Puck Soup - Deck The Hall

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

The boys discuss the Taylor Hall trade and its various ramifications for the Devils and Coyotes, the top 10 most likably players in the NHL, the top 100 players of the decade, the WWE/WWF Mount Rushmore, the end of Ilya Kovalchuk and an epic Christmas stuff edition of Favorite/Least Favorite. Sponsored by Seat Geek!

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Hi, I'm Taylor Hall. I just want to let my family know that I'm okay, that I'm safe. They're providing me with food and water. I'm looking forward to playing out the rest of the season.

Go Yotes. Oh, I don't have a character here. I don't know. I'm Kevin Ball. I'm a big tall guy. You could be John Chica. Yeah, be John Chaka. You could make references to video names.

Well, I just said I'm the other guy, so it's too late now. John, you say the guy you are. And I'm the GM of your favorite team, and I didn't make a move because it's December and it's too early and it's too hard to trade. You're in Puck Soup. I believe, Sean, the phrase you're looking for is you kept your powder dry. That was a phrase that I saw bandied about. You got to keep your powder dry, man.

You got those C minus prospects are going to pay big minutes on the third line in five years. Hey, one of them is a B minus prospect. So get your facts straight, buddy. Is keep your powder dry a reference to gunpowder or snow or cocaine? Well, it could be Although I don't think you get... If it's coming out of Edmonton, it could be. Yeah.

Yeah. Keep your powder dry. You've getting his nets off. So it sounds like you think that other teams should have maybe antied up more for Taylor Hall and been a bit more aggressive about these things, huh? Not even necessarily that. I mean, we never know how these things happen behind the scenes. Obviously, the devils wanted to make their move.

and if the coyotes had the best offer, then that's how it goes. I just kind of roll my eyes at all the immediate reaction from media and a lot of fans that, oh, thank goodness my team didn't do anything and just kept the status quo, which in a lot of these cases, the status quo is not good. And yet people are, I don't know, I wish my goal in life is to someday have a job where as many people want me to not do my job as NHLGMs, but still get to keep my job. I probably have a lot of people who wish I wasn't doing my job,

but that want me to still be employed. And I could just occasionally be like, guys, my job's really hard. I don't feel like doing it today. And people would be like, we absolutely get it. Try again maybe at the end of February. That makes total sense. Like, that would be the dream.

actually, when you're applauded for it. And again, like, I don't know where the worm turned, but like, wasn't it used to be a thing where you'd see a trade and you'd see how much a team gave up for some dude? And then you'd be like, fuck that. Why did my team make that deal? It seemed like with the Taylor Hall thing. And I don't know if it's specific to Taylor Hall because of the injuries or because he's obviously going to go to July 1st or whatever.

It just seems like there wasn't a lot of people that, like, mad that their team didn't offer up two fourth-liners. and a prospect that could maybe be something plus a one and a three. Yeah. People weren't upset about that. So I think part of the reason is you've got to look at the market, right? Like St. Louis, they needed Taylor Hall because they don't have Vladimir Tarasenko, but also they can go, well, shit, we won the Stanley Cup with a bunch of guys that nobody thought were any good, like this time last year.

So, you know, we can probably get by without Taylor Hall, you know, next guy up and all that shit. Edmonton, what fucking difference does Taylor Hall make? Who cares? Right? Like, I mean, that's not going to be enough to get that team over the line of being, like, a legitimate cup contender. Like, it might get them into the playoffs, which it's, I guess, technically, not wasting a year, Connor McDavid's prime. Can I say this, though, but Edmonton? Like, isn't one of their big problems the fact that you have two guys that are responsible for the vast majority of the office?

I know they've been trying to play McDavid, Drysettle, and Nuge, like, up the gut. But wouldn't Taylor Hall on one of those lines, like, make that line exponentially better and maybe give that team the balance that it needs? Like, wouldn't that be the play? I mean, it needs a lot, like, of course, Taylor Hall helps, but, like, they need more NHL wingers than just Taylor Hall. You know what I mean? And that's the real problem. Although, hey, now we're talking about Zach Cassie and getting $4 million. next year.

You know, he's got as many even strength points as Connor McDavid. Okay. Or Austin Matthews was what I saw last night. And it's like, yeah, I wonder how many points Austin Matthews would have if he played with Connor McDavid. I think it would be more. Yeah.

Indeed. All right. So the trade was five for two. The coyotes sent Nate Schnarr. and I'm pretty Shnar sounds like the kind of generic canned goods that you'd find in a Walgreens

like Shnar brand That sounds like some shit Kevin Smith made up That he thought like that a bunch of fucking boring idiots Were like saying for 15 years Snooty whatever Sucks Shnard the NAR Yeah

Nick Merkley Now Nick Murkley's good But he was always hurt right Am I right on that? he's supposed to be good. I think he was a former first round pick. I guess was a first round pick. People get mad when you say former first round picks because he just was one.

But, yeah, injuries are the problem there. And, you know, maybe that's hindered his development more than you would expect. And then there's Kevin Ball, B.A. H.L. And he is like 6.7 or some such. And he was drafted by the coyotes. and people were like, eh, he's not that good. And then I've heard people say that he's gotten a lot better,

and I've heard people say, no, he's still quite bad. I think the answer's kind of somewhere in the middle from everything I have seen and heard of this player. Basically, it's a thing of, yeah, he's probably an NHL player. No, he's never going to put up any offense at all. But if you need a guy to kill a penalty, he can be the fifth or sixth defenseman on your roster who does that. Okay, for Blake Spears and Taylor Hall,

which means in six years we'll be calling this the Blake Spears trade. The thing about the package, oh, and of course the first and the third, the thing about the package for the doubles that I find interesting is that from everything that we've read, and Pierre LeBron had a good breakdown on the athletic of the field for, for Taylor Hall as a rental. It seems like that Ray Shiro went into this, knowing he wanted to get odd defensemen. Got to get odd defensemen.

And, you know, the Avalanche weren't going to give up Obarim. Ed Benton wasn't going to give up their young D. And so in the search for odd defensemen, it became, okay, well, let's just make this deal and get Kevin Ball. Which I find ironic because the whole reason Taylor Hall ended up in New Jersey was because of I just need to get a defenseman. Yep. So that's all, time is a flat circle.

They should have tried to get Adam Larson for him. Oh, yeah. Do we like this trade, Sean? I can certainly understand why if you're a Devils fan, it probably feels a little underwhelming. We're kind of conditioned to, you know, there's the old Sam Pollock, whoever gets the best player in the trade,

and that's not only as Taylor Hall clearly, the best player here. He's probably the only player that a lot of people have heard of in this trade. And, you know, when you've got a guy who's an elite guy, he was the MVP a couple years ago. He's, you would expect this to be one of those kind of windfall trades that we still expect, even though they don't often happen anymore. Like, you know, you would, you look at what happened with Eric Carlson, you look at what happened with Mark Stone, guys like that, Matt Dushain, you tend not to get these huge packages back, especially when a guy is a rental, and it certainly seems like that's the case here. I think there was a bit of a market correction on, I don't know

if I'd say market correction, because that implies a market may have been in a different place, and maybe it never was, but just in terms of the perception, I think people realize that this is going to be a very tricky deal to do long term. It's going to be a deal that probably won't happen. You probably are renting them for a year. The timing was interesting. I, you know, often the longer you wait, the higher the price will go for certain teams, but also other teams might drop out. And Taylor Hall could get hurt and any, you know, any number of other things.

So the timing was interesting to me. I certainly don't think it's a home run for the Devils, but I see why they did it under the circumstances and why they felt like this was good enough to get it done and move on and not necessarily roll the dice that you could wind up with more in a few months, but you could also wind up with less or nothing at all, depending on how the circumstances play out. Right. Yeah. And they looked like super geniuses after one game, after what Taylor Hall did in that game

against the sharks, which is fun. Sneakers liked it, too. Yeah, putting up some offense against the sharks has been pretty tough for a lot of guys this year. Hey, Arndell played really well in that game. You know, look, I think the one thing for me in this whole situation as a Devils fan is I've really come around to understanding what the summer was. The summer, for a lot of people, they looked at it and they said,

oh, this is a gambit to try to keep Taylor Hall in New Jersey. You know, look, we can get you a shiny, slightly used, a P.K. Suban. And look, Nikita Gusef is here for offense things. And Jack Hughes can be the robin to your Batman. But I think the more I think about it, the more I think that they kind of maybe knew he wasn't going to stay. And this was much more of a Columbus gambit than it was a let's impress Taylor Hall and have him re-sign gambit. What do you think about that? That could be true.

I mean, like, you know, I think we've all known this whole time that they were counting on him going to free agency just because that has seemingly always been his stated goal is to test the market. And, you know, get his 10 million bucks a year or whatever the number ends up being. And I, you know, well within his rights to do that. And that's, that's great for him. But I think it was a thing of like, partly what you said of just trying to, you know, maximize his value now while you definitely still have him. But also be like, then look what we're building for the future too. So maybe you do want to stick around. And like, maybe he did want or does still want to stick around, but, you know.

but it was just he was always going to go to the market so if they struggled you know the devils are in a cap position where they can trade a lot of fucking guys and get some value and and you know if they don't get Taylor Hall back in the summer you know well you know they they have they have the cap flexibility to kind of you know make some things happen elsewhere in the summer instead now Do you guys think that race heroes should still be the GM of the devils? Hmm. It's a conundrum, right? Like, I mean, if you look back at his draft history recently, like, there's some obvious wins because he had the first overall pick.

Jasper Brat was good. There's, they've done a kind of a shitty job, I think, developing younger players. And, I mean, teams fucking miss. is going to miss the playoffs in four of the five years that he's been there. And now it looks like they're back in another rebuild for at least two years. So, I mean, he won the Taylor Hall trade, let's be honest. But should he still be the GM? Well, he took over a team, you know, that needed rebuilding.

So I don't think there's like to say, well, they've only made the playoffs once in five years. Like, first of all, they shouldn't have really made the playoffs that year. Like, you know, that was just kind of a fluke thing that I don't think very many people expected. And also, like, making the playoffs shouldn't have been the goal for most of those five years, if not all of them. So, you know, I can't hold that against him. And, you know, if you want to talk about the longer-term roster and player development like McKenzie Blackwoods, not what everybody kind of thought he would be yet and that kind of thing. Like, that's more of the question. I think, you know, winning and losing games, like, who gives a shit if you're supposed to be bad?

this whole time. Yeah, but it's been five years, though. Like, that's a really long time to be bad, even... Like this bad. This bad, and to still be back to where you started. I mean, like, there have been some really bad teams that have not... There have been really bad teams that have gotten good a lot quicker than this, and there have been really bad teams that have stayed bad,

and they don't have the same GMs in pretty much every case. And you needed Taylor Hall. to basically win the heart trophy in the span of three weeks to even make the playoffs the one time you made it. And you made it as the last wildcard. Then you got your asses kicked by Tampa. Like, it's not good. It's like, no,

it definitely isn't. I don't get me wrong. Like, I'm not defending him. But I think that, you know, it's a question of what his bosses think the goal has been this whole time. Because if the goal has been to get picks and prospects, well, he's certainly done that. but if the goal is to be competitive, yeah, I mean, you know, you cannot reasonably argue that they've been anything close. Yeah, and he's won two lotteries, which isn't something you can give credit to a GM for or bank on as a future strategy, especially now that you don't have Taylor Hall anymore.

For sure. And like we talked about before, like, you're either going to become the oilers or you're going to become the penguins. Like, it's, you're going to have this collection of amazing high draft picks that don't amount to anything for, for, for, for. a while until you get like a generational talent or you know you compile all these picks and then eventually get there i i uh i wonder how much of this is on jack hughes and what he becomes like you know is he what's his upside to the point of of we look back at this and be like okay they have two of the main building blocks of stanley cup life and and hues and he sure up the gut for the next decade like they needed a fenceman they need a goalie like how much of this is an engine on jack

Hughes. Oh, yeah, that's all you need. I'm just, that's the building blocks of life, sir. Haven't you ever taken biology? Two centers, stud defensemen, goalie worth a damn, you win a cup. Right. Well, right. But what I'm saying is they're halfway there and they are now short on the two hardest positions to fill of those things. Like a, a franchise defenseman and, well, maybe not up. Like, you could, if McKenzie Blackwood's like a 9-18 goalie behind two high-quality centers and a defenseman like, okay, maybe, but yeah. Corey Massesick points out that McKenzie Blackwood now has a 948 save percentage since the coaching change and the devils play at an 85.5 point pace when Blackwood gets the decision.

Cool. Strap a rocketeer back to seven points out of the wild card. Yeah, remember last year when people were like, well, McKenzie Blackwood has just as good of a safe percentage as Carter Hart. Cool. Okay. Great. Are the coyotes a playoff team?

Yeah. Sure looks that way. Like cement them in the playoff team? Or you're using permanent marker or you're using like a marker that you could use a Mr. clean dry erase to get rid of. Creola washable for sure. Yeah. So not etched in stone.

Maybe just like chalked on the stone a little bit. Yeah. They need they need to get more proof of concept with this offense before I can. say, you know, because right now they're really a goal-tending only kind of a team, you know, like they're not doing a tonne otherwise. And can you count on one or both of these goalies being this good all year? I mean, maybe, but it's dicey for sure. You can't get in 23rd or 24th in offense.

No. I mean, I just can't see a path to it. I don't know. I found it interesting that when they made the trade. everybody was immediately like fucking over a barrel talking about the coyotes being a potential conference contender. And I'm like looking at the standings and they're like two or three points up on the last wild card. Yeah. Like it's a lot yet to be determined.

And I think a lot of it has to, doesn't necessarily have to do with the coyotes. I mean like they get the benefit of a dog shit division though. They do. I mean like you figure for the sake of upward mobility, like the flames could go on a little on a roll. You know, Vegas is rolling. I mean, Edmonton, we're not, we're kind of seeing what they really are. The Canucks are probably a wildcard team at best. Yep.

And, you know, unless the sharks, fuck, I don't know. They're way too deep out now, I feel like. They're really way too deep out, but there's still a team that, like, can put together fucking, you know, eight wins in a row. Like, they're kind of streaky like that, even though I don't think they're good. Yeah, well, they definitely have talent, but it's the, it's, it's, it's, it's, the putting it all together. But I'm also not a Bob Boogner fan. I think it's the right time for the coyotes to take a swing at this.

Yeah, I agree. Because we all looked at that division going into the year and you're like, man, Vegas is amazing. Calgary's coming off a great season. San Jose is clearly still going for it. And now, and we're 30 games in. Like this isn't, we're not overreacting to a couple of weeks in October. We've been going for a while now. The division is not good.

It's right there. And it might not be there next year, but it's there right now. And, you know, it's kind of a little bit like the Columbus situation last year. Like at some point, you got to give your fans something. And I know we're always, you know, we're always talking about, oh, the Arizona market. And do they have, is it the right market? Do they fill the building? And then as soon as you say that, someone else runs in and says, oh, but if they're not making the playoffs, you can't judge anything.

You can't judge. Okay. So then sometimes you've got to make the playoffs. And you got to actually, you can't just sit there and finish 10th every year in front of half a building and have no expectations. Half a building, very generous. Yeah. Thank you. You got to take a swing at some point.

And, you know, same with Columbus, right? Like, it was, you know, at some point, you got to win around. Like, it's been 20 years, man. Give your fans something to sink their teeth in, make a few new fans. And it's the same sort of thing in Arizona. And the timing matters. And I think there's, you can make a legitimate criticism that for Columbus last year was the wrong time, even though it worked out okay, at least for one round.

I think this is the right time for Arizona. And the fact that John Jacob probably doesn't have five years of patience to put this all together is part of that too. But this was, even if it is just a one-year rental situation, this was probably the right time to take your swing. Yeah, I mean, they're never going to have a better shot. Yeah. I do wonder about, you know, when you start.

hearing about the owner and, you know, private planes and shit coming to get Taylor Hall and throwing money at Hall and throwing money at Kessel and everything. Like, I, I think Chek is on solid, solid footing there. They seem to get along and stuff, and he seems to be heartily endorsed to get a new contract and stuff. But, you know, would it shock you to see billionaire owner try to hire big name cup winning GM at some point? I love that that's criteria that they get along. That's such a lot. That's such a lot. an NHL. They get along.

They enjoy golfing together. So really the fact that you miss the playoffs eight years ago. No, no biggie. But that's, that's, that's, that's,

that's, that's non-depatism works, you know. Now, Stanley Cup winning GM. I'm trying to think if there's any ones who maybe are in a little bit of job trouble right now, just stand. Oh,

I was, I was thinking about somebody else. Who are you thinking about? The great role in, a warrior, Centurian once said that the, uh, L.A. Kings are the greatest

team that's ever been put together by a well-clocked man. Is what I'm thinking. Jay Feaster. By the way, up to, apparently in the finalist to run the H.L. From now on, Jay Feaster. That's good for Jay Feaster. Jay Feaster. I saw that this week.

And I mean this is no insult. Whenever I see Jay Feaster and I think of Jay Feaster, I think of Wayne Knight from Jurassic Park. Is that wrong? I think of going for it Where he's just like You know what? We have this Not even as good as the current Chicago Blackhawks roster

And we're just going to try to squeak into the playoffs So we can get absolutely fucking demolished by the Red Wings It didn't work somehow, incredible. Who are the most random GMs that won a cup? Oh man. Feaster's got it. Feaster's on that list. Oh, yeah.

Right? Maybe top of the pops of that list. I'm trying to think, who was the GM when Colorado won? De La Cua, I think, was the guy, right? And they, I think he was the GM for both, so, I don't know. Yeah. So that'd be, that'd be one. Um, who was the G, the GM and, it was a Ganey?

The GM in Dallas when they won? I think you're right about that, yeah. Yeah. You know, most guys aren't too random. Like, most guys, they win and it's like, okay, I see it more with coaching. That guy's been around the block for a bit. How about this one? Peter Chiarelli. Pretty fucking random guy to win a cup.

The thing about it is that like history may show that he's just a one-hit wonder. Like that's his. Yeah, it may show that. That's his Twitter Witch project, if you will. But you have to give him credit for how he built that team. Like he gets that. Yeah. And like Jay Feaster barely had anything to do with building that Tampa team.

You're right about that, I guess. But I also don't know enough about like the building of the like 1996 to 99 Dallas stars to know how much Bob Ganey was involved in that. Well, just wait for the athletic oral history. Yeah. So on the way. Where's Taylor Hall going next? That's the question. I don't know.

Who has $11 million in need to 28 year old winger? That's the real question, right? Like, it's going to be a team with a shitload of money. Are you not saying that there's not going to be a Tavares level courtship of Taylor Hall this summer? I think teams are kind of smartening up on that. No. Like, well, A, because he has the injury history now a little bit. B, because, you know, he's not having a good year.

So, you know, and C, because he's not a center. and, you know, like, Tavares spent a lot of time being, he's one of the most underrated players in the league. I think everybody properly rates Taylor Hall as a borderline elite winger having a bad year and coming off an injury. And the winger thing is key. I mean, what was the market for Pinaran at the end of the day? It was like four teams, maybe.

They were going to pay that money. But that's the thing. You only need that many. You don't need eight teams. Yeah, you need two or one that thinks there's two. That's all you need. And we're told that there were seven other teams in on Taylor Hall from a trade perspective, including some that were looking to do hockey deals, which is interesting to me,

because that suggests that these are teams that maybe were reluctant to part with big chunks of the future. Some of those teams would have purely been looking at him as a one-year rental, but I think that if he plays well the rest of the year, and that's a key. If he stays healthy, if he plays well, goes into the playoffs, does something, I think there will certainly be at least three or four GMs who can talk themselves into, A, you know, hey, I was willing to give up this, this and this to get him a few months ago. So now I can get them for nothing but cap space. Oh, I'd have to do that. And B, there will always be some GMs out there going, you know what, given this guy eight years is crazy.

There's no way he's going to be worth it in even four years. But if I don't get this done, I'm not going to be a GM in four years. And it's not going to matter. So I got to sign this guy, give myself a few more years on this job, and then it'll, the years five through eight, it'll be somebody else's problem, most likely. So I... Yeah, and like, you have to think he wants to go to a team that's pretty good, right? Like, the idea of him signing with Columbus because they have the cap space. He wants to go to, like, Boston or St. Louis.

Right, but he also wants to make a shitload of money. And I, you know, like, that's where it becomes... How about the Islanders? Do you think? Who's a team that's good and has cap space to burn? Do you think the Islanders with the new arena come in, a GM who's impatient? They're one that immediately springs to mind. I can see that.

The other one that kind of comes to mind, and I'm kind of half laughing as I say this, because I just feel like they're going to be the runner-up is the Montreal Canadians. Just, you know, Mark Bergevans under some pressure. The season isn't going great. Obviously, it could turn out well, but especially if they miss the playoffs. And just they're always in on every big player. And it's been more of the centers. So this would be a shift.

But I almost feel like Mark Bergevin has to get in on this, even if he doesn't win the bidding war, just to show that, you know, look. And Mark Bergevin going like, but what if we converted him to center? Just like he does with every fucking winner in the league. Oh, the next June. And here he is. Yeah, I could see that happening. And that seems like the kind of team that he'd want to play for, too. Are we just counting the idea of an Edmonton reunion?

They finished what you started Gambit from Taylor Hall. Where the Oilers get in this cap space? They got a ton of cap space next year, dude. They've got like fucking a dozen UFAs. But don't they have to resign a couple of key? Like, darnel nurse isn't he up? He is. Maybe that's like for next year.

Here's my thing. If you're the Oilers, if you're willing to go eight years on Taylor Hall in the summer. Well, it would be seven more. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, seven years on Taylor Hall in the summer. At a big cap hit and all of that, then you got to give up the B minus prospects to get him now

because Connor McDavid is about to turn 23. This is, you have been given a certain number of prime, full-powered, healthy Connor McDavid seasons. You don't know how many you're going to get. You've already wasted a bunch of them. You've got one more right now happening and to just kick the can down the road and go, you know, we're going to hold on to our prospects and then just do it. Like, do it now. Now is when you should have done it.

If you're willing to commit to this player long term and you think he's the answer. If they don't make the playoffs this year, I think it's grounds for contraction. Just contract the franchise like Connor and Drysaddle go where they want to go. Like 31's an odd. We're going to go to 32 now at Seattle. So 31 is still a odd. I guess contract the Oilers and then expand to Houston. Get them out of Edmonton. Get them out of there.

But it's the same like management and ownership team. You can't just, you have to, you have to cut the heads off the Hydra first. That's true. So contract them and then put a new team in Houston. Because new teams are fun. Like everybody wants to be with a new team, you know. That's why Pete DeBore and Mike Babcock will probably sit in their hands for a while to see if they can go and play in the Seattle sandbox. Yeah.

Who would want to do that? What do you think of the Maurice stuff, by the way? You see that stuff? That was odd. People assuming that the connection between Ray, I mean, it's Ray, between Ron Francis and Maurice is one that's strong enough where it's obvious he'll hop over from Winnipeg to go be the Seattle coach. Which he was asked about it and he denied it, but didn't really deny it?

Like he said very positive things about Winnipeg said, I want to be here. I'll be here as long as they want to have me. This is where I want to, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But he didn't say like, no, I don't know where that report came from. I've never had a conversation. I've never even thought about it. This is stupid. I'm nipping this in the bud. This, there's no, like he was, he gave kind of a thoughtful answer. And it's one of those things where like his contract is up, I think, this year. So when you say, I'll be here as long as ownership wants to have me, well, what does ownership? wanting to have you look like as far as the next contract, right?

Like I could, he could absolutely, they could, they could come to him and say, three year extension and he could say, yeah, double my salary. And they go, no, we're not going to do that. And he goes, oh, I guess you don't want me. And then he hasn't lied, but it's, it was just, I found the answer very interesting. And I'll give him credit because how many times would somebody have just said, no, no truth to the report and, and just lied right to everyone's face about it. Yeah.

But he didn't do that. And he certainly didn't, you know, he said all the right things about wanting to stay in Winnipeg and yet did it in a way where at the end you're like, oh, I feel like that door is still cracked open a little bit. You could count on maybe one hand the number of coaches that wouldn't want the Seattle job. After seeing what happened in Vegas and all these guys being fucking creatures of ego and they're all little baby Dr. Manhattans that want to create life. Like all these guys would want that game. Well, I don't think any of the coaches are black, gray. I'm not a stupid show sucked

Well he was He was he was he was I mean he put himself in in a black A black man's body Um Yeah I don't know why Me neither Great question

Oh spoiler by the way So like like who would Bruce Cassidy wouldn't go No That's it maybe Like maybe maybe I mean would Mike Sullivan go If Mike Sullivan, if someone, if Ron Francis walked up to Mike Sullivan with a glowing briefcase and was like, look, I have a way for you to get out of your contract with the penguins and take over this new team. Would he go? Yeah.

I mean, get out while getting is good. That's, that ship ain't staying afloat much longer, right? So maybe just Bruce Cassidy would be like the only guy that I could think of that wouldn't want to go. And Galant, obviously, because he's pretty, pretty happy in Vegas. Maybe Quinville. Maybe Quinville is in his, his sunset. days and just wants to be at the beach. But other than that, show me the guy that doesn't want to go to Seattle.

Barry Trots? He's got a good thing going on the island. Yeah, I think any of the new guys, I don't think, I don't think Sheldon Keith's leaving his his buddy who just turfed, who just ate 25 million to put him in the NHL. Yeah, that's true. He can't leave. Any of the newish guys are going to stick around and finish the job. But other than that,

Okay, what about Jeff Lashel? Do we think he's sticking? I'm just kidding. Finish what he started. I'm pretty sure, so definitely Rick Bonas would go. Yeah. Bob Boogner. Yeah, I can't think of the guy that wouldn't go.

Outside of like maybe three or four. I'm just looking forward to when Ron Francis hires Bill Peters. And it's just like, there you go. I've had so into discussions with people in the last couple of weeks about, like, or at least in the last week after the Crawford letter came out about, they're all like, oh, look, that's the way you do it. I'm like, what, that's the way, what, you hop in your fucking DeLorean and go back nine years and start therapy? Because you recognize what you're doing is fucking shitty. Like, there's no path back for Bill Peters. I'm sorry.

The thing that people have to realize about these situations is that they're business decisions. Like Cherry was a business decision. It wasn't a moral decision. It was a business decision. Bill Peters is at the end of the day, if you want to hire him, it's a business decision. You have to go to your consumer base and go to these demographics that you're chasing and say, oh, hey, look, I know we hired this racist, but, like, they're never going to fucking do that. He's done. He's cooked.

He's never going to work in the NHL again. The pathback for Bill Peters probably, if there is one, involves about 10 years in the minors and the KHL and all this other stuff. And then maybe, because then you don't need the Delorean because you're 10 years into the future. But it's, yeah, the short term, you're right, of course. I just think for Crawford, it's a lot easier because you could be like, I've been working on myself versus someone like Bill Peters who can't even apologize to the guy he offended. Yeah. Like, I mean, and I've said since the beginning, there's a path back for Babcock. He's the easy one.

Well, you know, I used to coach a certain way. Those tactics aren't, you know, appropriate to. learn my lesson, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, like, he's going to be fucking coaching by next week. Like, it's,

he's the easiest one. Yep. No, so. Yeah. I think, I think, I think that's pretty obvious.

Yeah. I don't know. Babcock's just going to collect this check for a while and call it good. Peters is cooked, though. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. See you later. If you had your choice between Mike Babcock,

Pete DeBoar, And Paul Maurice, as the first head coach of the Seattle, hopefully, Saswatch, who would you hire? Probably Babcock. I mean, you know, it's going to be a mostly veteran roster, and that's who he does well with. I'd go Paul Maurice partly because you're a new market, and I want the guy who's kind of smooth and hilarious and interesting. and not the guy who's sour and cranky and that's true yeah barking at everyone all the time which isn't a great reason to make a hockey decision but if if and plus if you're ron francis you know the guy you have the history so that's a really good point the temperament thing like like a lot was just

sort of a dude you know he kind of was part of the whole misfit thing was the way that he got got and having someone who's as rye uh as maurice as like the voice of your team to start off. I kind of like that. It's a really good point. I never really thought of it that way. Which is why you don't hire DeBoer. He's a great coach, but he's not exactly like the greatest salesman in the world.

He's kind of standoffish a little bit. I dig that idea. So anyways, Taylor Hall, like we said, very exciting. I'm sure those two hours he spent meeting all of the coyotes fans was probably time well spent for Taylor Hall. I'm sorry. All the coyotes family. I don't want to shit on Arizona. They always get shit on.

I know. I'm sorry. It's a very exciting time for the coyotes. And, you know, fill the building. That's all I'm saying. And if you're going to fill the building, there's no better way to do it than with C geek. There it is.

Not really. That's a B-minus, right? Ooh. Boy, lots of generous grades going around today, I feel like. What's the Rotten Tomato score for that transition. It's like a 68, Greg. Come on.

That's certified fresh right there. Sure. D is passing. 50 isn't apparently. The Rise of Skywalker reviews came out and I was looking at the tomato score and it's climbing.

Like, it's getting better. And then the ones for cats came out and I'm like, oh no, that's never climbing. Nope. Can't worry. The tomato rating for cats is going to be pretty low. I'm definitely seeing cats, by the way, in the next few days because my wife is a huge fan of the musical.

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Green dots mean good deals. Red dots are overpriced. I read a review for cats that said that at least one of the special effects wasn't completed. And I'm very curious what that means. Amazing. Is there someone dancing in a green body suit and they just didn't do the CGI, cat CGI? Is there like an actual scene that says, you know, TK to come? Apparently.

Apparently, they were, like, doing the final edit two hours before the premiere. Yeah. Yeah, I read that. Before the premiere, that's the Tom Hooper, the director literally was said, we just finished doing this. He said he'd been up for like 36 straight hours. Amazing. I fucking love it, dude. That way you can stop searching for the perfect seat and start enjoying it.

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It's all music. There's no, like, the musical is just, there's no, there's no story. Awesome. I can't wait to see this movie. Every purchase is fully guaranteed so you can shot. on Seekkeek with confidence. No wonder Seekkeek has over 50,000 five-star reviews or 50,000 more star reviews than cats.

I have the Seeky Kappa by my phone. It's the easiest way that I use to find tickets. I'm definitely going to use some to find tickets to a couple of Golden State Warriors games because I want to see the new arena and they're abjectly terrible. So I assume that tickets will be available. Yeah, they'll pay me. Seek will even give you $10 off your first Seek. geek purchase.

All you need to do is use their promo code. The promo code you're looking for is soup. S-O-U-P. That's spelled soup for $10 off your first Seek-Eak purchase. That's promo codes. Sean, do you know the plot of cats? Are you aware of it? You know what?

I'm aware of cats. I never saw it, but my sister was like a big musical fan growing up. So I've heard the music. Sure, she was. But I don't know the story. Except that when the movie started coming out, I saw some summaries of the story, and it sounds completely insane. Like, I didn't realize it was that level of crazy.

There is no story, per se. As Ruby will point out, Cats is a series of introductions of different kinds of cats. It's just a series of songs where you meet new cats, basically. But the thrust of the movie is they're having a giant celebration called the Jellicle Ball. and at the Jellicle Ball, they choose one cat to ascend basically. To die. To die. Yeah, it's a suicide cult musical.

That's my understanding. Yeah, and they pick, like, the oldest cat to die and then get reincarnated, I guess, as a kitten. But I'll never forget my experience, finally seeing cats as an adult, where Ruby took me to see it in its sleep. revival in Manhattan. And at the end, the realization that that was the story. It was like two hours of fun, you know, adults in cat suits licking their paws and going into the audience, crawling around. And at the end of the day, it's a movie about a suicide cult.

It was both the most pleasing and shocking feeling I've ever had at the same time. As far as I know, the one positive. review on Rotten Tomatoes when I looked last night was by a cat. No, it was a guy from the Arizona Republic. And the poll quote was, I didn't hate it. That was the poll quote. The positive review. Okay.

The reviews are, like there's a certain pile on effect, which we could talk about in a second about like, some of these reviews are trying a little too hard at this point. You think so? because some of the reviews are like... Well, I haven't seen the movie. I feel like maybe they're not trying too hard based on A, the subject matter, and B, the lay-miz version this director put out whatever six or seven years ago. This was a smattering of the reviews. These are actual poll quotes from the reviews.

Boston Globe. My eyes are burning. Oh, God, my eyes. Collider. Can you make a movie so bad that the Academy takes back your best director Oscar? Asking for Tom Hooper. Hollywood Reporter. Cat Astrophic.

LA Times. Cats is both a horror and an endurance test. Variety. Nine may not be enough lives for some of the stars to live down their involvement in this poorly conceived and executed adaptation. And Vulture, to assess cats as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong access on which to see it, it is with all affection a monstrosity. Yeah, I can't wait. This is going to be awesome. It's going to fucking rule to see this movie. that's promo code soup for $10 off your first purchase. Seekek, they have the tickets.

Oh yeah, I guess we didn't finish that. Oops, oh, well. Hey, listen, I'm on it. You know, I don't get the accolades that you get when you do the fucking ad reads, but I try my best. I'm going to try hard to that end. Dan Gluck Brown, you wrote a very interesting piece well received by the athletic commentariat, as per usual.

I'm sure a few people mentioned outright that this is why they subscribed to the athletic. The 10 players that no NHL fan can hate except for all the ones that do. So this is my... Ryan, have you seen this list? I have. I gave him a smiley guy. Oh, good. Thank you.

That's fantastic. Those do help. And by the way, always click the smile. What was your motivation here? What was your motivation in doing this list? Was it to put a little positivity into the world? Sure, let's say that. This is something that I've done a few times over the every few years I like to kind of do a roundup

because I find as hockey fans, and I'm certainly guilty of this, we tend to focus on the negative. And it's the holidays. Not me. Let's talk about the players. Yeah, present company excluded, of course. Let's focus on the positive and, you know, goodwill and all that sort of stuff. And so I made a list of the 10 players that nobody seems to be able to hate. And then I also listed all the reasons why some people do hate them and why maybe you could hate them too.

Among, I don't want to give away like the whole, the whole, you know, cow here. That's right. But a few tastes of milk. Mark Andre Fleury. I think without, I think if you had done this list five years ago, agreed. I'm not quite, I'm not quite sure if he's on it. But I think that the Vegas experience has made him one of the single most. Yeah.

The one that is the most. There's nobody on this list that I'm going to get 100% buy in from everyone on. But that's as close as it comes. Like he's, he left one team, but he left in pretty much the best pot. I mean, I think they, I think the fans of the penguins like Mark Andre Fleury now more than they did when he played there. And probably more than Vegas fans. like him. Maybe, yeah. Vegas fans love the guy, though, and even like the fans of other teams. And this is somewhat maybe a goalie thing. Like, I don't, like, are there sharks fans who hate Mark

Andre Fleury? Like, I, maybe. But, yeah, it's a pretty, it's a pretty tough one to hate the, like I think I said in the article, the only people I can think of that could hate him would be, uh, Canadian fans that are still bitter over the world juniors, like 20 years ago, uh, that he it up and then Hall of Fame sticklers when they realize he's getting in on the first ballot and maybe they don't they don't feel good about that. Other than that.

Yeah, no, Patrick Marlowe made this list. Yeah, and I feel like he's a good choice because he's sort of I mean, he's like an obnoxious, right? I don't think about him anymore. Yeah, in fact, he was one of the guys that I almost didn't put on the list, just because I'm not sure that he's as really qualifies

as a star, which is what I was going for here, even though I said players. And I've now got people in the comments, like, suggesting, like, obscure fourth-liners off their team. They're like, nobody hates, you know, nobody hates Blake Coleman. And you're like, yeah, okay, sure. There's, there's, see, that's, I'm glad you put that caveat in there because there was one name that I didn't see. And maybe he doesn't qualify as a star.

Well, Greg, what you should do is go into the conference. comments and just type that person's name with a question mark and then just that's it. That'd be your full. Excellent. Because I did a search. And Eric A, a very real person, already did it for me. Hurdle question mark? That was the guy that I would say.

Thomas Hurdle. I also tried to do one player per team. I didn't want to load it. So Marlow kind of got the sharks. The sharks thing. I consider Joe Thornton, but I've learned my lesson in the past that Blues fans are not having any sort of we all love Joe Thornton moment. So yeah, I went with Marlowe and mainly because I do think he's a likable guy.

He's, you know, he's well liked in Toronto and then all of that. And also because I like to occasionally mention that next year he's going to break Gordy Howe's all-time games played record because that seems to bother people and they don't realize it's about to happen. And it's going to, I'm looking forward to the awkwardness when that turns in with it. Yeah. Hurdle's the only guy that I think I would have lobbied for that's not on the list. But one guy that you had here who I think is interesting is Patrice Bergeron.

That's a really good pick. Yeah. That's like unimpeachably, like he's got, he's sort of like Sid without the, without Flyers fans. Yeah. Like he's just like a perfect player that everybody respects. And the only thing that you don't maybe like about him is that, Like you said that he skates with Marchand. Yeah, that's it.

Which maybe even helps him because it's like the yin to the yang sort of thing where you're like, you know, every now and then you're like, do I not like this guy? And then you're like, oh, no, look at that guy. No, I really don't like that guy. So everyone else around him seems better. The thing with Bergeron, like I said in the piece is I feel like for a long time, there was this sort of three-headed like Bergeron, Jonathan Taves, Anzi Kopitar thing where it was like you had to like one of those guys to show that you were the sort of fan who could appreciate. two-way players and 200-foot hockey and all of this. And it just feels like in the last couple of years, Bergeron's kind of broken off and claimed that throne all on his own,

where he's like, even if you don't like him, you have to say you do to show your bona fides as like a fan who's not just looking for 100-point seasons and that sort of thing. And I think he's kind of broken away, and Mark Stone is coming for that throne, but isn't there yet. So for now at least, like Bergeron is the guy that you have to say, that you, that, you know, even if you don't love the guy, you have to say that you respect

him to prove that you are, uh, capable of, of appreciating that type of hockey, which you should be because he's a right amazingly good player. Right. Um, one, one, one name that I think is interesting just because of how perceptions have changed is Lundquist. Um, I, I can remember a few years ago when Lundquist, there were, there were, there were Lundquist detractors because they thought, A, they thought he was overrated. And B, he was sort of the poster child for shitty equipment and making saves with your big pads who shouldn't be making. And now I think that because the Rangers have been so bad and because he's still there, that there's like a groundswell of sympathy for, well, fuck, he never won the thing.

Yeah. And that sucks because he's great. The thing with him is like you go down the list of like the dude is he's like a star. athlete in New York, a model, a rock star. He posts Instagram with his dogs. He like, I think he has a restaurant. It almost gets to the point where you're like, it's too much and you would expect the backlash to kick in and be like, screw that. Like the Derek Jeter level of like, screw this guy. Like I've had enough. Tom Brady, same sort of deal. Except he doesn't, he hasn't won. So that's like what adds this sort of urgency to the end of his career and the fact that he's come so close and clearly wants

so badly, like, that kind of lets you off the hook to that you can, you can be behind this guy, even though he's the sort of guy that if you met him in real life, you'd walk away five minutes later going, screw that guy. He makes me feel bad about myself. Yeah, I think, Pessel, oh, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, I think a lot of it is, you know, throughout the list, I think the, the, the main theme is old guys who haven't really won anything. Some of it is, yeah. Like, if you're like 36 and you haven't won and like a cup or maybe too many major awards or anything like that, everybody just kind of goes, yeah, he's pretty cool.

That's cool. It definitely helps. As soon as people start winning and assuming they're not on your team, like that's when a little bit of that bitterness kind of starts kicking in. Like I say, I've done this over the years. I think the last one I did was maybe three years ago. And I had taves on that list, whereas now I feel like a few years later, even though the Blackhawks aren't good anymore, there's enough of the backlash is kicked in, like, between them always being on TV and the outdoor games and the top 100 debacle. It's sort of like, I feel like people are kind of like, that's enough with Chicago. Like he's not, they just kind of roll their eyes.

And he's not quite there yet, but he's like into that Crosby zone where people don't like, even though they, you know, they come up with reasons why they don't like somebody. but really it's because he's super good and he keeps kicking your teams behind and that's it. But you can't say that so you come up with other reasons to tell yourself. Right. And people think he's overrated and yada, yada, yada. Is Phil Kessel internet lovable or real life lovable? Is there a difference? I thought it was the say, yeah. I put Phil Castle on the list and I acknowledged in the piece that this was maybe me projecting a little bit, but I feel like we're at the point where, uh, at least as fans, like, get on board.

Like, I get he's kind of goofy and awkward. Uh, and, and there was a time where he didn't seem to know how to handle that, but he's, he's either now like learn how to lean into it a little bit or maybe just the people around him have learned how to manage it a bit better that, uh, I don't know, I, I'm, I have a lot of fun with the Phil Kessel experience. And, uh, I, I, I understand, you know, when I was listing like, here's who maybe doesn't like him. It was kind of like, well, all his ex-coaches and most of his ex-GMs and many of his teammates and all the media has ever covered him. And like it's, you know, but if you're just a fan sitting at home watching the guy, I mean, he's, he's fun as hell to watch. Uh, and I mean,

he ate hot dogs out of the Stanley Cup. Like, what do you, what do you want? Like, He either thought of doing that or somebody told him to do it and he was like, sure, whatever. I think that's another one is just like guys who catch perhaps an undue amount of shit from the media, you know. The backlash to the backlash is. That's correct. Yeah. The strong one. I know who likes him most.

His hot dog vendor. I'm Steve Simmons. CSN. I agree with your evaluation of things. Taves, which was making me wonder how people will feel about his placement on my list that dropped today. Yes. The top 100 players of the decade.

The labor of love, my friends, this list. In true, former blog fashion. Speaking of a list that will generate. Yeah. I spent way too much. Question mark. Yeah. I spent way too much time in this fucking thing.

I tried my best to get it right, and I think I did, but like, just wait, just like, to put it into perspective on how much I bid off more than I could chew, it's like stuffing an entire large pizza in your mouth. It's kind of what this list was for the last, like, week and a half. And I, just a firm experience, I know this is the sort of list that, like, it seems like a good idea and you sit down to write it and you get like the top five and you're like, this is good. And next thing, you know, it's three days later. and you're like on going back and forth between spot 46 and 47 and you haven't eaten in two days and you're just like what happened where did my family go i'll pull back the curtain man like i did this entire list i had the whole thing i thought locked and loaded and then i realized that i didn't have joe thornton on it i'm like oh shit that's always there then you realize like or you have like the four in the morning like wait a second did i not put the oh god no the four in the morning one was straight up back and looked at it i had i had ben bishops twice. So I'm like, fuck. All right. See, that's just trolling Ryan there. That's, uh. Yeah, that's true. All right. Top 15. Jonathan Taves.

I think, I think for all, for all of the backlash about him being overrated and whatever, you can't deny the numbers are, are solid, great two-way player, Selky winner, um, fifth in the decade and points per game average in the playoffs and the Khan Smyth. Like, legitimately, one of the best players of the decade, even, even not as, but not as good as people make him out to be.

14 Kuturov. Just like next level, offensive player when he's not being scratched. And we should, like, it is tough when you do these lists. Like, how do you deal with guys who kind of came in

halfway through the decade or established themselves halfway through? Yeah, which there are bigger ones there. But I thought you handled that pretty well where it was. Part of the criteria was like, we value stretches of years together.

You know, that plays well. It's a lot of reliance on, on, uh, gar and war to determine the goodness of players. I did that for Ryan's sake. So he wouldn't yell at me. And, um, yeah, there's ways to figure it out. Like, I, I just don't think that an all decade list should just be guys that

played the whole decade. Like, I mean, yeah, no, it definitely shouldn't. Yeah, I mean, I caught some shit for putting Connor McDavid as the 13th forward on my all decade lineup. And people are, that's, that's, yeah, fury it. Like, people were like, what the fuck? Why, why not Claude Giroux? Why not this guy? You know, whatever it was.

Why not Clod Joe. Yeah, it was, well, it was fucking, Claude. Claude, is, is on my list. He's 18th. Like, I think he's really, really good. Like, just outside the, I mean, like, you know, how many major awards was even really considered for, you know? The big thing for me was, like, I had, I had three guys. that were kind of

kind of in the same genre as Patrice Bergeron. And it was Copatar, Taves, and Drew. Okay? That's the trio. Those guys are going to be forever. And I think that the proper order is,

I have Copatar 13th, Taves, 15th, and Drew 18th. Like, I think Copatar is the best of those three, in my opinion. You are correct, yes. Okay. So he's 13th. 12th is Headman.

Works for me. here's where things get fun the 11th best player of the decade is Pavel Datsuk Yeah it's hard to I mean like it's He he is a guy like Jonathan Taves where he

Really only had like one or two seasons Where he scored a shit load But fuck man He was so good at everything else That it didn't matter And we kind of We kind of forget that already I think that like he

I think he was you know A little bit overrated Like oh he's such an off defensive wizard and stuff like that. It's like, no, he's just like insanely good at hockey. Like, yeah, he was good in the shootout or whatever, but, you know, it was just like, he people tend to be amazed when they realized that he didn't have a thousand points. He didn't even come particularly close.

Like, he needed like another season and a half, right? Yeah. Right. So it's, but, yeah. And he is also one of those guys where, like, I, I don't want to turn into one of those like, well, 200 hockey men, but players love that guy. Like players, you know, because there's always guys where it's like some third liner with terrible numbers and they're like, no, if you played the game, you would

understand. But the players drool over Pavl Datsu. Yeah, the perfect example of that is one time they, I think it was, I don't know, I don't remember because this is like 1996 or 97 or whatever. But there was a time when every, when they asked who's the hardest guy to play against in the league. And Yarmir Yager said, Hal Giver said, And I think that comment alone made Halgill like $14 million fucking dollars in his career.

But that's a real thing that, you know, inexplicably happened. Right. That's why I think the story of Daniel Day Lewis calling up Adam Sandler to tell him how much he appreciated his performance in uncut gems is going to get Sandler an Oscar nomination. Fuck, I can't wait to see that movie. Dads 611th, Duncan Keith 10th. I wanted to drop Keith lower than had been, but everybody that I talked to for this, for this ranking was like,

that's nuts. Like, his early decade seasons were, like, among some of the best. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll,

I'll, I'll, I'll bite my lip and, and put him 10th. Nine is Patrick Kane. Uh, eight is Stamco's second best goal score of the decade. Uh,

seventh is, is Bergeron. Uh, sixth is, Malkin. Someone on Reddit said that I should have left Malkin off the list as a joke. Chilov Taves off the list as a joke if you're doing it that way. Oh, that's perfect.

Yeah. If I was still at Puck Daddy, I might have attempted that and then like added him later. Just to kind of troll people for a few hours. Five is Lungwist. Lungwist is the best goal of the decade. His numbers are fantastic. But only won the Ves and a once and was the finalist twice. Kind of, kind of, but that's like the GMs and they're, whatever they're fucking hang up, sorry about Lundquist, which I'll never understand.

For Eric Carlson. Yeah, it felt a little high to me, but I, I don't. Yeah, you think so? Why's that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if the separation between him and the other defenseman is as wide and especially as, like, you made a reference in your write-up on him, which I agree with completely, which is that his reputation as like a one-way offensive guy is, overstated. Yeah.

But also, we've kind of, today, well, not even today, he's, he hasn't been great lately. But the, like, from 2015 on, he was actually a pretty good defensive defenseman and as well as being an all-world offensive defenseman. But I feel like it took people long enough to realize that, that we've sort of now retroactively gone back and changed it so that he was always that. And in his first few years, he actually was a pretty bad defensive defenseman. Like he was. He was the guy that had used his speed. Dicey. Yeah.

He used his speed to overcome a lot of that. Like he would make mistakes and that he would be like exponentially faster than everybody else in the ice. And so it would look better than it was. Yeah. So it's one of those things where I like, I'm doing that thing that I hate when people do to my rankings where I'm like looking at Eric Carlson at four and going that doesn't feel right. But it's like, okay, so who do you move up? Where do you put them? And I'm not sure.

He just doesn't feel like a number four to me. and yet, like, I was looking at, you know, my first thought was that Malcolm should be higher. But Malcolm, you know, he only had to one heart trophy, but his injuries. His really elite years, most of them were before the decade. So I don't know. Yeah. It's one of those things where it feels high, but I'm not sure you're wrong. All right.

Here's where things get dicey. Number three is Ovechkin. Number two is McDavid and number one is obviously Sid. And I'm taking a lot of heat from. Ovechkin Nation, understandably. I don't think it's that understandable. I think he's a bit of an overrated player. I mean, like, he does want to say one-dimensional players.

Well, yeah. It's like better than anybody. He does, like, he's better than maybe anyone in history. No, I agree with that. And it's one of the most important. It's not like he's the best shot blocker or like, best face-off guy. But like, if we're going to, if we're going to ding Eric Carlson for, for spending a good chunk of the decade not being a good 200-foot player or whatever.

Alex Ovechkin's really only like an eight-foot player and it's the eight feet around the top of the left circle. But man, he's fucking great there. So like I get it, but. But at the same time, and somebody, I think in the comment section on mine, made this point. And it's been made many times before. When you look at Ovechkin's game, if he was, and I hate to do this because I, people make this point in various ways all the time and I think it's usually wrong but if alexander ovechman

was Canadian we would be talking about him as one of the great power forwards of all time he would be like right up there with cam neely and those guys like it's okay to say that because you're speaking the truth yeah and it's and it's okay because I'm Canadian so it's okay I can say it um yeah if he was like some dude from Saskatoon running over people like that like he does and playing the physical style, then that would be, you know, we wouldn't consider him one-dimensional because we'd be, it would be like Cam Neely. Cam Neely only scored goals, but he also truck guys. And so, you know, Cam Neely escaped that label. And it, but the fact that it was a Russian guy doing it, I feel like we still don't really know what to do with it. I would have put Ovechkin ahead of McDavid, just based on how

I would weigh an entire decade versus half of one. But I don't know. It's, it's, that's where you get into such a great area. 11th among forwards in war over the decade, the full decade. Behind guys like Kopitar, Malkin Sagan, Tavares, Taves, Ben, Marshand, King, Crosby. I mean, I know those stats are, I appreciate the work that's been done on them, but if someone saying Jamie Ben was a better winger this decade than Alexander Ovechkin, then I think we've got some more work to do on. The argument there would be. that he is not like a black hole defensively and and Ovechkin you know I can't imagine let's see

have there how many worse offensive players vanekessel and Kane are the only worse offensive or defensive players at even strength uh over the last decade by that metric so and and that's yeah and that's fair I just I don't think and you got to measure that sort of stuff at even strength but we're also talking about one of the greatest power play guys of all time. Oh, yeah. Well, so let's look at his contributions to power play offense, second only to Nikki Baxter, who I think got to piggyback a little bit.

Oh. And also, I forgot that. I was going to say this earlier. Nick Baxter would have been an interesting one for your list, Sean. You hates Nikki Baxter. Nicky Bax. Nope. He definitely would have been.

Again, I wanted to go one player or team, and I picked Ovechkin. And again, that was partly me lobbying, because I feel like, you know, you know, It's not something that everyone's on board with. And I kind of wanted to push for it. Although I got to say, I found it funny that the most pushback I got on Ovechkin was from Hurricanes fans who are still mad about the Svetnikov fight, which I get. I said this in the comments. I'm like, look, Carolina Hurricanes fans, you got to pick a lane. Like, you can't be the fun-loving, like, silly celebrations.

and we play weird music after we win and we have funny hair and we make t-shirts and we're going to single-handedly take down the old guard of Brian Burke and Don Cherry. But then when your favorite player loses a fight, suddenly you're like, we have a code that must be respected. And you can't do that. Man, when one of the most entertaining players of his generation wins a fight against a guy on your team, you can't suddenly go off and sulk because he's not respecting the code when you're the like slam dunk of basketball after we win team.

Like you got to kind of one or the other here. I agree with that, but I also think that you're underestimating the ancillary Southeast Division angst that occurs when it comes to Ovechkin. Yeah. They got some history, them in the hurricanes. Sure. Oh, yeah, that's the most Canadian thing you've ever done in this show is the abject disrespect for the history of the Southeast Division.

Hey, what do you think? The Winnipeg Jets are Southeast alumni. I don't go tell me that as a Canadian. I don't respect the Southeast. That was like their first season was in the Southeast. Yep. This is a great league. Yeah, so top 100 players of the decade and down goes Brown's list of the most likable players.

Two mandatory pieces of reading for you. Can I say my thing that everybody yelled at me about? Someone asked for your Mount Rushmore of WWE. And I said, And I said it's pretty definitively Hogan Austin Rock Sina. And people are like, what about Sean Michaels? What about the macho man Randy Savage? And it's like, come on, man.

That's not worth yelling at it. I think you could make a case for some other guys, but the idea that, yeah, I mean, for better or for worse. I think the only issue, I've thought about this, the Mount Rushmore thing before. the only problem I have and the only issue that you have to resolve when it comes to a WWE, WWF, Mount Rushmore is whether or not Vince is on it. Like if you're just saying wrestlers, then it becomes a little bit easier. If you're saying the company, Vince has to be on it. Hogan has to be on it.

Austin has to be on it. And then you have another spot. Triple H then, right? just in terms of everything he did. I've always gone in a different direction here. I've always said that if you're going to have Vince on the mountain, which I think you do, it would be Vince Hogan, Austin, Undertaker. Because I think with The Undertaker, you have not only one of the best performers through multiple decades,

but you have a representation of the of the, um, the fucking gimmicky side of the business. And I feel like if you're doing a Mount Rushmore that represents what the WWF and WWE has been, there needs to be some acknowledgement of the fucking wrestling garbage truck guy and the voodoo guy and like all of the gimmicky. Is Hulk Hocko Ging was the Golden Boy muscle steroid guy? I'm talking about like the Undertaker, you know, once crucified somebody above the ring. Like, fucking, like, the goofy.

Yeah, it was Stone Cold Sea of Austin. He used to walk around with an urn. He had a, uh, Gomez Adams as a manager. Like all this, like, you need some representation of that side of the business on the mountain. And you don't get that with Sina or the Rock.

And you do get that with the undertaker. That's always my argument about that. Doctor Thugganomics and all that shit. But that's, but not that, not that, not the cartoony side. Not like the wrestling, fucking, you know,

like earthquake and shit. Like you need that kind of thing on the mountain, in my opinion. Yeah. Well, the cartooner side of things. What's your rush more,

Sean? Uh, geez. I don't know. I mean, Hogan obviously, Austin, obviously, you want to put the rock on there

and though you're doubling up on the same era. I mean, I'm Canadian, so I'm going to try like chisel Brett Hart on there whether Yeah, I was wondering why your list wasn't Brett Hart, Owen Hart,

Ryan Pilvin. Yeah, four of the five Heart Foundation members. Yeah, Canadian Mount Rushmore has got five people on it. It's a conversion rate thing. Yeah, I don't know. I think you guys have got the right the right main guys into the mix.

And then you probably do have to do Cina, even if it's just to represent the era where it got, everything just got so boring and unwatchable. Sean Starr from TSN 690 was the guy who started this, and his list was Hogan, Undertaker, Rock, and Stone Cold. I'm with you, Ryan, that like, it's hard for me to not acknowledge the post-attitude era that Sina clearly was the face for. The face that ran the place. Sina has as many titles as Rick Flair.

That's the end of the fucking argument. Like, he is, for better or worse, the most important wrestler of the post-2000 WWF slash E. sure and in a way you could even have them on that list instead of the rock to say that he's the a representation of the crossover started of wrestlers I mean the rock is by like the biggest actor in the world like not just like the biggest actor to be a wrestler like to have started as a wrestler he is the biggest actor in the world so you like he is everything that you know like Hulk Hogan launched the industry into what it became, obviously. Like, there's no WWF without Hulk Hogan. Mm-hmm. But the Rock took what Hulk Hogan did as a crossover star,

and he was like, oh, you're going to be like, whatever, fucking, what was it, Mr. Mom, or was he... Excuse me, Mr. Nanny, Santa with Muscles, Superbent Commando, and on television, Thunder and Paradise, Sir. Thunder and Paradise was the other one I was trying to pull both sides Mr. Nanny. or whatever. But The Rock was like, I'm going to do all that, but also be in like six of the biggest or the highest grossing movies of the late 2010s. Yeah. And just he'll do it forever now.

Like, he's going to be doing it until he's 70. So he's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think the key for The Rock was that he did some roles that didn't require him to do any wrestling moves. Like, wouldn't it? It was always depressing when you saw like a wrestler try to do a real movie. And at some point, there's a suplex. Oh, yeah. Well, like in Hobbs and Shaw, Roman Rain spears somebody and does the Superman punch.

And it's like, fuck you. Get lost. Get out of this movie. Exactly. All right. Yeah. I think we're all in the neighborhood there. Yeah.

But I would put Vince on the mountain. I think that's a real key. All right. It's time for a little bit of hollow. Oh, first off, Ilya Colvichick. Anything to say about that? Yeah. I mean, that idea at the time, worse idea, given how it worked out.

Yep. I'm fascinated to see where he goes. And, you know, if he goes and takes some minimum deal somewhere to play for like a Boston or whoever, you know, strange things have happened. But at 6.5 million out of 35 plus. I had someone reach out to me and assure me that he wouldn't be on, he wouldn't be a top 13 forward in St. Petersburg at this point. So, wow. Yeah. Yep.

Like Florida? I think S.K.A. St. Petersburg, the team he came. Because that's what I said. I said it on Twitter. Like, you know, I give him a shot. And if he has two bad games, I send his ass back to St. Petersburg. And people were like, you know, dial back the racism. And it's like, well, I mean, that's just the team he played for. I don't think he's even from St. Petersburg in Russia.

I think he's from a different city entire. You pulled the Paul Bissanet back to the Soviet? I guess so. Yeah. I wish he was Soviet. Then we'd have really something to talk about. You'd be all about it. Yeah.

But, no. Ryan's WWE Mountain is Nikolai Volkov, Rusev. So, yeah, I think he's cooked. Yeah. Pretty much. Which is a shame. He waited too long.

Like, there were, if he had come back, like, three years before that, yeah. Yeah, three years before that, he would have been, he would have been fine. But, I mean, I understand why he didn't. It's just a bummer to see one of the great. I never let, was he on your list? Yeah, he was on my list. He should have been. He was fucking awesome.

He was very high, though. He was very high, though. Like, he was, uh, I mean, he left the league for like six years, so I get it, but. He was 88th. Yeah. Sandwich between Miko Koev and Andre Vasileselyski. He should have been fucking higher than. Miko Koiwu.

He was a higher than Miko Kui-Vu. He was one spot of Vazelowski. He should have been significantly higher than Miko Kovu. We didn't address the shit posting on my list. Here's my bottom three. My bottom three were

number 100, Alexander Semen. Yeah, that's insane, but okay. Number 99, Tori Krug. Reasonable. And number 98, Yarmur Yager. Should have been higher, I would say. But there's another guy who spent, what, the first three years of the decade, not in the NHL,

and then the last two, not in the NHL, so I get that too. But, yeah. He was great. He was funny. He showed his age at the end. Boy, did he. All right. So before we head out, it is, this is the last episode we're doing before Christmas.

And Merry Christmas to everybody. I say Merry Christmas, knowing that there is a war on Christmas, Ryan. and I proudly say it in defiance of that war on Christmas. Yeah, well, thanks to President Trump, we can say Merry Christmas again. It is legal for us to come out of the Sharia law under Barack Hussein Obama, and now we can say Merry Christmas again, thankfully. Has the Merry Christmas Happy Holidays thing been a thing in Canada where there's been a sea change in how many people say,

Like Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays? Every dumb thing that you guys do down there It makes its way here first as us laughing at it And then as our own dumb people trying to copy it. So, Right. No, it's not a thing that people are legitimately mad about,

but people have realized that pretending to be mad about it is good business. So, yes, it is, I'm sorry, Up there, up there, it's Happy Holiday A's,

and that's the second week in a row. I made that fucking joke, and it's still working. I mean, it's Advent, so you can continue to make it. That's right. Overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite Christmas shit is the list for this week. And this could be anything. This could be literally anything that has to do with Christmas or the holiday season, if you want, all of it.

Overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite Christmas shit. Um, overrated, of course, is simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Fucking terrible song. Everybody agrees it's a terrible song, though. There's nobody who's like, I unironically think this is one of Paul McCartney's great. Everybody agrees that it's like a cynical cash grab and it's bad. The actual overrated thing is, of course, eggnog. Oh, that's good.

I retract. I retract, Your Honor. It's eggnog. That is up there. Boy, I was actually thinking of saying an eggnog. Literally, you guys know, like, you could put booze in anything. I'm going to fucking like it, except eggnog. Like, even as a delivery system for booze, I hate eggnog.

I hate it. Yeah, I mean, I don't mind eggnog, but I'm alone in my house on that, so we don't even bother with it. And it's fine. It's, we're not missing it at all. So, yeah. I retract eggnog. Overrated is anybody in 2019 that's still doing the diehard as a Christmas movie bit? Yes.

Fuck that. Yeah. Thank you for that because... Thank you. I'm here for you. What's your overrated? I just put me down for egg knock. Sure.

Okay. Underrated. I discovered this this past weekend in Disneyland. We took a little trip to Anaheim. Holiday Churros had that for the first time. What makes a different... from a standard issue choro that you get in say August. Let me tell you, Ryan, flavors like peppermint,

um, horchata, um, all sort of like holiday accoutremon on these churros. And, and I discovered like this, uh, Christmas subculture that goes to Disneyland.

They wear footy pajamas. They walk around. And they go from churro stand to churro stand, sampling the holiday churros. So I, am now a holiday churro guy underrated part of uh christmas because not a lot of people know about it yeah no that that sounds pretty fucking good actually i'm gonna be honest um underrated i'm gonna say you know i i think people really think it's good but they really i think don't give it the this is

a modern christmas classic the charlie brown christmas soundtrack is perfect it's a banger It's so fucking good. I just bought it on vinyl the other day. I saw it in a store and I was like, yeah, I have to buy this. Wow. You buying the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack on vinyl is the most on-brand thing. It's cool as hell. Sorry, dude.

It really is. It really is. My underrated thing is other people's Christmas lights. I think they look really cool and I enjoy driving around with my family and looking at them. And as long as other people, People have put them up and it's not my house because I hate doing it for my house and it's a pain in the ass. But I appreciate your effort to do it at your place so I can drive by and look at it. Sidebar, do you like the overly egregious like local news station comes and films the house level of lights?

Yep, that can be fine. There's actually a street up here in Ottawa that one of our friends grew up on. where every single house does that. And it's insanity. There's like a grid lock traffic jam on the street. And it's like a little residential street. And I always think like the person I feel bad for is like the dude who buys a house there in May and doesn't know that it's like insane varsity level competition for Christmas lights. So yeah, I'm all in.

I want you to have like a radio station that I can tune into when I pull up. I want all of it And then I want to drive back to my house It's got like one strand of lights along the garage Because I left it until it was minus 20 And I was like screw this Yeah, that's what I'm looking for Favorite Christmas shit

This is going to sound real corny But like it's Christmas so like that's allowed I love how time stops For like At least 15 hours and I still remember Christmas in New York where you'd walk out of your apartment on Christmas morning, maybe to go get like bagels or whatever. And it's just, it's a ghost town.

It's just empty. And everybody just kind of does nothing for a little bit. Even more so than Thanksgiving. Like on Thanksgiving now, the Black Friday shit has crept into Thanksgiving. Yes. So like malls are open and shit. Christmas is still maybe the only, the only day of the year where shit just stops for about 10 or 15 hours.

And I always love that. Like, everything just stops. Yeah, no, that is really cool. The only way I tell the passage of time on Christmas is when basketball games begin and end. That's it. The rest of the time, I'm just like, I don't know what time it is. I guess it might be dark out. It's impossible to say.

That's how I handle Thanksgiving. One o'clock games over, time to eat. Four o'clock game starts. Let's go back down. Favorite Christmas thing You know, I still, like, I'm a 36-year-old man, I still love that fucking Christmas morning feeling, man. Like, it's really cool. I don't know, I don't know how else to put it.

I think it's just such a nice, like, you're sitting down with your family, you're having breakfast, you're opening presents. It's great. It's great. Yeah, I'm going to the presents, man. It's still like, I thought I would have to throw this, but I haven't. I still, I love getting stuff. And even, I even like, like, I like, I like giving stuff. I like coming up a good, good stuff to give somebody. I like that feeling of, of knowing that you've, you've got something good there. I don't even mind doing Christmas shopping as much as, as I used to, especially these days, where you just buy everything online and ship it off. And, and obviously, having, having kids just kind of makes it extra fun. Are your kids independent enough to get you gifts without assistance? They get, we do like a family shopping trip and we split off. And so they pick stuff out.

So yes, you are getting something that's a little bit personalized and thought of, which is nice. Yeah, my kid's not old enough yet. She needs an assist. But that's fine. She doesn't make me anything either. But she is creative. Maybe this will be the year where she makes me... Oh, wait.

Nope, nope. That's a Father's Day gift. I'll take it back. Least favorite. The fact of my kid doesn't make me shit. No. Least favorite. Oh, fake trees.

And I know that, like, fake trees are sometimes a necessity. And I know that real trees are egregiously overpriced. So I am not tree shaming here. I'm just saying personal preference, going out, getting a real tree. the smell in your house, Ruby and I try to always chop down a tree at a tree farm every year. It's one of my favorite things about Christmas is the real tree experience, including the haphazard loading it into your car or tying it to the top of your car.

That sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, we, I grew up, I grew up with a fake tree and I, you know, I didn't mind it. But the first time that I got a real tree, I was like, I've really been missing out. That's, it's that kind of, and I'm not saying that fake tree, if you have one, you suck or anything, like, it's fine. I just prefer real trees much better. Yeah, we also grew up with one and now, you know, like the huge pain in the ass of getting it out of the box, taking, like putting it back in the box in January or whatever. Like, that sucks.

Yeah, that I have to agree. But for me, I think the least favorite thing is feeling like you did a bad job buying gifts for people, because I always do. And then, you know, everybody's like, oh, this is great. And you're like, yeah, but it could have been better, I feel like. My is traveling, which I know is always sucks at the best of times. But even worse when you're hauling a bunch of presents and then you have to be a lot of presents. and then you have to haul a bunch back. And I hate that feeling of when I'm like visiting, you know,

if we're with grandparents for Christmas and seeing like them handing out gifts and being like, you know, this is wonderful. But how am I going to get that back home? Like, you know, can't you get me something smaller so I can cram it into the trunk of the car? And I just, yeah, it's just a, I wish if I could teleport, I'd be happy to be there and be with everyone. but it's just sort of like that and also that feeling if you're traveling like,

yeah, we're going to drive down on Christmas Eve day. On Christmas Eve. Yeah. Then the weather's bad and you're like, crap, but we got to do it. We got to get there somehow or flights are delayed and all that.

It's just, I mean, I don't love traveling at the best of times, but this is absolutely the worst time to do it. Indeed. All right. One last thing before we go. I just want to say something about Star Wars reviews.

as of right now, none of us have seen it. Ryan, you're seeing it today. I'm seeing it tomorrow morning as you do the podcast. I was worried about this being Star Wars Into Darkness, and it appears that maybe that's what it is. Yeah. I'm just kind of frustrating. I'm really dreading this shit, dude.

I'm not happy about any of it. But I've read so many reviews of the movie. And by the way, I knew the story of the movie beforehand. I was completely spoiled on Reddit. I just can't help myself. And the movie always sounded a little bit specious. But the thing about the reviews that I find really weird is like, and I'm not saying this as a Disney guy, just separate that for a second.

The reviews of like, all the reviews seem to want to touch on the motivations behind the movie as a product versus the actual movie, which I know a lot of people are going to be like, well, it's fucking Star Wars. it is a product. But I don't know how we got here as a... Well, here's what I would say is because this one is very explicitly the making of this... You cannot say how this movie got made without understanding that it is a reaction to the reaction, to the reaction of the Force Awakens, which I think people mostly were fine with as they were just like, you know,

it's exactly like a new hope. And that's fine. We don't care too much about that. So then, like, the problems a lot of people online certainly had with the Force Awakens was that it was a girl protagonist and a black stormtrooper. And isn't that all fucked up? And so Ryan Johnson went out and made a movie that I think has not held up over the past few years where he's like, oh, you don't like the black storm trooper and the woman. protagonist? Well, now everybody's a woman and a person of color.

And how do you like that? And it's like, well, the movie now like doesn't make any fucking sense, like that you had to go out and have everybody break off into all these different teams and, you know... Well, that's what they did at Empire. Yes, but not to the extent.

Like, what did Cantobite do for the story that Luke going to Dagaba did? It was a social commentary. That's all it was. Yeah.

I mean, that's all, it's all, yeah. But like, it didn't need to exist. It didn't further the story at all. And so,

like, it's my least favorite part of the movie. Yeah. And it's the middle third of it. So that's a real problem. You know, there's technical problems with, you know,

they're like, oh, we're out of fuel. And it's like, well, fuel has literally never come up in the Star Wars universe before. So that's fucking weird.

Like, now you're nitpicking. But, But here's what I'm saying, though. So then they were like, oh, fuck you, Ryan Johnson. Everybody hated this. We're going to give it back to JJ, who everybody liked his movie well enough. And JJ is like, and fuck you also, Ryan Johnson for like saying that Ray's parents.

So like his movie is a reaction to Ryan Johnson reacting to his movie. And like you can't therefore, that's why you can't separate these two things out. And I say that as a person who liked both of them initially. and then I just re-watched them this week, and I like them substantially less than I did. Which one did you like better, though? Probably the Force Awakens, because it didn't take me two sittings to get through it.

But again, it's like just because I like a new hope. You know, like it's just like, oh, remember when all that stuff happened in New Hope? Well, now it's happening, and there's a little circle robot and stuff. I guess my point is that like, when I used to talk about why Attack of the Clones was the worst Star Wars movie at this time, not having seen this new one, I've always said it's because it was a reaction by George Lucas to the negative reaction to the Phantom Menace. And it was always like, oh, you didn't like my story? Well, how about I give you all the Star Wars? You know, and and then it just became, it was such as a shitty movie. And I've said this for decades, but now it seems.

seems like that reaction is what has now become film criticism. It's like, you know, what is Justice League? Well, Justice League's reaction about Man versus Superman. What is the rise to Skywalker? Well, it's a reaction. It just seems like it's become... I mean, you're talking about film criticism. I think that Martin Scorsese would say you're talking, you're not talking about the same

kind of thing. Like, you are talking about product criticism. These films are products in a way that, film writ large is not. Like these are, if this movie doesn't make a billion dollars, we're ruined movies. And like, that's fucking insane that that's, these have become the stakes. Like Martin Scorsese couldn't get a movie with fucking Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino financed by anybody but Netflix. Hmm.

Like, so like, this is a commentary on how the, the film industry has changed. but like do not confuse these these movies for film and and also like this is why you know Scorsese and Coppola back in the 70s would be like oh yeah Spielberg and George yeah these great fucking movies guys and then like because of who came of age and became the people who were arbiters of culture those movies are now considered like you know the film canon and I would say correctly because they completely changed the way like filmmaking worked. But yeah, for me, for me, like, to say, you know, we need to look at Star Wars the same way we look at fucking uncut gems or whatever is wrong. And I say that as an unabashed Star Wars fan. Uncut gems, that's an adorable robots. I mean, obviously. Well, it does have the Furby thing, though, that everybody flips out about in the trailer.

I haven't seen the movie. It's true. Haven't either. Sean, Star Wars, you're going to go see with the young, the youngans? Younglings, yeah. We're going to go, we're probably going to see it not, I don't think, on the weekend, but maybe it might be like a Monday afternoon thing. So there you go.

Looking forward to it. I have seen them all. Star Wars is a very big part of my childhood, but not so big that I have super strong feelings about how it all has to go. I like the last two. I thought they were fine. I thought a lot of the criticism of the second one was actually pretty, pretty accurate, even though a lot of it came from people I wouldn't normally want to find myself agreeing with.

But also, it had big cool moments and good lightsaber fights and all that stuff. So duels. And I was, I will, my hill to die on is all the Luke shit in that movie. I think it's thematically correct and it was really brilliant. Yes, I agree. That was the best part of that movie by far. And again, like you want to talk about, you know, studio. decision making.

Like, they were like, well, Luke has to die fighting, uh, Kylo Ren and Ryan Johnson was like, that sucks, though. Like, it doesn't make sense that he would. And so they had to like, give him two endings at once. And it was like, oh, that kind of sucks. And he's like, yeah, dies. Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, I'll show you dies.

Yeah. They're going to try. The first third of this movie is just trying to convince you that this is the second movie in this trilogy is what I think is going to happen and I'm going to be very mad about it. It's a real James Cameron Tremator move where it's like, ignore all these other movies. This is a direct link. Can I just say my favorite Star Wars thing of the last few days is that last week, my son, for the first time, got his face split open and had to go to the emergency room and get stitches. Oh my God. He's fine. But after waiting for five hours, you finally get in it, and the doctor is stitching him up, and he had to get a lot. And they're just chatting. And the doctor was like asking him, like, you know, are you going to see Star Wars? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I saw the trailers. And the doctor's like, oh, I haven't seen the trailers. I don't watch them because of spoilers. And I then had to watch this dynamic of my nine-year-old son go, okay, but you know what was really cool? And the doctor who was literally stitching him up was like, no, no, seriously, don't tell me. And my kid is like, like, like, okay, but the one scene that was really great, and this increasingly, like, I could see his

hands start to shake a little bit. And I'm like, I'm like, hey, little man, like, no, don't, don't do this. And he's like, but I just want to tell him about the one thing. He gets it. Yeah. But I also feel like he was about to, like, suddenly start, like, sewing my son's mouth shut if he didn't. Yeah, like, and eventually my son's like, like, blurted out. He's like just. Like, just, like, he's just, like, he's just like, he's just like, he could, hold it. He's like, that part where Ray does a backflip, and that was it. That was the part he wanted to get out. And the doctor, like, was, he was like, you just ruined the movie now that I know that Ray does a backflip. Thanks a lot. That's hilarious. But, yeah. My favorite Star Wars thing this

week was that somebody deep faked the video, the clip from Revenge of the Sith where Palpatine fights Yoda, and they deepfaked Baby Yoda into the movie. God. Instead of old Yoda. And it's just the baby Yoda pod with little lightsaber sticking out of the movie. And it's just the baby Yoda pod with little lightsaber sticking out of it fighting Palpatine. And I got to tell you, it's fucking seamless. It's really well done. But it was, uh, it was by far my hero thing I saw this week. All right. It's a puck suit. Obviously, a Star Wars centric, uh, breakdown of the film coming up in a few weeks if we're all going to see it. Uh, I'm Greg Wysinski. You can go read my stuff at ESPN.com. The top 100 players of the decade list is on there right now. And, uh, you can listen to my other

podcast, uh, ESPN and ice where this week, we talk. talk to Rob Paulson, aka the guy who did the voice of Raphael of the Ninja Turtles and Pinky and Pinky in the Brain. That was a real thrill for me. Yeah, so check out all my stuff on Yahoo. Sign up for the Puck Soup newsletter that I do every week. Not decided when we're going to do the bonus stick to sports episode either this weekend or next, but it will definitely be one of those two this month. So check it out.

You can find me on The Athletic My piece this week About players you can't hate That we talked about is there And if you're stuck for last minute Christmas gifts Either an athletic subscription Is a really great idea

If you go to theathletic.com Slash gift And you can buy it now And then it'll get like delivered To them on Christmas morning And also my book is still out there And including an ebook And audio version

If you're really done The Last Minute stuff So yeah Consider checking that out if you're looking for stuff at the last minute. There it is. Get books, read, improve yourself. And we'll talk to you. Oh, next week, special app and a year episode.

You know you love it. And we'll see you then. Bye. Later. Bye. 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, it's and tools.

It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Um, Bork soup.