Puck Soup - GMs Are That Stupid

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

The boys break down NHL free agency, from the winners and losers to big signings like Taylor Hall, Alex Pietrangelo and Torey Krug; the Lightning's cap crunch; the goalie carousel; the flaming ice surfacing machine; the Blackhawks' revolt; Gallagher signs; Melynk has jokes; what the NHL might do next season, including pond hockey games; and overrated/underrated appetizers. Sponsored by Hawthorne and Away.

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hockey and Nonsense. I'm Greg Wichenski of ESPN, the worldwide leader in relitigating the Michael Jordan versus LeBron James debate. I'm Ryan Lambert, Zamboni driver for Bill Gray's regional iceplex in Brighton, New York. Sean McAnew, the athletic. You know, we're that true, Ryan, then you would be a hero today.

As we do the podcast, we are the day after one of the biggest viral moments in hockey since, well, since the debut of Gritty, I suppose, when a Zamboni started doing that traditional Zamboni thing of leaking I guess it's like transmission fluid on the ice, leaving a nasty, bloody streak. And then in a twist, caught on fire at the local rink.

I mean, it was very 2020, let's be honest. But it was also very incredible to see, Ryan. Yeah, well, I guess the first thing to say is it wasn't a Zamboni, apparently. Apparently it was an Olympia ice resurfacing machine. I'm sorry. But, you know, for the sake of the joke, you just say Zamboni and get on your merry way. Let's pause on that for a second.

Now, when I was an editor at Pock Daddy and you were there too, we would sometimes write about the ice resurfacing machines malfunctioning or, you know, bleeding all over the ice or someone stole one and tried to, I don't know, they drove it into a Tim Horton. and then won the Lady Bing. Like, I don't know. All of these different scenarios. And we would always get these nasty, well, not nasty, but assertive letters from Zamboni PR to say, actually, it's an ice servicing machine. And then we would then have to change the story and put it in to say, oh, actually, it was an ice resurfacing machine.

And then people would inevitably say, don't, doesn't Zamboni, be, like, they have to take the good and the bad with their product having become so ubiquitous. us, right? Like, Kleenex is a tissue. Yeah, it's the Xerox. It's the Xerox thing. Right. So, you take, you take the good, you take the bad. You've become the default setting for people talking about ice resurfacing machines. And, uh, you know, you have a band called the Zambonis, and I want to ride the Zamboni. And then when one catches on fire, I'm sorry. Well, the colloquial terms. I think if, uh, if, if it was like, oh, uh, there's a batch of, uh, poisoned tissues out there. And you were like, It's poison Kleenex.

And the Kleenex company would be like, no, it isn't. I think that would be their pushback on exploding ice reservicing machines. I kind of see your point. I mean, a little. Like from a legal perspective, I see your point. Yeah. But it was a hell of a thing. Have you ever seen anything like that before, Shown?

No. I can't say that I have somebody tweeted they're like the Canadian version of Fast and the Furious is good. Yeah, no, I got to say, I haven't

seen that one. You occasionally do get the fluid leak, which is always great because it looks like the Zamboni ran over somebody. And it's, you know, it's always nice when that happens before a skating lesson. You get a bunch of terrified children who I think one of them just got squished.

But yeah, it's the, having it burst into flames is a new, a new wrinkle. And yeah, you're, you're exactly right. That's, that's 2020 right there. Yeah, in a nutshell. Yeah. It's actually, it's actually what Kyle Dubas sees whenever he closes his eyes and thinks of David Harris, by the way. That exact scene. Yeah.

It's pretty crazy. Also, I mean, further evidence that Johnny Goodro should have been able to light a on fire because how cool how cool is that look when something's on fire on the ice i'm just saying um zamboni on fire i'm sorry shit ice resurfacing machine on fire um and kudos to the driver by the way i was i was dming with somebody who actually does some work at that rink and um he said to me that like the driver did did an incredible job, like getting the Zamboni out of harm his way and, and I guess maybe like turt, sorry, ice resourcing machine, turning off like the things that might explode and doing a real good job of it.

So, you know, by the time you hear this podcast, I'm sure that this individual will have already been on like the Today Show or what have you. Or he'll have been milkshake ducked and that's exactly right. Yeah, he. One of the two. One of those guys who, you know, he lights fires to be the guy who puts fires out or whatever. You never, you never know, again, it's 2020. Or he'll have been signed to star in Sudden Death 2, the sequel. That's right.

We've all been waiting for it. Yeah. Be like, uh, it's like sudden death meets speed. Kudos on Sanpone goes under five miles an hour. Yeah, it explodes. Sandra Bullock's driving the Zamboni Kiano's like over in that seat that goes to the lucky season ticket holder

that gets the ride on the Zanwini. He famously not in the speed sequel. Speed two cruise control does not feature it's Jason Patrick. I was just going back to the original speed because he made the bus joke. He made the bus joke. Yeah, thank you.

It's going to be one of those today show interviews were like, hey, congratulations on saving all those kids. And the Zamboni driver's all of us. like, well, if you really want to save those kids, you'll go to the basement of that pizza place in D.C. Uh-oh. Being kept. We got to go to commercial.

Free agency happened, like the day after the last podcast came out. Again, it's just who, there's nothing we can do. I mean, we did our best to kind of predict where people would go. I think we had a pretty good job. The other thing to say is, obviously, if we had just done it on Friday, we'd have been like, I guess Braden Holpey went to Vancouver. And that would be it. That would be all we'd have to talk about because nothing.

really happened until fucking Sunday. Yeah, it's true. I mean, like, well, there was a lot of signings, but they were just all sort of like middling and stuff. Right. The big, the overarching story of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of free agency was the, uh, defensemen all got term and all got paid. Uh, the goal, a couple goalies got term famously, Markstrom and, uh, and, uh, and

Cam Talbot, who will talk about, well, we'll talk about Markstrom. I don't really give a shit about the Cam Talbot. Um, and then the goalies also. also got paid too, you know, even on like the two-year deals that people like Corey Crawford signed. And then the forwards were just like devastated by the the flat cap COVID internal budget stuff. Like, I think I look back last year. There's like 17 players that got contracts of three years or more, 17 forwards rather, that got contracts at three years and more. And we're talking about like the Brett Connellys and Richard Panics of the world who certainly were not getting three years in this market.

nor were they getting any money. I mean, I know it was a down year for forwards, but I think that's, for all of the speculation on how the new economic landscape of the NHL was going to affect free agency, I think it's definitely that group. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's obvious. And what's crazy is, you know,

if you go by what everybody seems to think about the sport, forwards are the most valuable part of any team based on MVP awards and things like that. So it's very weird that, like, defensemen and not even especially great defensemen a lot of the time are like, oh yeah, no, these are the guys you got to lock down, the middle payer guys. All right, sure. It was a really weak year for free agent forwards, though, especially centered. Yes, that's definitely worth pointing out.

There weren't a lot of guys. You go down the list that you'd necessarily want your team signing, but yeah, there were few. I don't know. Do we want to get a into like individual guys or? Sure, why not? But banner here for third, third line centers, thanks to both buyouts and the glut of the marketplace. That's for sure.

And there's actually a few still on the market as we do the podcast. Now, listen, we're going to go through some of the big signings. We simply don't have the energy or the time to cover all of your team's signings. Nine hour episode. Yeah, I mean, we could, but like, honestly, no, we couldn't.

in this economy? Yeah. So we'll go with the big stuff. And to do the big stuff, we have to start with, I wrote about it in my column this week. The incredible dominoes falling, which should finally put to bed the idea that, you know, hockey teams are families. And, oh, we all love each other. And, you know, everybody's taking care of and yada, yada, yada. the dominoes falling from Torrey Krug, having us offered pulled from the Bruins to Tori Krug signing with the St. Louis Blues, who basically then say goodbye to their captain, Alex Vitrangelo, second captain, by the way, in a scant, what, four years that they said goodbye to, who then went to Vegas and signed the contract that he was looking for, who then had to ship out Paul Stazzaena, and Winnipeg, and Nate Schmidt to Vancouver to, you've rather than, you've

important people in that dressing room to make room for the new guy. This was some cruel-ass, you know, this is a business kind of business happening in this little chain of events, I think. Yeah, I mean, I guess the most shocking part of that is that the Bruins apparently didn't offer Torrey Krug a contract in the last year, I think is what he said, which is wild. I mean, it's, and I don't quite know why. Like, I mean, it's just a thing of just they didn't think that they would ever be able to get to the price range that he was looking for. Well, they get, apparently their last offer was the price range he signed for.

Yeah. So this becomes like, what, Dougie Hamilton 2.0 where they're just like, we're moving on from this guy? It's very weird. Yeah. Well, I think that's, I mean, that's what it is. And look, when you're a GM, you've got to have evaluations of your guys. And if you just, if you feel like somebody isn't, that their value doesn't match the perception of it, then sometimes you do have to make some hard choices. Often those choices would involve trading somebody and getting assets back.

I mean, the whole Boston thing was, it was weird in the sense, and I wonder behind the scenes how close they felt like they were to an Oliver Egman-Larsen trade. Yeah, that's true, too. You know, that took them right up to the, to the deadline. It struck me as strange. I think we talked about it last week that they were going to give up potentially some big assets to get Oliver Ekman-Larsen and then let Tori Krook walk for the same amount of money. They just may feel like Tori Krook either in the room or behind the scenes or just on the ice is not the, you know, they don't have the same perception of them that we do. But yeah, I was I was surprised and I was surprised to see them. not really do anything to address

what would seem to be a hole that he's left behind. I like some of their other moves, but yeah, it's curious. And then from the blues perspective, man, there's probably a good book to be written about the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on with Petro Angelo the last few months, because it felt like a game of chicken. It felt like there was a lot of PR and a lot of messaging being put out there in trial balloons.

and it sounds like they just kind of got tired of it. And if he, you know, I know there is some talk about maybe he had made his mind up on Vegas all along. In fact, maybe there's even some talk that there could have been some tampering going on. See if that story goes anywhere. I mean, if that's where he wanted to be, then, you know, it worked out. But there was a lot of messaging put out there that he wanted to stay in St. Louis. and yet there was this kind of back and forth game being played, and maybe he misplayed his hand and played it into a situation where St. Louis said,

you know what, we're going to take a guy we can sign right now and we're done. And I don't know. I'd love to know, but I don't and we probably won't. Can we circle back to the Bruins? Because I think the interesting thing, I mean, people know where I stand on, and guys who are going to be like 29, 30, 31 years old. So, like, I'm not, I'm, I get why they would be like, oh, yeah, this guy who, like, you know, he's good at pretty much everything, but he's, you know, in particular a powerplay specialist. And, you know, we feel like maybe Charlie McAvoy's that guy, like, can be that guy now.

And, you know, they actually, the top power play unit scored fewer goals with Krug, per hour anyway, with Krug on the ice, than, off the ice than with him on. So he was just, you know, like I can see why they would maybe talk themselves into that aspect of it. But the problem is, have you guys looked at their fucking depth chart on defense these days? Because the left side is bad. It's like outright bad. It's bad. Yeah.

Right now, their best defenseman on the left side is Matt Grislich. Good defenseman, but he shouldn't be your number one left side defenseman. After that, it's John Moore, who I would say is maybe a bottom pair guy. And then after that, it's Jacob Zboral, who's only famous for not being Thomas Shabbat or Matt Barzell. Yeah. So like, and it seems like they're going to give Zboral, you know, know, the shot with the big club. And if that's your left side of your defense going into the season,

and by the way, Grizzlick isn't even technically signed yet. But if that's the left side of your defense going into this season, that sucks. That's fucking awful. Yeah. And we're still waiting to hear about Zadano Chara, but. And Chara would be the other one, but he's 52, yeah. Yeah.

No, that's a really good point. I mean, I know that as far as power play quarterbacks go, they've always thought that Grizzlick could be the one who ascends to take over for Krug. Grizzlick or McAvoy. Like, that's got to be their thinking. But again, like it's not how much. You can't like Matt Grislik that fucking much that you just don't replace Tori Krug otherwise. But it's also like, I mean, it's a fucking art. I mean, I know that it becomes a lot, an art that's a lot easier to be good at when you've got fucking, you know, David Pastranack on your.

power play, but, you know, or in John Carlson's case, Alex Ovechkin, but I mean, it's still like, you know, there's a, there's a tier of guys that can run a powerplay as well as as crude can. And, and, you know, it's a rarefied error. It's the reason why he was such a commodity. Now, let's, let's circle back to what Sean was saying about Petriangelo. I agree with you on the sense that, like, I was in St. Louis when they made the Justin Falk trade. And I remember everybody on the ground.

being like, what the fuck is this? Like, because it was sort of a, the reaction wasn't, oh, hey, the Stanley Cup champions just got this other defenseman. The reaction was, what does this mean for Alex Petrangelo? Like, no one really understood why they would trade for a guy and give them an extension immediately

if they still had to find money to pay their captain. So I think it tracks all the way back to that, probably tracks all the way back to David Backus. And the idea of Doug Armstrong, knowing exactly the contract structurally, that he wanted to give somebody. If they wanted something different, I think his unsentimentality

when it comes to this stuff is both like jarring, but also really impressive to be able to let these captains and beloved figures go. And in Petra Angel's case, he wanted a buyout money-laden contract because everyone knows that when you're 31, you're probably only going to serve

the first five or six years of your deal and then you take a buyout. And he wanted a full no-move clause, which nobody on the roster outside of, I think O'Reilly maybe has, or maybe O'Reilly has the bonus money. I think he's got it, and he didn't sign that deal with them. Right, he signed it with someone else. So he's steadfast about those two things.

And Petrangelo has communicated for the last year. These are what I'm looking for in a contract. And if they can't give it to him and they refuse to, then, you know, obviously they look for an alternative. and, I mean, landing the second best defenseman on the market when you're letting the first one go is pretty fucking good. It's a good bit of business for Doug Armstrong if, in fact, you know, Kroog remains Kroog and can work his magic on that power play when, like, someone like Teresenko gets healthy. It's a pretty remarkable, like, safety net for the blues. But, you know, the thing about the, and then he goes to Vegas, does Petrangelo. And the tampering thing is very interesting.

Every one I've asked about on that doesn't know if it's just smoke or if there's actually something there. But they gave him the contract that he's looking for. And the remarkable thing about that is George McPhee, for a very long time, one of the pillars of his sort of managerial outlook was you don't give guys no move clauses. You just don't. And for the first couple of years of Vegas' existence, they didn't. Existence they didn't. And then they got Mark Stone, and then they gave him one. and now they got Elspatrangelo and they gave him one.

So you figure, like, as Doug Armstrong holds fast and digs his heels and says, I'm not going to give this kind of protection to these players, Vegas clearly, you know, has opened the barn door on this stuff to be able to acquire these veteran guys, which I thought was kind of an interesting juxtaposition. I mean, it's weird, right? Like, the way Vegas goes about it is they try to be as splashy as possible every single summer. word. Yeah.

And what's interesting is, like, I didn't look at Vegas and go, you know what they need is a number one defenseman. You don't think so? No, I really like Shait Theodore. I really like Nate Schmidt and, like, you know, maybe those are both like lower end number one guys, but like, there was pretty much number one guys, in my opinion. And I mean, what have we, what did we say, you know, the problem was when, when Vegas got bounced.

And, again, you know, don't take any lessons. from the bubble, blah, blah, blah. But, oh, they don't have enough finishing talent, right? Like, they do basically what the, what the Canadians do, which is drive a lot of shot quality and outscore you that way. And also, you know, they have pretty good co-attending. But, like, I don't think Alex Petrangelo is like, oh, we're going to, you know, we're going to drive shooting percentage with this pickup.

I just don't. I don't, again, like, you don't get worse by signing one of the five best defensemen in the league, but like it wasn't an area of need for them, I didn't think. No, but they, I mean, it's, they clearly have a philosophy as an organization that you go out and when elite players become available, you get elite players, yeah. You get elite players, yeah. And make sure that you're in on every one of those, which sounds obvious. It's like one of those, like, yeah, no doubt, but how many teams actually do it? And they're willing to even do it, even if it means moving other guys, even if it means potentially breaking relationships with people like Mark andre Fleury, who now sounds

like he's going to stay, but for a while there, they were shopping them. They're willing to do it, right? So they find a way. And other teams talk about that. But other teams always, you know, either because they actually, believe it or because it's an excuse they fall back on oh you know we we like our room we want to keep this we want to keep that we got to Vegas is like no there's one or two of these guys becomes available every year and we want to be in on them every time and we do whatever we have

to do with the rest of the roster to make it happen it's it's a pretty it's pretty fun to watch it play out you know it hasn't it hasn't fully paid off yet but they're a real good team we'll see maybe five years from now we look back and go yeah they got greedy and they you know they they kind of blew up their long-term structure but It's fun to watch these guys work. Yeah, and it's, see, I disagree with you guys. I think that getting Petrangelo and having him on one pairing and having Theodore on the other, if in fact they do that, there was some talk about them playing together,

speaks to a certain philosophical streak you see from general managers, tracking all the way back to the Niedermeyer-Prueh-Ronger years. Right. Maybe even Stevens in Niedermeyer-Ears, right? Like, if you have two guys and they can both play like 25 minutes a night, then you're pretty well set. And if you look at the playoffs this year, I mean, who did Vegas lose to? They lost to a team that had Miro Heiskinin on one pairing and John Klingberg on another.

And then that team lost to a team that had Victor Heddonen on one pairing and Ryan McDonough on another, right? Well, they had Victor Hedman on every pairing, I think that's that. Yeah, right. Sure. And even if that's the case, then I think Petrangelo at this stage in his career, at least for the next couple of years, can play those minutes and be that guy. I mean, he's not as good as Hedbin. Right. So I like it.

I agree that like Schmidt and McDab in particular were a really good pairing, but by no means do they add up to having Petrangelo anchoring one unit and Theodore or another for that lineup. I think I think it's a great move. Now, I don't think it's a great move when you factor in the cost of that move necessarily. Well, right, but like that's the point, though, is they're now spending, what, 12 million on goaltending, which is fucking crazy. and like, yeah, they're good goalies, and it's going to be a tough schedule where there's a lot of back-to-backs and you want to have two very reliable guys. I think you can go get, you know, based on what the market was, I think you can go get a guy who's as valuable as Mark Andre Fleury at maybe not a quarter of a third of the price. Sure, but like you got to get that contract off your book somehow. And to me, Sean, that's the book I want to read.

is like, what was going on behind the scenes where they couldn't facilitate this trade? Like, was it Flurry saying, I won't report somewhere? Was it teams refusing to bail them out? Was it Kelly McCriman not, I mean, refusing to ante up the same kind of price that, like, Kyle Dubus did to get rid of Patrick Marlowe? Like, what was going on where they couldn't move Flurry at a time when the fucking chairs and the musical chairs game of goalies were wide open? Everybody needed a goalie. Everybody needed a goalie. I think that was part of the problem, right, is when everybody needs a goalie and you've got a goalie who may still be a good goaltender, but with this price tag is underwater as far as being value of an asset, how do you move that in a market that's already flooded with better goaltenders?

There's only one way to do it, which is that they needed to find an intermediary team to pick up part of the contract. Everybody picks up a third. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe that's where it falls apart is they didn't want to ante up the treasure to entice a Carolina or an Ottawa or whatever to take on part of Flores' contract. Or, and this is the other part of it, obviously, is due to COVID and due to internal budgets, the idea of a team picking up a large chunk of a contract on a guy that's not going to play for them just isn't in vogue for a lot of teams right now. You know, and so even if you're buying a first round pick. And so they really fucked it up.

And I don't, I hope this isn't the case because it would, it would be sort of a sat commentary. But there's been talk that part of this is that Vegas was going out to teams around the league saying like, we need some help on this. And teams remembered how the expansion draft went. And we're like, no, screw you. We're not going to be the ones to bail you. You held us all hostage last time around. We're not going to be the ones to help you out. bail you out.

Yeah. That wouldn't be very good reasoning, but maybe, maybe that's part of it. Wouldn't it be great, though? But teams, that's the thing is, teams love bailing out other teams on their problems. It happens every fucking summer. Well, I guess

it's not summer right now, but you know what my off-season. Yeah, it's fine. It happens every year that it's like, oh, how are they going to get out? You know, it's old, I'd love to see old Donnie Trump wriggle out of this jam. And then you go, ah, nevertheless. you know, like somebody gets bailed out every single year.

And it's just like, I don't know if it's NHL teams. Frankly, Vegas is a perfect example this year where it's like, oh, they're fucked. What are they going to do, you know? And then it's like, oh, we're going to give away Paul Stassany for basically nothing because, you know, he's a perfectly good like two, three center, but he's way overpaid for it. And Winnipeg comes along and they're like, we need a two, three center. and we'll give him the full freight for that. Oh, okay.

Fuck, is that not the most hockey move, by the way, fucking, like, we need to figure out who to play second line center with line eight and Eilers. Well, there was a guy who worked out two years ago. For one and a half months. For one and a half months. Like, what the fuck? I mean, I'm not saying it's not a good move. I mean, Paul Sazzi really impressed me in the playoffs.

I think he has maybe more left in the tank than I anticipated, but not as like a productive scoring center necessarily. But just the idea, like the fucking myopic view of some of these guys of like, what worked before, let's do that again, is so NHL. It is the like peak NHL that trade for Winnipeg. But so the thing about Vegas I want to talk about, because it's gotten a little bit of traction, is kind of like the changing face of that franchise and sort of the golden misfits grow up aspect of this whole thing. You know, Nate Schmidt.

in that room was second most popular guy to Flurry, who they also tried to get rid of. I think you set a lot of people on edge in that organization because they didn't know if they were going to get traded to make room for Petrangelo. I don't know if they were necessarily reading the room, right? Like, this is a very successful team. And I feel like they are making moves now in a very sort of cold and calculated way that, you know, at the end of the day, makes the roster better. throws off the fucking formula a little bit. Am I wrong on that? I think that's a little bit overrated in terms of, you know, just what's really good for the

room is winning a shitload of hockey games. Which they do. Well, that's what I've been to the conference final twice. But what I'm saying to you is that like, oh, man, we really miss Nate Schmidt. And then they see what Alex Petrangelo does for them every night. And they're like, I don't miss Nate. Schmidt anymore. That's fine. Alex is nice and he's fucking really good. Like, I think, you know, I think that that kind of cures a lot of other issues where they're not going to be thinking

about Nate Schmidt in March when it's like, oh, we're leading the Pacific Division by 14 points. So. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Schmidt's such a beauty. Like, he's going to be such a rock. He's like, he's like a bubblyer Kevin B. Xa to go to Vancouver and be there for them. Yeah, and he's better than Kevin B.X. I ever was. Which, like, also help. Like, what? Again, like, Vancouver

loves Ilius Pedersen, not just because he's insanely good, but also because he's insanely likable, right? Like, fun. Yeah, he's super fun. He was doing, like, Photoshop of himself the other day I saw on Twitter. And that's, like, that's, you know,

that's important that you have guys who are just really likable and also your main stars. And Nate Schmidt's not going anywhere now, and he's very likable, and he's going to be, you know, he maybe does the thing now where he can either play with Quinn Hughes or he can be his own guy, and then he and Quinn Hughes are basically taking up 52 minutes of every game. Yeah. And the cool thought, as cold and calculated as all these moves were by Boston and St.

Lewis in Vegas. Bill Foley, who we'll talk about later in the show, said yesterday in that radio interview that they did the math on the Vancouver trade for Nate Schmidt because they knew that Holtby was there and they knew that Beagle was there. And they knew that it would be an easier landing spot for him to know some people that were on the team. Like, that's what Foley said. I'll take his word for it.

But that's kind of nice. I mean, it does show you that there was a certain amount of, you know, care, at least from the owner's perspective on making sure that this guy who really was a remarkable player for the franchise and a face of the franchise kind of way in the community a lot of times didn't get completely fucked over in this deal. But no, I think Nate Schmidt's tailor-made for Vancouver. Speaking of tailoring, you know, I've been thinking about making some changes lately, personally. You know, I wanted to improve my self-care routine.

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Before we get to Taylor Hall, I think we should probably talk about the goalie dosido with Vancouver, since we're on the Canucks of Markstrom. Well, I guess it's a goalie defenseant doci-dough. Markstrom and TANiv both go to Calgary. Markstrom for the six-year deal, and then Braden Holpey comes riding into Vancouver to replace him. How did you feel that whole thing worked out? Because you have a certain affinity for the flames, don't you, Lambert? No, I don't.

So I don't all the way get it, quite frankly. Like, I get that they felt like with Brody going to Toronto, they needed kind of middle-payer defensemen. who can shut things down, blah, blah, blah. I don't know that Chris Tandev in the year 2020 is that guy. And I certainly don't like the contract. I think the contract is insane. Yeah. And then like Markstrom is obviously they felt like they needed an upgrade and goal.

They were probably right about that. I think the contract is, at the very least, risky. just in terms of it's a lot of money and a lot of years for a guy who wasn't a even particularly good goaltender until he was like almost 30 years old. So, yeah, I look at it and I go, you know, that's a pretty big, like, again, Markstrom was great last year, pretty good. the year before that. But it's a big risk for a guy who, you know, for lack of a better term, was playing for a contract and had never really shown it before that except in a kind of 1A, 1B role. I, you know, I don't, I think he's good, but I don't think he's six years, six million per good.

Yeah, it's, I think I like Mark St. Merzegoli a little bit more. than Ryan does, but it is a, it's a big contract for sure. I mean, the cap hit is, it's a big cap hit. It's defensible, I think, but it's big and it's the term that really scares you. But this is a classic, this is a classic UFA deal by a GM who's, who's been on the job six years, hasn't won anything, has a hole in his roster, and is feeling some heat that, you know what, I got to, I got to get this team to make the next step. And so you go out and you talk to some, you know, the free agent you want. They say we want too much term.

And you go, you know what? If it doesn't work, it's not going to be my problem. It's going to be the next guy's problem to deal with. So I can either walk away and get a bunch of heat for it right now or I can sign the deal. People will be happy for now. And if a few years later it's not working out, it's not. going to be my mess to clean up anyway. So I think that's a sense for Calgary. I understand why they did it. It could work. Look, on the one hand, I'm looking at the deal going, that might come

back and bite them. On the other hand, there's teams out there that didn't address their goaltending where I'm sitting there going, why didn't they do something? And I, you know, I can't really have it both ways. I can't say you've got to do something, but doing something in the UFA market often means doing something like this. Yeah. Let me say this about Brat for Living signing UFAs. Up until this year

when there were a shitload of buyouts, I remember looking at it last summer and going, oh, Bradford Living buys out a lot of contracts. And oh my God, he signs most of them. Since he took the job in 2014, he, prior to this

year. He bought out one in every six contracts that got bought out in the entire league. And I think it was like, the first contract he bought out was Shane O'Brien and he hadn't signed that one. But every other contract he'd bought out was one that he personally signed. Your Troy Browers and that kind of thing. And it's like, oh, he like gets buyer's remorse on these deals immediately. And I, I, I want to say Markstrom's is pretty much buyout proof, but that Chris Tanev deal looks like it's going to be another in a long fucking list. And like, yeah, the flames are always in cab trouble because they just keep taking, and by the way, that doesn't include the James Neal contract, which he then took on an even worse contract to get out from under.

So, yeah, he, when in doubt, be like, oh, true living for. probably got this one wrong on a UFA deal. Is this why they needed the city to pay for the arenas because they're like, we don't have it. We have all this buyout money. Yeah, no shit, man. It's bad. I remember, I just posted the, because somebody asked like, oh, is it really that bad? I'll see if I can find it very quickly.

And you're like, it's that bad. It's, he is that bad at it, yeah. While you're looking, Holpeeda of Vancouver. Now, on last week's episode, I said the ideal situation for Braden Holpey is to go to a place where he doesn't have to face a billion shots and do all the work on his own, which is my argument for him not going to Edmonton. So I'm really hoping Vancouver gets their shit together defensively because I'm not sure if he can be Jacob Markstrom in the situation that Jacob Markstrom was in last year. I think he's a good goalie. I like the fact that Ian Clark's their coach and can kind of like maybe get him to find his game a little bit again. but I think he's better with a little bit more structure

than Vancouver had for most of the regular season last year but they don't have to give up fucking Thatcher Dempco now that's the important part. They got a goalie that can dig and dangle in the expansion draft if needs to be. I kind of like, I mean, I said last week that that was my pick for where Hope he was going to wind up and I understand that there's risk with a goalie of his age, who's coming off a bad year.

A couple in the last three at least. He may just not be brain-hopi anymore. But I like the idea, if you've kind of made the decision to run with this kid as you're, at least your 1A, bring in a veteran, a guy with a cuppering, a guy with, by all accounts, a good attitude, you know, be the mentor. That could potentially be a good fit, even if he is just okay as a backup goalie. And if he's good, now you've really, found something potentially. So I like that one as a low-risk gamble for the Canucks.

By the way, it was Mason, Raymond, Lance Boehma, Troy Brower, and Michael Stone were all guys that Trillivings signed and then bought out within, I think, two or three years. So, yeah, I mean, and all of them. A literal all-star team. Yeah, and certainly like most contracts that get bought out, a contract that on day one, you were like, well, that sucks. That's fucking terrible. Yeah, I know. It's like, I think I looked at it and I was like, it's about 80% of all, of all the contracts that get bought out were like self-evidently bad on day one. And without a doubt, one of my favorite tropes in hockey media is like when there's a buyout and then there's some local hack columnist that it's always going on Twitter is like, you know,

if you didn't say anything about this contract when it was signed, you don't have a right to criticized it now. And then literally everybody's like, we all said it at the time. It fucking sucked. That's the David Clarkson thing. Still to this day in Toronto people are like, hey, everybody loved that deal when it was signed. And you're like, no man. Look, we have the receipts. This is, I don't know if you know how this online thing works, but the stuff stays there. One back, one back page editor at the Toronto Sun liked it. That's it. And everybody else fucking hated it. I think it was the front page, but yeah. Oh, Canada. Yeah, all right.

So moving on to other goalies, Hendrik Lundquist signs with the Washington Capitals. Now, this seemed pretty inevitable. He wanted to stay on the East Coast. Capitals obviously had a need. He's flushed with buyout money. He doesn't need a big cap hit. He used to being a backup for a Russian kid.

Exactly. Henrik Lundquist and Alex Oveschkin on the same team. If you had told me, you know, like six years ago. That's a good, though. Six years ago. Oh, shit. I think Hank's got at least another year left in him. I mean, he's all right.

He's not bad. He played on some horrible teams in the last couple of years, especially defensively. I think he's going to be one of those guys that were like, wow, what a bounce-back year for Henrik Longquist next season. And we're saying the capitals are a good defensive team? Is that where we're getting? Well, they're better. They should know.

They should. They should. They should. They should. So that's a good. spot for him. Moving on to other teams, the lightning remain in their pickle.

Boy, Tyler Johnson, what a fucking roller coaster for our sweet boy. Hey, we'd like to trade you. And then he's like, cool. I'll give you some teams. And then they're like, well, none of those teams really want you. How about add more?

And then he's probably like, well, I got this no trade clause, so probably not. And they're like, all right, how about this? We're just going to put you on waiver. and anyone can take you. And he's like, oh, that fucking sucks. And then no one took him. And now Julian Breesbaugh is on record as saying that he's not going to bury any contracts

in the minor leagues, nor is he looking to do any buyouts. So I'm not quite sure what the path forward is here for the lightning. Being that Tyler Johnson, apparently, you know, they're going to have to sweeten the pot a little bit to get him off their cap if they can. and then also, as has been rumbled by a few insiders, Stephen Stamco's not looking to move that no-move clause they gave him to facilitate a trade somewhere else. So I don't know what they do.

They're in a pickle. Yeah. It's a really weird situation. There are like a number of teams who are over the cap right now and you don't really maybe see an easy way for them. Vegas is another one. see a way for them to like get out from under that given the economics of the market right now and all that kind of shit.

Like I don't know how you fix it, but they're going to have to. Yeah. And I think, I mean, they will find a way to do it. You can, like, Tyler Johnson's a good player. They will be able to find a team somewhere that's going to take. him one way or another. They're doing the right thing, by the way. I know some people go, you know, you give these guys these no trades and then you try to

pressure them in the way. Yeah, you're allowed to do that. And you should be allowed to do that. You should, you know, and Stephen Stamco's or Tyler Johnson or whoever is allowed to say, no, I'm not waving. And then you're forced into a situation where you've got to figure out something else. But I don't have an issue with what they're doing. I mean, my heart breaks for them.

It's got to be terrible to have so many. players and, you know, some of whom are only on slight discounts and not massive underpayments. It's, it's, it's pretty tough for them. But, like, they just got done with their COVID parade. And he's like, and then low, like, they're just like, you got to go. Yeah. It's really tough. It's, it's awful.

But, yeah, they'll, they'll figure it out. And, but it was interesting. I don't know if you guys saw in Friedman's 31 thoughts this week, he just sort of slipped it in there that apparently there had been some serious talk of dropping compliance buyouts into this offseason at some point. And that ended up obviously not happening largely because a lot of teams are just, you know, when you do a compliance buyout, you still have to pay the actual money to the player.

And they didn't, they didn't feel like financially they could do that and they didn't want the implications for how it would affect the HRR pie and all that other stuff. But I mean, that gives you a sense of the sense of the level of urgency here for some of these teams that apparently at least there was some actual discussion of, hey, can we can we just give ourselves the get out of jail free card here even if it's going to even if it's going to cost us financially give us a way to do this so that we can get out of the cap? Like it's it's not easy. And there are going to be some good players who get locked out of this or or end up having to play for far less than they probably. imagine they would. Well, it's like the first time in NHL history that the, the, the NHL didn't allow their teams to get themselves out of their own

fucking mess. Well, I don't know. I mean, a luxury tax would have, would have gone a long way to helping teams out, and they didn't, they never want to talk about that. So, I don't know. I'll just, I'll just say this. Before we move on, I am, I, I, I, the whole goaltending carousel thing was, was, was really interesting to me, especially since so many teams were like, it was,

like, you know, okay, I take your guy and then you take his guy and you could just follow the chain down like half a dozen teams. But what was interesting to me is that the teams that either didn't move or in the case of Chicago, they don't have anybody now. Like they don't have any proven NHL goaltenders, which and which apparently is not playing especially well with some of the veterans on that team. It's not like Corey Crawford just said, see later. I'm the market and I'm going to go get an outrageous contract somewhere. Like he wanted to stay and was told, no, you won't be staying. They don't have anyone.

Edmonton obviously swung hard and missed and kind of went slinking back to Mike Smith. And like, I'm still surprised that I haven't seen something from Carolina. I know they've got two guys under contract and that both gives them some security and also makes it harder to make a move. They can't just go out and sign some, you know, somebody and then they're stuck with three goalies and trying to move one, but I'm surprised that it seems like, again, they're going to be going into the season with the, sort of the status quo. There's not a lot of goalies left right now.

Like, there's a couple of guys. There's Ryan Miller, Jimmy Howard, Craig Anderson. No. If, you know, there's a couple of guys that could get, but that's pretty much it. And I wouldn't be surprised to see one of those guys wind up in Chicago because I, I, I, They have to. I under like to have both your friends open for young guy, young unproven guys. Absolutely.

Young unproven guys need a chance. You're going to be unproven until you get a chance to prove yourself. So I don't have a problem saying we're going to be one A and one B and we're leaving the door open for one of those jobs to be one of the younger guys. But to do it for both. Ooh, I don't know. When you're paying a $10 million contract to two veteran stars in their 30s and you just kind of go, yeah, we're going to see what we can do with some of the kids? I don't know. Well, the thing with the Jonathan Tave's stuff is like, I mean, look, yeah, you want to make the

playoffs every year, but like you also have to look at this roster and go, oh, we like stink. We're really bad. And, you know, like, the idea of us competing for the playoffs is not fucking realistic just because we beat the Oilers three games out of five. You know, like, at some point, you just have to, like, look in the mirror. and face the facts of like, uh, yeah,

it's probably over for us as a, as a group. Yeah, but even if you, even if you do that, I mean, you've, you're,

you're locked into these big deals that you're either can't move or won't move because, I mean, you know, they're not going to turn her. I mean, if they really felt like we're done,

then go trade Patrick King. Right. They should. You could, they should have done that two years ago. But they're not, but they're not going to do it. So,

I, I mean, I'm all in favor of saying, you know what, we're, we're, it's, it's time for us to, to hit a bit of a reset button. But that means you actually make moves and move guys out. It doesn't mean you just go, so we're not going to have any goalies this year. And it, well, I mean, that's like the best way to tank, though, right? Like, you know, you can, it like, if you, if you're like, oh, you know, we can't move all these contracts, but we want to be bad. And, like, we have enough guys that are, like, going to ensure we're not abs.

terrible. Well, how do you fix that? You have two rookie goalies who may or may not be any good at all. Which is basically, that's basically what the Sabres did in the Eichel year. Yep. And it works later. Because that's the other team that didn't do anything to address goaltending is the Sabres again, apparently, are just going to, you know, stick with what works. We'll go to the Sabres in a second. Why are they so bad? Like, I'm looking at the Blackhawks roster. and it is it's a bad roster. Yeah, so there you go. That's why they're bad.

But I'm trying to figure out how we got here. Like, how did we get here? I mean, I know that they've got a lot of money tied up into Cain and Taves and, you know, to Brinket, I guess now makes 6.4. I guess it's, I mean, is the Seabrook thing really the thing that's kept them from actually like being good to have close to $7 million tied up in a guy who's you can't get rid of? I mean, it doesn't help, but I don't. Well, I mean, also, they were playing him a shitload.

Like, they were playing him like he was that kind of a player, and obviously he isn't, right? Like, that has had a huge impact. And Duncan Keith is like, I don't want to say toast, but like pretty fucking close. You know, he's at least browned bread. Let's put it that way. And, yeah, I mean, you know, like, guys got old. How does Stan Bowman have a job? How does Stan Bowman still have this job?

I don't know. I don't know if you heard. they won three Stanley Cups with him. But, but like, he's made a complete hash of this fucking roster. Like, at some point, you know, the Red Wings move on from Ken Holland. And at some point, they will move on from him. But, but that is it. I mean, they're five years from removed from winning multiple Stanley Cups for a franchise that had gone 50 years almost without one.

And frankly, that's going to buy you some time and some patience. They don't do a bad job of drafting either. Like, look, to bring it. I mean, look, like, that was a situation. where I was on the draft floor that day. Everybody in the media was like, why isn't anybody taking De Brinket? And then Chicago took to Brinket,

and everybody was like, fucking, of course Chicago got to Brinket. Right. And Kirby Docs good. Yeah, he's good. They've got players, yeah. But they don't. For sure.

Oh, what was it? Somebody, I want to say it was, I'm sure it was Mark Lazarus, but pointed out that, like, Chicago hasn't, like, re-signed a single goalie they've, or a defenseman, rather, they've drafted. Like in years and years, like they just, they draft defensemen, they bring them into the league, and they don't stick with them.

Yeah. And like, that doesn't help. But yeah, I mean, the reason the team stinks is they committed whatever, like $30 million to a bunch of guys who turned 30 at some point during the contract. I mean, that's, I don't think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of that one, really. but do you think the thing is right now with them that like they can't like trading taves or cane becomes well first of all it's fucking real tough because they've both got no moves and they love Chicago but it becomes a a business decision right like you are signaling to those fans that we're we're flipping the flip in the book turning the page and then they're going to be a lot of them

are going to be like well then I don't you really need to have season tickets for a while do I I think it's a complicated decision. Who's buying the, who's buying season tickets? Like, oh, this is the year they get right back to it. You know, like, at that point, you're just, you're only dealing with fucking roobes. Right. You're buying, you're buying tickets to see your favorite players. Sure.

You're buying tickets to see your Blackhawks. And if, if Taves and Kane aren't there, then they're not your Blackhawks for those fans that came to the team, like within the last 15 years. It's a big decision. I mean, you're. right that it's a big decision, but also, like, it's when you got to make at some point. Like, you can't just keep rolling them out until they're 30, like, you can't be the Red Wings were, where it's like, well, everybody on the team's 38 years old, and they all stink now. But we do have Justin Abdel Cater signed for the next 14 years.

So that's going to be fine. You love Justin Ablcater. He's from Henrik Zetterberg's line. Do you remember that? Like, that's what it is. So you got to play the hits. Right. Like, at what point does-

Fantasy casting? Yeah. Fantasy casting. You have a chance to put Caves and Cain on any team, any two teams, maybe any one team around this league. And you can make the money work in some way, shape, or form, if realistically. Like, you can't put them on Vegas. They can't afford them. But, like, where would you put them?

I mean, is Kane, like, destined for Buffalo? Is that the only place for Kane? Yeah, that seems like that's the only place for game. Yeah, that seems like that's the best. I think that makes sense for him. Does that mean that the only place her taves is Winnipeg? There you go, great, perfect.

Manitota native. And, you know, you give Chicago Stasney, you got your number two center again, you're all set. All right, then we just fixed it. We fixed it, we fixed it Chicago. We cracked the code. Buffalo we're going to talk about because we almost forgot to talk about Taylor Hall.

How about that? I'm glad I got this thing in front of me, telling us what to talk about. One year, $8 million for Taylor Hall. And it's become pretty obvious in doing some snooping behind the scenes that Buffalo was the only team that was going to pay Taylor Hall $8 million. And, you know, for all of the admitted great PR, he's been giving the Sabres and saying, hey, maybe they can contend. Maybe I'll stick around.

Who's to say? Wink. It comes down to the fact that no one else is paying them $8 million. He gets the one year. He gets to spend a year with his old pal Ralph Kruger. He gets the Jeff Skinner special and skate with Eichol and juice up those numbers that kind of went in the tank a little bit for the last couple of years. It's a real smart business decision for Taylor Hall. But again, for all of us that were like, where is he going to try to chase a cup?

Where will the new Marion Hosa go to chase a cup? He signed with Buffalo. Yeah. No, it's a good financial decision for him, like not just this year, but. next year because he's going to put up 35 plus goals with playing with Jack Eichael. Jack Eichel is by far the best player he will ever have played with in his entire career. Leon Drysidle. Jack Egoe, probably better than Leon Dreisital, but, you know.

Whoa! Oh, great. Now all of Edmonton is going to start tweeting at you. I think everybody understands my position on Leon Drysidal at this point. I'm going to send a copy of this podcast to David Staples right after. that we're done. Oh, no. So he can do all of his research for cult of hockey and do a point-by-point refutation of your

opinion. And we'll describe you as a Toronto-based writer. That's right. Toronto-based writer. And then not only that, Bruce McCurdy will then write a follow-up blog about how bad you are again. Yeah. It's going to be a full of hockey.

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, no, I mean, like, I don't think it's telling tales out of school. that just say that uh that jack eichel in uh 20 20 is maybe a little bit better than leon dry sidle was as a rookie you know um so yeah i mean look like he's uh he's gonna he's gonna he's gonna be able to like oh oh we're really trying we're really contending we're he's going to do the thing the sabres do every year where it's like oh we're kind of hanging around the the higher end of the standings for the first 20 games of the season. Then the wheels fall off because the defense is terrible.

And you go, well, now you can trade me. Now you can trade me to a contender. You're going to get more draft picks and that kind of thing because I'm having a really good fucking season. And then I can sign with that contender next summer and be insane. mainly rich and on a good team. Yeah, no, I think that's pretty much all of it there. I like this a ton for Buffalo.

Yes, so let's start there. I mean, we all kind of rolled our eyes when they hired Kevin Adams and gave him pretty much nobody in a front office to work with. So far, so good. You know, he's done all right so far. Obviously, the Ralph Krueger factor was a big part of this. The fact that they, you know, if they were the, the one team willing to to pay this much? You know what? Good. It's, you know, they,

they had the cap space. And I think you're going to get value from Taylor Hall. First of all, I'm not completely willing to look at the Sabres and go, oh, they're terrible. They have no chance of making the playoffs because this is the NHL. There's always a few teams that surprise us. Maybe it could be the Sabres. And then everybody loves this signing and, you know, it's great forever. But even if they don't. They'll flip them at the deadline and they'll get good assets back that will, in terms of value, recoup a lot of that $8 million that they'll have spent. And I do think they move them at the deadline if it comes to that. I know I had a bunch of Sabres fans, you know, because I mentioned this on Twitter and a bunch of Sabres fans telling me that he has a no trade clause. Yeah, well, no kidding.

He wants to have control over where he's going to go. That doesn't mean he's not going to get traded. Yeah, he's not going to be 60 games into a season in Buffalo where they're, like 14 points behind the Leafs and go, you know what, I'm sticking around. You're not, you're not allowed to trade me. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it would be, you know, A, I'm sure he does want to win, but B, if he's going to go into free agency, he, he, he wants to go to a contender, because the one thing, and I understand, you know, if, if nobody else was willing to offer you more than five million, I understand taking the eight million, of course.

I do think just knowing the mindset of the sort of people that run NHL teams, it's not a great look for a guy who's had one playoff run in his life that he and it moves to a fourth team that isn't really contending. You know, I can see, I get why he did it. I can see

grizzled hockey lifer GMs going, does this guy really want to win if he went to Buffalo instead of taking half that money to go to Colorado or go wherever else and chase a cup? I can see that being held against him if we get to the deadline and he says,

I want to stay here and miss the playoffs again. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think he's going to go to a contender. I think Buffalo is going to get. It made sense for, like I said, it makes a lot of sense for the Sabres. I get it for Taylor Hall. I would love to know what, if anything, he was offered by teams like Colorado. But, yeah, I mean, it does make some sense.

Think of it this way. Like he gets a full, he gets like half a season. three quarters of a season, to look at teams and be like which one of these teams looks like it could win the cup. And then be like, I will only go to this team.

And then this team gets them for like pennies on the dollar because the Sabres, you know, paid out most of the freight on an $8 million deal. It's kind of a fucking genius move. And it's a one-year deal so they can retain half the salary, no problem, make it very easy to fit under the

salary cap of some teams that couldn't pay them this time. And the other The other piece of this is if I'm Taylor Hall, I'm sitting there going, if I play well and the team is doing okay, the Sabres are going to pay me. The Sabres are going to be one of the shit lower money. I mean, you know, it's Jeff Skinner all over again, right? I'm the new acquisition. They're going to come in. There's going to be a lot of pressure on Kevin Adams to keep Taylor Hall.

So that's not a bad situation either when you get to January 1st or whatever the equivalent in this season to January 1st is where you can extend a guy on a one-year deal. maybe he ends up staying there long term on a really nice deal that obviously was nowhere near close to happening this offseason. All right, a couple more signings. Tyler Tofoli to the Habs for four years. I gave Jim Benning the loser label in the Winners and Losers thing. I think even if you consider Schmidt better than Tandov than he is, avoiding the marks from contract,

Holpey, that's a good move. I just don't understand the logic and not trying to bring this guy back to your top six. I just like, I know that people are always like, oh, well, it's easy to find forwards. Well, they've tried. Like, Louis Erickson and Michael Furlin on that roster,

and look what happened there. Like, Tofoli is really good. Especially at this price. And worked really well with, The four years is the longest anyone got. You didn't have to give him, yeah, you didn't have to give him no move protection. you could expose him if it doesn't work out or whatever the fuck.

Like, man, it's just illogical to me that you don't bring back to Foley. And the only thing that was said to me by a Canuck fan the other day was, well, they were already like a real good, you know, playoff contending team before they made the trade. That's a Markstrom only. Right. But again, but that's why you make the trade is to level up. Yeah. And you fucking level up if he's there.

And I'm sorry. Like, what are you going to do? Like, put fucking Vortanan in your top six or your top, you know, at hope that he'd be. What the fuck? Right. Like, you have the guy. Sign the guy.

Yeah, he's good. He does, I guess the problem with this contract, if you want to say there is one, which I, of course, do, is that he is basically like a one man encapsulation of the Canadian's problem, which is he drives a lot of shot quality and doesn't convert on it in a way that, say, a Mike Hoffman does. where Mike Hoffman That's the knock. Mike Hoffman is a little bit of a a downgrade in terms of like, you know, he's not as good of a play driver, but he converts on chances.

And what's the knock on the Canadian's is they don't have anybody that can convert on chances. And like Josh Anderson isn't going to fucking do it, probably. So it's a little bit, like he's a really good player. I don't know. that he, again, that he addresses the specific problem that this specific team has,

even in saying, I really like the player a lot. A couple more teams. Edmondson. They signed Tyson Barry to the one year, go get your points on the power play contract. They signed Tyler Innes, which I think is low-key, one of the better signings of the weekend. They signed Kyle Turus, which, again, is a real good signing, you know, flush with buyout money. 1.65 against the cap to be your like third line center. Potentially a nice player, but also he might be cooked.

We don't know. Could be. We'll see. And then they sign fucking Mike Smith for $2 million at a year. What is, what the fuck is that? That's the market. They ran out of options. We said that there's going to be all these goalies moving around, but when the music

stopped, somebody wasn't going to have a chair. Ryan Miller's not going to, Jesus Christ, right? No, you're right. And that's the disappointment. And that's what kind of undoes, because I liked all the moves that they made outside of goaltending. They got, you know, those are smart gambles. Kyle Turris is a gamble, but it's a smart one. It's a low risk.

Tyler Ennis is every year. He signs cheap and out. We go, oh yeah, he's a pretty good player. Out does the value of the deal. Tyson Barry, Tyson Barry was better in Toronto than people think. There's this perception that he was this total disaster. he was bad under Babcock and then that kind of set the perception. He was fine the second half of the season.

His power play numbers are really awfully low for being on a team with that much talent. He was, although he didn't always, you know, he didn't always play with the top unit. I do find it funny. The one thing that makes me laugh about the Tyson-Berry deal is as soon as he went to Edmonton, everybody went perfect. You're a power play guy, go to the best power play in the league, give the puck to Dracidal and McDavid and rack up points. And then in the off-season, everyone's going to,

to look at the point total and you're going to make a lot of, and it's like, okay, if we all see this now, why do we assume that GMs next year aren't going to see that? Like, do we really think there's going to be some GM going, oh, this guy has 60 points? He must be amazing. Because every GM is exactly that's stupid. Exactly. Because we do think that. And that's, so that's, that's the fight. Yeah, I liked, they went three for four in terms of their moves, but the one that they missed is the most important position. And apparently, you know, according to some, Some things that I've seen, they really thought they had Markstrom. Like that was maybe there wasn't enough of a plan B or maybe plan B's moved on while they were figuring they had plan A locked down.

Yeah. And the real issue for them is, you know, Kaskinen had a really good year last year. Is he the year he had last year or is he the year he had the year before when he wasn't good? Right. And now you're really gambling. like what we have in this, you know, older KHL guy that we signed is, it's legitimate. And he's exactly that good. And, you know, okay, you're, you're gambling on the pissing off McDavid thing, uh, on Miko Koskinin now.

All right. But look, I mean, here's the, we just finished saying with the Markstrom deal with Calgary that, uh, you know, not sure about that. That was a lot of money in a lot of years. And then here's Edmonton that either wouldn't go to that or wouldn't go higher or whatever they needed to do. And like I said, here's the other side of the coin, right? They didn't get it done. They walked away or had it walked away from them.

And now it's like, well, yeah, but you don't have a goalie. You've screwed up your whole offseason. It is a tougher job for some of these GMs when it comes to this stuff. But I'm surprised with all the movement out there. Edmonton being maybe the number one team on the list of teams you assumed would address their goaltending that they didn't find a way to do it. Let's not fuck around. Like, if you put Mark Andre Florey on that team, like, they're leaps and bounds better than they're going to be next season.

I wouldn't. I wouldn't maybe go that far because, again, like, it's all dependent on Koskin and I think. And, you know, like, Mark Andre Florey, again, like, you know, before he came to Vegas, which is a good team with good systems and stuff like that. His numbers weren't that good. And, you know, like the idea that you can just plug and play this whatever he is, like 35-year-old guy on a team that everybody was like, oh, well, I mean, look, like, yeah, dry-sidels defense is bad, but everybody on the oilers defense is bad.

So, you know, what are you going to do? Like, I don't know that Mark Andre Fleury is a guy who, like, flourishes in that environment. You are tempting fate, man. Now a cult of hockey is going to have to write the response to the tricidal defensive thing. God, your week is just stacking up to be very painful. That's fine. David Staples's sharpening his knives. The Leafs sign Arendel.

They sign Jimmy Visi. They sign Zach Bogosian. They sign Wayne Simmons. They bring back Jason Spetsa. And they sign the big fish. T.J. Brody, four years, $20 million. Sean, you like the Leafs.

What did you think of their offseason? I thought it was reasonably good under the circumstances. We all know that kept at. Much like this podcast. Yeah. We all know that they, you know, where the gaps were. They made a few decent bets. You know, Aaron Dell is your third goaltender.

Sure. You get to get some experience. He can shuttle back and forth. He's cheap. Yeah. Doesn't suck. Better than Matt Martin Jones, I'll tell you that. They did go in on the whole kind of we need more toughness, we need me harder to play against.

And I'm not, you know, both Simmons and especially Bogosian might be done as players who can make much of an impact. Didn't spend a ton on them. Also didn't get them dirt cheap. So we'll see where that goes. I like the Brody signing. I think that's, this is the guy that they wanted last year. This is the guy that they tried to trade Nazam Cadry for last year. Couldn't do it because Cadbury wouldn't go to Calgary.

That's right. I forgot about that. It does take some of the sting off watching Tyson Barry leave after a year, where you're like, oh, man, we gave up Cadbury for that guy. It's almost like he sort of Plan B worked out and he locked him back in. He was probably, he was the best defenseman in their price range, and they got him. So I, you know, I, I, yeah, that's good. They had to move out Andreas Johnson to New Jersey for next to nothing.

And he's a good player. But they just needed to do that for the cap speed. Yeah, he'll score 15 or 20 for New Jersey next year. Yeah, all of which he'll come against the leaves. That's right. Yeah, he's going to have just four monster fucking games. So, I mean, I, I like what they did, especially given, and the other thing we should say is the Caspari cap and india looks great now, like a month later.

or however many weeks it's been later, the fact that they got a first round pick on what was essentially this same sort of salary dump. And you're now seeing around the league guys are just having to give guys away. That looks pretty good. So overall, under the circumstances, pretty good. Are they significantly better than last year? I'm not convinced that they are. I'd say they're maybe slightly worse, honestly. They're worse for skill in terms of skill.

I think in terms of overall as a team winning high, they might be a little bit better, but they're not a lot better. They're not, like a team that hasn't won a playoff round doesn't suddenly jump to the front of your line for, for cup contenders based on this offseason. Like, I hate to say it, but like, it really, a lot really depends on whether Dubus's bet that Wayne Simmons's, like last two seasons have been injury related

and that he's going to be better now that he's had some surgery or what have you. Because he's been, he's looking. fucking cooked. And I mean, even at a low cost, you're still putting them on this team to play a pretty significant role, I think. And, uh, Greg, I heard on TSA, he can be a net front front of that first power play unit. Sure. Okay. But if, and that's great. Because if he still has cement skates, then that's all he's going to be able to do. Yeah. It's standing for that's exactly right. The fucking net. Um, um, um, the thing I wanted to say, though, about this is like, I, I might have mentioned it last week, but it's the, it's the kind of capital that now Dubus is

like, look, you guys have been in the Toronto media have been killing me for fucking two years because you don't think we're hard enough to play against. I went out and got guys exclusively like that. And so if we lose, I tried what you wanted me to do and it didn't fucking work, so shut the fuck up. Like, I think that might

matter in Toronto more than it wouldn't any other market. I just went out and got every guy on your fucking shopping list and we still lost in the first round of the fucking Bruins again. So maybe it's not a Mitch Marner problem, it's a, we have to play the

Bruins every year in the first round problem. Very easy. Speaking of Dubis, Lula Marillo had to trade Devin Taves to the Avalanche because he's mismanished his cap so badly. Which, of course, is Kyle Dubas' fault, probably in some way, shape, or form, I'm sure.

Avalanche, again, don't pick up the phone of Joe Sackett calls. What the fuck are you doing? Then he's going to make you take money back from Brandon Sott's contract when trading him to Colorado. And then also he's going to give up two second rounders for Devin Taves, who's really good. Their defense is insane now. It's insane.

It's insane. It's so good. McCar Graves. What, do you want to go Taves? I mean, take your pick, right? You've got Cole back there. You've got Johnson back there. You've got Gerard back there.

So, yeah, I guess it becomes, do you want Jackson's. and Johnson and Gerard or Taves and Gerard and then Ian Cole who's perfectly good is your worst defenseman of the six you have like and they're good at this

and they can bring in one of Connor Timmons or Bowen Byram or both of them and that's what their defense looks like it's fucking insane Brandon Sodd oh yeah he drops into your left wing next to Nalzum-Cadry

and Berkovsky, and that means you can drop Don Skoydon. Like, it's crazy how deep they are now. By the way, if anyone gets a chance to interact with Pierre Maguire, my condolences, but if you do get a chance to interact with him, please inform him that Colorado is another one of those analytics teams that he always seems to forget to mention when he's going that bad shit about Florida and Arizona. Remember when Sackick-Fer, took the job and made a bunch of trades like what the fuck are they doing he's so bad at this this is

terrible and then like they hired a whole analytics department and now they're the best run team in the NHL yeah weird how that happens yeah it's crazy anyway yeah so they're doing good islanders have to figure out something uh with the money they're going to have to give barzell trying to think there's anything i i felt really happy for kevin chattonkirk because the new york thing was such a disaster and then yeah it's nice to see him get paid yeah yeah well he goes to light he gets his name on the cup and then he gets a three-year contract with trade projection from Anaheim. Like it's fucking great. Like it doesn't always work out that way for guys.

Oh, certainly not guys who get bought out, but. Yep, yep. The sharks solve their goaltending problem with Devon Dubnick, obviously. Like, no worries there. They're going to be fine. Patrick Marlow goes back to break Gordie Howe's record for a year. And again, like, it's the weirdest thing in hockey when we all know something nefarious. has happened, but we can't really prove it, but also, like, it's just common knowledge.

But Kevin LeBank gets a four-year contract at $18.9 million after one of the worst seasons you could imagine. Yeah. Because he had the handshake deal after taking the one year, one million dollar deal the year before. It's fucking great. I, like, I can't imagine being, like, I would, I would have maybe done a sign and trade or something, but, like, I can't imagine why you would be, like, look, like,

The whole deal with this was that you were going to hold up your end of the bargain and be good for $1 million. You were probably not worth a million dollars to me last year. Right. But Doug Wilson's a man of his word. He's a man of his word. Yeah, because Kevin LeBogg would say, yeah, and the other part of that deal was you were going to use all that money you were saving to build a winner, and you weren't very good at that. That's a good point. That's a really good point.

Any other side? We should give a shout out to Steve Eiserman in Detroit. They made a bunch of little tiny baby moves that will make them a better team than they were last year. And while also having six picks in the first three rounds of draft. Like, they're still not going to be good or anything, but they're not going to be losing every game five to two. Right. Yeah. They're not trying to do that thing that people seem to think you can do where you're just, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you get top five pick, top five pick, top five pick.

Okay, now it's time to be good. Let's go make the playoffs. Like, there has to be some interim steps. They're going to try to take those if the steps don't. work out, you can move those players potentially for more assets and try again. But yeah, the other thing to say is, like, it happening in this market is really fortunate for them because, like, a lot of times when teams go, well, we're just going to sign like 10 veterans who are not great or anything, but like, they'll help.

Like, I use this example a lot, but like Florida did in like, whatever, 2012 or something like that where they just signed like 11 guys. But they signed them all for maybe a little too much money in definitely too many years. Detroit didn't do any of that. They got all the guys for like reasonable contracts in short term. And that's like the way you should do it. That's, you know, you want to, you want to supplement your young guys with guys who have been around the league and they can help and blah, blah, blah.

You don't want to lock yourself into all those guys. And they didn't. And that's, like, part of the job that a lot of GMs miss. Yeah. So really good offseason for Steve Eiserman, I think. Truly. Let's talk about the Brennan Gallagher thing, which is one of my favorite things that happened this week. Very fine.

Talks break off. Oh, God. All of Vancouver's Blogosphere starts writing posts about what they should give up to get Brendan Gallagher. And then less than a day later, Brendan Gallagher signs a six years. extension with Montreal. What the fuck? Like, what is that even? That's very funny. I wonder where the talks broke off stuff came from. It came from his agent calling LeBron and saying talks broke off.

Right. Okay. So that's where it came from. Yeah. So that was just a thing of like, well, we can't afford to lose Brendan Gallagher. So I guess we just better give him what he wants. And frankly, what he's worth more or less. Like, I didn't think it was an outrageous. He's been underpaid for, I don't even. I don't even made for years. Well, I don't even think that's like, GM should be like, yeah, we tricked you. That's fine. But, like, I think, I don't think the money or the term is, like, how could they do this?

This is insane. I think he's a guy whose game probably holds up like that for, what was it, six years. So, he plays a style that makes you a little bit nervous. But the bottom line is that if you're, if you're, you know, crowing about how you want to be a team that's tough to play. against and you're, you know, transitioning into being a contender and all this other shit. Like, if you don't sign Brendan Gallagher, you're going to spend the next three years looking for Brendan Gallagher, right? Like, so keep him around.

I like him, too. He made good TikToks during the pause. Eugene Melnick, first of all, Eugene Melnick suing the columnist who wrote, well, maybe suing. He hasn't filed anything yet, but maybe suing the columnist that wrote the story about how the senator's charity was, you know, using the money to. to fund, like, liver research or whatever the fuck it was. Whatever the story was, it was unfounded, apparently. The paper apologized, and now Melnick is suing him, maybe.

And then Melnick also says that Ottawa will win a stand-the-cup the next four years, Sean. Yeah. Four-year window to win a cup. I'm in Terry Pagula right on top of the shit. It was the five-year unparalleled success, so apparently this was year one that we just saw. Right. very successful. Very.

Yeah. I mean, it's, this is, this is what owners say. I would love to see this, like in the, what was it, like a 112 page document that spelled out the exact strategy that they're going to use. I would love to get my hands on that. That would be, that's probably some fascinating reading. But, yeah, obviously, again, we've said with Pierre Dorian is, he's good at two things. He's good at drafting and managing up to his. owner. And if he put together a 112-page PowerPoint to convince his owner that they were going to

win a Stanley Cup soon, then God bless him. That's some good work. I got to give Melnick credit because in this big financial post story, he gets into what he thinks the capacity could be for Ottawa games next year. And it's like, like, we can find a way to get like 3,000 fans or some such numbers. It was 6,000. It was 6,000. And the quote he gives, and the quote he gives was I can assure you that even the Ottawa senators who don't have a great record are bringing fans in over the fast few years, we'll have a sellout crowd. It's great. It's good stuff.

We'll see about that. But, uh, yeah. No, I mean, it was interesting where he was, I mean, it's, it's, and we all kind of know this is coming, but there's a lot of teams that need fans in the building. And right now, you, you couldn't get anyone near, uh, an arena in Ottawa. the way things are going up here right now. But that's right now. And February is four months away.

So obviously that's what they're looking for. But I really wonder what happens as we get closer to the season resuming. If it becomes clear that there's certain places where it's like, no, you're not going to have fans, period, at all. The hell does the league do then? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the senators do other than hope that there's real big revenue sharing

in place from the markets that do get fans. But Ottawa fans are going to know that they are going to watch a team that's going to win a cup within the next four years. How do you not get excited about that? That's it. Yeah, they're clearly

going to pack them in. Speaking of packing, today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Away. Damn, my fame phrase, of course. No, that's fine. We've talked about Away before. Away is by far the greatest line of suitcases, travel stuff you could possibly find.

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He thinks that February 1st could be the date. We come back. He is predicting a season of less than 60 games. Could be 48 or 56 games, he said. As far as the attendance goes, kind of says, look, you know, Gary Betman's not going to be flying us around the country if there can't be fans in the stands, basically says, hey, I expect there's going to be an all-Canadian division because of the border issue. And then as far as his own attendance goes, You know, he says that he's looking to get 40 or 50% of fans back in the building. Right now in Vegas, you can only have 10% of your capacity, which is 1,800 people.

And he says, that is not going to be enough. So lots of stuff from Bill Foley. What was your take on all this job, Sean? I mean, the Canadian Division thing didn't surprise me. I think everybody knows that that's on the table at this point. I didn't read this as him. saying it's definitely going to happen or spilling something other than that it's one of the more likely scenarios.

The date being pushed back, yeah. I mean, again, I don't, we just went through this whole playoffs where a lot of us are like, I don't think it's going to work, and then it worked. And we're all relieved and we're happy and we're in an offseason now that feels kind of normal-ish. So I know the last thing anybody wants is a bunch of doom and gloom about next season. But just between the date getting pushed back, the question of how you do this in a safe way, looking at what's happening in the NFL right now, where again, even just today, another team shuts their facility down because of positive COVID test, that's the NFL that plays once a week. If you're playing four times a week, you've got a game, I mean, almost if they start even in January, especially if they start in February and they've got to get done by July because of the Olympics.

you're going to have a game either tonight or tomorrow or yesterday pretty much every day of the year. There's not going to be any breaks. So when you look at the NFL and people testing, what's going to happen when it happens in the NHL? And it's not just, oh, we had a positive test on Thursday. We got to shut down the facility. We got to contact the team we played last Sunday.

It becomes, we have a game tonight. We got to know, what about the game we played two nights ago? What happens to that team? What about the team we played three nights ago? What about the team we're supposed to play? The schedule gets screwed up. It's going to be potentially a nightmare. And then you get to the whole question of, like I said, for a lot of these teams,

is it even worth doing if there's no fans in the stands and you're bleeding money? The players are expecting full pay for a shortened season because that was what was agreed to. That's the deal, yeah. I could see, like, potentially, and this is just me throwing stuff out there. This isn't based on anything anyone's told me. but I don't think it's guaranteed that we necessarily see all 31 teams even wanting to play the season. So it's going to be a potential real mess. And you know what?

This summer was a real mess too with the playoffs and the NHL figured it out and full credit to them. And maybe they deserve some benefit of the doubt going forward. But they figured it out with bubbles so that they managed to keep sealed. That's exactly right. That's not an option. I get like every time I'm an NFL fan, so every time I see one of these new NFL stories, my first thought is,

oh, how does this affect the NFL? And then immediately I'm like, what if this happened in the NHL? It's unworkable. You couldn't have teams just constantly dropping in and out of competition. I mean, the NFL's already screwed because one team's already missed, you know, enough games that they're going to potentially have to push forward

and add an extra week to the season. And again, that's when everybody is playing a nice, even once a week scheduled. What the hell are you going to do when you got five games in a week and you've tested positive before game three? The thing that I've heard a lot of people say is maybe you just do what like HL teams do and you play the same team like three days in a row, three games and five days, something like that.

And that limits your need to travel. It limits a lot of stuff. The number of teams that have to be notified if there's an exposure, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, that, that kind of helps, but unless, but again, like, you're still traveling around the country and, and, it's, but that reinforces the sort of regional, uh,

approach to the, yeah, but then, but then what is it? You're going to play 48 games and you're only going to play, like if you're Vegas, you're only going to play the, the, California teams in Arizona. Like, I, Vegas is like, okay. You know, exactly. Vegas is like, we're going to be the first team to go, uh,

82 and 0. But you see what I'm saying. Like, yeah, you know, you can do that pretty easily in, in, on the East Coast. And especially, like, once you get into, like, just all the teams from, like, Pennsylvania to Boston, play each other exclusively. Like, you can get a good variety of teams going there. But, like, if you're, say, Tampa, where are you going to do? Just play Florida 40 times?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. What did you think of the report? You see the report in the Toronto Star about the NHL snoop it around the idea of doing a game on a lake in Alberta? Yeah, Lake Louise. Hey, like, you know, the thing I said at the time was like, you're not going to have fans there anyway. Like, do something insanely unique and cool.

Or, you know, like, you can obviously do more than just play on a baseball. big lake. You can just be like, we're going to play this one in a fucking, you know, youth hockey rink. And, you know,

nobody's going to be there. But it'll be cool because it's just like, the youth hockey rink or whatever. Do you remember when, like, for years, they've talked about the Winter Classic maybe being held in places like the national mall or,

uh, Central Park, you know, was one that they always talked about. Like, this is the time to do it. Yeah. Absolutely.

You don't need fans there. Just get super creative. I think I'm, I've readed that and I'm like, wow, that makes a ton of sense. It would be really cool if they did it. It would be cool as shit to try to do that as a way to like, you know, take this moment where, you know, make the best out of a really bad moment. If you could put a hockey game anywhere and not have to need fans, where would you put one? Is there one place that sticks out in your mind? The surface of Mars.

Whoa! That's right. I watched that Hillary Swink. The Red Planet? Netflix show, and now I'm all, now I'm a Mars guy. Great. Now we're going to be back in a bubble because you'd need one. That's right.

Unless you're going to put, unless there's going to be individual spaces on all the players. Red Mars, green Mars, blue Mars. They could terraform it, is what I'm saying. Well, easily, if you can find that alien switch that's buried in the depths of Mars and then put your hand on it and then release all the oxygen, just like in total recall. Quato. Yeah, I remember. Sean, is there a place where you wanted to put a hockey game?

I actually hadn't seen the story that you're referring to, so that sounds cool. That, to me, might be the place and the time to do it. And hey, why stop at one game? How about every game gets held out there? And it's a big lake, right? You could just clear off multiple ranks, have everyone play at the same time. That's exactly what I was thinking. slides into the other, what?

You just, you know, stop and shoot it back to them. It's fine. Yeah, it's Saturday at the youth soccer field. You know, just set up some cones and all the games happen on the same pitch. Absolutely. Some people have said the mystery Alaska rink, wherever that might be. The same gimmick, though, right? Like, I think, yeah, you're right.

Okay. What about this other lake? What about a third lake? You know, I guess, I guess. Could you just move the NHL to Minnesota for a season and just play on. all of the lakes. What about freaking, what is it? Ritto Canal, is that, that's what it's called, right?

They could do one there and, you know. Bear Clause. I don't know, there's a lot of options. Like, now is absolutely the time to get creative. And so, you know, Greg's always talking up that guy who does all the events and stuff like that. Yeah, Steve Mayer, he's genius. Yeah, and I wonder if he's a source. but he's not

I mean he's been a source on the record he's he's a smart guy yeah but point is now is the time for him to earn his fucking paycheck let's go let's let's live up to all the hype let's let's really make things happen he should and uh the only thing the only drawback

for me uh to doing all this stuff is you know how nauseous I get when we start doing the boys on the pond and their mom's making cocoa kind of bullshit and I feel like that'll just be what this is, like over and over and over again kind of thing. It's too much. All right.

Anything else to touch on hockey-wise before we do a little over-rated, underrated action? I think we covered all the bases, didn't we? Yeah, that feels like about it, right? It feels like we did. All right, good. We have three options. You tell me which one you want to do. Horror movie franchises?

Hmm. Action figure toy lines. No, pass. Appetizers. I'll go one or three. Either one. Yeah, let's go apatat. I'm not really a horror movie guy, so I...

I knew that when I asked it. I thought maybe you were familiar enough with the franchises and the spooky monsters. But, and I figured it being, you know, spooktober and Halloween time that, uh, that, uh, that, that, would be one of the options. But appetizers is fine by me. All right. Overrated appetizer nachos. Yes. Nachos are the, I think you should leave sketch. There was so much truth there. And they're not being enough stuff to, to have, like, there's never enough stuff on your nachos. And you're always stuck with those nachos on the exterior that have like the faint whiff of, of, of, cheese or or topping like one shred of lettuce and uh it's it's it's it doesn't work as as a as a

meal um now i'll say this when you make them at home and you can put the nachos on like a baking sheet now you got something yep but as a plate of food at a at a restaurant i mean you get past that top layer like the minute you're done that you're out of sour cream what's the fucking point of nachos. Notchos, it really, you know, you need to know your stuff if you're going to order nachos. You need to have the scouting report on that particular restaurant how they're, how they're done. I almost, I'm a big nacho guy.

I'll order nachos as a meal. But as an appetizer, yeah, you're right. You kind of take your chances. So are we all overrated on nachos then? No. Let me, let me, let me add one to the mix. though. Any restaurant that has like just onion rings or fries as an appetizer you can get, get out of here. That sucks. Well, hold on. Now hold on. Because there's two different

genres of onion rings. Okay. You have your functional small onion rings like you would get at a Burger King, right? And then you have your giant beer battered onion rings, which are clearly a different type of meal. Like that could be an appetizer, can it? Um, I just, I would want those on the side as well, man. I don't, I think in much the same way as just being like, a buffalo wings are an appetizer. No, like, if you're, you don't get buffalo wings for the table. You get buffalo wings for yourself.

Come on. Hmm. Interesting. All right. So, my, I'm good. For my overrated, just, like, a dip. Like, when people get like some cheese and spinach dip. Absolutely.

Come on, man. I don't need seven layers or something. It's an appetizer. Just get me. you know, we're good, man. Like, don't, you're, you're, you're not impressing me, and I don't need, like, a whole table full of people all trying to fight for the same, uh, for their specific mix of dip, uh, on, on each chip.

Pass. Yeah. That is. Great call. Great call. That is blast. That's blasphemy. Um, okay, underrated.

This is a tough one. because underrated would mean that we don't rate it properly. That's right. You do get the game. I feel like in most cases, everything's kind of rated properly. So I'll respond to the blasphemy that you guys are just inflicted with. And I will say that an underrated appetizer would be a crab dip.

I love a good crab dip. You get it on some good chippy chips. It's like, you know, it's a heart attack in a bowl. But a good crab dip would be my choice for an underrated appetizer. Folks, the answer is loaded potato skins. Those are underrated? I think they are an S-tier app. For sure.

I don't know. It's fucking overrated personally, but... Okay, then let me give you this one. I was trying to choose between the two. Here we go. Okay. Fried pickles. You know, I'm a little torn on that one because I do love them, and I get them all the time at...

Actually, they've become a staple at your sort of Alamo draft house-y, like, dine-in movie theaters when they're used to. be movie theaters. So I am a kind of a fan of those, but I understand what you're saying. Let me put it that way. I understand what you're saying. I don't, I don't, yeah. I dig it. I would say they are not necessarily S tier in that way.

But, you know, if we're talking about one that I think gets overlooked as a very solid A tier, especially if you can get a good dipping sauce. Oh, man. Can't go wrong with a fried pickle. I'm a little torn because, I mean, I feel like maybe they're overpriced at times for being what they are, which is basically like just fucking pickles that are deep fried. Yeah. But that's why I think they might be a little bit overrated.

But as an underrated thing that people don't normally get, I think they fit into what you're talking about. I think the only knock on, because I'm a big fan, but the only knock is that if, If you're talking pure appetizer, like, let's get one for the table. Half the people at the table aren't going to like deep fried pickles. They're going to be wrong. They're going to be wrong. And it's going to be more for you. But it's a little question.

But my pick is, give me good antihitos. Don't always see them, but real good when they are there. And I don't know. I don't think I've ever had ones that were bad. I'm sure there's a way to do them badly, but everyone I've ever had are like somewhere from decent to very good. Okay. Favorite. This is an interesting one.

Now, we're saying wings aren't an appetizer, right? Wings are a meal. I think people broadly consider them an appetizer, but I personally never get wings as an app. Never. I might, I mean, I think I have, but I will, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll slot those more as a meal than anything else. So I'm left with, so guacamole, I'm not going to say as an appetizer. I think that's like a side dish. I'll go, I'll, here's, here's my favorite. Honestly, like, if you were like, can you have any appetizer in the world, what would you want? I would say a Vietnamese spring roll with that plum sauce.

you know, the one that's in sort of that, like, rice paper, those are fucking tremendously tasty. And it might be my favorite thing to get, along with, you know, whether it's Thai food or Vietnamese food, like, those things are fucking great. So I would say a Vietnamese spring roll would be my favorite appetizer. It's very obviously the king of the app. The reason the appetizer exists, the mozzarella stick. The humble mozzarella stick is,

The only answer to this question, they are fucking great. That's solid pick. I'm going to go, just give me a nice, simple chips and salsa at like a Tex-Mex place. Wow, that's a Sean answer if ever heard one. That to me is a classic appetizer. You don't even have to order it half the time. They just bring it to you. Like, that actually does what an appetizer says is going to do and make you more hungry.

Like that, and there's, like, we've got a place up here. here, Lone Star. The chips are, I mean, they're so salty, but like the chips and salsa combination is fantastic. I don't think you guys have those in the U.S., but you, you know, the sort of stuff that I'm talking about. Just not like a Lone Star Steakhouse? Like a Lone Star Steakhouse? No, no, I think, you know, it's a Tex-Mex place up here, like a Fahuea and that, but it's, uh, yeah. Lone Star. And, and, like, when the waiter, like, shows up and is like, oh, you polish those off, I'll bring you another one. Like, That's just, like, the whole table lights up.

Everybody's thrilled. So, yeah, it's, give me, I'm, I'm keeping it simple. That's, that's a favorite. Interesting. Well, these favorite, obviously, mozzarella sticks. They are so fucking completely overrated. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a plate of mozzarella sticks and one will be empty because they've overcooked them and the fucking cheese is melted out. It's, it's gummy.

and stupid and usually a delivery system for mediocre tomato sauce. So, uh, mozzarella sticks are my least favorite. Outrageous. Truly, truly fucking. I had that I had that in the fucking queue before you, you unleashed yours. That was not an attack on you.

That was, that was my choice. Uh, it was not an attack. It's not always personal. Always, not always personal. Um, I'm going to say brus chetta. Like when they're like, oh, we have like some. Oh, good choice.

Yes. That is, that's like, it's like, oh, yeah, we fucking grilled some French bread for you. Have a good one. Okay. And as it, I'm a tomato hater. So like, that is such a tomato forward. Yes. Uh, thing.

I like bruchita and I'm with you on the anti-tomato. It's like the only thing that with like actual. raw tomato that that I can handle but I actually I'm a fan So well you can handle salsa too

I mean salsa's are sort of the same genre of like I've I've we've been getting like those pre made like you get the box of food and make the meal like hello fresh is what we've been getting

And a lot of those meals have this sort of like you make your own mini salsa And like I'll take a tomato there But I don't know Brichetta is very sort of like tomato forward A little bit too much for me I'm gonna go for my pick I was gonna say Cal

Mary, which I don't like and we never get. But I do get that it's, you know, that that's just me being a fussy eater and not wanting to try. So I'm going to go, I'm going to leave that. If you like it, go ahead and order it. Anything, any sort of cauliflower bites or like cauliflower wings, get out of here with that. You go to jail if you try to put, pass that off as like some sort of buffalo cauliflower. Get out of here with that. If you order that for the table, we're done.

We're not friends anymore, and we will not be dining together. Three quick... Yes, please. What? Ooh. No. Three quick things. First of all, what was the first thing you said on that one, Sean?

Calamari. You went to cauliflower? Oh, yeah. The thing about Kalmarri is that if it's just the rings, not good. If you have the pieces that look like little squitties, always really good. Love that. All right. Well, there you go.

Appetizers for everyone. I would also say the mighty cassidia is one that perplexes me. Could be a meal. Could be an appetizer. It's a meal. It could be terrible. Could be terrible, too. Flatbread also falls into that meal category as well.

That could be an appetizer, but I think that's a meal. All right. That's Puckoo for this week. thanks to our sponsors Hawthorne in a way thanks to NHL Free Agency for providing the content for this week's episode and you can read my stuff in ESPN.com you can listen to my other podcast ESPN on ice

with Emily Kaplan. We spoke with Kevin Adams, the man who signed Taylor Hall with Terry Bougoula's money and also had a really cool dual interview with Megan Duggan who retired and Camie Granato to American team captains chatting with each other, and that was a good time as well.

And you had them fighting in a duel? We had them fighting in a duel. That's crazy. Ten paces. And I'm not going to say who won, but Seattle's going to need another scout. Yes, I have for the Pucksuit Patreon. We have a bonus episode this week about hockey video games that we're going to record. Hell, yeah.

Very soon. and we're going to keep doing all the other stuff on their mailbags and stick to sports and the newsletter and all that kind of stuff. So head over there, check out everything we have on offer. Find my stuff on The Athletic. I've got a piece that I guess is probably going on Friday, but it's another one of these neat ideas that a reader sent me, which was he challenged me to make the best roster I could of guy,

who never in their career got a single vote for the Selke Norris or Vezina. So in other words, it's the all-offence, no completely useless in your own end, all-time team. So that was kind of a fun thing to put together. So keep an eye up for that. And a bunch of other stuff. I don't remember what I wrote. Aren't you happy that like your lot in life is readers challenging you to do these sort of like roster exercises and not being like, you have to eat 20 cockroaches to keep your job kind of stunts.

Yeah. I think I'm like the only sports writer who's happy when I see a DM that starts off with. You know what you should do? And I'm like, I'll click on this. This is probably going to be, this will be fun. This will work out great for me. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm really, I'm really happy because like if I had your take on your career and I did whatever those DMs would say, I'd constantly be trying to fuck myself, so I'm really happy that it works out better for you. All right. Thanks, everybody for listening to Fuck Soup and supporting the show. We will talk to you soon. Take care. Bye.

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