Puck Soup - Free Agent Winners/Losers

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

The boys discuss all the big trades, big signings and big mistakes from the NHL Draft and NHL Free-Agent Frenzy. Dougie Hamilton, Marc-Andre Fleury, all those goalies, Seth Jones trade, Logan Mailloux ordeal, Tony DeAngelo mess, Jack Eichel intrigue and reviews of all 32 NHL teams and their transactions!

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. For two. Hey, I'm Greg Wyshinsky of ESPN, your worldwide leader in Samalcasting TSN, one or two days a year. I'm Ryan Lambert and there's a guy running a lawnmower outside my window. So if that's the thing you hear, I tried yelling at him and it didn't work for some reason.

Ride on or push? You know, I'm assuming it's one of the big ride on. You know, I live in an apartment complex. There's like a grounds keeper guy. Scottish guy. That's right. Yeah, he's always, he has a rake always. It was oiled up.

Yeah. Was, was, uh, was, uh, mowing the lawn one of your, like, primary chores as a kid? Uh, primary is overstating it. It was one of my chores, though, yeah. That was definitely like a weekly thing for me. Like, I was, I was, uh, told, I had to mow the lawn and, uh, and, uh, rake the leaves, but my dad shoveled the snow. And I listened to probably, I would say 90% of my lawn mowing was,

spent listening to Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN. So it was good times. What about you, Sean? Do they have lawns in Canada? Yeah, for about two months a year. They have to be more than twice. Who are we talking to? Who are you?

I forget. I'm Sean McAnew from The Athletic. It's almost like doing the intros at the top has become like burdensome in some way. It's not burdensome. It's like literally the only like recurrentice. thing we do on the show besides like the thing at the end and the thing at the end is always different. You know guys, speaking of trimming your growth. No, we're not doing that.

But you understand that like as much as it shocks me and shocks you, there are like new people that listen to the podcast occasionally. I'll figure it out. But no, they don't figure it out. They always think that the things that you say are me. And I don't know how. It sounds so fucking different. I get accused of stuff And I'm just like, that was Lambert

Anything you don't like that I said was the other guy Lambert, did I ever tell the greatest But it was Lambert's story? Is this a Brendan Shanahan one? Yeah Yeah, I've heard this story 6,000 times No, but have I ever told it on the podcast? I'm pretty sure you have, yeah

Sean, do you know this story? Yeah, I've heard this story, so you've either on the podcast or Well, there you go. that's this week's challenge. Go back and find when I told the Brendan Shanahan story at some point. It's not worth it, I would say. If you do... It's fine. Oh, no, it's very worth it. It's great.

If you find it and can tell me what episode I set it in, I'm going to send you a prize. Nothing. You're not going to send anything. No, you know what I'm going to do? I'll say exactly right now. If you can go back and find out the episode in which I discussed Brendan Shanahan at the Research and Development Camp talking about Ryan Lambert, I will send you a

box of pubes shaving equipment from manscapes. Wow. Yeah. I'm really glad you said equipment. This was headed to some serious. I will put a collection of pub shavings on your pizza. It's freaking Jared Lido.

He's the joke. Is there any hockey news? Did anything happen this week that we could talk about? I will tattoo damaged on your forehead. All right, listen. We're going to start. We're going to do what we always do at this point in the year. We just talk about all the. the signings.

Okay. Well, first I think we're going to talk about some trades, right? Do you want to talk about the trades first? Yeah. Everything happens since our last show. That's what I'm saying. It's old news. Literally.

Wait, like the draft happened too? Yeah. Oh, fuck. All right. What do we want to talk about first? Let's go to Chicago. Let's talk about all the Chicago things. Because everybody's already read all the takes, but also they're going to want to know what

we think. So, yeah. All right. So Chicago, via trade. okay, they acquired Seth Jones, okay, for Adam Boquist, a first, a second, and a conditional first. So a first in 2021, which became Cole Cillinger,

and then a first in 2022, which is lottery protected. They get Seth Jones and they sign Seth Jones to a, what, a seven-year deal? worth 9.5 against the cap. I thought it was 8. It's 8, right? Was it 8? Was it 8 over? Yeah, because they traded them then re-signed. Right, great. Eight and then 9.5 million against the cap.

And it's a no-move clause. And there you go. And then Chicago acquired Mark Andre Fleury for practically nothing. And then found out that Mark Andre Fleury didn't want to play in Chicago. Is that for, is that like for certain by now?

because the last I saw was like, well, he's weighing his options. He hasn't said. He's weighing his options, but his first visceral reaction was like, I don't want to play in Chicago. Now, let's, let's, I mean, let's not blow past these. Because they're all very important stories. What did you guys think of the Seth Jones situation? Somebody was going to be that stupid, right? Like, that's just how he's viewed in hockey as being that kind of a player.

I think everybody knows where I stand on the Seth Jones. being worth that kind of money situation. And I guess I'm not surprised it with Chicago just because if you're trading Duncan Keith, you're going to talk yourself into being in the

market for a guy you think of as being a number one, but who's actually maybe more of like a number three. Number three as a second pairing defenseman, you mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Your feelings on the trade and more so the contract are going to be dictated by where you fall on the whole is Seth Jones actually good debate. They're paying him like a Norris guy.

So he... Sir, I think even the biggest Seth Jones fan would say he wasn't that last year. I think even Seth Jones would say that. In fact, he has on multiple occasions. And, you know, when you trade for a guy, I've written about this in the past. You trade for a guy, you always turn around and give him too much on the contract because you have no leverage. You can't make this trade and then sit down and be like, I don't know. We're looking at the comparables. Like you just gave up a ton to get the guy.

So not a big surprise. We had heard Chicago as a destination for a while now, and we figured that would be about the price to get him in trade, maybe towards the high end. I think Columbus did very well, especially given it kind of came out afterwards, that he gave them like two teams to work with. That's the part that I wanted to focus on. We could keep, you know, quibble on the cap. I think Lambert's right that he would have probably gotten it from somewhere. There is absolutely no justification for Chicago paying as much as they did for Seth Jones knowing what the market for Seth Jones was. Because the only team that was going to ante up for him was going to be one that was going to sign him.

and he was only going to sign in like three places. Yeah, one of them didn't want him. But the thing is, if you're Chicago, right, even if it's just down to you and Dallas, if you really want the guy, you've got to beat Dallas. And if you're either bidding against a Dallas-Stars team that's being aggressive or you think you are

because the blue jackets have led you to believe that, then you've got to pay up. I mean, whether the market is two or three, three or 10 teams, if they're all interested in bidding, then you're in a bidding war. And it's, and you're going to end up paying. And, and I think full credit to Columbus, they at least, they manufactured either a significant bidding war or the perception of one. And really those two are the same thing. So let me ask you this. Do you think that this move, the Seth Jones move, was made primarily to try to win now with Tate's.

and Cain, or was made primarily for the transition to the next thing after Taves and Cain leave? Well, it's both. I mean, you know, like, we heard, you know, in recent, oh, they're so frustrated with how bad they are, and the players are really mad that they're trading away. All these guys are letting Cory Crawford walk and all that kind of stuff. And so I think the other moves lead me to believe, like, the other moves they've made in the last few days lead me to believe, oh, they think they're going to be competitive next year.

Yeah. You know, they, in all likelihood, will not be, especially if Mark Andre Fleury says he doesn't actually want to play for them, at which point, you know, Chicago just basically said, hey, Vegas, do you want $7 million in cap space for free? It's so insane. Yeah. How do you not get anything? Like, no sweetener?

No, nothing. It's so bizarre. I can't figure that shit out. Well, I mean, go ahead. I think the reason you don't get a sweetener is because he's the Vesina winner. Yeah. Like, this isn't, you're not grabbing some injured guy or somebody who hasn't been good in years. But he's the Vesina winner who they have to trade. Like, they have to trade him.

Do they have to trade him? Obviously, they have to trade him. They had to trade him. Why did they have to trade him given, and we can get into this in the free agent? But look, when they made the trade, I think everyone went, oh, there's $7 million cleared up. We know Vegas is going to do something crazy. And then they went and got Genni Dadanav and who, Lauren Braswa is their new backup goal? And that was their $7 million right there.

They spent it on those two guys. So is that they had to do that? Well, they had to do that because they were nose up against the cap. Yeah, they could. They still are right now. And they've added a guy who scored like 10 goals last year. Yeah, but sure. And a much worse goalie.

But those are the moves. In other words, but they don't make those moves if they still have Flurry. That's the point. Like, they can't make any move if they still have Flurry. That's what they had to trade. If those were your two options, if you're standing at a fork in the road and one says keep the Vezna winner and one says add a pretty good forward who's coming off a lousy year and a adequate backup goalie, I'm not saying one of those might not be preferable to the others. I'm saying you don't look at those two choices and go. we have to move on from the Vesna guy, who, by the way, is also our heart and soul in the most popular player in the history of the franchise.

But you're missing the point. The point is that he's been gone since Lainer signed. Yes, that's right. You can't spend $12 million on goaltending for a second straight year. They made their choice. Like, the only reason he was there is because they couldn't move him. And the only reason that he won the Vezina is because Lainer wasn't playing. Like, that's the fact.

And you're absolutely right. He is the most popular player in the franchise's history. He's the most popular player in the locker room. He's the most influential player in the locker room. And that's one of the reasons they wanted him gone. So, like, he was already gone. The minute Lainter put pen to paper, Flurry was done. And, uh, yeah, you don't, you don't have your agent tweet out a picture of you with a sword in the back and you're like, I think I'll stick around, you know.

Or the team is stick right. He very clearly wanted to stick around. want it to stick around. Yeah. No, I'm saying, I'm saying, like, for all involved, not just in his, like, in his mind, yeah, I want to stay. But, like, you can't have that be the going concern. Right. So what do we think happens to Flurry?

Like, now that we can get past the Seth Jones thing a little bit here, like, what do you think happens with the Flurry? Think he plays? I don't think he plays for Chicago. Yeah, my guess is that ultimately he probably does, but it's not. a sure thing. It probably does play next year somewhere. Maybe Chicago. Obviously, the dots we're all connecting is Pittsburgh as being potentially a place where that would fit for team and player.

Did you hear, did you read Ron Hextall's quote about that, by the way? Very, very telling. Like, like, very deep. He said something along the lines of like, there were a lot of people here who really, appreciate how good he is or something along those lines. And I'm like, oh, you've been inundated. Like there's an S. Crosby on your phone at all times trying to get you to make that deal. And you don't want it.

That's not what you want to do is add that money to your cap or bring that guy in. You don't want any piece of it. And yet you've got everybody knocking down your door being like bring back flour. Yeah. And they're very aware. Like Rob Rossi wrote what I thought was a pretty insightful piece where he said, look, they're still, to some extent, stinging from the whole Yarmory Yager thing, where everybody thought he was coming home, and it was the Yager watch, and then they didn't do it.

And he signs in Philadelphia, and their fans were really pissed off. And it sort of feels like, okay, here's that scenario again, the chance to bring back the really popular ex-player. And oh, by the way, we desperately need a goaltender. We just saw another season of the Sydney Crosby era fall apart because our goaltender stunk in the playoffs. And we're not going to get too much into who the guy who used to do that for us was. We're going to pretend like that's a different person.

Yeah. But also, but also like Malkinsen is walking in a year, man. Malkinsen is walking. Oh, I get it. Yeah. And it's one year on the, you know, on the cap. And who knows? Maybe you go to Chicago and you say, okay, we'll make a deal.

But we need you to retain. And Chicago's going, well, we don't want to I mean we were willing to pay this guy 7 million to play for us would we eat 2 million in order to turn something we just got for free into a decent asset

or two? You might be willing to do that so especially if the alternative is you get nothing at all If he plays for Chicago I'm not going to try to Mike Traikos this and pretend that Chicago is a Stanley Cup contender which is the thing that was said this week but I will say that if he plays for them

and he plays upwards of 50 games, 50 to 55 games. Given Taves coming back, given the talent around them, and given how absolutely dog shit the Pacific is going to be, I don't think it's outlandish to think that they could challenge for a wild card, right? They would need Flory to play really well. They would need, like, maybe not another Vezna season, but, like, Vesna adjacent. because I look at that defense and I go, oh, this defense is bad.

This defense is not good. I kind of like them up front, though. Like, they're not terrible up front. They're pretty good if Taves can come back and be Taves, you know, or 75% of Taves. Like, I think they're actually pretty good up front. But you're right. I mean, the defense has a little bit of work to do.

Let me hit the depth chart real quick here on our friends, cat friendly. You got yourself Calvin DeHaan, Seth Jones. Oh, Jake McCabe's good. Connor Murphy. Riley Stillman and Ian Mitchell. Maybe not your best third pairing in the league. But you've got maybe like three to four good defensemen there.

Yeah. And I mean, well, it gets into a thing of, are they going to completely give Seth Jones the Duncan Keith treatment where it's like, we're going to, no matter how bad you appear to be, we're going to give you 25 minutes a night. Like, you're maybe struggling. Yeah, we don't care. We go play 25 minutes a night because. our alternative is playing Calvin DeHan 25 minutes a night. So we just can't, you know, we can't figure that out. And that was the problem with Duncan Keith.

Like, do I think Duncan Keese is absolutely cooked? Maybe not if you can cut eight minutes off its ice time, you know? And so, yeah, that's the issue. And also, we should say, yeah, the Pacific is going to be bad. but the Central is going to be pretty good. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's a tough part. Chicago is going to have a tough schedule on their hands.

I don't know. And then the other thing that they did was they acquired Tyler Johnson for a 2003 second round draft pick to Tampa. And then team cap shenanigans acquires Brent Seabrook. Yeah, they gave themselves like almost $12 million in cap space. Fucking Julian Brisewa. Genius. Ladies and gentlemen, genius.

All right. Yeah, I mean, Seabrook doesn't help them that much. I think there was some bad information. I thought you were going to say on the ice. No, but there was some bad information that, like, they magically get a full $6 million more in cap space just by having them. And it doesn't quite work. It doesn't work like that. But, yeah, this is the deal we all thought Tampa was going to have to make last year until the Kucharoff thing.

I, you know, and like everyone, I'm shocked and horrified that a team is using the, rules that exist and have existed for years and years and years to do a thing. The good news about that is I think now everybody's just like, you know what, they're going to do it. What am I going to keep getting mad about it for? You know what I mean? Like everybody's just kind of accepted it and I think that's fine. People are like railing and saying they've got to change this. I'm like, they just did a CBA.

If it was a fucking problem, they would have changed it. They just did a CBA under panic conditions with the pandemic. But this shit's been going on. But this shit's been going on since the fucking pronger and host of trades. Like it's always been there if they really thought that it was a pox on the league. And I'll tell you this, Sean, maybe it's not the pandemic conditions. Maybe it's Tampa that pushes the Boulder over. Right.

It's the fact that they want to cop doing it. I think to this, I think it's not, the league doesn't care about this because this doesn't move big amounts of money from one pile to another and they get it back in escrow anyways. I'll honestly say, I think when all this stuff eventually ends, it's not going to be the league. It's going to be the insurance companies who are going to say, like, wait a single. Why are we paying out on guys that every time,

everyone in the hockey world seems to think this guy could still play if he needs to. Why am I paying out millions of dollars on a policy? And as soon as that stops, the whole system falls apart as far as the way it works now. So that's what I would watch. but what do I know? All right. Let's move on to the adventure that was Jim Benning in the last few days.

I wrote an article. I did 10 takeaways on free agency on ESPN. You can read it now. He has a Homer Simpson-esque existence in my mind. Like no one makes more mistakes and then somehow remedies his mistakes. And then somehow at the end of the episode, things are kind of a. Okay? Like, it's very strange. So he signs, he signs Roussel, Beagle, and Louis Erickson as free agents. None of them work out. And I'll, I'll go to his defense on Louis Erickson. I remember the Louis Erickson signing at the time being like, this guy's coming off a huge year in Boston. They're going to stick him with the Sadiens. Like, he's going to be okay. And then he wasn't. He was fucking terrible. Yeah, that was a situation where it's like, where it was like a lot of UFA deals where it's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's

be fine now, but like three, four years from now, yikes. And then it wasn't even that, you know. Right. Right. Yeah. And you're thinking, right, fine now means, okay, you got a good player to play with the Cydians while they're still playing. So it's not the worst idea. But the other two, Roussel and Beagle were like horrible from the start. Yeah, on day one. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So he trades those three plus a first round pick that ends up being, the ninth overall pick where the coyotes get a pretty good goal score in Dylan Genther. I think this can be a pretty good player for them. A couple of other. picks. They get Connor Garland, who's really good. Good player. It's a good pickup. Like him. Like him in their top six a lot. And then they get fucking Oliver Ekman-Larsen at $7.26 million through 2006. And that's terrible. That's a terrible thing to have him on your team. Yeah. I mean, so I was on the PDOCAST last night, you know, doing reactions to everything that's happened. And the thing that I said, and this is to you. point, Greg, about, like, he keeps screwing up and nothing bad seems to come of it,

except, like, he keeps his job and gets to roll back how long the rebuild's going to be another year. And, like, again, like, the, the thing, the Jim Benning Experience is his quote about, oh, you know, that's what, like, what are your plans for Oliver Ekman-Larsen? And he goes, well you know I don't really know why his plus minus was bad last year but it'll be good next year it's all going to work out and it's like and to your point about Homer Simpson I felt like Frank Rimes it's like what are you talking about yeah it's exactly right and then he he makes two big moves in the offseason of 2020 he signs Braden Holby and he trades for Nate Schmidt buyout trade yeah yeah and then and then buy out the trade and my favorite thing that I read the

entire week was, I think, from our friend Thomas Drance's article on the athletic about the Canucks, when he said, so Nate Schmidt blocked a trade to Winnipeg. He didn't want to go to Winnipeg. He actually had blocked a trade to Winnipeg when he was with Vegas as well. And then, so he's blocking the trade. And so the Canucks come back to Nate Schmidt and they say, okay, well, listen, we try it our best. The alternative is now a reality. You're going to be in Vancouver next year. And Nate Schmidt says, actually, I'll go to Winnipeg. It's just incredible. What a fucking indictment.

Yeah. So, you know, the big talk around Nate Schmidt, who I think we all would agree is a pretty good defenseman, is that he just didn't fit Vancouver's system. Whether that's true or what, you know, or they just didn't put him with the right people, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's just how it's perceived and that's whatever, you know, that's how it is. is Oliver Recman-Larsson? What if he doesn't fit the system? Yeah. Coming off, like, at least with Nate Schmidt, he was coming off, like, good seasons with Vegas, you know?

Oliver Recman-Larsen coming off some bad seasons in Buffalo, or Arizona, aka Buffalo Southwest. Right. And so you're going, oh, well, like, if that doesn't work out, you're stuck with this player for how many years? and he has a no-movcloth? Like, uh-oh. It seems like it's a big gamble. And to the larger point, though, um,

car garland and, and the other guys they've, they've added in the last few days. Like, I think they've really improved their forward group. Really improved it. Uh, they've also made their defense maybe the worst in the NHL. My fucking they, so they, we just got done talking about J. Beagle.

Like, the Tucker Pullman contracts that J. legal contract of defensemen. They gave a four-year term to a third-paring guy. What are they doing? They're getting harder to play. Yeah, they're doing exactly what they always do. And this is like, Carter Garland's a good player. Yep. That's the key to the whole thing. If this ends up working out, it's going to be because he keeps looking like a 60-point guy and those guys are hard to get. But somebody made the comparison with the Ekman-Larsen. It was, it kind of was like the,

the Leaf Senators deal a few years ago for Dionne Funuf, where the Leafs took on all of the senators crap for one year to get out of Funuf's next five or whatever it was. And it's the same sort of thing. Like I'm amazed I've heard people say like, oh, Jim Bethe, he turned those guys into value. Did he? I mean, it's kind of like, you know,

if I got three guys who were going to hit me over the head with a shovel for the rest of the day and I trade that for one guy who's going to run me over with his car for a week. That's not really an improvement. A year from now, you're going to be sitting there going, oh, man, it's too bad. We didn't write it out with those guys. Unless, I mean, Oliver Eckman-Larsen's a guy where I think there's an argument to be made that he was never as good as people made about to be. He was in a small market. You know, we always say, oh, if this guy was in a big market, he gets so much more attention.

but sometimes when you're in a very small market, people just go, I got to pick somebody on that team to pretend is good. You know what that is, dude? That's Dave Tippett syndrome. Well, it's Louis Erickson, too. The most underrated player in the league. Like, the most underrated player in the league is always on a dog shit team in a small market.

But in Arizona, there was always, like, grading on a curve, right? Because, like, not only are you on a dog shit team, but your team might leave, right? So it's like, whoever was good in Arizona got good by, like, a times three multiplier. It is. So, I mean, I was going to start to say, you know, if all of a Rachman-Larsman can get back to his previous level in Vancouver, which at his age would be unlikely,

but even if he did, I don't know that that level is $7 million first-paring defense. Well, it's definitely not. But, like, if you can turn him into a reliable second-paring guy and manage to not overpay all your other, oh, wait, okay, well, that's a problem. Right? Like, that's the issue is, like, you can, can take on a guy where it's like, I like the player, but I don't like the contract,

Blake Coleman, Tyler Johnson, that kind of thing. And you can get value elsewhere in your lineup, then, okay, yeah, you can, you can live with the overpaid middle of the lineup guy. But, and this is a Jim Benning thing, and this is a, this is an Edmonton Oilers thing, and this is a Calgary Flames thing, and this is a Chicago thing. they don't do that. So like if everybody's overpaid by half a million dollars here, a quarter of a million dollars there,

that adds up. And then when you have a guy who's overpaid by maybe two, three million dollars, you're like, oh shit, I hate that guy. He's ruining this team. And it's like, no, everybody's ruining this team. Like, that's the problem. Yeah. And to the point earlier about like what is,

what's Stan Bowman trying to do, is he trying to win now or is he trying to win in the future? It's like, well, no, he's trying to protect his job, right? And that's what Jim Benning's trying to do. He's trying to create the illusion that this team is both rebuilding and competitive. And it can't be. Like, there are almost no teams that can do both. And so what he's, like, if that's the mandate from ownership or whatever, he has to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're actually competing.

And if they don't make the playoffs this year, he's getting fired. So he's trying to load up on players that can maybe scrape him into the playoffs and get destroyed in the first round, and then you can go, oh, well, look, I mean, you know, we got to the playoffs, and then player X was hurt, and, oh, if we had that guy, we would have been fine, you know, like, that happened. every year. So as long as you can get into the playoffs, you can make an excuse for yourself and keep your job that much longer. But, you know, you'd have to be a sucker to think this team's any fucking good. Yeah. All right. A little praise for Bill Armstrong, who took over a team that was,

had no draft picks, even less draft picks than they normally would because the NHL took some and was a cap team inexplicably and managed to offload a bunch of salary, then weaponize the cap space, and has two first rounders and five second rounders in a really good draft next year. And also is committing to the tank in a way that might be historic.

Fucking Carter Hutton is his number one right now, which is really amazing. So good on him for embracing the bit. Also, I guess we'll transition. I know we're kind of jumping through the time. timeline a little bit, but oh, fuck it. We'll talk about the Darcy Cooper thing later. We don't have to talk about it now.

I'll get confused and we'll start forgetting shit. Pavel Bustavich to the blues for Sammy Blay in a second. From what I gather, the Rangers didn't want to pay the guy. He had arbitration rights, and they were kind of ready to walk away from them if they didn't find a suitable trade. And then they make a trade that speaks to the thing we heard when Jeff Gordon got fired, which was, we got to get tougher. Yep.

Do they bring in Sammy Blay and trade out a really talented forward? That they never really appreciated, let's be honest. Like, Boussnavich was always like, like, never really appreciated about that organization. Yeah, he's so good. He's a good pick up for the Blues. I like that a lot. Yeah. That one Tom Wilson Scrum is going to be the time traveler stepped on a butterfly moment for the entire Rangers organization.

This is like one, it's like when the Sabres got toughness pilled because the Bruins. Ryan Miller thing. Uchi Tread over Miller. Yeah. Except that happened in an era where toughness still mattered. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But like, and, you know, I said this on Twitter yesterday,

but like, this is classic. Like, we got to get a good guy with a gun to stop the bad guy with a gun because it's clear that the NHL is going to let Tom Wilson do whatever he wants forever. So they're like, we're going to get a bunch of guys who can beat the shit out of Tom Wilson and not just throw like, you know, some random, third liner out there to get wailed on and then say, well, we, we fought them. So, you know, there it is. Yeah.

And then you get selected 10th overall in the draft. We'll get to that. The Flyers, so we had covered, I think, the Ryan Ellis trade in the last show. So they make the Rassowitz-Witts-Leyn and trade, trading a first and a second in Robert Hague for Ritzelan, who I know you're, I don't think you're, he's not good, but he might be okay if cast them the right role. He's like, look, we just talked about with Ekman Larson. Like, he's going to be a second pairing guy instead of a first guy.

He's not a first pairing. Well, here's the thing. Buffalo, the last couple of years, they've been cutting his ice time because he used to get the Duncan Keith, like, 23, 25 minutes a night. And they cut his ice time in recent years. And he's gotten worse. His numbers are actually getting fucking worse. So he needs to play more? All right.

Yeah. If they play him 60 minutes a night, you know, but they might get to the point where he's actually not bad. And then they make the big, the big, the big trademark. with Columbus. They sent Jacob Vorichick to the blue jackets for Cam Atkinson, basically acknowledging, hey, we don't need a guy passing the buck. We need a guy who could score some goals. And I like it. I like that a lot. And I like it for both teams, too, because I also think that, like, throwing Vorichick on a line with Patrick Line is probably going to be beneficial. So it was good. And also just nice hockey trade. A hockey trade. It was kind of fun, you know? Like, I mean, there was cap considerations as far as as far as it goes, but like, that's a fun trade because

we're going to get to like every game in the season. We can look and go like, oh, Oh, Vorchik had three points tonight. Blue Jackets won the trade. And then, you know, you go back and forth. It's going to be, it's going to be fun. I like that trade. Me too. Not a hockey trade. The Buffalo Sabres acquire Devin Levy and a conditional first round pick, lottery protected for Sam Reinhardt. Were you, I guess like, I mean, honestly, I didn't really know about Levy. I don't even know how to say his name. Probably Levi, based on how his name is spelled. Should we go with that? I didn't know what D.L. really was about until I looked into it. I guess his stock has risen as a prospect. Yeah, he's a really good

goalie prospect. He was supposed to play college hockey this year. Oh, college hockey. No. Started the year playing in the Canadian World Junior camp instead of playing college. chalk, he got hurt during that time, played anyway, was pretty good, actually. He was very, very good, as a matter of fact. And then didn't play anymore that season because he was too injured. So he, like, it's a, I don't think it's like a chronic injury situation where you've got to be worried about that sort of thing. But, like, he's coming out of a Northeastern program that has done a good job getting

goalies to the higher levels of they also Caden Primo who's like the heir apparent in Montreal was a northeastern guy so yeah there's a lot of reason to believe this kid's going to be a pretty good goaltender so good addition for a very good player a very good player who obviously was never playing in Buffalo

yeah who had asked who by all accounts asked out so it's going to be interesting to see what he signs for there I don't I have an inkling it's going to be something short term in order to get to UFA. But we'll see how that works out. Yeah, I would admit. Real briefly on Winnipeg, hey, it only took them a couple of years,

but they finally are fixing the defense. We all like Nate Schmidt. He's pretty good. And Brendan Dillon's a really good pickup for like two seconds. I think they did a good job there. Yeah, the Devon Taves price. Maybe not quite a Devon Taves type player, but, you know, he's a good defenseman.

Yeah. And this has been an area of need for them. since the great exodus since before Bufflin retired well Bufflin Myers Truba and there's one I'm missing all left at like the same time

Oh Sherat I think it was right was the other guy that was the other guy Yeah that sounds right Yeah And he's one of the four prongers back there So there you go

We talked about it briefly But we should probably touch on it a little bit further You're getting Daddenoff to the Knights for Nick Holden in a third at full freight of $5 million for two seasons? Like I said, man, if that's what you're spending your flurry cap money on. Okay, he was not good in Ottawa.

Now, Ottawa was not a great situation for him, and I can absolutely see why some team would say we can get this guy back closer to what he was in Florida, and he was pretty good in Florida. Pretty consistent 25-goal guy, But I don't get it. Like on its own, in isolation, the trade makes sense.

If you've got cap room, they didn't give up very much. The senators, I mean, we all knew they, senators signed guys to deals that are cheap in real money early and get more expensive as they go. And then they trade those guys halfway through. So on that sense, the deal makes sense. But in the greater context of we just knifed our franchise guy to clear this cap room, and this is what you do with it? Yeah, because they cleared the cap room and everybody's like, Eichael time, and they were like, Evgeny Dattanoff time, and you're, oh, wait a second. And he's a winner, by the way.

So it's not even like, you know, they need a center. So he was the best guy out, no. You're like, Eichl time. We just acquired Nolan Patrick. Why do we need Jack Eichol? That's right. Yeah, I mean, they needed more finishers than that team. So from that aspect, it could be a good move.

But his underlying numbers have declined for four straight seasons. And I, this was a weird one. I, if this was a one-year deal of like he was in his walk year and they pull this, maybe it makes a little bit more sense. That extra season for this guy, I don't know. It's very strange. Didn't expect that one. But they, I mean, Kelly McCriman said the other day, they love their centers.

So maybe, maybe they're rolling with your, you know, Marcia So's, I'm sorry, William Carlson, Chandler Stevenson, hopefully hoping Nolan Patrick is better, you know, thing. Or this is the first step to something else. And the thing that really confuses me is they did it so quickly. It's not like a few days went by and, okay, we didn't get this guy or that guy, and this fell through, and we can't wait on that. So we go to plan C or plan D. They did it right away, which suggests this was plan A. Yeah.

Yeah. Which, yeah. All right. Finally, a little bit of goalie laundering. Vitechek vanichek gets selected in the expansion draft and then goes back to Washington for a 2023 second roundback. Now, I'm joking, of course. Like, obviously, they didn't know they were going to get Grubauer. so then Vanichick

Well, they have no fucking plan. That's the point. They fucked this up so bad. They fucked it up so bad. Because also the guy they selected from Columbus, Gavin Beiruthor, who's like, he's not an NHL player probably. But, you know, the guy they picked, they just let him go back to Columbus in free agency. So why fucking pick them?

An excellent point, Lambert. It almost feels like they have not played. this as well as they could. It's outrageous how badly they've done it. Because, like, you know, when they, when they did the expansion draft, I think everybody was like, well, look, they fucked up in, you know, in maybe not maximizing the assets and that kind of thing. But their goaltending situation looks good.

Like, V-Dec V-Vanezschev, maybe a solid, like 1B kind of a guy, Chris Dreeger. You give him a chance to expand his role. Maybe he gives you something. And Joey DeCord's like a solid, uh, goaltending prospect, um, even if he's maybe a little bit on the older side. And then they were like, yeah, actually, and also critically, uh, those guys didn't cost a lot of money combined. Right. Um, and then they were like, what if we spent nine and a half million dollars on goaltending? Yeah. I know. We just got through the carry price. Don't commit all that cap space to your goldtending shit. Yeah. And they like, didn't go that far,

but they went pretty far with it. And Vegas too, where they're like, okay, we have, now a $7 million goalie and a $5 million goalie. And, you know, obviously neither one of those guys makes as much money as that. But it was funny. This is like the Diet Coke version of it. I was on Dr. Rieger, like, I was texting with a player the other day about like when Gru Bauer signed. And I'm just like, like, how bad does this guy feel?

Like he signs this deal to become like a crack in because he has one good season in Florida. And then, like, everybody's like, oh, actually, Carrie Price is going to be the goalie. Then Carrie Price doesn't become the goalie. He's like, okay, I'm here. I'm wearing the jersey. Look at me. I'm at the inaugural, whatever. And then, like, they sign Groupauer.

And you're right back where you should be. And the guy I'm texting is like, listen, man, this dude was in, like, the East Coast League a couple years ago. And now he's making, yeah, he's making fucking $10.5 million and living in Seattle. Like, he is okay-dokey. Let's talk about the cracking because we've gone through the trades, I think. Jaden Schwartz for five years at 5.5 is I'm not the biggest

Jaden Schwartz guy. I feel like he's never really found consistency and never is really offensively that's true. He's a very, very good defensive player. Great defensive player, great in the corners, can muck it up whenever, but he's just not, he's never finished in a way that is relative to like his I mean, I guess you could just say expected goals,

but like he plays a style and does so many good things you expect her to be more statistic results, is I guess what I'm trying to say. But hey, you know, he's a good player. What did you think of the group error signing, Sean? I think they had an opportunity and they took it. I don't actually have an issue with them saying, yeah, we didn't really think this was going to be a possibility. But once it was, we jumped on it and we undid something else we had done in order to make that happen. That makes sense.

Like, I was kind of on the record. We talked about it last week and even in the subsequent days. I didn't like what Seattle did or more specifically what they didn't do as far as not making any side deals, only making the one trade involving a guy they had just picked. I thought they left a lot of value on the table, and I thought it suggested that they had misread the market pretty badly. But I always said it with the caveat that, okay, they've got all this cap space. Let's see what they do with it in the next week.

They can either use it to acquire assets to take bad deals from teams that want to spend or they themselves can spend. And they did spend. And I think they did okay. Gruberauer is a really good goalie. Schwartz, you know, I guess that deal is fine. Wemberg is, I know people are less enthusiastic about. They did spend. They still got a ton of cap room.

And now that all the free agency's done, I'm not sure that that cap room has as much value as it did. So I'm still not really sold. But it was better than, you know, I was pretty clearly setting up the possibility that they were just going to go into free agency and keep all this cap room and just sit on it and be the cheap team. And they didn't really do that. So I'll give, I'll give credit at least if the plan was we're going to go to free agency and spend there. They did do that. Although, whether they did it wisely, I don't know. Yeah. Whoever does free agency wisely.

Well, right. But that's the point, right? Where it's like, okay, we're going to be very judicious about this. We're going to spend money wisely. And then it's like we're going to do all our spending in free agency an inherently inefficient way to spend money. Right. And so this is another case of like, I like the player, but I don't like the contract. Jaden Schwartz, I'm not totally convinced he's a $5 million player. I'm very convinced he's not a $5 million player for five years. You know, he's a guy who, you know, has an injury history, and he's closing in on being 30 years old.

And he's, like we said, like, he's an inconsistent offensive guy. And so if his only value is, like, his only reliable value is defense, you're locking a guy until he's, like, 34, 35 years old. and that might go away as the injuries continue to pile up. Alexander Wemberg, a guy who, you know, he's had some productive years in his career, but like last year he shot 20 percent, and it was a bit of a fluke, how many goals he scored, right? So I don't know, like, I just look at this and I go, okay, like these are players that you can maybe bet on a little bit, but like they're betting the house on them in terms of, like, they're. They spent $20 million a year yesterday on a bunch of guys where you're like, I mean, I guess.

They're all guys that should be in service of better players that they don't have yet. Correct. They didn't go and get Dougie Hamilton and Gabriel Landiscag. Right. For sure. No. Okay, so two things on that. First of all, I am convinced they thought they were to get Landiscock.

100%. Yeah, I really think they thought it was going to go sideways with Colorado. Of course, they didn't realize that it's stuff's in Denver, as I've been saying for weeks. and then they very much did not anticipate Rubauer being available. Ron Francis said as much last night when I asked him about it. I'm like, did you come into this first off season think you're going to build around your own flurry? And he's like, we had no fucking idea that this guy's going to be around. So Ryan's right.

They had a plan and they kind of like scrapped the plan and went in this direction, which is, I don't know if I like that for the Cracket. The other thing too. And just to add real quick, if they really, if Gabriel Landiscault was the key piece of the plan, then they could have taken him and had exclusive rights to negotiate with them and, you know, all that stuff. So they didn't. They should have had a good, they could have they had a window to talk to him. So they should have had a pretty good sense before the draft. I think they should have taken him and really, really double down because I think they, I don't know, I'm, I'm pretty sure they thought they'd had a, they had a real good shot at him.

I'm not as high on Gru Bauer as the goalie community is. I think he's fine. I defer to the goalie community on a lot of shit because I think they know their voodoo best. I might split with him on this one. I'm not a huge Gru Bauer fan. And I don't think that I would have necessarily made him my guy. But others say that he's got the goods, so I'll defer. Well, he's got the good head positioning and he keeps his pot, you know, all that fucking goalie.

Well, no, he's got great. He's got great mobility within the crease. Like, he's got great physical gifts. I'm just not... Like, if you told me, even with the Vezina nomination, which I think is more about the team in front of than anything... Of course it is. Right.

So, like, if you told me to rank the top ten goalies, where would Gru Bauer be? Maybe on the lower end of the top ten? Like, he's like eight or nine, maybe? Yeah. I mean, at most... I think he's in the second half of the top ten. I think that's about...

Okay. Sounds about right. I'm not crazy about him. But here's the thing, Sean, and your point is really well-take. when the the second best move that Vegas ever made besides getting Flurry was trading for Mark Stone. And they traded for Mark Stone when he was 26. He looks like he's 55, but he was 26.

And like, that's the kind of move that really good teams make. They don't make the let's get Jaden Schwartz at 29 move. They get the let's turn the draft capital and prospect capital that we have acquired through all of the expansion draft. But that's what I said. It's insane. Yeah. So that's what I know that there's different paths to success. And the Cracken have one.

They have a very smart front office, what have you. But like I think about a move like the Mark Stone move, which really kind of like fucking turbo powered this team to being a. superior cup contender. And I'm like, they're doing that while you're signing Jayden Schwartz to a fucking five-year deal. Like, or whatever. Yeah. And I don't, I don't get it.

The other thing is, what was always the knock? There were two knocks on, on Ron Francis' teams when he was running Carolina. One was that he kept giving Cam Ward the number one position, which he's not doing. Like, you can say what you want about Phil Grubauer. He's not, he's not Cam Ward, right? No, he's not Cam Ward. Right. No, he's not Cam Ward.

But the other thing that everybody all. always said, and they were 100% correct, is that that team had no, those early Carolina teams had no fucking finishing talent. None. And who do they have on this team right now that can put the puck in the net? Jordan Everly, kind of. Yonnie Gord? Not really.

I don't think of Yanni Gord as being like a guy who, oh, yeah, there's a reliable, like, 20 goals a year. Maybe, yeah, yeah, sure. You want finishers on the wing. Your points taken. Yeah, well, I want finishers. finishers anywhere in the lineup. That's the other thing. They don't have any fucking centers. They have Yanni Gord.

That's it. Well, now they have Alex, Alex Wenberg. And Jared McCann, I guess. But yeah. Let's, let's roll through this. We're going to do the traditional thing of going team by team, but we'll not linger. Anaheim signs Ryan Getsloff one year, 4.5. How do you like that flirtation? The Ryan Getslap flirtation. It was Edmonton and Dallas, was it? And I saw people saying Boston, too. I don't know. He's like my age.

He's not leaving Anaheim. Get a grip. His stuff is there. The Boston Bruins had a pretty noteworthy day. My God. So like on top of signing Taylor Hall and Mike Riley, by the way, like two players they acquired at the trade deadline that are still with the Bruins, how rare is that? They bring in Nick Folino for two years at 3.8. Eric Walla, who will always find a home despite not being good at two years in 2.375.

Thomas Nosek, two years, 1.75. Derek Forbort, three-year contract for Derek Forbort. And, like, this is the thing. I wrote about it last week about, like, I really don't understand how NHLGMs look at defensemen and go, oh, this guy's worth this, this guy's worth that. And at the time I wrote about it, I was talking about, okay, well, Dougie Hamilton's like a $9 million guy, but, you know, Seth Jones is nine and a half and Kale McCar is nine. And it's like, okay, we're just kind of really all over the place with this. But as if to underscore the point, Don Sweeney goes out and gives Mike Riley a really good three years, three million per deal.

He's a solid middle-air defenseman. He does a lot of good stuff for you, all 200 feet of the ice. blah, blah, blah. Then he goes and gives the exact same contract to a guy that the Winnipeg Jets were like, no thanks. Fucking psychotic. I don't get it at all. Like, I get it insofar as their problem last year was they didn't have NHL defensemen,

and technically Derek Forbork is one. But why would you give him the exact same, like, how can you look at him and Mike Riley and say both those players are worth the exact same deal to me? Yeah. Sean, what did you make of Linus Olmark getting the big old four-year, five million per contract to become Boston's goalie? Yeah, it's more of a commitment than I thought you would see Boston make to a goalie because they've got the whole two garass situation, which he's apparently had surgery. He's not going to be able to play until the middle of the season, and we don't know from there if he wants to play. If Boston wants him back, who knows.

But I think the assumption has been that he beat back, but who knows on what kind of deal. But you need a goalie. I mean, you can't go half a season hoping that Tudorask's recovery is fine, and he shows up in the second half. So I kind of thought they might go with a more veteran, but this is a situation where they went and got a guy who could be the starter for the medium long term. I think he's probably a better goalie than certainly than he showed in Buffalo, because everyone's better than they should. in Buffalo. Well, here's the thing, though. But he had a winning record this year for the Buffalo Sabres.

He had like a 915 save percentage for the Buffalo Sabres behind that defense. Like, I think he's shown that he's quite good, you know? Yep. So, and I do feel like there's this thing that's kind of almost taken on a life of its own around the league that like X Sabers goes somewhere. And it's the Ryan O'Reilly syndrome, right? Like, get them out of Buffalo. And they're, they, they, they,

get like a plus two modifier and you know Boston's out with Taylor Hall so yeah knows why not try again try it again what have you got to lose other than 20 million dollars we should mention the hilarity of the buffalo sabers um needing a goaltender and then signing Craig Anderson who Brian McClellan of the Capitol said was going to retire yeah well I mean you can want to retire but when the perfect situation presents itself. A league minimum contract with the worst franchise in professional sports. Exactly.

I mean, come on. You got to jump on that for sure. Like, did they give him a percentage of ownership or something? Like, how do you possibly go to Buffalo instead of retiring? What's going on? Again, for league minimum, if they gave him $4 million, I'd be like, oh, course, sure. But they gave him nothing.

And he was like, yeah, I'll stick around. But he gets to live in Buffalo. I don't know. Are they going to fucking, like, pay his medical bills when it gets whiplash from watching all those pucksco up behind them? Like, there's got to be some other incentive here that we're not getting. I mean, I think, honestly, I think the, from a hockey perspective, the incentive is come to Buffalo, we don't have anyone else. You're going to play a decent number of games.

And halfway through the season or three quarters of the way through the season, when some other contenders goalie gets hurt, we will trade you there. You'll go back up on a cup contender. And this is your ticket to win the Stanley Cup that you have never won in your career. There you go. That's all I can think of. Spoiler, it's going to be Arizona. Hey, Lambert, you're a huge Calgary fan. You've got your face-painted flames right now.

What did you think of the Blake Coleman signing? Once again, like the player a lot, that contract is going to be like Troy Brower contract, James Neal contract, where by like year three, they're like, what the fuck? Oh, my God. Why do we do that? And this is like, again, this is the Brad for Living experience where it's like, oh, this guy's a solid. veteran, you know, he's going to make a difference for us, like, deep down the, deeper down the lineup. And at first, we'll play him up higher.

And it's like, oh, yeah, that's not going to fucking work, Brad. I don't know what to tell you. Like, they... Oh, no, no. He, listen, I got to tell you, like, he can definitely play in your top six. Like, he was top six for the devils in scoring over 20 goals a season. I don't think he's necessarily just a checking line guy. I think that's not their issue.

I'm actually shocked they didn't pay more on the cap of for him. Like, fucking 4.9 million. to convince a guy to play in Calgary is sort of interesting. But it turns out that, like, as a Texas guy, he kind of likes Calgary. Yeah, they all wear a cowboy hats. He's like, this rocks. I love it. Yeah.

It actually worked to their advantage. They found the one guy who's like, fucking, hey, cattle and cowboy hats. Let's go. And he took less than market value. I think he could have gotten over five with a number of teams. Yeah, but for six years? Not for six years. Well, there you go.

But his wheels are going to go. I think he does a lot of... There's a lot of good things, though, that might make him a little bit better than some of those one-dimensional guys that you mentioned. Like I said, I really like him as a player, but I just look at this contract and I go, he fucking did it again. Like, Trilovin can't help himself with this shit.

And especially because you go, much like a lot of the other teams we've talked about, you go, what's the direction here? Like, what are they trying to fucking do with this roster? Because they just gave away their number one defenseman for nothing to a division rival and like who did they sign to

make up for it? I don't even remember they signed some dog shit defenseman. Well they made those. Oh they got they got Nikita Zedorov. Yeah. Zedorov. Yeah, he stinks.

He's bad. And so what are you going to do? Like are you going to give him Mark Giordano's minutes? And if, and if not, who do you give those minutes to Noah Hanofin? Chris Tanev?

Like these are these are guys where it's like again like, yeah, I guess I guess, I guess I think Tanev and Hanifin are like pretty good defensemen, but like, they can't be up in the lineup. No, they were, they were perfectly cast. All right, let's get to Carolina. Let's start with the good. Ian Cole.

Ian Cole is like, as a Carolina hurricane as they come. Fucking fun dude, good defenseman. You could see him, you know, throw an ideas in the hat for the storm surge. That's great. Love you and Cole. Love that he's there. The bad. Well, they've nuked their goal tending. And that's going to either be a good thing or a bad thing.

Sean, what do you think of Freddie Anderson and Auntie Ranta as the solution and goal for the next two seasons in Carolina? Yeah, I mean, Ranta's okay. I was surprised to see Fred Anderson get multiple years at close to last year's hit. He was not good and not healthy last year in Toronto. And I think it kind of tells you something that a Leafs team that has been desperate for stability in goal since Pujo and Eddie Belfour what lets Freddie Anderson walk for nothing. And the fan base is like, yeah, that's fine. We're good with that.

Now, maybe he gets healthy. And, you know, sure, I thought he'd get one year somewhere to prove it and then maybe move back. So it's, I mean, look, clearly they didn't trust what they had. And so they went and reworked it. Will it work? I don't know. Who knows what goaltending? Nobody.

So we'll see. Yeah, Rod is sort of the wild card. If you could stay healthy, he plays well. And they've, listen, they've wanted Freddie for a long time. I mean, they were talking about making a Freddie trade last off season. I think it probably predates that. I mean, hell, I mean, he gets drafted there and then he walked away from the team. So maybe it goes all the way back to that.

But I think the possibility is there that they've improved their goaltending. The Nadelcovic thing's tough to get your head around because they clearly didn't think that he was the guy that he was for those three or four months. And if that's the case, then there's no convincing them otherwise. Like, they're not going to hitch their wagon as somebody they don't believe in. And maybe they're right and maybe they're wrong. I guess we'll find out. And then we got the ugly. That'd be Tony DiAngelo signing a one-year, $1 million contract with the Carolina Hurricanes.

And their fans noticed, I guess, and have threatened to not have season tickets anymore. Yeah, I'll believe that shit when I see it. But okay. Yeah. But there's definitely palpable backlash. Like, it's very embarrassing, I think, for this team, one to, have, you know, people that otherwise are very

supportive of the franchise and the media like turn heel and really trashed the decision. Well, they didn't turn. The team turned heel. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, no, no, for sure. Absolutely. No, I'm not trying to say that they're in the wrong at all.

The writers. The fans are upset. I think it's super embarrassing to participate in like the Get Uncomfortable campaign with Black Girl Hockey Club and then have them trash for signing Tony DeAngelo. That is very embarrassing. If you're as progressive as the Hurricanes

Pretend to be. Pretressed to be. Well. This is bad. Now, the interesting thing that DeAngelo said yesterday in his roller coaster of a press conference was that other teams wanted him.

Coaches wanted him and GMs wanted him. but the owners would say this is not worth the trouble. Like, I don't want this guy here. I don't want the backlash. I don't want our fans getting pissed at us. Tom Dundan meets the guy, and he's like, we're in the Tony D'Angelo business. So, I mean, say what you will about that, but that's how this happened. He had to sign off on it, and he signed off on it.

And I felt really weird for Don Waddell. I mean, I'm not thinking that Waddell didn't have a hand in this, too, but watching that guy fumble and stumble and flop sweat his way through trying to explain what is different about Tony DeAngela now was embarrassing. So. Yeah. I mean, look, the whole thing with Carolina and being the lovable team that did something different, it was branding. It was marketing. That's all it ever was. They lifted the veil by signing this guy. But if they had, hadn't somebody else would have maybe your favorite team.

So, yeah, I mean, it shouldn't be news to anyone that this is how this business works. But, you know, and then we'll just see how it goes. It's a one-year deal. Let's see if this guy can last one full year without doing something stupid. There was no indication, obviously, at the whole press conference that anything had changed. you know, his comment about, oh, you know, my problem is I'm just so competitive. That's always been the issue. I'm just such a competitor.

And like, yeah, that's, you got kicked off the New York Rangers because they just couldn't handle how competitive. Yeah. There's clearly like, there's not one. Teammates definitely punch guys that they think are too competitive. I don't think that could be underscored enough. Like, this isn't somebody who just like has kind of an attitude problem. Yeah, pissed off his coach or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. This is somebody whose team literally said you're never playing. playing for us again. And it's a team that could have probably fucking used them. Yeah. And that's the, that's the important thing to say here, too, is that he is, uh, within a certain role, really good hockey player. You know? And so like that's ultimately all the matter. For sure, which is why somebody was going to do this. He had like 50 plus points in a seat. Yeah, I mean, that was playing on the power play with

Artemi Panera in the year Panera one fucking cycle. But still, yeah, no, like, Like, they don't, they don't like you. Tyson Barry someplace? Absolutely. Yeah. And that place is Carolina. Right. And like, the other thing is, we should say that he is saying that he is saying that he worked with some groups to be better or whatever, whatever the fuck, you know, language you want to put on that.

And, like, he, I don't know, maybe, maybe he's right that he is. a different person now. And I hope he is. And not even because I don't agree with his politics, but because like, it seems like everybody fucking really hated this guy. And I, like, if he's

a different guy, then good. That's, you know, that's the point of like, you know, not to be reductionist, but like the fucking, the sloppy steak sketch, right? Of like, I used to be a piece of shit. I'm not anymore. People can change.

But like, the only way he's not a piece of shit anymore, and it has nothing to do with whatever bullshit, you know, I went to a class because my agent told me to go kind of thing he was professing yesterday. The only way he's not a piece of shit anymore is if the Ranger situation was a shock to the system. Yeah. Well, right. No, of course. That's the only path. Yeah. And at which case you would think he would have said that yesterday and not just talked about what a fiery competitor he was.

Yeah. He did. That's a good tell. Yep. And the other thing that maybe would have helped it be a shock to the system would be if he didn't have teams who were willing to sit their GM down and say, well, I can tell just by looking at him. Like, you can just tell that it's fine. It's all cleared up. All right. I mean.

I don't want to go too deep on Tony DeAngelo. By the way, for those asking, I asked about the insurrectionist thing because it had been written about on Yahoo, as he had sort of like supported the idea that the election was for. fraudulent. And he had cleared up so many other things. Like when he said that his, his tweets about COVID were more about the media overhyping COVID to not get Trump elected versus being a COVID denier. So he cleared that up. And he cleared up, you know, to everybody's satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah, all of his slurs and all his other shit, he cleared that up. He never really cleared up the, that election part of it. So I wanted to ask him about it. And I gave him the platform to clarify his comments. And there you go.

Angelo, not a supporter of insurrectionists and doesn't believe that anybody, anybody who is a supporter is out of their minds, which, I mean, is an interesting comment to make, given his politics. We should probably talk about Logan Mayhew, which we did not talk about in the draft portion of the podcast, because it is obviously part of the hockey culture reckoning that's happened in the last week of, oh, hey, these guys really don't fucking. care about anything but talent. And they really don't fucking care about anything except for player acquisition.

I mean, what are we? Like the 500th people to dunk on this? Like getting in line after Justin Trudeau? Yeah, we're just because of the scheduling, we're real late to the party on this one. We're not going to say anything that hasn't already been said. So. Although, I mean, in terms of what's new, the fact that. they did that whole

song and dance thing yesterday with the statement from the owner and the bread but they do it all on free agency day and they drop the statement half an hour into the single busiest hour

of the entire off season which just tells you all you need to know and I got to say this because I've I made this comment on Twitter and I've had lots of feedback from Montreal fans

and I'll just say this if you're a Montreal fan I know you're loyal and I appreciate the passion. I know you're going to defend your team. But we don't have to be willfully and performatively stupid about this. So if your take is that actually the Canadians put this statement out in the middle of free agency because they wanted it to get more attention and they knew that everybody was online. And so this was their way, you sound like a moron.

Defend your team without sounding like a moron, please. You know, if you want to take the best possible view of things or you just, whatever, this is what fans do. I get it. But let's not be stupid about this. They very clearly, for all the talk about from the owner on down that they've realized, and I do believe that they did not think this was going to be as big a deal as it was. Clearly, they misjudge this. They can talk about doing the right thing now and they've all suddenly refocused and they've realized their mistakes and all of this other stuff.

but when it came time to say that, somebody in that organization put their hand up and said, you know what, I know when we do this. We do this right when everyone's talking about everything else. Yeah. And everyone else around that table went, good idea.

That's when we'll do it. So it tells you all you need to know about how serious they are about this versus how much of this is just a PR exercise for a team that realizes after the fact that it screwed up a lot worse than they thought. Right. And so part of the timing, too, is that earlier in the world, week, major, like it was in the Montreal newspapers that major sponsors were uncomfortable with the decision and wanted an explanation and blah, blah, blah.

And that's the only reason Jeff Molson had shit to say about it. That was not a letter to fans. No, absolutely not. To tip their hand on the PR strategy and to say, don't worry, we got this. It'll blow over. It's fine. Yep. That's all it was.

The one thing I keep coming back to was, so Mayu did the, uh, the, uh, the, his own press conference on the second day of the draft. And, like, I'm trying to figure out where the pieces fit from him saying, don't draft me to him saying he's okay and that Montreal is going to make him better. Was he saying don't draft me because he didn't think he'd be a first rounder? And then he ended up being a first rounder and now he's okay with it. Like, where did that change happen? Why did he go from, I don't, don't do this to actually, it's okay that you did this.

That's the part I'm kind of struggling. I don't know. Like, I can just see that being a thing of like, well, look, they fucking drafted me. What am I going to say? What am I going to do? I'm mad about it? I can't walk away from the team. What's he going to do now?

Because here's the other thing. If he, you know, because I've seen people say, he should just say I refuse. You know, I will not sign with Montreal. I, you know. Yeah, he does that. Now he's made an NHL team's GM look bad. And for all the talk about redemption and personal journeys and how we always want to give second chances, that is one of the many things in the hockey world that won't.

get you a second chance. And there's a whole lot of people in the league that are happy to give guys like this a second chance that will not do it if it turns out you're the sort of player who publicly makes your GM and your team look bad. So he's got to fall in line now. And look, I mean, look, nobody here is approaching this story with a ton of sympathy for Logan Mayu, to put it lightly. But he's not well served by any of this either. This is not a good situation for him. So, even if you are someone who says hey the dumbest thing you do as a teenager

shouldn't follow you forever, et cetera, et cetera, second chances, okay, he's not well served by this because he's been put in an impossible situation. It's just, it's a disaster all the way around by a team that should have known better

and either didn't or did and just didn't care. They don't care. Because at the end of the day most of these teams and most of the people making decisions for these teams don't actually care about this stuff in the way you would want them to. They care about pretending convincingly enough to get you to shut up. Yeah.

And that's it. Anything new. This just tracks back to fucking Nashville and Mike Ribeiro. And there were apparently teams other than Montreal that were going to draft this kid. There were. Yeah, of course. And it might have been your team. And your team probably would assign Tony DiAngelo.

And if they wouldn't have done either of those things, there's something else that they would do to. let you down. And I don't know what the answer is because the Nihilus version of this is just stop expecting anything from these teams. Stop caring and just watch the games and have no standards beyond that, which that

doesn't sound right. But as soon as you have any standards, no matter how low you set the bar, you will eventually be disappointed by these guys. Because they just with very few exceptions on a fundamental level, they just don't care. Yeah. I

the thing you said about like being Nile, like, you can like your favorite teams or whatever, but just understand, they're not your fucking friends, you know, like, you know, again, I've said this a million times. The only difference between Tony DiAngelo and probably like 40 plus percent of the league is that he's dumb enough to say this shit out loud all the time. That's it. That's the only difference. And so, like, all these guys, ooh, he's my favorite player.

He's so funny. He's funny on social media. Yeah. He has all these same views that you're like, oh, I can't believe they would sign this guy. And in a lot of cases, not even that well hidden. Yep, that's exactly right. So, again, like, you can like the...

It's a thing of you've got to separate the art from the artist. Like, again, you know, I said this around the time that the whole Artemi-Panran thing was happening. The reason he's an enemy of Putin is that he, like, likes a guy who's maybe a little bit more right-wing than Putin is. So, like, oh, yeah, he's a hero because Putin's the bad guy, and I'm not saying Putin's a good guy. But also, you know, you're just got to, you got to keep in mind that these people aren't,

and these corporations aren't your fucking friends. That's it. You've got to separate the art from the artist. Oh, it reminds me, Annie Hall's on HBO Max. It's not that good. Like, that's the thing. I know it's better than Annie Hall. Oh, boy.

I mean, I guess that's true. The best Woody Allen film was crimes and misdemeanors. But the larger point is that Manhattan also, problematic elements, let's say. Oh, a ton of them now. It's like trying to watch that Louis movie, right? Like, you know, which I actually have never seen. I think that's like nobody's ever seen it. Is that right?

I don't think it ever got released now. By the way, most underrated Woody movie back when I'd watch Woody movies, match point. I fucking love that. That was pretty good. I think that was a great. great flick. Anyways, the Colorado Avalanche

re-signed Gabe Landiscag for eight years at a $7 million cap pit. That's insane. Hometown discount, baby. You got the extra year out of it. That's why it's all-em-kind discount. And again, I'd heard the term was the big thing there and not the money anyway, but it's kind of wild that he took seven. And then, you know, McCar gets nine over six

because he's McCar. And then the thing that we didn't talk about before, which is that once Philip Grubauer pieced out, and every other goalie in the league outside of Arundel at that point, I think had a place to play. They had to trade a first in Connor Timmons to Arizona for Darcy Kemper. The Darcy Keper is a really good goalie, and they actually got them for a little bit less

because the coyotes retained a little bit. But they traded a first in Timmons form. I was thinking to myself, if this happened at the trade deadline, would I feel the same way about it? it that I do now. And I think I kind of what, I feel like this is this sort of payment for Darcy Kemper. It kind of felt right. It didn't feel like an overpayment despite the being over a barrel. Well, with Timmons, it's like, well, how many fucking defensemen do you want them to

have on the roster, right? And with the first round pick, it's going to end up like 30 first. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, like, it's not really that much to give up, especially because Arizona retained salary. Like, I think this is, I don't know, as good as you're going to do with it. given what the market was like let's put it this way Philadelphia signed fucking Martin Jones to back up Carter Hart I cannot fucking understand that at all

I just can't I said this in the newsletter yesterday but let's just think about the fact that there were going to be triple digit minutes this season where Martin Jones is playing behind Rasmus Ristolin like Jesus Christ

it's like it's like take a goalie who's been an abject disaster for the last like three seasons seasons, then put him in a goalie graveyard. Oh, and by the way, your franchise kids coming off his worst season as a pro, and you don't know what you have him in him, like, this year. Like, what a fuck? I wrote about this, too.

It's like buying a safety net and then having a gigantic fucking hole right in the safety net. Like, it's just so dumb. All right. So do we like Kemper? I mean, I think the issue now for Colorado is that you have a fantastic team, a really fantastic a team, a team that could win the Stanley Cup. but you now have uncertainty. You know he's a good goalie,

but being a good goalie doesn't always mean being a good goalie for that team, and you had a known commodity in Gruberauer. And I think that's tough flex. The thing with Gruberauer is, you know, he didn't really, like, win them any game. He was a solid goalie for behind a team that really put him in a position to succeed and look really good on any given night, right? So, you know, I think that that's, you know, like the idea that you can plug and play any goalie into this system and it's going to work out, I buy that.

You know, that's very plausible to me. Is Darcy Kemper maybe that guy for me just because, you know, he doesn't seem like he can stay healthy, that sort of thing? You know, we'll see, I guess. but the thing is, and speaking of, it doesn't seem like people can stay healthy. Everybody on the Colorado Avales, like every good player on the Colorado Avalanche dating back the last few years is like, yeah, I miss like eight games here, nine games there, 12 games here, six games there. And it's like, yeah, you can maybe get away with that for, like, how long do you think

you can get away with that? And then you go out and get a goalie who's like, whole reputation is he's good one? he's healthy. Dot, dot, dot, dot. I don't know. Yeah. We shall see. By the way, Darcy Kemper just as good and or better than Philip Grubauer in the playoffs. Okay. Yeah, sure. That wasn't their problem this year, but. The Dallas Stars, sign Braden Holpe because they don't know what's going on with Ben Bishop.

Sign Ryan Suter. four years, $14.6 million, Foldo move clause, and Ryan Suter ends up making more money having been bought out and signing in Dallas

than he would have made in the last four years of his contract in Minnesota. The NHL economy, folks. That usually happens when guys get bought out if there have any sort of career left. Well, it doesn't...

Because you get two thirds. Right, but sometimes you go when you sign the one million dollar one year Brad Richards'esque deal. Yeah, the deal that like makes you whole on the buyout. Yeah. He got a fucking four-year contract at Dallas at 36. Not bad. I wouldn't have done it.

You like it for Dallas? I mean, the cap hit is fine and maybe even a little better than fine. And the last year, he'll probably get bought out again. And so that's, I think teams are very clearly a step ahead of the rest of us as far as realizing that there's always an exit from the last few years of a contract. So I think people like me are probably still paying a little too much attention to term and going, oh, that's an extra year is going to be. I think a lot of GMs are like, first of all, probably won't be my problem. It'll be some other GM. And second of all, yeah, I can get out of it.

there's going to be a way out. So I like it for Dallas for the first couple years, and that's probably all they have to worry about. Yeah, and Aaron would... They're just in a really interesting position where, like, they're over the cap right now, and they still got to re-sign Kiveranta, if I'm not mistaken. But, like, they have a bunch of guys with no move and no trade clauses that aren't going anywhere. But, like, also, like, Joe Bavelski's 37, and he has one year left, and he's an important player for them. Alex Radulov's 35 and he's got one year left and he's an important player for them.

And like, oh yeah, they locked up Miro Heiskin and who, you know, I kind of personally think he gets a little bit of that. Oh, he's one of the most underrated players in the league. And like, is he, is he a good player? Absolutely. Is he worth eight and a half million dollars? Well, I don't know. And, and yeah, like, we don't know what their goaltending situation looks like. It's Hudobin and Ottinger and maybe, and Holtby, maybe. you know, but like Hood Oben wasn't good last year. Yeah.

I like he's getting in a lot. I think he's going to be fine. Yeah, but like in, let me put it this way. I see him in much the same way. I kind of always viewed John Klingberg where it's like, oh yeah, above average defensemen quite good. But like John Klingberg at least was signed for cheap this whole time. And now they've decided, well, we've got to get him the fuck out of town

because he's not coming back. And it's like, well, okay, I guess I don't see what the plan be. beyond this season is. And I don't see this like Stars group. You know, they missed the playoffs last year and there were a million extenuating circumstances. But this seems to me like, well, Christ, we got to a cup final,

kind of on a fluke. Nobody wants to say that out loud. And we're, we just got to keep rolling with it with the same, the same group and, and see where that gets us. And I don't, I don't know. I just don't know.

Yeah. All right. So, Edmonton, Sean, tell us about Zach Hyman at seven years and 5.5 million. Yeah, he's, they're going to like him a lot. He's going to fit probably really well in their top two lines. The contract will almost certainly not age particularly well. But for Edmonton, Connor McDavid in his prime, Leandro Sital in his prime, I don't have a problem with. with them signing a contract that's not going to age well. I usually, you know, as I just said, I'm usually one of the guys going, oh, you've got to think about those last few years.

But at some point, you've got a generational talent from another planet on your team. Put some talent around him. And Zach Hyman's a good player who plays really well with good players. And he did it in Toronto. And Toronto would have loved to have kept him. and I think Edmonton fans are going to love him for a few years, and then from there, figure it out. All right.

I like him too. I also like the notion that he's not the kind of player that you should have to acquire, but kind of like develop on your own. Yeah. I think that's a great theory, and I kind of agree with it. He's like a plus Ryan Nugent Hopkins, if that makes sense. Like he does a lot of this stuff. Ryan Nugent Hopkins does well, but he does it a little bit better.

And, like, they developed a Ryan Nugent Hopkins, and it didn't cost them as much as Zach Hyman. Well, they developed them with the first overall pick. Right. And that is the other problem. That's only every three or four years you get one of those. That is the other problem. The other thing with Hyman that was interesting is we almost finally, however many years into the cap era, almost got our first sign and trade. Yeah.

that everybody thinks is going to happen every year with every free agent. Apparently, they actually talked about it, but the Oilers were not willing to offer very much. As Darren Drager put it, they offered a pick in the first five rounds, which, hey, that could be any, that could be a first overall pick. Who knows what it could have been? I found that a very creative way to say they offered a fifth round pick, but, yeah. And I understand why the Leafs, I understand why the Leafs didn't take it. I understand why Edmonton wasn't willing to go further than that. But it was...

Zach Hyman... Almost got there. Zach Hyman versus Jaden Schwartz. Who's better? Zach Hyman. puts a puck in the net. Okay. Yeah.

All right. L.A. Well, the other thing we've got to say about Edmonton is that... Cody C.C.? Well, right. So, again, much like Vancouver, what was always the knock on Edmonton? They have no wingers who are NHL players, right?

Like they're playing fucking Josh Archibald next to Connor McDavid. This can't happen, you know? Like, and that's absolutely correct. That couldn't happen. That shouldn't happen. But their problem is that they don't have anybody who can really play when McDavid and Dries Eidler are off the ice up front. And they still don't. Right?

So like, yeah, Zach Heiman helps. But how much more can you possibly get out of Connor McDavid on the ice? Right. You know what I mean? And that's the other thing, too. Like, Connor McDavid should be the one making a Zach Hyman versus needing a Zach Hyman. And, I mean, that's kind of what we would say they've been doing, they've been trying to do with Josh Archibald and it just isn't happening, right? If I'm Connor McDavid, I'm like, guys, I'm tired of making these guys.

Yeah, no, right. Get somebody for it to stop dropping every minimum wage scrub onto my line and expect me to turn him into a 60-point guy. Give me somebody. That's kind of what happened with Sid after well. Remember the Kessel trade was supposed to be for six? Yes. And then it wound up not clicking and he wound up being on another line. Well, right.

I mean, that was like a stylistic thing where it's like, oh, yeah, those guys need to puck on their stick to like do what they do. And so. Yeah. But anyway, so again, like I think the Oilers have a pretty solid forward group, obviously, driven largely by their two all-world talents. Their defense fucking stinks. It's one of the worst.

Like, it's bottom three in the league easily for me. where, you know, who do you put with Darnell Nurse? Because we should say, Oscar Clefbaum, not likely to play again this year, right? So who do you put with Darnell Nurse? Is it going to be Tyson Barry again? Okay, I guess. But then your second pair is Duncan Keith and Cody C.C., and those are your shutdown guys? All right.

And then it's what Chris Russell and Evan Bouchard is your third pair? Good luck. I mean. Yeah. Well, he blocked shots. And they're going to fucking have to. All right. Real quick, L.A.

I love Alex Edler. I know he doesn't have a whole hell of a lot left, but at one year in 3.5 as an elder statesman on that team in a depth role. It's one of my favorite signings of the day. I got to be honest with you. I like him a lot. Philip Deno. Philip Deno, six years. 33 million. We'll probably talk about this in the Duggy section two, but the trend,

I think the Rangers started a trend with Panarin of if you've got a guy and you think that you are going to win with this guy eventually, but you're convinced that this guy isn't going to be there when you actually get good, just get him now. Give him a bunch of term. And then hopefully he's still real good when your young players get good. And I think that's what L.A. did with the no and I think that's what the devil's did with Dougie. Like, neither of these teams are going to be any good, but they're worried that when they get good that the guy that they want isn't going to be there for free, you know, without having to make a trade for him. It's a smart move. I like it. Why? Why is it a smart move? Like, they're, they're,

not going to be good. So, but like, they're, they're, they're burning all that, all this money that they're going to need later on. Like, I'm not, I'm not saying I don't, what, but what money, but hold on. What money do they need later on? Well, when you eventually have to re-sign all these prospects you're so fucking excited about. But they're not even in the league yet. Like, they're going to be so far down the road as far as, like, having to spend the kind of money where a $5.5 billion cap hit for Philip Deneau is going to impact them. Okay. Like, it's not even on the horizon.

I guess the larger point is, like you said, they're not competitive. And, like, with Deneau, it's like, he's a solid, you know, like, clearly he has shown he can play against top talent. but like maybe he shouldn't be your first line center, right? No. And so you're paying a lot of money for a guy who, again, he's good. And like I don't even think this contract is going to be one where like five years from now, you're like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck. But with that having been said, like, this is all like, oh, we got to accelerate the rebuild. We got to accelerate the rebuild.

And it's like, why? And it's because apparently Drew Doughty and Ante Copatra are like, we go to win now. We're sick of the rebuild. And it's like, well, you know, we're rebuilding. I don't really give a shit what you, like, two guys who are going to retire in two years think. Like, that has to be the attitude. And it's like if you, it's same thing, same thing with Kane and Taves in Chicago. Oh, you don't like it?

Well, give me your fucking trade list and we'll get you out of town then. Who gives a shit? Like, you're not, like, I understand obviously the, the, the, what's the word I'm looking for? The, like, emotional connection those franchises have to these players and, and, and, and, blah, and, like, the fans and all that kind of stuff. I obviously understand that. But with that having been said, how many times do we say, well, this is a business? Oh, hey, you hate to trade that guy, but this is a business. And that's always in service of getting better, like, this year.

That's not in service of getting better three years from now, ever. You know what I mean? And so, like, I just, I don't, I don't get it. I don't get why you would, um, why you would be deferential to these guys who you're not going to win with them, right? Like, you're, the, the kings are not, uh, Phil De Noan and Alex Edler away from anything of note. And so you're like, but to accommodate these two cry babies, we got to, uh, oh, oh, we're, we're

not winning. We want to be winning. Well, you can do that with another team. Alright, moving on. Minnesota didn't really do anything. They signed Alex Golkowski. Sure. Montreal signed Mike Hoffman to shoot the puck on the power play.

Three years from Mike Hoffman. Shea Weber's not going to do it. Yeah, three years from Mike Hoffman. Oh, and also David Savard. I like the David Savard thing. That was, that's... Yeah, and they got what's his name from the Lightning. Cedric Pocquet. They got him as well.

He was actually, I believe, on the Hurricanes. He was on the Hurricanes? Oh. Yeah, but he used to be on the lightning. So not a bad bit of business for Bergevin. I mean, I think Savard's a good signing. I don't know if I would give Mike Hoffman three years. But sure.

Why not? Well, again, like they're a team that they've had power play problems for as long as anybody can remember. And in part, it was because they were just hammering it from the point at every opportunity, which is not likely to produce a lot of goals. And now at least they're going to be shooting from the top of the circles instead. Yeah. That's not nothing. It's very exciting. Michael Grandlin and David Riddick go to the National Predators. Sure. Yeah, a lot of people thought that the Granlin thing was interesting only because, His agent, like that morning, was like, no, we're out. We tried.

It didn't happen. Oh, really? I didn't see that. That's crazy. Yeah, it was like, oh, we're back in. Interesting. But, yeah, I mean, I know some people seem to think that deal was a little much, but a little much for agency is probably about right.

Yeah. Yep. About right. All right. Devils, first of all, Bernier getting over $4 million on a two-year deal is symptomatic of the devil's just having too much cap space to play with. Like, I don't think there's any reason. Feeling like they need to pay a premium to get guys on board. But it could be, yeah, it could also just be like the team sucks.

So you have to pay a little bit more knowing what you're going to be facing if you're a goalie. But let's get the Dougie. Seven years, $63 million. We talked about it a little bit earlier, I think, but contract is. is interesting. I had somebody tell me it was going to be a wild ride and it was, it makes the most money during his 6% escrow years. That's why it looks the way it does there. And then he's got like just a metric ton of bonus money coming to him right around where there'd be a lockout if there is one, which is not a good harbinger of things to come. But from a on ice perspective,

it's doggie, man. Third in the last three seasons in shots on goal for defensemen, I think first in goals. He's like top 16 and points. Just an elite puck moving defenseman, power play quarterback. Team ain't ready for him. They're not good. But they will be maybe at some point. And Dougie will still be good. So couldn't be happier. Yeah. He's a, he's a really good player. You know, I don't know that a team necessarily needs two nine million dollar defensemen. But the first one didn't work out the way they thought they would. That's the problem. Right. Right. But like at least this one seems to be worth it for now, you know, like I've said all along. I think he's a $9 million player. The New Jersey Devils were like, we agree with you. And so, yeah, like, I think the

thing about Suban was like, there were people when they made the trade, they're like, hey, it could be cooked. And it's absolutely. And nobody's saying about it. Nobody's saying that about a doggy. No, there are probably people who were saying he was never worth this kind of money as opposed to, Right. You know, which is why, like, it's a, that was a little bit interesting to me because I've always felt there was like a disconnect. Like, he's like the opposite Seth Jones where all the, all the people like me with their little charts are like, oh, this guy's fucking unbelievable. And all the NHL GMs are like, there's just something about him. I think he sucks.

Which is why he's now on, I think, his 14th NHL team. So, you know, I, I. really, really like the player. I think he's going to age fairly well. You know, he's on the older side. He's one of the few guys that I would be, you know, somewhat comfortable giving him seven years in free agency. Yeah, I think, I think as far as best player available, you know, this is not a Ryan suitor, in part because it can't be, but like this isn't a Ryan suitor P.K. Suban style, uh, we're just going to break the bank for this guy and, and completely, you know, reshape our franchise. To your point, Greg, he, um, you know, he's going to cost a lot

of money, but they don't have other big commitments they have to make anytime soon. They certainly don't. They certainly don't. Um, also, uh, I hope one of the selling points was how easy it is to take the train from Prudential Center to the Museum of Natural History, which is as A classic gag. Anyone who knows this podcast knows is probably the greatest non-art museum

in the world, would you say, Lambert? It fucking rules. It's so cool. They just redid the gemstone room and meteorite room. It's fucking incredible. Highly recommend if you've never been to the Museum of Natural History to get your ass there. I'm sure Dougie's already been there. Ottawa did nothing.

Flyers signed Keith Yandel on his buyout contract one year $950,000. Speaking of Flyers' defenseman who can't play defense. Oh, but he's an Iron Man. Yeah, right up until they healthy scratch him four games into the season because this is just what the Flyers do.

They experiment, oh, who can I healthy scratch this game that'll get everybody going? And it's like, oh, you can't. Oh, my God. Yeah. I would never. Brock McGinn, Dominic Simon, and Taylor Fadune go to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Very exciting. All those signings. I'm sure, like, some of them were already there. I think Dominic Simone was still with that now.

Who's to say? I mean, who's to say? The sharks added Nick Benino and Andrew Cogliano and James Rimer to the mix. Got to add somebody. It's very weird. I mean, I like the James Reimer. Andrew Cogliano and Nick Benito, it's a little bit of a Spider-Man pointing meme thing

where it's like, oh, yeah. But apparently both, especially Cogliano, just great guys. And, I mean, the team's not going to be good. At least some guys who are good in the room. And Rimer and Aden Hill are a, improvement over Martin Jones and

whatever the fuck. The three of us are an improvement over Martin Jones and let's be honest. Would they let us all play at the same time? Like the old sumo wrestler as a goalie gag, just have three people play goal

at the same time? I think it couldn't hurt. Could it though? Do you think if the three of us were defending an open goal that we would all be able to be on the same page to the point where we could stop a puck or would we all try to do the same thing

at the same time. Like, could we be king... Stop eight. Let's say it's like, who would be a good... Let's say it's like Kuturoff coming down on us, right? I think we'd occasionally make a save, but occasionally... Could we stop Kuturoff on a shootout? Yeah, like, could we stop him on a shootout if we were like King Godora, if we were a head of monster?

I think if we do the thing of, you know, in soccer when there's a free kick right outside the penalty area. They get in the wall formation and they kind of like link arms or whatever so that they can. I think if we did that, we could pull off a 500 save percentage in one NHL game. I would, if we were going to do the soccer wall thing and it was Kucharoff coming down, I would definitely have to cover my balls because that guy seems like a guy would shoot the puck at my balls if I did not have covered. That's what you get the Kevlar Cup for, Greg.

You're fine. I think there's probably. actually most of the NHL would do that to you. To us, particularly, yes. To me in particular, he means. Would a Kevlar cup stop a bullet? In theory, yeah. I mean, it's Kevlar.

That's what Kevlar does. Can we do an experiment where you wear a Kevlar cup and I try to shoot your dick off and we can see if it works? You know what? Let's save that for Jackass 5. Or the MythBusters revival. Yeah, one of the two. Tampa gets everybody who wants to play in Tampa.

And who wouldn't want to play in Tampa? Everybody does. Pierre Edward Belmar signed for two years, one million a year. Not bad. And then they do the old Braden Point deal. Eight years, nine point million. Tax-free, baby, as they say. Sean, is Peter Barazic the solution and goal for the Leafs?

I think he could be the solution to the problem of who plays the 30. to 40 games that Jack Campbell doesn't play. It's, I mean, that, that deal is fine. They, they save some money off of what they were paying Freddie Anderson. It's three years, I think ideally you'd probably rather be two on a guy like that, but the hit is okay. They're now, you know, Jack Campbell's in the last year of his deal, so that's always weird with the goalie, because if he plays bad, you've got a problem, but if he plays great, you've

also got a problem because, you know, what are you going to do going forward? And they've got a guy who, in theory, is pretty good and can be at least a 1A for the next few years. They have to go cheap in goal. That's, you know, when you're paying every forward absolute top dollar, you just, you've got to find bargains and value and goal. And I think goaltending being what it is, they're situated as well as anyone to, find more than $5 million worth of the goaltending out of the $5 million they're paying for it. Okay. I think he's like the most boom-bust goalie in the league.

I think he's the classic guy playing four straight games where he looks like he could be a Vesna winner and then he gets pulled in the fifth game. Yeah. And if you're the leaves, all you hope is that those first four games are like the first four games of a playoff series. That does, I mean, that does kind of worry you a bit, given that this is not exactly a team that handles adversity super well in the playoffs. No, sir. But, I mean, look, Jack Campbell outplayed Kerry Price in the first round last year, and it didn't matter.

So it's... That can't be possible. That's Carrie Price you're talking about. It is Carrie Price I'm talking about, but it's... Yeah, doesn't make sense. So, they have no money to work with. for very well-documented reasons. So, yeah, they didn't have a great day, but they couldn't have.

They had an okay day. And they had like $3.5 million to get a forward. Yeah. It's obviously going to be Tyler Perduzi. Well, they seem like they're kind of advertising also that, hey, if you're a forward who thought you were going to get $5 million on multiple years, come to Toronto, get $3.5 million for one year, play with Austin Matthews and Mitchie. Marner and then ask Zach Hyman how that works out after you do that for a little while and have

success and then hit go back to the free agent market that's not a bad strategy it'll be interesting to see who they get but it that could work all right um let's see here we did Toronto, Vancouver we talked about, Vegas we talked about, I guess Matias Yamark goes back there for a $2 million one year deal. Fine. People were like shocked that that happened, I noticed. Well, he's not a very good

offensive player, but he's good in your bottom six. Yeah. It's fine. Yep. Let's see here. Winnipeg we talked about, which means the last thing we have to talk about in our big old free agency blowout is the most important signing of the day.

Motherfucking Alex Ovechkin. a five-year, $47.5 million contract, a $9.5 million cap hit. I talked to a bunch of people around the league, and they all said probably three years. A couple said probably four, maybe.

Nobody said five. Five years for Alex Ovechkin on this deal was a bit of surprise. Yeah, worst contract in the league right out of the gate. Oh, come on. Well, he's Alex Ovechkin. Yeah, I know what's Alex Ovechkin. And I seem to recall him playing in,

like 2005 or something like that. It was a really long fucking time ago. And, you know, like, his, his defensive game has deteriorated to the point where he's, like, way, way, way below replacement level defensively. And you go, well, we don't pay him to, to, we only pay him offensively. And it's like, yep, how much longer do you think he's going to be able to get up and down the ice? He's, like, already kind of slow. Let's be honest.

But then as soon as he can't get up and down the ice, he will be injured. And the rest of it will go off their cap. Like, we've seen this before. We know how this works at this point. So are you kidding? The minute he passes Gretzky, he's going to get rickets and like just never play. Yeah, but like, again, so, yeah, the minute he passes Gretzky, he needs to average 33 goals a year over the last five years of this contract. the full five years of this contract.

That's if he played, and, you know, obviously, speaking of injuries, like, when I, when I said, oh, I don't think this is a good bet, like, just for him to pass Gretzky. I was like, I don't think, I don't think it's a good bet anymore. It's really no fault of his own. Like, if he's, if he doesn't have the, the 2013 lockout, if he doesn't have two pandemic shortened seasons, he probably has an extra 50 goals on his, on his ledger already. And we're going,

Well, yeah, he's just running down Gretzky and there's no fucking problem here. Like, he might do it by year three. But, you know, are the days of him being a 50-goal guy over? I think they probably are. Here's what he needs. It's like 33 goals per season, right? Like, on average for five years. He needs the score between 18 and 19 even strength goals.

Like, that's it. I mean, like, he's going to get the rest in the power play because he doesn't have to move from the fucking circle. He just shoots the puck. Yeah. So he needs about 18 to 19 even strength goals this season. And if you can get that, he could pass Gretzky. Yeah, I think he has an outside chance of doing it. I just, man, it is a lot of money for, like, how many old guys do they want to sign until they're like 35, 40 years old?

You know what I mean? And like, Baxter not a fast guy. Carlson, not a fast guy. Kuznetsov not a fast guy. Ovechkin, Oshy. None of these guys even like. like in their primes where you were like, oh, man, those guys motor, you know. And so they're all going to age together.

And it's like, oh, their power play is such a weapon. It's incredible. It is for now. They have nine guys. They have nine guys over the age of 31 right now. That's crazy. Their entire defense is over the age of 30. This is 2002 Red Wings territory.

But I got to say this. It's, yeah, it's sports. It's a business. You've got to be cold-blooded. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're going to overpay anybody, let it be the single best player in the history of your franchise who has won multiple MVP's, brought you a Stanley Cup, all of the... Hey, you know what? Like, yes, it's possible four years from now they might have too much on the cap because Alex Freakken Ovechkin was got a little too much money.

Every other fan base would go back in time to 2005. have that problem. Yeah, first of all, he was underpaid for 13 years. Great, you fucking tricked him. I say this all the time. I say this all the time. You fucking tricked him. You won.

You don't have to like make up for it later. Sure you do. Because here's the thing. Absolutely. I completely agree with you in almost every case that paying for past production is a mistake in this league. And it happens all the time. But when that past production, like, they're going to give him $47.5 million

over the next five years. Do you understand what fraction of, the money Alex O'Evetchin has made the Washington Capitals that is. But it's because they tricked him. No, no, no, no. It has nothing to do with his previous contract. It has to do with him building the fan base that exists now since from 2005 to now. This franchise has made billions of dollars on the back of Alex of Vetson.

So out of all the guys that deserve to get the, we're going to give you a little bit more money than you deserve at the end because we're paying for past performance. He's the guy. Because whatever you give him now is a fucking decimal point of what they've made off this guy. Sure. So I can completely fine with it. I mean, again, like I just, let's put it this way. I was looking at this yesterday. Through the end of 2024, 25, these players are on the Washington Capitol's roster.

Alex Ovechon, currently 36. Nick Baxter, currently 34. Evgeny Kuznettov, he's just 29. T.J. Oshy, currently 35, or will be 35 at the end of December. John Carlson, 32 in January. The combined cost of those players, 40.25 million. That's like almost half your cap on those guys. And it's like, I really kind of don't like the idea that Ovechkin is going to be

like kind of Patrick Marloweing his way to chasing down O'Vet, or Gretzky, on a team that's like 15 points out of the playoffs. That sucks to me. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean, that's just cyclical. And I understand you're saying you'd rather see him be chasing a cup along with the record, but it happens. It's not even chasing a cup.

They have a real chance to be extremely fucking bad because, to your point about Ovechkin, got it. That makes sense to me. But also Baxter, also Carlson, also Oshy, also Kuznetsov. and you know, you keep saying And I'm just saying all of those guys are the guys I have the problem with if it comes to that. Not Alex O'SKin.

Kuz is going to be. No, I totally get that. The one contract that I don't think is defensible is Oshy. Like, if we're being honest. Back from and Carlson also. No, Baxter and Carlson are fine. Baxter McCarleson are still very productive players.

Like, without question. It's the Osi one that's like you don't, you could find that and not have committed that money. You could find another player that does what Oshy does. Yes. So that's the one that kind of bothers me. All right. I think that's it, right?

Did we miss anything? Did you want to talk about the draft at all? Anything you give a shit about the draft? Okay. We talked about Mayu, so that's kind of like the only thing from the draft people really gave a shit about. Yeah.

And right in this year's draft wasn't pretty good. I feel like in the back of my head, there is something that we're missing, but I can't pull it. Well, Mike Sullivan's the team USA coach. That wasn't it. Who cares? they're not going to the Olympics.

Come on. Grow up. I mean, as an American, I care. It's a big one for us. Big chance to win the whole enchilada this time. They're not going to the Olympics? Come on. Oh, COVID.

Ooh, geez. Like Gary Bettman's calling Biden every day. We got a boycott. We got a boycott the Chinese Olympics. Was it Sergey Zupov getting his number retired by the Dallas Stars? Was that it? Is he? rules, that's cool. I didn't see that.

Okay. Did we talk about, I can't remember when it happened last week, did we talk about the Kel McCar extension at all? Just figure that's the sort of thing. I don't think we did. Ryan would, uh, we touched on it just earlier a little bit, but, but I mean,

yeah, it's great. I mean, I think it's like a phenomenal. Exactly what he should have gotten. Yeah. Yep. And exactly, and, but he's going to not guaranteed, but he's going to outplay that contract.

Like this is, the classic. We thought a couple years ago, remember there was that big RFA class and people were like, this might reset the market. This might be the class

where we all realize that guys should be making more money when they're 23 than when they're 29 because they're better. And that clearly didn't happen for anyone but the Leafs. So now everyone is still getting great value out of these guys.

And it's like, there's not a lot of times you give a guy $9 million and you're like, yeah, he's still going to comfortably I'll play that. But yeah, I just realized. It's the fact that Ickel didn't get traded and, oh, that's right, Jack Ikel.

That's the thing. And Tarasenko as well would be the other one. Tarasenko, sure. But like, Ikel in particular, because everybody's like, well, it's guaranteed to happen. And then Kevin Adams is like, yeah, we're comfortable bringing the player to camp. Fucking what, dude? So the way the Eichol landscape looks right now is, so we talked about it on the show that LA's been out for a while.

So they're out. The Rangers and the Sabres have never. really been close on a deal. And I still think that they probably hesitate trading Eichl, not only within the same conference, but also within the same fucking state. So there's that problem. You have Minnesota, according to Mike Russo, pulling themselves out saying that they think the price tag is too high, which doesn't mean they're completely out. It just means that they're out for now. You have Vegas, who either is loading up to make a trade for Jack Eichel or has decided they're not. I mean, no one really knows.

Well, I mean, they don't have the cap space to do it anymore. Aren't we all in that binary situation of either we're going to trade for Jack Eichel or I might do it. I might not. But, I mean, Sean, they could create the cap space depending on who they ship out. Like, that's... Oh, yes, absolutely. That's an easy-fee-easy thing. Montreal apparently wasn't really close.

And so, when you come down, like, there's one team that's never been out. Right? There's one team. It's Anaheim. Anaheim is there always just kind of been there being like... We've heard multiple times Anaheim is out. No, I didn't have heard they're out. I've heard that I've seen that

as enthusiastic about it as I think. But, yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think that they want to give up either Drysdale or Zegris, and I think that's probably what Buffalo's asking for one of them. Yeah, if they're asking for Krebs from Vegas, they certainly are asking for Zegris from Anaheim. And if you're at a high, you're like,

I really want to fucking have Jack Eichael play with Trevor Zegris. Yeah, we want two points. to be you guys. To go one, two, down the middle. And, and yeah, I mean, you can't, you can't trade Drysdale because it's like, oh, then our, you know, we only have, like, Hamas Lindholm and Cam Fowler and maybe Josh Hansen on defense. And none of those guys are, well, Fowler signed long term, but the rest of their defense isn't. So it's like a huge hole. And again, this is somebody who makes $10 million against the cap.

It's a lot of money. It's not that fucking easy to just go and fit this guy in. You look at Minnesota situation now with those buyouts. How do you add Jack Eichol if all of a sudden let that buyout money is going to hit your fucking cap a couple years? They can't do it, right? It seems like it would be impossible without pissing Jack Eichael off and making him demand a trade again because we have like 24 million in dead money or whatever it is. 14 is a 14. There's no way it's 24.

But anyway, point is, yeah. I suggested this in my column, and I'm going to stick to it. Vegas should trade for him and then put him on long-term injured reserve until game one of the playoffs. Yes. That's the move, right? Isn't that the move? Got to fix his neck. Got to fix his neck.

And then after this season, you figure your shit out against the cap. That's the move. Trade for him, kutur off him, bring him back for game one, let's fucking go. And then you figure out the cap. Still think Boston should trade for him, but, you know. Let's see. Forbort, Huala, and a third. Trent Frederick.

Like, I just think, you know, as the heir apparent to the Bergeron-Kraychi, two-headed beast, you're not going to do much better than that. Like, they should move heaven and earth to do it. I think that makes perfect sense. And he would fucking love that shit. Oh, my God. Woodney, he had eaten up. He loves it.

He loves Boston more than Taylor Hall does. All right. Corey Perry to Chaffa, apparently. Really? Just came across two years. All right. That was sort of rumored. But Kevin Weeks is saying it's a two-year deal.

It's a bit of a surprise. That might, I mean, depending on the price tag, that might be a thing where it's like, oh, yeah, we can stash him the miners and it doesn't actually cost us anything except the money, which they've already shown. They don't give a shit about the money. They'll pay whoever they want to not play for them. So this is like one of those deals where they've decided to replace their, uh, their, they're incredibly offensive talented checking line with a bunch of shit kickers like Belmar and Perry.

Is that we're trying to see now? It's going to be fun. It's the Pat Maroon always win in the final energy versus the Corey Perry always losing the final energy. One of them has to have to Yeah. One of them has to not have that happen anymore.

Although, Corey Perry always loses in finals that the lightning win, so I don't know if that, I'll have to work out the logic on it. It's the immovable object versus the irresistible force. Wow.

As the great girl of monsoon used to say. That's so great. Wow. What a, I did not see that that signing happening. at all. Jesus Christ. There you go.

I love it. We got to get slower. Do you think he called Marion Hosa? And he's like, how do we want a cup? He's like, join your enemies. All right. I think that's the show, unless something else crazy happens. Okay.

Well, let's just sit on the line here for another 20 minutes. No, we got to do the fucking mailbag. It's been a marathon. I hope everybody enjoyed it. I understand. As per usual, it's the same. summertime now. So we'll, we'll let you guys in on what the schedule of the show is and all that other jazz is as we move forward. But thanks for listening and thanks for supporting the

podcast. I'm Greg Wushinsky. You can hear, listen, I'm sorry, read me. Jesus Christ. I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's a little mini-stroke. On ESPN.com where I have my 10 takeaways from a free agency and then Emily and I will collaborate on winners and losers. And grades and all that shit next week, I think, as a dust settles. Sign up for E.P.Rinkside. E.P.Rinkside.com. If you use the promo code, I love EP, all capital letters, you get three free months tacked on to the end of your annual subscription. And we have a great stable of writers and prospect experts and all that kind of stuff who are just working, like already back to work

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