Puck Soup - Early Impressions

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Sean and Ryan talk about the interesting start to the season, more new contracts, and the ESPN top-100 list.   Sponsored by Hatch (hatch.co/puck) Gametime (download the Gametime app and use code PUCK for $20 off), Athletic Greens (athleticgreens.com/puck) and Factor (factormeals.com/puck50)

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hockey and Nonsense. I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And, well, I mean, what are we? Like, less than a week into the season now?

Yeah, a full week. Today will, yeah, you're right. Yep. Right, yeah. More than enough to start drawing strong conclusions. Well, that's what I was going to ask you right off the hop. I'm usually a wait till November 1st guy before I feel like I can get. I hate talking about hockey at this kind of year.

Because like, I'll give you an example. The Edmonton Oilers, right? Jack Campbell, he's fixed. We're genius. You know. Then he plays like absolute shit in game one. Then Stuart Skinner plays like absolute shit in game one and game two, quite frankly. And then they, I believe they won last night, right?

So it's all fixed. Yeah. They look great last night. Yeah. So, yeah, we're definitely at the time of year where like one day difference is huge. Like if we had recorded yesterday on Tuesday. we would have been talking about how broken the oilers are. Now they're fun.

And I don't know. It's such a weird time because on the one hand, you wait all summer for hockey to come back. You wait all through training camp in these boring, meaningless games. And the season finally starts. And you want to talk about what's going on. But at the same time,

it's way too early to pull anything out of anything. And you just look. So, I mean, if you don't talk about it, people are like, oh, you got to, how come you're not talking about my team? But if you do mention it, then it's like, yeah, but it's way too early. I'll give you another example, right? Is Buffalo. First two games, all you heard from Buffalo fans was,

this offense sucks. What are they doing out there? Then they beat the lightning last night. granted it was in overtime. Yeah, nearly a... Disaster for Buffalo. Yeah. But, and now it's like, oh, I guess, I guess it's all good.

Like, who cares, you know? And I don't... So, like I say, for me, it's like November 1, I can start maybe thinking about, you know, is this team for real and that kind of stuff? But, like, right now I'm just watching the games and going, oh, okay. Like, every night, I'm just like, oh, if you say something, There's 32 teams in the league, and they've all played between two and four games. Yeah.

And there are two teams that haven't won, and I think four teams that haven't lost. Everyone else is like two and one, one and two, one and three. Yeah. Like right in that mix. So, I mean, does any, okay, of those six teams I just mentioned, the win-list. or lossless teams. Any of those jump out? Let's see.

Even the teams that have lost have got loser points. So everyone's got a point on the board. Now, this is going to surprise you, I think. I think Vegas and Colorado are going to be really good this year. Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

It's crazy. I like that you went out on a limb there. Yep. Boston, you know, they're two and oh. And I know for sure the Chicago game was on the second night of a back-to-back for Chicago. Right. I don't remember who they played.

Oh, they beat Nashville. I don't remember what the deal was with that. Other than there were, I was at a college hockey game during this one, and I don't get to watch Bruins games anyway. So I didn't see this one, but I saw, you know, I saw the clips and I saw people talking about it. And yeah, I mean, yeah, they're supposed to be Chicago and Nashville, so who knows, you know. And then New York Islanders.

they're 2 and 0, obviously. Why wouldn't they be? They're one of the best teams we got. Yeah. And then for teams that don't have a win yet, it's only San Jose in Seattle. Right. Seattle is, to me, the only of those six teams that's really interesting. San Jose, oh, two, and one.

I mean, it sounds about right. Here's the thing about Seattle. It's that minus 10 goal difference. You're like, uh-oh. Yeah. Through four games? It seems like the, well, okay, let me amend this. Seems like they can't get a stop.

We could have seen that one coming a mile away, right? They don't get stops. That's kind of their whole thing. They've only scored three goals in four games. That's obviously not going to last. But, uh, I'm starting to think this team actually doesn't have the most shooting talent of any. It's pretty crazy.

If only someone had been saying something Somebody should flag that. Yeah. It's crazy. But again, it's four fucking games. Like, who gives a shit? I'll put it this way. They could go out and score seven tomorrow night.

You're going to be surprised? Anybody can score seven in a night in any given game. It happens all the time. So, you know, I'm... The only thing I want to flag about this to say flag again, I guess, is, you know, we're less than two weeks away from that November 1

cutoff date of like, if you're not within four points of the playoffs, you're not going to make the playoffs, basically. It's actually, I was like, four points is like a real lot in 10 games to be out already. like you would have to only win like two or three games out of your first 10 to and it's like okay well yeah sure you know but I looked at it uh over the weekend about whether you're just below 500 in in terms of NHL points percentage um 119 teams have had sub 500 records on November 1 in like

what, like 82 game seasons. So not counting the, the COVID or the lockout seasons or any of that kind of stuff. 119 teams. Only 27 of them made the playoffs. Okay. So,

you know, no, it is 1.8 per season. So call it two per season. But like almost always, I don't have the list of what those teams were in front of me now. But almost always it's like, I think it was, wasn't it like Toronto started badly last year? And like the year before that, I want to say Tampa, something like that were just like, yeah, we knew those, that team was going to be good anyway. You know what?

It's very, very rarely a team that going into the season, everybody was like, oh, these guys are going to be good. And then they, or aren't going to be good, rather. And they just, like, turned it on after the first 10 games or so. So, yeah, it's also less common in the divisional playoff format than it was in the one through eight playoff format. It used to be 2.1 teams per year that started below 500. And since they've switched to the divisional format, it's only 1.5. So.

Yeah. I mean, you've got to be pretty bad to be under 500 in the NBA. HL, and I'm looking at the teams that are under 500 right now. The only ones that I would consider playoff contenders, well, no, I shouldn't say that. But the only ones I would consider good teams is Edmonton, they're one and two. I mean, they'll, they look right. Nashville at one and three, I mean, they, maybe you look at them, the Jets. And then Tampa and Florida are kind of interesting.

But again, they are. They are both like, Tampa's got three points. in four games. Florida's got two and three. So, I mean, what are we? Yeah. What are we doing? Well, okay, let's actually talk about Tampa. Can't get a safe. And again, it's just one of those things. It's nobody's fault, right? Like, they didn't, they did not plan for for Ves Levski to miss 10 weeks to open the season or whatever it ends up being. But you do have to say, start wondering when they decide the solution isn't, the solution of just like gritting your teeth and playing for 10 weeks isn't going to work for them. Because it's not that,

like they haven't been terrible, terrible, right? 893 is, is not good, certainly, but it's not as bad as I think it could have been, honestly. Their team save percentage is 893,

I should say. but it's not like awful but it's just you know it's going to be enough that you're one and two one two and one in four games instead of three oh and one or whatever it is yeah and it's their schedule has been interesting because those three losses right Detroit Ottawa Buffalo those are the three teams in the Atlantic that's a really good point chasing that playoff spot that a lot of us have figured would come from the islanders, but then when we got the Vasilevsky news, you kind of wondered if Tampa would be vulnerable. And the fact that they just handed out six points to those three teams is a little tough. Now, they did get the late goal against Buffalo last night, which felt big for both teams, because I mean, the Sabres haven't been great to start either. And if they had coughed that one up.

Yep. We've seen that. The other thing, by the way, Tampa's been outshot by the was outshot pretty badly by all three of those teams. Yeah. There's something to be keeping an eye on, I think.

And an interesting schedule coming up, because they got Vancouver tomorrow. Then they've got Toronto, Carolina. So there's your test against theoretically the top of the conference. And then they go San Jose, Seattle, Columbus. Yep.

So there's your test against maybe the other end of the league. And by that point, by that we're in November. So yeah, they should be beating Nashville and Detroit and Ottawa and not getting outplayed by them. But again, if they were out playing them and just, you know, not getting the saves.

Reverse goalie, then maybe you feel a little bit better. Well, again, they've given up 17 goals in four games. you're not going to win a lot of hockey giving up four and a quarter a night, right? Like, that's, but the fact that they're 893 giving up, like, usually if you give up 17 goals over four games, you're getting like 870 goaltending, not 893. So they got to figure out what's going on really quickly would be my advice to them. That's just a tough division, you know. The other thing that happened last night that I wanted to talk about is the King's Jets game was wild.

Those teams, it does seem like those teams straight up don't like each other now. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah, no, it is. I like hockey a lot more when the teams don't like each other. Dubois got booed every time he touched the puck, as you might imagine.

Okay. I guess the thing for this game really starts their home opener on Saturday afternoon. I was watching it. And they had Rick Bonus on the pregame. And they were like, we haven't had a chance to talk to you since Hallibuck and Schifley signed. What do you think about that? And he basically was like, nice to have some guys who want to be here.

You know? Yeah. And I would say this. put it even more pointedly than I did. He was going, ah, some people, they didn't want to be here last year, and that affects you, you know? And, yeah,

booed every time he touched the puck. And then, of course, he scored and the Kings won very easily, I would say. Almost at the winning goal. Yeah, you want to talk about goalies who have been bad this year, Connor Hallibuck, not making a lot of saves. No, it doesn't need to.

843, Conor Hellebuck so far this year. Oof. Yeah, it's tough. Look, you sign that contract, you get fat and happy, you know? That's right, yeah. You're all set. You don't have to worry about it ever again. Hey, I'll be retired by the time this contract ends.

Well, I got this shit. Probably halfway through it. But yeah, I just wanted to talk about how fun that game was last night, unless you were a Jets fan, in which case you probably fucking hated it. And Gabe Valardi gets hurt. and we don't know. As we're recording this, we don't know whether it's serious or not.

It didn't look good. No. I'll tell you that. No. And it wasn't one of those where they just immediately said, yeah, you know, not too serious. They were going to find out more tomorrow,

which is today. So probably by the time you're even hearing this, you will know. Yeah, we'll talk about all the injuries that have piled up this week in a minute. But yeah, we'll do a little more around the league kind of stuff. Do you give any kind of a shit at all about

Evgeny Kuznetsov's playoff move? Or a shootout move, I mean? The shootout move. Certainly not as much as some seem to, where we're talking about, like, putting in shot clocks and beer. I mean, I do think that if everybody started doing that it would have an impact on the already extremely minimal entertainment value of a shootout. But if it's one guy and it's sort of a still a uniqueish thing, it doesn't bother me.

I can't say. Well, here's my big take on it. They're going, oh, he's making a mockery of the shootout. Good. Yeah. Who gives this shit? Fuck the shootout. Are we not supposed to be doing that?

because I've, yeah. Yeah, all anybody's done for for 15 years, 20 years now is, let's make fun of the shootout. It sucks and it's stupid. Oh, I gotta be mad about this. I can't imagine caring. Oh, like what you said, oh, if everybody starts doing it, maybe they'll stop doing the fucking shootout.

Okay, great. Sounds awesome. What's the problem here? I'm on board. Yeah. I, You see, was it Tim Peel? It was Tim Peel, yeah.

Saying that somebody should, like, some goalie should, like, run out and close line him. And then he said, apparently he's got, like, I'm going to talk about it more on my podcast with Jeremy Roanick. Is that a real thing? That's, apparently it is. There's just, like, it's just people who don't like Greg have a podcast. That's wild. I can't wait to be on there. Yeah.

I've got my invite yet. But yeah, no, he wasn't the only one saying it. Like this was a topic of conversation for a good six hours yesterday or something. And I'm just sitting there going, I thought you all hated the fucking shootout. Now you're worried about the sanctity of it? Yeah. Crazy to me. There is no sanctity of it.

Yeah, they made it up fucking 18 years ago. That's fine. Is the shootout older or younger than Connor Bedard? Oh my God. I don't even know if I want to look that up. I'm going to look it up. Speaking of which, I didn't even mean to do this transition. It is slightly younger.

He was born in July 2005. Obviously, that season started October 2005. So he's never been alive for an initial season that didn't have the shootout. That's right. Great. Um, anyway, yeah, so everybody, uh, coming into the league next year, guaranteed to be, uh, in the, in the, Connor Badaard, don't know, don't know hockey without the shootout camp. It's weird to think about. I don't like that. No. Um, anyway, speaking of things that people are just mad about for no fucking reason. Is Connor Badaard over exposed? Are we? Are we, there's too much of this guy. I hate this.

I'll say this. Watching that first game where, like, he's taking a big slug of bio steel on the bench or whatever, and they're like, there he is again. He's drinking it. Okay. I get it. But I also can't imagine being like, why are they doing this? Yeah. Like.

The guy who's going to be the biggest star in the league two years from now, you don't know why. You want to see this guy as a rookie. but he plays for the Blackhawks, and they have no other good players. So, I mean, I don't know what you're, like, if you're, like, tuning in, like, I want to see Bedard when he's on the ice, but the rest of the time, I really want them focused in on Nick Folino. I know, I need to see Corey Perry out there. Yeah. What's going on with that? So.

Enough, enough showing me Carter Bardard. Give me, Andreas the fantasy you. But I am glad you, you. I was glad to see you put this on the outline and bring it up. Because I was thinking this week about writing a thing about this, like preemptively, like, knock this off with the Connor Bardard is being shoved down our throat stuff. Yeah.

And then I was like, if I did it, would I just be doing that thing where, like, I just saw two people say something dumb on Twitter and I'm going and acting like that's a widespread opinion. But the fact that you're seeing it too. No, great. You're not going to believe where I'm seeing this. Yeah. but I mean it's the marketplace of ideas so it only costs a dollar now yeah so perfect um do we care

about again they talked about this like extent not extensively I guess but they talked about it a fair bit on uh on whatever TSN game must have been the Jets game at last night I guess but whatever TSN game I was watching last night they talked about this Timo Meyer getting benched for the third period in like game three, game two maybe even it was. Yeah, took bad penalties. Because he took a couple bad penalties. And somebody else, was it Damon Severson got benched, I think? That sounds right, yeah. I mean, you know, Severson didn't just get whatever, $8.8 million a year. You know, I think I think that's the, I think that's the notable thing. Fair, yeah.

But to me, you know, this is just one of those things of like, probably the coach is overthinking it, especially if this is a game where you're like, you know what we could really use is a goal. Mm-hmm. But, you know, hey. Guys are going to get benched for taking stupid penalties.

And sometimes it's going to be a star because the coach has to be like, Even the stars can get bench. Well, that's it. It's one of those things where it's like, if by sending this message, the message actually gets through not just to him, but to the whole team, then so what if we kiss away a point or two in October? Like, that's how not meaningless,

but how relatively unimportant these games are, that you can use them for message sending instead. Yep. Devils, though, one-one and one. against Detroit, Arizona and Florida. Not good enough. Again, you want to talk about a team that the goalies are not doing so well? And, well, Vanacek especially, I guess.

But, yeah, I think, I saw some people saying like, oh, they've got to go trade for a goalie. I think they're just kind of figuring over the course of the full 82. They'll get league average goaltending, just like they did last year. Maybe they were a little better than league average. I don't remember now. And after that, it'll be fine. And also, you know, unlike, I would argue, a situation like Tampa, like with New Jersey and a few other teams, you get into the whole, like, what goalie out there now is better.

Now the hell of bucks off the market. Yeah. Who's actually better than what you have? If you're Tampa, I think the answer is lots of guys. Like, there are teams who's veteran third. goalie would be an improvement over what you've got now. Yeah, probably. But I don't think that's the case for the devil.

So at this point, probably just got to write it out. Yeah, for sure. One last thing here, you're going to be happy to see your old friend, Austin Matthews, scoring a shitload of goals. Yeah, it was nice. Yeah. It's always fun. You know, it's funny, I look this up. Who's the last guy?

You probably know the answer to this just because they probably mentioned it, 500. times on Leif's game the other night. But who's the last guy to open the season with two hat tricks? Wasn't it Ovechkin? Yeah. Now, do you remember when that was? That was like, I want to say, like, 2009. Oh, I think it was more, I feel like it was like 2017 or something like that.

Okay, maybe, yeah. But I just remember being like, and the only other three guys were all from 1917, which is like, it's okay to just not include those guys. For sure. Yeah, see, I just, you know, you show me stats from back then and I'd go, this doesn't look like anything. No. That's made up. But yeah, it was just like, well, I just remember being like, whoa, two hat tricks to open the season.

That's incredible. I bet that's never happened before. And they were like, it happened like six years ago, dude. Oh, my mistake. I guess I didn't know that. So, yeah, there's your little trip around the league, early reaction. and things like that. We'll take a quick break.

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Your thoughts? Not to do my kind of well. well-worn shtick, but I like it for the Sabres. I don't get why a number one overall pick is signing a seven-year deal. A year early.

A year early in a world where the cap is, you know, the cap is still flat, although, I mean, maybe not because by the time this kicks in, we already know it's going up. But now, that said, when the contract ends, he'll still be in his 20s and theoretically able to bank another nice big.

So I get it. I just, I think it's a, I think it's a very good, I think it's a good deal for Buffalo. Comes with risk, as always with any of these. But I think given the pedigree of the player and what he's shown so far, a very good risk to take. And I was, I was mildly surprised because when we saw the, the Rasmus Dallon contract, I think a lot of us looked at that and went, okay, well, what does that do to the Owen Power conversation? Yep.

Dallin definitely, you know, didn't take any sort of discount. He got full freight. Owen Powered, not someone who's proven himself as much. But, you know, again, this is, it always feels weird to me because I'm always, I always find myself saying stuff like, well, you know, if I'm the player and then it's like, really, you, if you're the player and somebody comes to you with $60 million, you're going to say no. And maybe I would. But this is a situation where as a player, I'm tempted to say, like, I'm going to play another year.

And then I'm going to see what I'm worth next year. And yeah, I could blow my knee out and who knows. Well, I think the odds that Owen Power is worth less this time next year seem low to me. I would agree with that. however, he was at the time, you know, he's still on a ZLC, and that means you have less negotiating power. That means, you know, like, if he signs a bridge deal, what's the AAV on that? You know, five million bucks or something like that, right? And so he's just like, you know what?

I'll stay the extra the extra four years, bump that Aavie up three million bucks a year. You know, I get it from his point of view. Like, and I say this all the time. They put $70 million in front of him. And he was like, oh, okay, that sounds great. Thank you. You know what I mean? Like, at 21 years old, and like you said, this is a contract that ends when he's 29.

So he gets another big deal at the end of this one. Now, I was thinking about this, though. I'm pretty sure the CBA runs out between now and then. Okay. Right? And I wonder if, you know, the next battleground on the CBA is term. Right. Right.

Because. Bill Daley's Hill to die on. Well, like, for the NBA, for example, I think, I think term is one of those things where it kind of protects both sides of deals a little bit, where the guys that signed for five years in the NBA, for example, those are like the upper, upper, upper echelon guys, you know? And so I guess what I'm saying is it really protects players like Owen Power

and kind of leaves a lot of lesser players, you know, on less comfortable ground, let's say. But, like, you know, by the time Owen Powers is 29, 30 years old, it might be a situation where the most he can sign for is five years. And if that's the case, you know, it's just one of those situations where he, doesn't have to worry about like, okay, I need to make sure this next deal is seven years as well so that I can get as much money as possible, even if the AAV's a little lower.

Like, I think at the end of this deal, Owen Power might be looking at a similar AAV for what could be a max deal of like five, six years instead of seven or eight. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. but what number do you think this gives own like what rank do you think this gives Owen power in the defenseman cap hit who I'm going to say somewhere between 15 and 20 15 is is the number just ahead of Jake Sanderson and behind some let's say more established guys I'll read you 10 through 14 here.

Dougie Hamilton, Kale McCar, Alex Petrangelo, Mikhail Sergachev, and Miro Heiskenen. Not a bad group. Not a bad group and... I guess when you look at that group,

it's tough if you're o'en power to say, I need more than what I got. That's what I was going to say. Unless you wait the year and have a, I would say, breakthrough season, but have a, you know, have the best season of your career so far, maybe sprinkle in on a couple of Norris ballots and then. Yeah, but again, the only guy he really could jump ahead of in theory is Sergachev, right?

Like, that's obviously the least of those guys. But he gets paid slightly more than Heiskenen. But like, and I'm not saying Sergachev is bad by any stretch of the imagination. I think he's quite good. but, you know, Owen Power, Heisken is already on Norris Ballots. Patrangelo is already on Norris Ballots. Cal McCar is Cal McCar. You know what I mean?

So at some point, Owen Power has to be going, I have to jump all those guys to start a conversation about me versus like Darnell Nurse and Seth Jones, who are all, you know, higher paid than Dougie Hamilton and Cal McCar. And I think. I think, this is the last thing I'll say. I think the, the McCar salary being at $9 million is kind of like that

old Nick Liddstrom, like, what are we going to do, pay you more than Kale McCar? You know what I mean? They literally just did it with Dahlene. Yeah, sure. The other, their other number one thing. Yeah. But, at least with

Dalline, they have a little more proof of concept, right? Like he's been in the league a lot longer than Owen Power. So that's the last thing I wanted to say about it. Do you have any other? No. I mean, it's other than to say that when you look at that group that Buffalo is pretty much locked in long term,

it's a pretty good group, pretty good value. I don't mind the work that they did. Yeah, but I will say this. It's kind of like the senators thing where you're like, oh, all those guys, they're saying like, you know, half a million bucks here or a million bucks there. That's pretty good. What's that team ever done, though? You know?

We're locking in a core. We don't know if they're any fucking good, really. We think they are, but, you know, two, three years from now, the Sabres haven't made the playoffs still. I don't, who's surprised by that, you know? Well, fair. It'd be a little surprising, but it wouldn't be like, oh, my God, I can't believe they didn't make the playoffs in that division, you know, blah, blah, blah,

go down the list. But it's the same thing with Ottawa, and I guess to a lesser extent, Detroit, although Detroit is maybe a year or two, behind these other teams and they're rebuilt. The other big contract, also to a defenseman. Devon Taves seven years, 7.25 to stay in Colorado. Yeah. Again, I think the cap number is a good bit of business for Colorado.

The term, when you're dealing with an older player, I certainly understand why he's looking for close to the max term there. But I also get why Colorado was willing to give it to get the cap hit down to that. I thought his, when I first saw that he had signed, the number that kind of went in my head was $8 million even. Sure. They got him a bit under that, more than a bit, I guess. And maybe a year or two more than ideally they would give to a player that age, but that works. Yeah.

Oh, awesome players. Yeah, the only thing I want to say about this contract with regard to the term, normally I'm a don't give a term to a guy who's already 30, right? Obviously. He'll be 30 in February. So you don't want to start a contract when a guy's 30, much less a seven-year contract, right? With that having been said, what happens three, four years from now for the abs? Probably doesn't matter that much. Their window will probably have closed. McKinnon's 28, Rantan's. 26, Nachushkins, 28, McCar, obviously, he's only 24.

But, like, Taze is going to be 30. Like, that's just, Landiscag is already 30. Who knows if he'll ever even be able to play again, quite frankly.

Certainly at the level we think of Landisg being at, you don't miss, like a year and a half or whatever he's going to end up missing at age 30 and come back, like, yeah,

I'm better actually. It doesn't usually happen. So like, I think the abs are kind of betting, you know, by the end of this, we're going to be paying all these guys a lot of money, but they're paying for the next three or four years. They're not worried about five plus years. And if I had to guess. Yeah.

And they're also probably looking around saying that we've seen teams can get out of deals like this. Sure. in the second half, one way or another. In most cases. Now, yeah, every now and then you get a Mark Edward Vlasic situation where a guy just goes from being a strong piece of your roster to a bum. Do do, do, yeah.

But that's the exception these days. Yep. And what was the other thing? Speaking of Vlasic. Oh, yeah, Taves is one. slot ahead of him in the AAV department. He is 29. Vlasic is 30.

Yeah. So you know, that's for a guy that signed his contract years and years and years ago that kind of gives you a sense of this isn't a super high risk.

It's not a no risk deal for Colorado. For sure. But it makes a lot of sense. How many years do you think Mark Edward Vlasik has left on his contract. Oh, he's got to be down to what? Like two? Two after this one, yeah.

Ugh, okay. And you know why they can't get out from under that contract? He has a modified no trade clause. How many teams do you think he can refuse a trade to? How many? All but three. A three-team trade list. But does that even matter?

Like when a team is as bad as San Jose. Yep. And you're talking about a guy who's 36, never won a cop, obviously, because he spent his whole career in San Jose. Got to bring that up, huh? Is he really, like, maybe he is. Not a bad place to live, but I don't know. No, yeah.

Well, the other thing about it is that no trade clause kicked in this year. Before that, it was a full no move. Yeah. So they've opened the door. And, I mean, the other, the big problem with him, guy keeps staying healthy. Yeah. He's played, guys played 70 plus games every year other than the short and season and he was healthy for most of that too. Like, you can't, you know, they've got like a nice LTIR spot already built for him.

The moment he gets a hangnail. But no, dude just keeps plugging away, staying healthy. Hey, Mark Edward, you, uh, by him. I noticed you coughed earlier. You're coming down with something. There's every. I think you are, man. Why don't you go see the doctor wants to see your toe.

Banded elevator shaft. So, yeah, those are the two big contracts. Oh, you know what? I meant to mention this on the, on the other segment, the first segment. It says here, Leon Dreisdel has set the Oilers PowerPlay goals record. Yeah. That's crazy to me.

So I saw that in the other, and I'm like, what record? Like, I'm assuming the all-time record, but that sounds. Yeah, no, that's the one. He has more power play goals. 127 power play goals in his career, I believe. And that's more than Gretzky, Messier, Curry, all those guys got in Edmonton. I'm going to assume so.

That's wild. Yeah. Well. Let me double check this just very quickly, just to be sure. No, that can't be right. Yeah, I'm looking at it up. Gretzky has 125 power play goals. Yeah, there you go.

Nine years. Wow. That's what I'm saying. It's cliche, man. Like, it's any, when you're tying and breaking Wayne Gretzky records and like prime Wayne Gretzky records. Yep. In the 80s.

I'm going to go out and let me and say that's good. Yeah. And by the way, after he set that record, I think he had another run last night, so he's up to 128. That's wild to me. And so my hat is off to the great Leon Dreisdahl, seven points in his first three games this year.

He's pretty good. Yeah. He's pretty fucking. And his numbers against Nashville are like, He's insane. He has like 35 points in his last 12 games or... It's something like that. And also he's like shooting almost 33%.

Might want to put a guy on him. In his career against the Predators. It's just like, yeah, I take like five shots a game. Yeah. One in every three goes in. Three of them go in. I call it a night. Yeah.

That's right. He rocks. He's so cool. We'll talk more about our buddy Leon Dreisidel in a minute. Also, Sean Couturey scored his first two goals in, first goal in 22 months last night on a penalty shot. Cool. Yep, pretty nice.

I like to see that. Nice little move, too. I don't, like, I know that game, I know why that game started at 6 p.m. last night. It's because of the Phillies game, obviously. Have you been to that arena in Philly? I've never seen a game there. I was there for the draft.

Okay. So you know what the deal is with how they do their stadiums in Philadelphia? Oh, how they're all together. Yeah. Yeah. For people who don't know this, the Flyers slash Sixers Arena, the Eagles Field and the Phillies Field basically all share one enormous parking lot. They're right next to each other. I don't know if people know that.

But so the reason this is funny is last night. Flyers had their home opener. The Phillies had their playoff game against Arizona. And Mexico had a, like the Mexican national soccer team had a game at the Eagles Stadium. I don't remember what it's called, but let's just call it the Eagle Stadium. So that place was a fucking madhouse last night. Yeah.

That is so cool. Yeah. I don't know. have anything else to say about it. But like, I wish I had been there just to like. Just you're not even, you're not even going to buy a ticket to the event. You just want to park. Yeah, anthropological just sitting there going, whoa, this is wild.

Go in. I'm going to drink three hours. Five pints of beer and then sit in my car, not moving for four hours. And if anybody, and if anybody questions me, I just yell, go birds. And they're all like, yeah, birds. Fly Eagles fly. still probably got home quicker than people after a Sends game. Yeah, man.

I just thought that was really fucking cool. Oh, also the Flyers, their opening song that they did when they were introducing the team. Du Haast by Ramstein. Okay. With the mission statement of the team being, you hate me. That song means. See, I was going to say. like I don't know that song, but I do know

Ramstein. So I feel like I do know that song. I feel like I don't think you're going to play it for me and I'll be like, oh, that's a real departure. That's right. The one where they yell angrily a lot. Yeah, it's the, I'll say this. That's the only Ramstein song I know. Okay. And the lyrics are you, in German, obviously, are you, you hate, you hate me. You, you, you hate, you hate,

me. It just repeated that for a while. And it's like, yeah, again, just the flyers opening the season with that. It's like, yeah, that's, I mean, if you're a Philadelphia sports fan, that's probably true for the next few years. At best, I don't know if Remstein has a song, you're indifferent to me, but I feel like that's where they're treading, trending toward. So let's talk about there have been a lot of injuries the first, the first week of the season here. Uh-huh. The nastiest one, of course, is it was announced this morning. Kirby Doc's season is over. Yeah, brutal.

ACL, MCL, I think they said. Both. Yeah, no, no, that's what I mean, ACL and MCL. I couldn't remember if, like, what's the, is it PCL is the third one? LCL, something like that. Yeah, there's a PCL in there, too, but. Yeah. Sounds like that one's doing great.

No problem. But yeah, a real bummer for Kirby Doc who, you know, I feel like he was on the comeback trail a little bit in Montreal. Yeah, I mean, he was real good last year. It was a good piece of what they were building. And I mean, not, you almost hate to say it, but this is not necessarily the sort of injury where you just say, well, you know, we'll see him again in a year and pick up where. you left off. It can be, and in a lot of cases it is, but it's a tough. Guys come back, missing a half step and that kind of thing.

Yeah, it's a tough road back, and it's a tough, that's a tough blow for, you know, a Montreal team where they've been rebuilding and you kind of looked at them and said, well, you know, got some good young pieces, but is there, is there like a star here? Is there a franchise guy to build around? And Montreal fans would say, well, maybe not, but we got a lot of. of good young pieces and now one of those good young pieces is gone for the year at least and to be determined after that. Not that, I'm not suggesting it could be career-ending, right?

It's not like that, but as you said, you come back and maybe just not quite the same player. Fingers crossed, that's not the case because I want to see guys like this back. Yeah. I don't really have much else to say about it. Um, Zach Werensky opening night, uh, last week, he's going to miss a couple weeks. Knee on knee, I believe it was. Um, or around that area. And, uh, it's just a contusion, but, you know, remember that whole thing last year of, if Werenski had been in the lineup for Columbus, they,

they would, they would have been a lot more competitive. I don't know if I believe that, but obviously he's a really good player. Yeah. And, uh, I guess the only thought there is when he first left the game, you're like, oh, no. Like, not again, especially if you're Columbus where not only did they go through all that nonsense in the off season, but before that. Wait, what happened in the off season? There was something they hired a guy as a coach, and it didn't go well. I don't, I don't remember the details, but I'll, yeah. It was, it, it flew under the radar.

But they had rebuilt their, their blue line, right? Like, that was the whole thing with, if you were Columbus, going, or Columbus fan going, why are these guys going to be any better? It was, well, we got this new coach and we got a new blue line. Hell, we got two new coaches. We got another new coach. And the blue line was going to be better, not just because they had added guys, but because primarily Zach Wrenzke was coming back.

He was like, right, like, don't forget, he was gone pretty much all of last year. And then you see him leave and you just kind of go, geez, are we? Are we really doing this again? So it's never good news when you see a good player missing two to three weeks, but it feels like it was better news than maybe could have been. Yeah. We mentioned it in the first segment. Gabe Valardi goes down with a scary looking, again, looks like it could be a knee injury.

No timetable on that as far as we know right as we record this, but something to keep an eye on. Brandon Tanev is out four to six weeks. Victor Arvinson's out long term. Sebastian Ahho missed last night's game. Who knows what his deal is? So I don't know. And that was a weird one because, like,

we didn't find out about that until right before the game. Yep. So hopefully that's just... A few people for various reasons, but... Yeah. Well, hopefully that's just one of those... Yeah, he was a game time to say. it'll be good to go for the next one, but I haven't seen anything that indicates that he's just like, you know, only missing last night and he'll be good to go for whenever their next game is. I don't know off the top of my head.

But yeah, I just feel my point is I feel like we're seeing a lot more like week to week injuries early in the season than I'm, maybe I just, maybe I just don't remember. but or maybe they're just happening only in games I'm watching, which is also possible. But yeah, it's been weird. I don't know. Yep. All right. Why don't we take another break?

We'll come back and we'll talk about a little list of 100 players that you might have heard about. Our next partner is game time. And we're here. We made it. It's October, the best month on the calendar to be a sports fan. Got the NHL has started, NBA soon, NFL in full swing, and even the baseball playoffs. It's a great time to be a sports fan.

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Project, okay. It's the predictions for who will be among the top 100 players in the league this season. This season. From the staff at ESPN. And this is key. Because right off the bat, I feel like people are already misunderstanding what the list was. I refuse to believe that that could ever happen. This is not for 10 seasons down the line.

And it's also not based on what you've done in the 10 seasons previous. And it was a panel of more than 50 broadcast. investors, analysts, reporters, and editors who, you know, presumably follow the NHL with some amount of attention. Greg Wischinski did this list himself, and it is his personal ranking. Oh, it says here, Dougie Hamilton, number one? Interesting. That's interesting. And three and seven.

Wow. We'll just get it out of the way here. Presumably number 101 on this list is a young man out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, named of Guinea Malkin. 101 because there was a list of 10 honorable mentions and Gettie Malkin is also not it. What is it with Gennie Malkin and Top 100 lists? They just do not. Do not. Oh yeah.

Here's the honorable mentions. Boy, this is a crazy honorable mention. Yeah. Chris Cryder 101. Alex Tuck. Like these are all guys where it's like you could make an argument to me, but then you get to like. Noah Dobson, and it's like, okay, slow down. Again, this is just this year.

Yeah. The sun is going to explode in July. The NHL is redrafting for one last season, and this is your top 100 draft list. And people in Pittsburgh are very mad that if Ganyi Malkin is not on the list. And again, it is based on this year. So a veteran... Now Malkin did go psycho last year. He was so good.

Yeah. So I have seen... like, you know, some of the comments from, because there was a piece on the athletic where they were talking to some of the players and they were like, that's crazy. But some of the players were like, that's crazy. This guy's won an MVP. He has to be in the top 100. And it's like, well, right. No, he, that was in the past. This is right now. Now, that haven't been said, you look at least some of the guys that are ahead of them on this list. Although, I mean, this is one of those things where I think a lot of times people hear stuff like this and they just,

have a general sense in their head of like what a top 100 player is and you just feel like Melkin has to be one of those guys but you know you look at their list guys at the in the 90s are guys like Thomas Hurtle Morgan Riley J.T. Miller John Carlson, John Tveris, Drew Doughty, Matthew Barzelles in there like those are pretty good players. It's not you know there's more good players in the NHL than you might think. I don't know that I would put Malcolm ahead of too many of those guys, but I would probably put him ahead of Ryan O'Reilly, for example, who's 99. And certainly, you look like it in the playoffs last year.

And certainly some of the guys in the honorable mentions, but also this is the whole reason you do list like this is. To piss people off. To have the debate, right? Like you're not, I have seen lists like this that clearly were designed to piss people off. Where you look at it. Yeah, everyone that NHL.com ever put together. And this isn't that.

I think this is a legitimate list that, you know, again, they talk to a whole bunch of people. If, you know, the story here is that Malkin is still not appreciated enough by, you know, some whatever segment of the hockey men were talked to for this, then that's, That's interesting. But I mean, I don't know, even if I was the biggest Malkin fan out there, I'm not sure how high onto this list I could get him. Well, it's not like the top 100 where the, sorry, the all-time top 100, the NHL did a few years ago that I referenced earlier where they left Malkin off.

And it was just not only was it indefensible, but I think when me, Greg, and the other guy did our own list as an e-book, we ended up with Malkin like in the 50s. So, I mean, it was, like, not even close. Of course he should have been there. And I don't know that I'm feeling quite that way with this list, again, given that it is just for this year. And you're talking about a, you know, 36-year-old Malkin or whatever he is. Yeah. I think he's even older than that because he is. He's just turned 37. Yeah, there you go. A couple weeks ago. But yeah, let me tell you my big takeaway in this list.

These people fucking hate goalies. Hate them. Can't get it. Can't believe how much they disrespect. How many goalies were on the list? Let's see. Looks like nine. That honestly might be more than I expected.

Well, okay. Because I think they're not counting Vasselowski. There's like five reliable goalies this year that I... Totally. But I'm just going to give you a handful of goalies. The first goalie on the list, the first goalie you get to, is Connor Hellebuck at 14. Who on earth is a bigger Hellebuck homer than me? Not many guys, yeah.

No. I think it's insane to have him as the top goalie in the league. I think it's crazy. I'm with you on that. And not just like barely. It's not like, and then at 15 you get to, no, you got to. No, it's, it's Hellebuck 14 and then you're going to drop down to 28 before you get to Igor's circen. Which again, that would not be my pick for the number two goaling in the league.

Because at 30 is Elia Soroka, the guy who's been the best goalie in the league over like the last three years or something like that. He's been fucking outrageously good. Yeah. And I just don't understand a league where you look around and you go, there are 29 players more valuable than this guy, especially because 34 Jake Ottinger. Okay, okay, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, like, you're right that that sounds crazy,

but then you look at the players ahead of them, like right at Miral Heiskin and 29, Roman Yossi, Rasmus Dallin, Charlie McAvoy, Braden Point. Sydney Crosby at 23 was another one that a lot of people questioned, but, you know, Sebastian Aho, I won't go down the whole list. But these are good players. Sure they are. Like, again, it's the kind of thing where

anytime there's a list like this and people get mad, how could you say this guy's not a top 10? How could you say this guy's not? It's like, okay, then who are you bumping? Who is clearly, who ahead of him is clearly wrong? Tim Stutzla, 21. I had him, Sydney Crosby? What are we talking about, dog?

Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that for this. What are we doing here? And, and, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm a bigger Stitzel fan than, than you are. We kind of went over that in the summer. I, I would put Stutzel ahead of Brady Kuchuk, who they have at 19. Again, what, but that's Cancon to me. That's just like, look, we got to get, we got to get some Canadian guys on the list here. Maybe.

I'm trying to find, oh, yeah, remember all that stuff about Tim Stutzla? Oh, well, he had like 90 points last year or whatever it was. He'll do it again this year. Someone said this to me when we were talking about this, and I didn't want to bring it up again, but now that we're on the subject of old Timmy S. There are six players who have scored 90 points in each of the last two seasons. Do you want to guess who those those, those, those players are?

I'm going to say they're probably pretty good. McDavid, Dracital, Marner. Yep. Yep. Not Matthews. McKinnon? Nope, not McKinnon.

A teammate of his. Randon? Yep. Pasture neck? Nope. I'll give you the other two. Matt Kachuk and Artemi Panera. Okay.

Those are the old, and so like, yeah, people go and like, Oh, well, he could do it again. He did it when he was when nobody does it twice in a row. Like, you have to be, like, insanely fucking good. All right. And I, yeah, anyway. Finish the gloves because I...

Yeah, 34 Jake Ottinger, so not too far behind Sorokin, who, I'm going to say this, has a slightly better track record than Jake Ottinger. 47 Linus Almarke, he's the reigning Vesna winner. I guess I get that. You're going to drop all the way down to 51. one before he hit Yossi Saros, the guy who is the only reason the predators have been even approaching good. When I said there's five good goalies, like five bankable good goalies, it was the first

four guys you mentioned and then Saros for me ahead of Allmark. Just given that we don't really even know that Allmark's going to be the starter on his own team. Right. So Yossi is at 27. He's the first predator on the list. I guess I get it a little bit Second Predator on the list Philip Forsberg

One slot ahead of Yossi Soros What sport are these people watching Are they like missing a lot of these Predators games? Yossi Soros makes 42 saves And a 3-2 loss Every fucking week But yeah, I mean Philip Forsberg His career high in points is 84 it says right here

I'm with you Man what are we talking about And then the rest of the goal is it's Vasilevsky at 57, which, who like, given the injury, I don't know how you rank him anywhere. Like, he's going to be too high or too low, whatever you do. That's your Demko at 80, which is interesting. And Sergei Bavrovsky at 97. Oh, yeah, the 97 best player in the league, Sergey Bavrovsky? A little bit better than Owen Power and Thomas Hurtle.

A little bit worse than more. and Riley and J.T. Mill. I'm going to read the blurb written by a guy named Blurb Blurginsky. When you average out the play of regular season, Bob, 901, save percentage, 307 GAA, with playoff Bob, 915, 278, you get a goaltender worthy of being in the top 100. Let me stop you right there, brother. No, you don't. Well, I mean, I might agree that if you average out an.

enormous sample size of a guy being bad and a tiny sample size of a guy being adequate. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You split the difference on those two, then, yeah, I don't. And again, like, a list like this are interesting because they, I think explicitly, like, aren't counting contracts. So we're not. Yeah, for sure. But still, it's weird.

What did you think of where they put badard? Where'd they put Badaard? I don't have it. So they put him on the top 100. but not high. Again, this feels like one that you just, you can't get right. Like, no, you definitely can't. The idea that, you know, you see him like right behind Brandon Montour and Asam Cadry and you're like,

are you crazy? This guy's the best prospect that's come in in a decade. But again, this is based on this year. Yeah. But is he going to be more valuable this year than Robert Thomas, who he's right ahead of? Maybe, but. I'll check the, the, the. receipts on jersey sold at the end of the year.

He'll be pretty valuable. That's, I mean, look, like, you got, you can't not put him on the list because if he has 75 points or whatever as an 18 year old on a rotten team, that's going to be higher than probably a number of guys on this list have produced at age 28 or whatever, right? So you kind of got to put him on the list. I get that. Um, and I get why people are like, come on. you know, like I do see both sides of it. Let me say this, though. One that blew my mind that he was on this list here is Jonathan Hubertow at 70.

I had not noticed that. Yeah, I was just like, if ever there was a year to be like, we don't have to do this with Huberto. He's another one that's so interesting. Because if they did this list last year, which I'm. Yeah, they did. Last year he was ranked 15th. And imagine last year being like, how bad a season, a healthy season would he have to have to drop out of the top 50? You're like, well, he just had 115 points.

Like, I mean, but yeah, he was quite bad. And two spots ahead of him is Ryan Nugent Hopkins, who wasn't ranked last year. But then he wasn't had 100 points. So it's kind of like there's a recency bias, but there should be, right? Because this is just for this year only, right. Yeah. Now, there's one other thing that I wanted to bring up here. And that is the defensemen who are ranked behind Josh Morrissey at 63.

Okay. Josh Morrissey 63, okay. And then there's... You notoriously a big fan of... Well, it's just like, again, like there's recency bias and then there's like, oh, he had one good season, so he's in forever. Like he's a top 63 player in the league. Part of a good season. Sure.

Yeah. Right. Zach Werensky, one slot behind him. Yeah. Okay, he's coming off injury. Fine. Fair enough. Devon Taves at 75.

Now hold on a second. Are we saying this guy's not one of the 10 or 12 best defensemen in the league? Mm-hmm. Okay. What are we doing? Mo Sider, out in Detroit, Jacob Slavin, Alex Petrangelo, Brandon Montour, Jacob Truba, Drew Doughty, John Carlson, Morgan Riley, Owen Power. Those are all the defensemen below Josh Morrissey. Now, here's the thing.

I can buy that several of those guys are going to have worse seasons than Josh Morrissey. but all of them I'm just sitting here going like really yeah but you know who's better than Josh Morrissey who's that did you get a look well I mean I got I got a lot

Devin Taves is one of them did you take a gander who came in at number 52 on their list one spot behind UC Saros okay we're gonna shut down ESPN until we figure out what's going on there This says Seth Jones. That can't be right. Do they mean?

Who was ranked 97th last year? So he jumped up 45 spots. Well, I mean, you have a season like Seth Jones had last year. Why wouldn't you be jumping the line like that? That's the kind of year where you've got to move up 80, 90 slots or whatever it was, right? Yep. He remains a mobile puck mover with the vision and booming shot to threaten from the blue line. I got, no, I figured it out.

He scored 12 goals last year. Okay. That's it. We're done here. No problem. He went from shooting 2.6% to 6.7. So it's all good. Three spots behind Dougie Hamilton. I mean, really, it's a coin flip. I think if you offer most people,

Dougie Hamilton or Seth Jones. I mean, even taking the contracts out of it, you got to think people are torn one way or the other. I'm just going to quickly look up Seth Jones' his even strength plus minus, or five on five plus minus from last year. I bet, I bet he, this guy probably finished, I don't know. Third in the league? Something like that, yeah.

Gotta be, right? You'd think. You got, got to be. It's something like that. Let's see here. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see.

Boy, they really make you click on a lot of stuff. Oh, well, that's weird. Chicago got out scored by 26 goals when he was on the guys last year. I mean, they said he threatens from the blue line. They didn't say which team. Hey, very last thing on this, do you want to take a guess who was the highest ranked guy on their list who was not ranked last year? Highest ranked who wasn't ranked last year. Let me see here.

Let me think. Was Eric Carlson not ranked and then he won the north? Carlson was not ranked, but he's not the guy. He was, he was very close. He was, this guy was 31. Give me a hint. Eric Carlson was 41. Rupa Hints went from not ranked to 36.

This guy is a- I think that's fair, yeah. This guy is, let's just say, I feel like Greg's fingerprints might be on, on this one. He's a younger player. I bet they, I bet they would have ranked Jack Hughes last year. Yeah, they did. It's not Hughes. Although Jack Hughes was ranked fourth this year, which ahead of Austin Matthews, ahead of Leondresightal, which I think is...

With Matthews, he's coming off the bum year, you know, in relative terms. I get why you would put Jack Hughes, who had an awesome season ahead of him. The dry-sidal thing, unconscionable. Who's... He had a hundred... He was the, I believe, the second leading score in the league last year, and then went psycho in the playoffs. Yeah. I don't know.

At this point, I don't know what Leander Seidel has to do to settle into a spot in the top five. But yeah, Jack Hughes is interesting. Okay. It's the other guy from New Jersey. Oh, Nico Heeshire then. Up to 31. Which, you know, from not ranked. I love Nico Heeshire.

Yeah. I remember when he signed his big contract, people were like, what are they doing? Not me. I was like, I get it. This guy rocks. And obviously, they've unlocked a little something extra when they have. started putting talent around him, you know? But like, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that feels a smidge too high.

If, if you're doing a complete redraft of the league and Nico Heesh are at 31, like, that means like, he's a first round pick in the entire league. I don't know if I'm going that far with him. Um, again, I love the player, but, yeah, jumping from zero, whatever, not ranked. Naren, right behind Ilya Sorokin. Yeah, again, that Sorokin ranking is insane to me. Just watch the fucking games, man.

The Highland stink. Anyway, yeah, that's a good list. We think it's going to hold up like one to when they, when we get to the end of the season and you pull up evolving hockey's war stats. This is

it's just going to be a complete Yeah, not one thing out of place I have that feeling like that I've just been spoiled On like a season of my favorite show Look, I'm seeing Killers of the Flower Moon tomorrow I can't tell you how studiously I've avoided spoilers for that movie But are you still doing the don't watch trailer thing?

When I'm at the theater I There's just some amount that you have to accept But when I see the first frame of the Killers of the Flower Moon trailer, I am up out of my seat and sprinting to the exit. I'm not joking. Like, okay, I'm not sprinting. I'm walking at a brisk pace to not see.

So I've heard, I've seen probably a combined 20 seconds of this movie and I've heard probably a combined minute of the movie. But, yeah, you know, across the different trailers they've released. But I'm, I know next to nothing about it. All I know is that the flower moon does survive at the end and the killers are unsuccessful. Well, like, the thing is, I read the book. Oh. Well, wait a second. You read the book.

What do you? Yeah. So, I read the book before I knew they were making it a movie. Okay. But this is the thing. What is the trailer going to tell you that you don't know from? The performances, the look of the thing, you know, like, I, because these are people that only exist in my brain. I was surprised.

I got to be honest that they did it, the whole thing, anime style. Like, I was not expecting that. That was... I thought they'd do live action, for sure. The other note I have on this is the first trailer is Leo DiCaprio talking to the woman who... She's First Nations or whatever. She's Osage, I believe. I believe they picked an actual Osage actress.

But he says, you got a beautiful skin. collar. What do you call that color? And she says, my collar. Which is a good line, you know. And then the second trailer, it's Leo being driven somewhere by another, I believe, Osage actor. And he says to him, uh, whose land is all this? And the guy goes, my land. Yeah. And it's like, well, I mean, this is, this is really hitting the same notes for me, you know? Maybe. Yeah. It's question my blank. It opened two consecutive trailers for this movie. Very, very strange choice.

But look, I can't wait to see this fucking thing. Basically, they were like, the earliest showing is at this time. And I was like, well, I'll be their front road center. And I likewise cannot wait to watch it over the course of four separate nights in eight months when it's on Netflix or whatever. Yeah. How I'm already intended it.

I believe, if I'm not, If I'm not mistaken, this will be on Apple TV plus when it, when it finally hit streaming. The Irishman was Netflix, but I believe, uh, I believe this is Apple TV. So hope you're, hope you're paid up on that subscription service, but yeah, this is all, I don't care about hockey this week. That's all I'm thinking about. Killers of the Flower Moved. Oh, they, and apparently, uh, my girlfriend told me this yesterday, Martin Scorsese's

next movie is based on a book by the same author as Killers of the Flower Moon. And starring a young man, you might have heard, names Leonardo DiCaprio. These guys are making magic together. Movie magic. That's what it's all about for me. Very good. You got any plugs for us? Find me on The Athletic, including today I have a brand new column debuting called the Controuping

called the contrarian. Which is... No, I should be getting 10% of your salary off this one. I just got to say this right now. Yeah. It was, you know, I don't... I'm not saying what or who may have inspired it, but this is where I asked people, I said,

like, send me a statement that you, about the NHL that you believe to be true and maybe even, like, self-evidently true, and I will argue against it. And what I'm trying to do is keep in shape, as a sports writer, you have to be able to, like, argue passionately about things you don't actually believe in case you get invited to go on TV, on ESPN, and yell. And I thought people would, you know, send me challenging statements. And instead, about half the people intentionally tried to mess with me by sending the most obvious and inarguable statements that you can imagine.

And I argued with them. And so if you're, if you would like to know that, if you'd like to know why Mark Messier era was good for the Canucks, why Carrie Fraser is getting a raw deal from Leaf fans and, and other fascinating takes, check it up. I got to say, I read this with great expectation this morning. and it really it really hit for me. That messy A1, it opens the article. I was like, this man is a fucking genius. Let McAdo cook. This guy is so good at what he does.

Unbelievable. I got to tell you, man, I started convincing myself halfway through. I was like, I was dead on with you. Because like, you know, the idea is a listener writes in and goes, oh, say this is actually this bad thing is good. And you were immediately like, fuck, I might have, I might have blown it. I should not have

come up with this column idea. And then two paragraphs in, I could in, you know, being very familiar with your writing, I could just tell. Oh, no, he's actually kind of coming around on this one. And I was like, I love this. This is so cool. So, yeah. It's a fun.

There you go. What do you got? E.P.Ringside.com. I'm really doing all my NCAA coverage. I'm doing my obviously NHL coverage. NCAA season's been very interesting so far. I saw Michigan twice this weekend. They went one in one to a blowout either way. It was pretty fun weekend of college hockey,

and now I get to see Denver this coming weekend, so I'm looking forward to that as well. But yeah, all my NHL content is on EPRink. side too. Use the code I Love EP, all one word, all capital letters. When you sign up for an annual subscription, you'll get an extra three months tacked on to the end of those 12 months, free of charge. And then patreon.com slash puck soup. We're about to go record a mailbag. We're going to do a stick to soup later this week. And yeah, there's just always a bunch of stuff going on over there. Check it all out, patreon.com slash puck soup. Thanks for listening.

And we'll see you over on the mailbag. Have a good one, folks. Bye bye. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nonsense.

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