was pretty freaked out about the whole thing to begin with. I was like, sweetie, I'm going to go quit my job, become a professional gambler, and write a book about it. She just, like, puts her hands on her knees, like, yeah, pretty much. Although I have to admit that dueling with hand jobs for money is a bit of a poetic title if you got around to that part.

She definitely would have not liked that one. How far in the hole did you get before it turned around? The worst I actually got down was $6,600 before I turned it around. But believe me, at that time, like, that'd have been like six months of consistent losing. And I was then starting to even bet more and, like, going down into the whole deeper because BEEP, my mentor was like, no, I believe you're getting better at this. Start betting more. And I was like, are you? I can curse here, right?

Yeah, I was like, are you fucking nuts? Like, can't you see I suck at this? And he was like, no, I actually believe you're good and it's going to turn around. And like, clockwork, it suddenly started to it. And like, all of a sudden I was good. And it was like, how did this happen? It was kind of crazy, actually. The lesson was you just needed to believe in yourself the way he believed in you.

You know, it wasn't that far off. I know the lesson was that eventually the percentage is even out and you stop losing and start winning and you just have to know when that happens. All right, math nerd. I'm getting into the spiritual side of online gambling. He actually was like super spiritual though. He was like, you know, the more you believe in yourself,

the more you'll trust your picks. You need to, it was really some like Yoda, like unlearn what you have learned kind of shit. What was it like waxing his cars? You know what? I mean, I don't think he has a car? I don't know he does. He has a Jeep.

Of course, he has a blue jeep. I totally would have done it. When they make this a movie, Will Tilda Swinton play him or is that going to be kind of actually we were talking about the other day with some guys it's totally Michael Sarah Is that what he looked like? Oh yeah and it's kind of the demeanor like he has that kind of like

quirky little bit off kind of demeanor So as we go think of Michael Sarah teaching Jason Biggs yeah pretty much How to play Daily fantasy sports and you gotta see who's gonna play Emily that's a good question too so Oh and Hathaway oh okay I mean come on Am I wrong on that I was kind of going with the Allison Williams thing but uh... No I like his better

yeah yeah we just dye your hair black and then yeah or brown Also, I mean, as far as, like, what the budget of this movie would be, I think Allison Williams might be more up your alley than trying to get an Oscar winner. Allison Williams. Hey, she's pretty good, man. And her brother, actually, I believe, works the S network. So I used to be a, you know, who are you talking about? Oh, I thought you were talking about the flute girl from.

Oh, Allison Hanigan? Hanigan, I thought you said. Oh, I mean, we couldn't do a whole reunion of a marriage. You guys have the stuff. No, that's another girl from girls. Yeah, oh, oh, Alice and Janie. Oh, my God. What, she's great.

She is an excellent actress. There's something beautiful about your mind going to mom when the show is girls. But he hates girls with every fiber of his being, so it's not surprised. Yeah, I kind of get crap for the old times. The times I have watched it for my wife. Sidelines. I just not like it very much. I only hate it because it's bad.

That's the only reason. That is the thing. All right. So what did you, specifically from a hockey perspective, what did you discover about it? And how did, to steal those, this question, how did you get good at it? Well, I mean, first of all, I discovered that, like, whoa, Hockey's kind of amazing. And, like, I became, like, the biggest fan of it.

Hold on, I'm reading this down. Hockey is kind of. Yeah. No, I became totally obsessed. So, like, I'd start, you know, my, like, line-up betting process at, like, 3.30, right? So I'm building lineups for, like, four hours. I'm going through every kind of random stat, you know, all kinds of, like, stuff on Corsica and all this way. You know, let me, let me dial it back for a second.

For those who haven't played Daily Fantasy, the gist of it versus traditional fantasy is that you're trying to build the best lineup to give you the best stats. but are you also trying to beat a pool of other people or anybody in particular? I would be a tournament player. So I would play in these big tournaments where, you know, the first prize gets a bunch of money. You know, it could be $5,000, it could be $200,000,000, $200,000,000, $3,000 other guys. And you're trying to get into that really small percentage at the top. Right. So I remember during the giant hunk and scandal in Daily Fantasy, the whole gist of it was that you're trying to set your lineup in a way where you're going to have an

advantage over other people because they're not going to pick the same players. You're trying to pick players that they're not picking. You're trying to pick their whole contrarian plays. Okay. So the most obvious players are called the chalk, which is an old-time gambling term. And an old-time horse racing tournament. Yes, in fact, yes. Something I learned along the way, I wish I'd learned a little sooner.

But the contrarian players are where you can really make your money in a tournament. And so Beep, who mentored me, was a very contrarian player and a real student of game theory and that kind of stuff. And so he basically said, like, you need to figure out who are going to be the secondary or tertiary plays, the ones that are good but are not going to be obvious to everyone else. And that seems easy to do, but it's not, because your mind gravitates to the most obvious stuff in a major way. And you almost have to train yourself to say, I am not going to do the thing that I know is the best thing. I am going to do the thing that is the third best thing,

and I will then hope that the first and probably second best things fail. So in the percentage of time that, like, they don't happen, that the most, you know, the first thing, let's say, for example, that 45% of people have Sagan that day. That makes him, because he's such an obvious good play and he's going to be shooting a lot and he's going to score or whatever. It may be that you actually really don't want him at all and you want, like, say, Derek Stepan, because he might be in a great spot that day too, but just not a lot of people are going to be on him. So when the 45% of people who have Sagan get a bad night out of him, you know, when he gets a couple shots and doesn't score, their teams are in a much worse position than you are.

And let's say that you and the 5% of people who have step on suddenly surge to the top. So if you're not going to win like that every night, in fact, you're going to win a much smaller percent of the time. Let's say two days out of every seven, maybe three out of every seven. But when you do, you really do much better. Yeah, you win bigger at the top of those contests. And that's where the money is, is at the absolute peak spots in those contests, the top 10, the top five. So you win one of those, you make up for a lot of days of losing. And that's the strategy that he basically taught me to play.

It's different than what it would be called cash games where you're kind of going head to head against one player. I never really did that. I mean, I did it enough, but that wasn't my bread and butter, shall we say. So are you looking at, like, the thing I would like to do is, like, at 2 o'clock, I check out all the line combinations for the night. And, like, say, like, it was like Taves, Kane and, like, Richard Panic.

Sure. And Panics, like, $2,500. Right. Like, is that, like, is that a good guy to grab in your mind? Well, it is, but it might also be a chalky play. Yeah. It might be the situation where everyone knows that because it's an obvious one. It's like, oh, of course panic's good.

And so what I would do for these terms, I line stack. You know, I'm going to play all three guys and then probably put them with a defenseman too. So if Kane scores, panic may get the assist. You know, I mean, Seabrook may get the assist if he's the defenseman I have paired with that trio. And a lot of other people would play single guys or dual guy, you know, double guys, pairings. But what Beep taught me to do was put as many guys together as possible because you want to exploit scoring situations and exploit scoring lines rather than individuals. How did you handle goalies? There's some correlation effects there, too, if you like to put them with an offense that you believe is going to score well.

But, I mean, with goalies, it's a lot of things like looking at quality of shots. Like, you know, for instance, a goalie that goes against the Bruins. The Bruins take an incredible number of shots. Many of them are bad shots. And so that guy's going to get a lot of saves. Now, sometimes he's going to get lit up. But if you believe in the goalie and his defense and the ability to protect him, then you want to be against a team that's shooting a lot because he's going to rack up a lot of points for saves. And then you hopefully get the win.

A lot of people go with trying to get the cheapest goalies. I don't necessarily do that. But there's a lot of different ways to do that. Goleys are an area that there's a lot of debate over within that world. How about how bad he wants it? Like if he really wants to do well, how do you, is that a stat? You know, I mean, I think there's something to that. Isn't really?

I was just fucking. No, no, no, no, no. But no, no, no. This man's a genius. You park your shit. Listen to this man. He lost $7,000. We don't know how much he won.

Well, you do, actually. You can figure that out pretty easily. But, no, look, do I think that there is something to narrative. You know, I think there is something to teams that really have a reason for whatever time to push for a win. They are going to play harder sometimes. I think there are things where you can tease that out, where you can say, oh, you know, a team is tired out at the end of a long road trip. They just can't wait to get home. They're, you know, they're probably going to half mail it in on this night or a team that's coming off.

You know, the bi-week effects, that kind of stuff. That stuff matters. You know, whether he wants it more, no. But are there things that are not simply in the stats that I think you can tease out usable information from? I absolutely do. See, with your smart-ass questions, you're getting good answers there. I'm so confused right now. It's going to get so yelled at by the QWERC.

Yesterday, I watch this video about counting cards from one of the MIT guys. I'm talking to Dan about online gambling. All I want to do is, like, light my money on fire gambling. You want to bring down the house. I want to bring down the house. You want to bring down the house and you want to duel with kings. I want to go online right now and enter like a five. $40 tournament for tonight's hockey games.

Dude, let's do it. All right. You were telling us before we started recording that you, you, uh, you broke the house in hockey. You're like hockey champion in the world. Well, I try not to give too much away because, you know, it's going to go out I know, I know, I don't want to give the ending away. But yeah, so it was over time.

Him and Ben Affleck actually opened the casino offshore. Is that right? Yeah, and it turned out that Ben Affleck was a bad, bad dude. Yeah, and he got, he got pinched by the feds. Yeah. Yeah. And now Dan's on a run. So it wasn't that demon, it was the good one all along.

Oh, man. It was so weird when he opened up that Oreo cookie and listened to it as well. And then the guy from the Avengers gets Justin Timberlake on his knees. And then it turns out Kevin Spacey was stealing money from him the entire time. I mean, it was a really nice penthouse, but I mean, what a dick, right? You haven't seen Runner or Runner, have you? I have seen Runner. I was going to the fucking 21.

Yeah, I thought we were on the 21 thing there. We were skipping around. We went from Runner Runner Runner to Rounder, to 21, but you stayed on Runner Runner Runner for some fucking reason. You stayed on the movie at least the least people have seen. Everyone's seen Runner Runner. Why? Because of HBO? Because it's just a great movie.

We have such limited time with this, man. Why are we doing this? Tell your story about hiring a million. Okay, anyway. So, because of Beep, so they have these things were live finals. That's the ones you see on the TV commercials where all the top players get together and it was wearing sports jerseys. Yeah, you know? I didn't realize that that was. Right, that's how they sold it. They're like, this guy won our

bidillion dollar prize. And that's where the guy's holding up the check and he gets the belt and all that. Wild Wings, right? I thought it was like a party for the winner. I didn't realize they were actually playing there. So everybody, they fly every, if you have to qualify for these things, it's really hard to qualify for them. Like, the way I won my way when I was do like this $1,000 like entry and 21 man qualify,

maybe it was 24 man. And you, you know, the first person gets the seat to the thing, like an impoker tournament, everyone else gets dick. So like, it's really hard to even get into these things. People throw tons of money at just trying to qualify. And then once, yeah. Is it a bunch of guys sitting around a table and you're all wearing those reflective of recal eye glasses from Spencer's.

No, no, it's actually pretty funny. Like, everybody comes in, like, hockey jerseys from, like, old school stuff. That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Yeah, and, like, and basically, so you draft your teams during the day, and these are, like, basically the best of the best who you're doing battle with, and you spend, you know, all day or two drafting your teams, and then that night, like, it all locks, and you can't change anything anymore, and everybody's... Oh, so, you can't change to, like, a 10 o'clock guy.

No, for those, they disable the late swap, as they call it, they disable it, so that everybody just sits there, and, you know, you get in a big ballroom, and there's the boo is flowing and all the games around all the screens all around and everybody's in their little like clotches and you have your allies and your enemies kind of and everybody's going nuts all around the room when different things are happening in all the games and the scores are changing constantly and it's actually pretty crazy so i brought amy to this last year and she was like running my like command center and she's like update me she's like you got a shot and go from this guy you know you got an assist here and so um it was pretty crazy and so i had three seats and uh a couple other people

did too. Like, that gets kind of esoteric. We only did get that part. But so there's, you know, there's 40 people. I had a, I was, you know, just a guy. I didn't even know what I was doing three months ago. And then I end up kind of going to this thing and, you know, I don't want to get too much. I want to. I end up doing pretty darn well with the help of Kevin Chattonkirk, actually. You got to wear the power glove and play Super Mario 3. You're pretty much correct. That was the wizard. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, that was actually seen the movie more times than I should probably admit. But, you know, Fred Savage, cool guy. What do that room smell like?

Like nachos and farts? Just like 30. Oh, 30. I mean, there was like 100 dudes. Yeah, I can just imagine. Because everyone's got guests and like... Yeah. And actually more women there than you think coming along as like girlfriends and stuff. But like, which I really don't expect.

They're farting too, probably. I mean, might as well. They do fart, don't they? Weird. I've heard that. You've heard that. Like, literally heard it? Because I think that's the issue is that...

I think we all know that women fart, but I don't think that we actually hear it. They have a real SBD kind of thing. Yeah. I think they do it in bed once we're sleeping. You don't hear it, but you have to listen. That's right, like Jimmy. Listen, is Daily Fantasy a bit of a sausage fest? Duh.

It's like 90-something percent dudes. It's like guys from 20 to 40 basically. 45. It can go up to there, you know, but yeah, it's like brotastic, man. It's completely that. It's an absolute sausage fest. This is going to come out next week, but we're actually interviewing him on International Women's Day. Right.

Oh, yeah, God. The most bro-iest bro thing to ever bro. It really is. What did you learn about the industry in doing this book? Okay, I learned that initially, and so I tried to kind of weave my story in with the story of the industry, to explain for people who were like, what the hell was this thing that had all those, like, commercials and was, like, maybe scandalized or maybe on the level or what. So what I learned?

Back at 1835, you ever die a fan duel. And then his evil cousin had a run. They ruined it on a horse. Exactly. And Paul Rubeu. But no, I wanted to tell the story of this thing and just do it from the inside. And so, you know, what I learned was certainly at that time when it was all crazy and scandalized, there was a ton of shit that was wrong with it in terms of like they let employees play on the other sites,

which is an obvious thing to you should have fixed a while ago. The thing I really had a problem with, some extent, was that they were so focused on growth and on beating the other company. You know, Fandle wanted to eat Draft Kings. Draftings wanted to eat Fandle that they didn't really worry about the fact that the playing field had gotten really uneven. and the best players were able to leverage their advantage in a way that was really ruinous to the common guy. And, you know, the average dude sees these commercials, which are everywhere, and it's like,

you can get rich quick just by knowing basically two things about football. It's like, if you have a fantasy football team, you will be a millionaire next week. And it was like, well, no, it's not that. If you have a fantasy football team, you will show up, and one of the really good sharks will probably take your money. And that's okay if you know that going in, but when you don't know that going in, it's presented like, this is super easy, you'll be fine. And the reality is that, like, you know, at the time, very, very few people are winning. It's a little better now.

They've actually done some good stuff to really help it get better. But, you know, that was under a lot of outside pressure. So at the time, the playing field was really uneven. The best players were able to leverage their advantage in a really, you know, not good way. And there were a lot of things about the companies themselves that needed to be changed. And, you know, thanks to the regulatory pressure and investigations by the Attorney General and all that stuff, a lot of it did get changed. But, you know, and that happened over the kind of the time that I was inside this world.

And so I was experiencing that stuff. And, by the way, it is also not a coincidence that when I started to get good at this is when all those changes started to take hold. I think that is like, I think a big part of it. Like the multi-entry limits came down by a lot. And all of a sudden, like, you couldn't just flood big contests with hundreds and hundreds of entries. And not coincidentally, I suddenly start getting way better. Right. So, you know, with my like three or four lineups.

Yeah. It's like writing a book about Vegas and winning big in Vegas the week that they decided to take. tell all the dealers to stop fucking cheating. Pretty much. All pushes go to the player. It's like, oh, okay, this is a better environment now. So this is better to win now. And so, yeah, I mean, I think they've actually done a good job of leveling it a lot more now.

But when I got into it, it was like, what the hell, man? And that's part of why I wanted to write the book because I was like, there's a lot of stuff here that people need to be talking about. And it turned out that it got fixed before I got the book out, but that's good in the end. But, yeah, a lot of that was there. You think Aaron Sorkin writes this movie? You can call me anyway. I feel like it's we've already done the cast right yeah we have the cast we just got to get director we get sorkin who directed Steve Jobs we get him uh the guy from slumdog Danny Boyle Danny Boyle

yeah Danny Boyle to do it mm-hmm Michael Fastbender as Jason Biggs as yeah as Tim and you cast us as like one of like the the the sharks in San Diego like no no no we would be the we would be in the room with the I want to be in the room too but we would be like the fucking radio talk show hosts they're like no oh oh like Daily fantasy. What is this thing? What is this scourge on society? Oh, I was thinking we're more like, what's their faces from pitch perfect to do the thing.

Oh, you mean we're what's your face and what's his face? Elizabeth, what's her face? Banks and the guy you look like. And the guy I look like. The dude who played Letterman and the Letterman in the late shift, who's also the gay brother in the breakup. Oh, 1,000 years ago? Yeah. He's like three names.

John Michael Higgins. John Michael Higgins. Oh, okay. I got this. I get fat, fat tofu grace, I get skinny Pat and Oswald. Oh, yes. Wow, that was right there. Holy shit, that was right on.

The Rosetta Stone there. Damn Arisi, it needs to go. Damarisi is, of course, the author of dueling with Kings, high-stakes, killer sharks, and get-rich promise of Daily Fantasy Sports. It is a bestseller, we should say on Amazon as we do this interview, and I'm sure it will remain so as he continues to tour of the world and do all these things. Boy, you got a gay to lease and a Jason Gay. Yep.

Blurb. There's a lot of... I can't even make the joke here. It's almost too easy. But yeah, no, Gay Talese was actually awesome. I mean, he's obviously a legend to people in our neck of the woods. And I met him a few years ago when he was working on a story about the Yankees and Joe Gerardi and kind of helped him out with some of his Yankees stuff. And he ended up, you know, reading my stuff over the years.

And when I wanted to ask someone, he said, I'd love to read your book. write nice things. I was like, whoa, gate to leave. That's pretty amazing. Well, congratulations in the book. It is, as we do this podcast, number one, in books greater than sign humor and entertainment, greater than sign puzzles and games, which means that you're beating Sudoku books. Oh, yeah. You're beating word

searches. You are kicking ass and taking names. It's all because of Dan Shaughnessy. Oh, totally. It was great, actually. He makes a brief cameo in the book as well. And actually, I'll be on the I qualified for this year's hockey final as well, which happens in like a week or two, March 18th down in Miami. So, we'll see if I can do okay again.

You know, again, Kevin Chattankirk helped me win the last one. Oh, did I say that? But yeah, help me, you know. Play hard in the last one. Play well and do okay in the last one. He actually makes a cameo in the book, too. I was just Jack Eichel.

There's some interesting hockey player scenes in it. Before you go, I don't know you've got to go, but do you want to tell everybody your name on drafters? Oh, yeah, it's Pimpot love. Pimpot love. And the whole story of how that happened is explained in the book, but that has been my name on most websites and stuff like that. Was that a Conan reference?

Oh, yeah. In like the late 90s. I was like the biggest fan. of that ever and like every time Pimpot would come on he'd be like going in I got you bitch and I'd be like oh my god this is the greatest thing it ever happened was that because masturbating bear was taken um ooh it probably too long believe it or not masturbating beer is a lot more letters than Pimpot love m baiting bear yeah oh maybe I should have done that you know if I could do it again if you can do it all over again you don't have to tell me how many letters masturbating bears it's the same reason I don't

have it in my license plate uh Dan thanks for joining us bud oh guys thank you so much for having me I appreciate it sweet thanks to Dan brilliant Dan. Pimp love bot. Pimp love bot. 69? Wait. Is it 69th?

We recorded that interview a week ago, so it's not entirely fresh of my mind. It's Pimp bot. Pimpot love? Pimpot love? Yeah. Oh, yeah, because it was Pimpot and Conan, yeah. Pimpot love. I want to just go in there now and, like, dump some money in there and find out which tournament he's in.

Yeah. I want to take him on. I would be in the year to the... you my handle. I would take him on. I would beat him as another Conan reference. Another dated Conan reference. You can just get a bunch of Conan references into like a room for a special like 10 teen tournament. The am baiting bear. You're like Andy,

Richter, what are you doing here? And I felt better to do. I'm just on Twitter all day anyway, just manually retweeting. Now, Dave and I are once again arguing like like the petty children that we are. No, you are. About the word boycott. No, you are. I contend that the women's national hockey team, the U.S. Women's National Hockey team, is boycotting the AAHF World Championship until their financial demands are met. But you, sir, contend, it's not a boycott because of wiggle room? Because they're threatening to boycott.

Like, the event's not happening now. They're threatening to when the event happens, they won't play in it. So it's a threat of a boycott. Threat of a boycott. Like, you can't boycott something that's not happening. happening yet. Of course you can. You're going to say, I intend to boycott this thing.

Intend to, correct. Right. They're not boycotting it yet. Like, this is a way for them to get what they want, which is a good move. But because they're apparently not getting it in private, so they're using this to get public pressure on USA hockey, which is a good move. But they're not boycotting yet. We will not be playing in the 2017 WIHF Women's World Championship of

Fremitton, Michigan, unless significant progress is made in the year-long negotiations with USA Hockey or Fair Wages and Nickwoodville support. So if I say I'm boycotting SNL until they stop doing Trump jokes. that's not a boycott. No, it is because SNL is a weekly thing every week. The World Championships, what's the date of the World Championships? They start on March 31st. Right.

So if on March 31st they're not playing in them, then they are boycotting. So it's a threat of a boycott that then hatches like a Pokemon egg after you've walked five kilometers and becomes a boycott. Right. Like let's say SNL, I don't get their reference at all. I just stop listening. But like, all right, SNL, like say you were really mad about Baron Trump jokes and you were like, I am boycotting. S&L. I am boycotting Fox Sports.

Right. I'm sorry. That is so inside. But you're not actually boycotting it until 11.30 on Saturday or 11 on whatever it starts the fucking show. Then you're boycotting it. You turn your TV off and you don't put on NBC. That is when the boycott's taking place.

Up until then it could change where they do something. Pre-boycott. It's like an adolescent boycott. It's a it's just a way to put pressure on USA hockey. Beautiful smooth adolescent boycott. Boy, are you okay today? I mean, it's fine. All right.

So listen, I don't know about you, but I'm team women, U.S. women's national hockey team. Oh, really? You're not team greedy sports organization. I'm not, I'm not greedy, ham-fisted, can't put together a men's national team to worth a damn. Yeah, fuck that. USA hockey. I am not team, oh, we're going to let a national reporter into all of our meetings and then

feign surprise any reports on how the team was put together USA hockey. Yeah, I'm never going to be it. USA hockey, it's funny, because they put out a statement, too, and you realize when you read their statement and their argument for why they're doing what they're doing, they sound both like a professional sports league negotiating with players for a CBA and like the NCAA about why they shouldn't have to pay the players. We give them housing and food allowances. You're making millions of dollars off of these people.

The payment is going to class. The payment is the experience you get traveling in the world. I wrote from inside my gold mansion. Right. Oh, my God. And the number in there, $85,000. It's like they could make that with gold medals and stuff. Let's get into it here.

That's not. The women claim two basic things that the USA hockey is not fulfilling the requirements of the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act. What is that? Well, it's an act that allows national federations to use Olympic iconography as long as these federations. are doing the things that they need to do to be equitable to women's sports, to grow their sports, and that sort of thing. So, for example, when the U.S. women's soccer team had beef with the U.S. Soccer Federation. I'm hungry now. The Ted Stevens Act says that the U.S. Soccer Federation has to provide equitable support and encouragement for participation by women where separate programs from

and female athletes are conducted on national basis, and that, you know, furthermore, the women's national team is entitled to equitable support and encouragement in every aspect. So equitable. Equitable. That's the word. So the first thing is, is USA hockey fulfilling the obligations of this act, and what does equitable mean? Does equitable mean that the women should get as much money as the men? Well, no, because you're dealing with professional hockey.

hockey players going to the Olympics, for example, and professional hockey players going to world championships, and you have to pay for, say, like, extra security, for example, for these players. That's just a fact of life. Yeah, but you still got to do that for the women. Right. But they don't need as much. Yeah, but...

Right. They still need it. Okay. Of course they do. That's the point. Greg, why are you so sexist? I am not being sexist. I'm saying, you know, what is equitable?

You know what corner I'm in here. Equitable means, first of all, whatever equitable means, it means more than what they're getting now. Yes, it does. Like, whatever the, whatever you want that to boil down to, like, what they're getting now is ridiculous. And here's equitable because I think you know as as you learn more about USA hockey's relationship with this women's national team which by the way should be pointed out actually fucking wins stuff compared to the

men who don't win at worlds who didn't even meddle in Sochi literally didn't win anything at the World Cup literally didn't win at the World Cup what oh in whatever three okay so they don't win anything and the women while while admittedly having trouble beating Canada hit it up to that god damn it Jesus, it was wide open. Fucking Canada. They win stuff. Here's a basic fact.

When USA hockey unveiled the jerseys for Sochi, okay? What the jerseys are going to look like for Sochi. The women weren't invited to stand on the stages with the men. And like, it comes down to simple shit like that where it's not even a thing. Like putting Hillary Knight in a Jersey and having her stand next to a men's player, that's a simple thing you need to do in order to make it equitable to the women's team. And it's a pretty good indicator of where they are mentally, probably with the overall aspects of women. And I said this this morning and I'll say it again.

Like, I've covered two Olympics. At no point did I ever feel like I was covering Team USA. I was covering the men's team over here and then this other thing happening way over here. It was never a case of like, we're all going for gold. We're all trying to beat Canada. It was completely separate. It never felt like they were in the same... Separate.

The same organization. But not equal. Not equal, exactly. So it's the little things that matter and they're not doing little things. Now, as Lozo noted, USA Hockey has put out their statement about the women's statement. This came out as we're doing the show here. A lot of bullshit in that statement. And part of the statement goes like this.

The support USA hockey is implementing in order to prepare the women's national team for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. includes a six-month training camp, additional support stipends, and incentives from medals that could result in each player receiving nearly $85,000 in cash over the Olympic training performance period. Now, $85,000 over a six-month period,

but also, like... That's if they win gold, which they don't do. Incentives from medals! Right. Yeah, I know. That's not how it works. Can you imagine if you got paid at your job

only if you were the best at it? Like, listen, we're going to pay you 85K a year. That's great. Well, it's only if you're the employee of the year. Well, what do I get? if I'm not. I like 4K. But like, you're trying to prove that you're, that you're fulfilling the financial obligation to these athletes, and you're doing it in a way that people do when they're hiring

advertising executives. Like fucking hit your numbers and your salary could be X. If you don't, though, your salary is going to be Y. Your salary's going to be why the fuck am I getting so much little money compared to everybody else is what it's going to be. This sum is in addition to a housing allowance. Well, congratulations. They don't have, they don't have to go ask their, their,

their former roommate at Dartmouth to see if they can crash on their couch while they're at Olympic training camp. This letter checks all the boxes of what a bullshit organization would stay and they don't want to pay somebody. Travel allowances, meal expenses, medical and disability insurance, and the infrastructure that includes elite level support staff to train and prepare the players. Elite level support staff. Thank you for not hiring a junkie to, you know, sharpen their skates. It's like Jimmy Dugan rolls in there. I totally hung over to start the season. I don't got hockey players.

I've got girls. We can't beat Canada. There's no crying in hockey. They actually hired a real coach who wasn't hung over and scratching his balls. Great job. Oh, yeah, by the way, they don't have a coach right now. USA is true. USA hockey is invested in the growth.

Actually, they might have one now, but they didn't, like, a month ago. USA hockey is invested in the growth and development of girls and women at every level of play. As a matter of fact, USA hockey has grown in participation in girls and women's hockey. from just more than 23,000 players in 1998, 1998. 1998. To more than 73,000 20 years later. To more than 73,020 years later. Mm-hmm.

Fantastic. But like I don't get how like that's a that's a feather in their cap as a I think it's really I think it's super impressive that they have they have girls and women's hockey. So girls and women's. women, so every woman in the United States is eligible to be part of this total. And they've added 50,000 in 20 years. The current participation rate for girls playing field hockey in National Federation of

State High School Associations. So this isn't even like private schools, is 60,000. So there are more girls playing field hockey in high school than there are women of any age playing ice hockey in the United States. I thought the women's ice hockey number was 70-something. Oh, wait, no, 70-something, sorry. So that's 10,000 less. Right, fewer.

A math major. Like, no, I'm not. Less than fewer. But, wait, so, but, but, like, that's different high school field hockey compared to the high level. My point is that the numbers are not anything to crow about. Like, if you're, if you're just going to sit here and be like, yeah, that we've done a hell of a job growing the grassroots,

and you've added 50,000 people in 20 years in the United fucking States. Yeah, but I think, but like I see it the other way. I see that number as being really good, and I see it that number is that way because of the players and because of all the success they've had and all the things they've done on television and how, like, they've grown, I gotta hate that term,

but they've grown the game. Like, I think that's a pretty good, again, this is like the seventh most popular sport in fucking in the U.S., you're asking women to play it, which there aren't. starting in 1998, like how many role models were there for women to go out and want to play hockey. And now they're up to three times that basically.

I think that's good. And it's the players that did it. And I'll say it should be better. And I'll say it's not better because of a lack of investment from USA hockey and a lack of representation on the part of USA hockey and everything else that the players are arguing. How many dudes, how many boys and men? I don't know. Don't tell you. Also, they don't tell you what the additional support stipends and incentives for medals are for men either.

Well, yeah. It's because fucking... It's going to be astronomical. Well, Kevin Shankirk doesn't need the 85K that comes with a gold medal. Like, you know what I mean? You don't think there's an incentive. Wait, you don't think that the men have incentives for winning gold from USA hockey that they don't get paid for it?

You think they're doing charity work for two and a half weeks? What do you think they get? I think they get more than the women? But like, ballpark me a number here. I never really thought of like a U.S. You never thought that the men get prize money for winning in the Olympics? I just thought it was the honor of representing your country in a beautiful goal. Oh, I'm sorry, Pauliana.

It's the gold medal that has the value. Of course. Now you're a fucking college athletic department guy. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's the honor of playing for Notre Dame, sir, not the... But I figure you get paid for representing, and it is what it is. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you don't get a bonus for...

You totally get a bonus for winning a gold medal. Hold on. I started typing in Kevin Chattankirk because I was talking about Kevin Schenker. So this is an interesting battle. It should be familiar, like I said earlier, to anyone who followed the U.S. women's soccer team versus the U.S. Soccer Federation. And I give the players so much credit because if, in fact, they don't participate in worlds, they are obviously risking their chance to win gold again, as they've done in seven out of the

last nine tournaments and worlds. And they're risking not participating in a tournament on American ice, which means that in some ways they're going to be called hypocritical for saying, hey, USA hockey, you don't grow the sport. Oh, by the way, we're not participating in a tournament in the United States. That could be very high visibility. So I get that, too. But you got to stay on your ground.

So according to this, see, it just says players. I don't know if it's men and women or if it's just men, and now my screen just went black. Uh-oh. I got to get a new phone. You really do. Oh, by the way, Rangers Sabre is likely to play 2018 NHL Winter Classic. at City Field. According to David Lennon and Arthur Staple of Newsday.

Kill me. Okay, so they had players, players, players, total players in 9798, 401,218. This is men? It just says total players. This is USA Hockey Registration, total players. I searched men. But like, let's say that's the men. 400,000.

And the most recent report they have is 2014. So let's say that's the men. at 400,000, you said? Yeah. This is great. People love when we do math on the show. 400,000, okay, minus, let's just say minus 2300. All right?

And currently, by my math, that's 377,000 men's players. But, like, just say that's the number. Currently, it's 500, the most recent one, 1415, it's 533,172. So that's an increase of 130,000 people total over the course of 20 years. a little less than 20 years. So, like, if that, if half of that's women, considering where they were starting from, like, that's, that, again, that, to me,

that's another example of why they, you seem pretty proud of the work that USA hockey son of the grassroots. I don't credit that to USA hockey. You don't? That to the players. Players, like, USA hockey, yeah, it's parts together, I guess.

Oh, my God, the realization that the people that you started out bashing are now the ones you're defending. Oh, fuck them. I just, my concern is just, like, this feels like desperation and it's not going to work. You mean as far as the women threatening this boycott? Like, to me, like, they must have already threatened it quietly to them, and they were like, L-O-L, G-F-Y. And now they're like, well, let's put public pressure on them. So now, if this doesn't work, like, what do they do next?

They're like, T-B-H, we'd like more money. And they're like... They're like T-T-Y-O. And they're like, the men. get paid a.F. I just don't think it's going to work. D.YK, we don't get paid all that much. FYI.

Hashtag sexism. Hashtag blessed. And the thing is, is they have so much leverage to me because they're not getting paid really anything. So, like, they can go without this money and it won't make a big difference. It's not like an NHL strike where you're losing millions of dollars. It hurts the USA hockey more than it hurts them. but at the same

and also there's basically USA and Canada like there's a suite in Finland but like everyone was going to want to watch USA Canada you take away US you destroy the whole tournament so they have all the leverage and it just feels like they're not going to win based on this being a public thing at this point yeah

and I also think that like in the defense take the other side for a second whatever the other side might be classic Wischinski there is a little bit difference as far as like the number of people that would fill a stadium to watch a women's soccer match versus the number of people that would fill, you know, an arena in Pittsburgh, let's say,

to watch a women's national team match against Canada. But that said, it doesn't mean, it still doesn't mean you don't do it. I think that's part of their argument is too. Is that like, what do you mean, you still run the game in Pittsburgh or you still run the game in Buffalo. Like, like you put it in, even though you can't sell out the NHL arena maybe for a women's hockey game, you do it anyway, because it's going to get more people in there. I wonder if they've already sold it already if they're two weeks away from that no I just mean in general I mean I mean that's one of the arguments the players are making is that like you know USA hockey has told them well we have to put you in this bingo hall because you can't fill an NHL arena you know that

kind of thing that's not true that's what they said I mean again it's like the world juniors too it's like USA plays Canada if it's in Canada Sweden plays Finland I mean you were there for the World Cup yeah no one's no one's no one's filling well that's because you know it was an afternoon Dave and everybody in Toronto works Dave and be fair they can't get off for the World Cup Dave I'm kind of with those people yeah shut off even though they say my name

like that that's kind of Dave Dave Dave All right so back in the women go Hillary Night go go go Lamaroos go everybody Go get some money go go get yours and USA hockey Congratulations on providing Travel allowances meal expenses Medical and Disability Insurance

Congratulations on your release explaining that you do the basic things that an organization needs to do for its talent. This is funny. I was watching ESPN the other day because they're doing like a bracket thing. And one of the questions was like, what's your favorite NCAA tournament memory? And it was like Carol Lawson and Rebecca Lobo and it was Jay Billis, who's the oldest person at the thing.

And his favorite memory was the first time they went on the road with Duke for the tournament and they stayed in a motel. And he was like, yeah, that's right. 20 years ago, they were sticking us in motels for the NCAA tournament. And now, today, 20 years later, everyone stays. their first class hotel the combinations are much better and like you have to fight to get that shit and this is basically the they're basically the women's team right now is basically in that j billis zone where they're like we deserve more shit because we're super awesome and we're just as good as

the men better than the men relatively so give us give us more stuff we deserve it we earned it speaking at brackets that's a good segue listen everybody knows that as a pop culture podcast and sports podcast we are obligated to give you a bracket. We didn't want to, but we have to. The mayor stopped by today and said, you guys are recording a podcast today? Yes, well, where's your bracket? We're like, we got it.

Right. Part of the Ted Stevens Amateur Athletics Act is you have to treat the men, then women like the men, and also pop culture podcasts have to provide a bracket. No choice. No choice. No choice. So the number one seed is going to be the McFlurry.

Number two seeds of frost. Oh, we'll get to that in a second. Now, we were trying to figure out what Brackley wanted to do, and we came up with one that Dave and I both, but gave us both pretty big hockey boners. And that is, of course, March mute this, the tournament of hockey commentators. Yes.

16 of the voices that you hear in your head. That you wish you could probably get out, but there's no psychiatrist in the world that's trained that way. Some voices in your head make you want to kill, and some voices in your head make you want to kill yourself. They make you want to just open up that oven. When you hear Doc and Eddie, you kind of black out for a second and you wake up and you're in your oven. You're like, wait! Oh, my God.

Mute the game. Now, when you say oven, do you mean the conventional oven, convection oven? Or do you mean the oven that the government uses to spy on people? We're all going to die. It was the best. It was the best thing ever. on TV. It does not even connected to the internet.

Yeah, so basically I can't. I am fully down with the idea that the government can use any device that is connected to the internet to spy on you. I'm fully down with that idea. Sure, they do. Yeah, absolutely. Microwave oven. Microwave oven is as connected to the internet as this fucking pen I'm holding and now

dropped for effect. Wait, why would you drop that pen? If it's not that heavy and doesn't have a camera in it, why would you not be able to hold that? Makes you think, Don't it. Tournament of Hockey Commentators. By the time you hear this podcast, this bracket will be in your hands on the PuckSoup podcast, Twitter feed, on the Reddit. Yeah, we'll do a new one where people can actually read the words that I wrote. You should see Greg Wichinsky's handwriting.

We'll tweet out the one I wrote as well, so you can really get a sense of what we're dealing with here. Let me just take a quick look at that before we start. Let me see how many of these I could actually probably. Now, for those of you who don't know, I don't hold the pen correctly. When I was a child, my mom got me the little plastic hood ads that you put at the end of the pen in order to hold it correctly. And you know what I did with those? I chewed them like gum. And that's why chemicals got into my brain and made me the way I am today.

Like, I know all these because we talked about them, but the 16th seat, I don't remember. And it looks like, ooh, Arthur. Yes, right, from the canteen in Star Wars. My writing is the suggestion of words that you already know. Did you take notes in college on a computer? Because, like, there's no way you could have possibly got back to your dorm and studied your notes if they looked like that. You were supposed to take notes in college. Wait, oh, really?

Shit. I explained so much. Yeah. All right. Who are you anyway? 16 team elimination tournament. We're going to go through these things real quick. Pierre McGuire is the one seed, obviously.

Top seed. Number one unanimous seat. Couldn't find another way to get anybody else in there. Number 16 in our bracket, the 116 matchup, Bob Costas. Now, you suggested Bob Costas as being a part of this. He's sort of tangentially related to hockey, but I think enough of a hockey presence here in the States. Outdoor games?

That he should be in there. Yeah. I think it's, yeah. He's like football, too. Like, he shows up at halftime of the Sunday night games. He's footballish as well. He is a hockey. He's a hockey commentator.

I have a feeling. this is going to be a trouncing. Although I don't, you know, as much as I don't like Pierre, I do feel like there's a large contingent of people who don't like Bob Costas. The venom for Pierre is on, like, you can tweet out an opinion about somebody. And it doesn't matter how steeped in fact or evidence it is, you'll get someone who's like, oh, but he's just mixing it up. Oh, that's just what he, nobody defends Pierre McGuire on Twitter. Right. Nobody.

You're right. There isn't a Pierre apologist Brigade Like once a year Somebody would be like oh He just loves the game That's it And it's probably him

And by the game we mean the sound of his own voice Dachan seriously Oh my god Did you watch Chicago Minnesota game on Saturday Or something? I did not I put it on Holy fuck

This was just the worst Fucking 10 minutes of my fucking weekend I put it on at the start Because I'm like I will not watch an NBC game Unless it's like a really good game In Chicago Minnesota fits that fits that uh fits that whatever and Chicago the anthem wait the best thing in sports I'm

like not watching 20,000 assholes scream over the anthem for two minutes so I turn it off come back on 17 minutes to go Patrick Keynes already scored it's one nothing Minnesota here are here's the shit that happened between the 17 minute mark and the seven minute mark yeah Panarin scores this crazy crazy goal from like the top just inside the blue line like an Vetchkin-esque goal. Doc is talking about scratches in the game over that goal. He's not even calling the other. He's like, oh, he's going to be sitting out that I score!

So you got that. Like, Doc can't pay attention to the fucking game. Yeah, one guy talking about junior hockey, one guy talking about fucking horses, and one guy just, Pittsburgh, scratch it. Oh, what a goal! You know who used to scratch himself was Michael LaValleier, catcher for the pirates. Great. It's an unwatchable broadcast, so that happens.

About a minute later, Doc misidentified. Eric Stahl is Zach Porese, which it happens sometimes. I mean, they say hockey is a game of inches. In this case, it's about a foot. It's a huge difference between Eric Stahl and Zach Porese. So there's that. There's that part of the broadcast.

And then a third thing was, I believe he was talking about Eric Stahl. Doc went off on a tangent about how Eric Stahl at the 2003 World Juniors, 14 motherfucking years ago, this high school hockey tournament, he was cut from the team. He's like, oh, you think they regret that back then, Doc and Eddie? No, they

stopped thinking about that. Two weeks after they cut him. It's been 14 years. Nobody cares. And then on top of that, Erkstall scores like a minute later to make it two to one. And 10 seconds before that, I want to say it was Charlie Coyle fed Brent Seabrook his stick, put it right in his mouth. Seabrook goes down. There's no call. They score 20 seconds later. NBC doesn't show a fucking replay of that stick to the face at all. It's a huge part of the game. The Blackhawks won anyway, but any other sports broadcast would show you the high stick that was missed. But NBC is so pro-NHL pro referees that I think they just refused to show a really bad miss call. And I turned it off right after that. I was like, that's it. I made it through

10 minutes of a hockey game on NBC this weekend. Wow. Pierre anyways. So Pierre is a one seed. Pierre is a one seed. Doc Emric and Eddie Olcheck are in our eight, nine game for the right to play the winner of Pierre and Bob. Now, this is an interesting one. one for me because I as you can listen to on this very podcast every week, Doc Emmerich is divisive. I love Doc. People love Doc. And you don't.

I think Doc should have retired about seven years ago. I think the game has gotten too fast for him, which is a problem with a lot of these announcers that are up there in age. I've noticed like the TSN old guy too is really. In like a lion and out like a lamb. Madness sets in the munch of March, but also mute this. The March mute this tournament. And while you were talking, Artemi Panarin just scored his third goal of the game, and you missed it because you're telling a story about an NHL birthday that day.

Is there any chance that Eddie Olcheck could beat Doc? I would imagine I have to beat people that really fucking hate hearing about horses. Yeah, I feel like there's enough Doc love where I think Eddie might pull that one out. Okay. I don't mind Eddie either too much, but I feel... Oh, we should probably set the parameter on this. Are we talking about the people that you like or the people that you don't like in this tournament? Oh, I thought we were picking the winner is the ass.

I was like Pierre's a one seed, so... Yeah, so it'd be the people you don't like. So you think there's a chance that more people don't like Eddie. If I had to guess, I would say, yeah. Interesting. I think that would be close. I think my picks, Doc, but I'd be interested to see how that works out. I thought you love Doc.

I do, but I think that a lot of people don't. Oh, your pick to... Okay. This is why we really need to set the parameters. Just go online and click the vote button. Nobody cares. All right. Don Cherry is a four seed against Gene Principae, a 13 seed.

Now, why Jean Principay is a 13 seed? Donald Trump winning the election is not funny. Him building a wall and throwing people out of the country and not letting citizens in isn't funny. So when you go on TV during your broadcast and put a Trump mask on and say, Cam Talbot's the wall! Get it? The wall! Go fuck yourself, Gene.

Oh! No, I already did this on Twitter. He blocked me. Oh, he blah. I didn't directly tell him to go fuck himself. I think Dimitri, Philopovic, he tweeted a screenshot of it, and then I quote, tweeted it and just go fuck yourself and then I found out like a week later he got you got you box so solid but you know he's up against Don Cherry

That's again another divisive sort of love him or hate him kind of a thing So I don't know yeah I know I feel like my gene hate is pretty much just me I think I think that the interesting thing about Cherry is to see if there are enough Canadians that will support him winning this tournament of horrible hockey voices right Because I think there's a lot of Canadians that genuinely love him as a national treasure And so you have to vote for that the guy you like the least in this matchup. And I feel like, like, Gene, I feel like Canadians find Gene funny.

I understand that. Yeah. If you like Austin Matthews, you should vote Don Cherry through because he is team Mitch Martin. He's the guy that will eventually make Austin Matthews leave Canada. Now, see, the Nielanders, the guy who's going to go. Seriously, like, he's going to be the Phil Kessel in like two or three years. Like, he doesn't play defense, and he's the reason why they lost and didn't make the playoffs.

He's a 2016-17. He's Canadian, but not really. He's a fake Canadian. The 5-12 game is John Bucchagrosse of ESPN against Barry Melrose of ESPN. Now, you're not a Boucheross fan. I think I'm a little bit more of a fan than you are. I have a little bit of that ye old NHL-2-night nostalgia

that you don't have. But, oh, we should have put Oberman on here. No, we should have to it. But the interesting thing that I find in this matchup would be whether, it comes down to this. Break it down for me.

Do you hate words like Selly and salad in your hockey and do you hate overly enthusiastic coverage of college hockey? Or do you hate fuddy-duty old men who maybe write their notes in a cocktail napkin and then just get wheeled

out of a closet once every few months to talk about hockey on ESPN. What Chris Martin is to Cole play, Alex Oveccian is to the Washington Capitals. That's a no-brainer for it. Oh, yeah. Indeed. All right. Number two seed, Mike Milbury against number 15 seed, the old guy who fills in for Liam McHugh. You know who it is.

You know who we're talking about. Liam McHugh is obviously never going to make this tournament. He's a great guy, although it does other podcasts and not ours. But Mike Milbury, a two-seat against the old guy who fills in for Liam. I imagine this is going to be a walk for Milbury. Yeah, this is, like, Milbury could have been a one-seat at a different year. He's like Duke is the two this year in the NCAA tournament where you thought, wow, I thought Milberry would get a one. Tough year.

Tough to climb ahead of Pierre. So that's going to be, that's probably going to be a whooping. Darren Drager of TSN, a seventh seed against Jeff O'Neill, the O'Dog. The O-Dog. A 10 seed. Now, admittedly Lozo is not familiar with the comedic styling of Jeff O'Neill. He's like, I would say you're like your older brother who gives a lot of wedgies and nuggies against a refined gentleman who just wants to break some trades and drink a nice glass of Merlot, give him the chance. Do whatever the Leaves tell me to do.

Make my backyard rink, create a nice little trade rumor, probably involving the Leafs, and then sit back with a beautiful glass of Merlot. Is William Neander fitting in here? I don't know. Just tell me. All right. We get it. So that's the winner that will go up against Mike Millbury. Number six-seated Jack Edwards at Nesson against number 11-seated Keith Jones of NBC Sportsnet and also CSN-Filly.

This is one that I'm interested in. I don't know if there's a lot of despising of Keith Jones. Probably not. But I know that there's a lot of despising of Jack Edwards. But also Jack Edwards, I think, is our one non-true national guy in the list. We have another non-true national guy coming up. But he's definitely one of the few. As I said to you before the show, the moment in which Jack Edwards went into that spiel about Patriots Day and the Bruins being the halves and doing the...

200 years ago today, a group of rag-tag farmers somehow rose up and overcame the tyranny of the... That thing... Even Jim Manses and rehearsed the shit that much slayed me. Oh, God. And it continues to slay me. And then, of course, the, uh, this maniacal laugh when, like, Roman Hammerlick got hit in that game. And he goes like, ha, ha, stay down. He's a maniac.

And I love him for that. Like, like, I've heard him do a play-by-play on fights where he just loses his mind. I know. He's just, he's a, he thinks he's like fucking Larry Merchant. I don't think he's well. I kind of worry about Jack. And our final matchup in the bracket, Jeremy Ronick of NBC. S.N a three seed behind Pierre and Milbury, but ahead of Don Cherry, against...

Now, which Stigerwald is the Stigerwald? Paul, right? It's Paul, right? That does the Pittsburgh? It's Paul Stigerwald, right? That does the Pittsburgh game. So he's our 14 seed. The homer of all homers, a homer who makes Jack Edwards look like a politic fact by comparison. Who's worse, though? Him or Bob Erie? I feel like Bobby. I think Stigerwald's worse. I think Bob Berry's worse.

So Stigerwald's your 14th, seat against running. Again, this tournament will be in your hands when the podcast comes out. Voting will commence on the Puck Soup podcast. Twitter feed, I imagine is where we'll set it up. Yeah, and off we go. So congratulations to all who made the tournament cut, and best of luck to the most loathsome commentator in hockey in March mute this. And now for the 24 people that made the NIT version of our tournament. Kevin Weeks.

We love Kevin Weeks. He didn't win his conference tournament, so he didn't get in. All right. So that's the tournament. It's now time for the show, part of the show where we dip into the puck soup mailbag for various and sundry things. Yeah, we got some stuff today. So the first one that I want to ask you. Go ahead.

Which one did you like? Well, I'll tell you which one I liked. It'd be this one. From Andrew Dojack. Who would catch more fish? Dave Lozo or Greg Wichinsky on just like a normal day of fish. Have you ever been fishing? I...

First of all, I'm not good on boats. Oh, is that what it is? It's a problem for me. So I'm going to win by virtue of the fact that you can't keep your cookies down. It was like two years after college, and like five of us got on my friend's dad's boat to go out to the Atlantic, do a little fishing. And I wasn't hung over the next day.

The night before we kind of went out, but I was fine the next morning. We got out to the ocean, and I threw up in ways that I never had ever thrown up my life ever. Like I just, it was just stuff. The, the absolute bottom of my stomach was coming out. And eventually it was my friend Rick, too, was the same way. So like four of us stayed above, or four of them stayed above and fished for five hours. And me and my friend Rick basically snuggled on a one person dead for five hours passed out below deck. Got back to the deck, got back,

this is the part I remember the most. The throwing up and then getting back to the pier, like you know how you get off the boat and the boat still feels like it's rocking under you? Yeah. Yeah. I had to lay down on the pier for like five minutes because I was afraid I was going to fall down on the walk back to the house. So I just lay down on the pier until it stopped for five minutes. It was like five hours later. I still could not, so I can't go on boats. So, okay, so the answer is unless Lozo can projectile vomit like a bullfrog's tongue.

Oh, like chum it up in there. And whip it out and catch a fish and drag it back to his own mouth. Not going to happen. I'm pretty sure I'm going to catch more fish on the boat. Yeah, I can't. I just, a big boat maybe. If it was like a big charter, I could maybe do some damage. But like on a tiny little boat, I might.

I'm good for 20 minutes, and then I got to throw up seven times. Matt Doak wants to know how much pay-per-view pornography have you put on the hotel bill during your travels? Well, here's the thing, Matt. Tell them about the internet, Greg. Yeah, the internet exists. Paper-view porn, I'm like, I mean, Jesus, right? Is this question from 1990? I know.

How many of those magazines and plain brown rapists do you guys buy at the grocery store? What are you doing to eat the pages from getting stuck together? What? The answer is none. None pornography. In fact, I don't even buy movies in a hotel room, I don't think. I have never once purchased a movie or anything in a hotel room. I don't think like to video games.

There's like video games sometimes too. Never done that. I will say that like I do love to spend as much time in the hotel room as I can. Not as much as Leahy who fucking basically never leaves the hotel room. But like I enjoy the experience of being in a hotel room. It makes me feel. fancy. It makes me feel more important than I actually am. I feel pampered because you take a shower and there are people that... I guess me, I don't think I feel special. This goes back to the conversation earlier about Harry's. I like people sending me things in the mail to make me feel good and I like being in a hotel room because it feels like they actually give a shit about me.

Wow. I know. We're really getting some deep issues today. Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like feeling back the layers of this onion. Tell me about your childhood, Greg. Well, Dave, um, when they would let me out of the closet. When they took me out of the cage to clean it after I pooped in it all day long. It was weird going to college and still breastfeeding. What? Sorry? Is that out loud? That's normal.

Brett Bodner wants to know, what do you guys think of the rumored Rangers Sabres' Winter Classic at City Field? Shouldn't the aisles be there if it's at City? No, I mean, it's basically the NHL is saying, finally, to the Buffalo Sabres. Hey, remember that first winter classic you held on a whim? Thanks for that. Here's another one for you. Like, it's like, it's a give back, what, 10 years in the making?

Oh, shit, is that why they're doing it? Was 2008 the first winter classic or was at 09? I want to say it was 08. 2008. I want to say it was a 7-8 season. I think that's probably, is that your, yeah, there you go. That's all you need to know. 10th anniversary.

This league loves anniversaries. than more than oxygen. Wait, and where are they doing it? They're doing at City Field against the Rangers. It's the 10th anniversary, Winter Classic, get Buffalo in there. They were in the first one. Do it at City Field in New York. Big time. Bigley.

I was just looking at the questions. You asked the two that I like the most, so I don't really have any specific ones that I'd like to get to. Captain Celery wants to know, would you like to have fans singing at games, a la European soccer? No, because when they do it at like MLS games and stuff, I always feel like it's counterfeit. Like we're, what's the word I'm looking for? Not provocating. No, you know, when you borrow someone else's culture and make it yours.

Appropriating someone else's culture, thank you. Do you want to hear songs being sung at hockey games? I've heard people do that at baseball games. I've never heard it at any football. baseball I think I'm for it yeah you like that you like the yeah I like that you like that you like that you want some of that yeah yeah you know you do yeah I like singing I if singing your places the fucking horn in Pittsburgh that apparently they got there now and the one in DC I'd rather I'd rather hear singing songs coming through my TV as opposed to oh caps go all right real quick we should

touch on this, because by the time we get to it next week, it'll be way too old. It's already old already. The ringer came out with their list of the top 50 fast food items. Oh yeah, I forgot you wanted to do this. We don't have time to really get into it. I will tell you that the top ten real briefly, 10, bacon cheeseburger, five guys, nine, McFlurry at McDonald's,

eight, Frosty at Wendy, seven Blizzard at Dale, your queen, six curly fries at Arbyes, five chicken sandwich, Chick-fil-A, four chicken Popeyes, three fries at McDonald's, two, double in and out, one waffle fries, chick-fil-a. Full disclosure, my wife works to the ring. Now here's a thing.

Yeah, she's a McFlurry person, right? My problem with this list is that you cannot have fries as your number one in a fast food item thing. A number one needs to be a thing where you are craving it to the point where you will get in your car. Yeah, no one craved out of your mind wearing like a pair of athletic shorts and snow boots. And you need to go to the place and get it. And no one's doing that for waffle fries. No. Right.

You might do it for a double double. Where are the waffle fries from? From Chick-fil-A. They're really good, and they're great for picking up condiment, as you know, is my big thing about anything, any food. Like, they're really good for, like, you slam it down and the barbecue sauce, the barbecue sauce goes through all the little holes. Yeah, it's great. But, like, waffle fries are waffle fries. Like, there's no real difference between waffle fries.

You know what I mean? Yeah, but they're the only one that does it. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the issue. Like, I'd rather, I mean, I'd rather have an onion ring than a while. Like, again, like you said, those are the side stuff. Like, that's not, like, when I'm hungry for something, I'm like, ooh, I want to get, like chicken strips at Popeyes are like, oh, I want to get a gordita, a Taco Bell.

I'm never like McDonald's fries. I eat like as good as they are. Right. And the McFlurry is fucking terrible. Like, Flurry is not a top 10 fast food thing. That's my biggest problem in this list. Oh, it's so bad. The Blizzard, the blizzard.

The Ringer, as you know, has a lot of writers that I think are probably in the millennial age bracket. And they're West Coast people too. And they're West Coast people. So now you have young people that like desserts and young people that live in California and want something that's like ice cream because it's hot as balls. Wait, is that a millennial thing where they just go out?

They're like, hey, you want to go to McDonald's? And you're like, yeah, sure. I have to imagine. Anybody who puts a McFlurie, a Frosty, or a Blizzard, over a bacon cheeseburger or the spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A or the fucking cheesy gordita crunch, which should be top five.

That ended up being like 40 or something. It's number 15. Oh, is it? Like, again, I don't understand why dessert items are in the top 10. I don't understand why dessert. items are on this list. Yeah.

I never go to a fast food place. Well, a blizzard is a different thing. Dairy Queen's a fucking ice cream shop. But I'm never going to Wendy's and being like, I got to get me a Frosty. I've done that, I think, with a Frosty. I might do that, but then I look at that menu and get a baconator instead. Yeah, like, fast food places aren't really snack places. There are places you go when you're really hungry and it's right there and you want to just fill

your body with tasty garbage. And a McFlurry. Dude, I worked at the NHL for six years, and there's a McDonald's right across the street from 1185, and it's just so tempting every day. And they got the rollo McFlurry going, and I fucking love rollo. That's interesting. It was the grossest fucking thing I've ever put in my body. It was just like the ice cream was all melted and flavorless and, like, watery, and the Rolos were like rock hard, and they weren't. They didn't even taste like Rolos.

Like, it's the last dessert. I would get the, I would get a Burger King Apple Pie. I would get a Frosty. I would get a blizzard. I get a chaco taco, there's so many better desserts than McFlurry. Chaco taco. Is that a thing?

Cinnamon taco? Any dessert at Taco Bell is garbage. It's just, it's one of those. That's the other thing about desserts. Like, and I always have this fight with Ruby about, like,

how to structure a meal. I'm an appetizer and entree guy. I can picture like that. I'm an appetizer and entree guy, and she is a appetizer and or entree, but definitely dessert girl. Like, I've,

I've probably had dessert after a meal of any kind of, fast food, nice restaurant, whatever, 0.5% of the time. She loves dessert. Like, I would rather have more sides. That becomes an issue. So there will be times we'll go to a restaurant. We'll get two appetizers in preparation for the dessert she wants.

Because she's got a sweet tooth. Wait, so, like, you're, like, a good team, though. Like, you anchor the food at the start. You're just sitting there shoving, like, mozzarella sticks and calamari on your face. Then you team up for dinner. And then, like, while you're exploding, she's just kindly. But that's the thing is that sometimes. it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes it's like we have an amazing meal and then it's like she gets a dessert menu and it's like fucking key lime pie or some shit and she's like oh, I'm going to have that. And I'm like no, we've had a meal. We've had all the good things that we want and now we don't have to have any more of it. But then we eat it because like we split it or whatever. Well, why don't you do this? Like get your appi, get your meals and then for dessert. Your appi meal. You'll have a little toy with it. Like you can have mozzarella sticks for dessert. Listen, that's a good idea.

So desserts, not a thing for me. And I'll also say one another thing about this. How many Taco Bell items are on there? I'll tell you a second. I feel like not many. I'll say this one of the cheese and gradita crunch, crunchy, crunchy shell tacos, chicken cassidia. Or the three things that made the list. Not a steak cassidy, which I think would put on.

The one thing I'll say about this list, though, is that they left off one of my single favorite food items. Maybe in my top three, maybe. Sausage McMuffin with egg. Oh, no. They have an egg McMuffin and a McGrittle on here. And fuck a McGrittle, by the way. A sausage McMuffin with egg is a perfect breakfast sandwich. McRiddle is pretty awesome.

When I first heard about the McGrittle, I was like, this is inhumane. Then I ate it and I was like, I can live off this forever. But like, we live in an area where you can get really good breakfast sandwiches from like all these deli. Yeah, there's no reason to get McDonald's. There's no reason for us to do that. Also, I don't get fast food in the city. I know of what lurks and kitchens that I will eat at. Wait, so what you, whoa, you don't have any fast food?

I'm out of state. I'm driving around and I see a rest stop or something. I'll get fast food. So you would rather get food from a place where people shit while they're taking a break from the road and walk up to like 14th and 6th. Because they deal in volume. Those restrooms are always going to be cleaner because they deal in volume. They have to keep them clean. Yeah.

The volume you're talking about is peat and as a liberal. I believe that your government should be in control of your places where you shit and pee. Yes. And everything will be fine. And the idea that we should privatize places where you shouldn't pee is a conservative bluster. I've had probably 80 sausage egg and cheese McMuffins in my life. And 70 of them were at like four in the morning coming back for Atlantic City off the parkway. I've never like set out from my apartment in the morning and said I got to get myself a Dunkin.

Never like a Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sandwich? Yeah, I don't know. That's another place all I'm going to do it. All right. This is one of by far a longest episode. Is it? Keep your eye out for the bracket. Is that the name of your new book?

Keep your eye off of the bracket? Read me on Twitter at Wysinski. Read, take your eye off the puck. Buy the greatest 100 players in NHL history and other stuff. And thanks for all the kind words you've left for the podcast on iTunes. We really do appreciate it. Here's Dave Lozo. Oh, yeah.

I was going to talk about Trump's taxes and then the thing happened yesterday. And now I don't have anything to say. You mean Rachel Haraldo Maddow? She kind of fucked that up pretty. bad, though. She really did. But no, my thought was just like, everyone keeps tweeting at Trump, show me your taxes. Like, if he had some sort of, like,

seriously, like, criminal thing in there, we'd already have known about it. Like, the IRS has his returns. Like, I don't know what people were expecting to find in her thing anyway. That's the thing that bothered me. That's like one of my favorite things about, one of my favorite things about this whole thing was when John Fabro, who used to be

the speechwriter for Obama and now he does the crooked media thing, said, okay, so basically you're telling me that Obama wiretapped Trump got all this information. Yeah, like had access to his tax returns and just decided to do nothing with it. You saw it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't really add up.

You were never, ever, ever going to find this, like, smoking gun and his taxes ever. No. That's not where it's going to happen. So, but like, yeah, Rachel Maddow tweeted, I have his tax returns, plural. Mm-hmm. And then later on, she was like, it's from 2005. And you're like, oh, all right, it would be 2000? and it was two pages of a 1040.

And she had the 20-minute intro where she asked rhetorical questions for 20 minutes. Yeah. And luckily, though, the guy who provided the information in no way looks like the guy reading a beat-up copy of Catcher in the Rye in the back of Starbucks. George R.R.R.

Taxing it. After ordering a small black coffee and the stales muffin that you have. Also, it was his scoop. Like, Rachel Maddow didn't get it. That guy had it delivered to his mailbox. That was the Daily Beast story. You don't want to hear any more of this.

We've gone long. We've gone way too far. Thanks for listening all this way. Everybody. We'll see you next week back. Now leaving nerdist.com.