Puck Soup - Gritty Reboot, Ask Us Anything

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

The boys discuss the police investigation into Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty, the Professional Hockey Writers midseason awards ballots, Ovechkin chasing 700, the strange world of the classic sitcom "Perfect Strangers" and a segment where you asked us anything and everything. Sponsored by AWAY!

This episode of Puck Soup is bought to you by Away. Away creates thoughtful products built for the way modern travelers see the world. They started with the perfect suitcase, and now they offer a range of essentials, all of which will make your travels more seamless. You know, I love Away. I use the bag. I use the gear. It has made my traveling as a hockey scribe. All the more easy. To get your suitcase and travel essentials, visit awaytravel.com slash puck. That's awaytravel.com slash puck and enjoy the show. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute.

We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tools. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. From the great state of Missouri and the city of St. Louis, I'm Greg Wyszynski of the SPN. I'm just at my house. Ryan Lambert, no job. Sean Maganoo, the athletic in Ottawa, which is probably even more miserable than St. Louis right now.

And you're in Puck Soup. Now listen, Sean, I will not have this. I will not have this at all. When you say you work for the athletic, you have to say from this point on, You work for Matthew McConaughey is the athletic. Yeah. It's always been Matthew McConaughey is the athletic, man.

He's, he's our boy. He's an investor in the athletic. I think a lot of people realize this for the first time in the past week. Couple questions. Is he in the athletic slack? Probably, but I wouldn't know because I don't, yeah. I'm assuming there's like a big group slack or group tech. that he's on and everyone else is on and that I'm not on.

Does he ever come to the athletic office and give Wolf of Wall Street-esque speeches to fire up the troops? Yeah, so you're trying to get me to do a Matthew McConaughey impression, and it's not going to work. It's weird. I'm on the athletics website right now, the NHL page, and everything's about Texas football? It's very... Oh, God. Is it just all Lincoln's in the athletic? garage now? Is that how it works? They don't, you can't get any other cars. I will say this about

head office is probably like that already, but I will say this about Matthew McConaughey. That dude turned, uh, being in a movie where he drives a Lincoln into a years long sponsorship for the company. Uh, and I really respect that. All right. My next movie is going to be called the Gucci accountant. I think, uh, I think it's great news. I think he is obviously a very, big sports fan. And, I mean, what could go wrong? Matthew McConaughey has never backed a project that didn't work out outside of Sahara

and that movie with Bill Murray where there was an elephant. I don't know this movie. But everything else has been good. Oh, yeah, hang on. Operation Dumbo Drop? I don't... No, Operation Dumbo Drop took place in Vietnam. Yes, well, I know that.

Was it Vietnam? No, it's larger than life, 1996. But you're talking about pre-McConnorissance, McConaughey. That doesn't count. The only movie people are allowed to act like exists from that era, from the pre, I would say what, what came first? Mutter Lincoln Lawyer. But Lincoln Lawyer, I think. So from before that, I think you're allowed to say like Dazed and Confused, maybe failure to launch. but otherwise we're just not referencing.

You know what? Even, even let's just say, pre-True detective, we're all set. I really wanted his why I'm joining the athletic letter, by the way, to just be all of his monologues from true detective strung together. It went big document. Anyway, Math McConnor-Hae at The Athletic. There's your athletic content for this week. Pretty excited.

it. Gritty. And when last we spoke to you, we can now mark time pre-milkshake Gritty, post-Milkshake Gritty. I don't know. For those who don't know. You don't believe children. You don't believe victims. Well, okay, let's not frame it maybe that way.

But it's definitely a situation where, you know, it seemed like. Like, I don't, it's one of those things of, I don't know why you would make this up a month later or, you know, whatever it's, or two months later. But also, like, why would Gritty just haul off and punch this kid in the back? It doesn't, none of it makes sense. It's an insane. Flyers mascot. Yeah. He's the Flyers mascot.

But he's the flyer, he's been the Flyers mascot for over a year now. Mm-hmm. which implies that either he's been secretly punching kids all along and we haven't heard about it, which is plausible. I could see that. Or he made it a year plus on the job and then a kid kind of tapping him on the back of the head caused him to snap. Yeah, have you ever seen how kids treat a freaking mascot? It's not great. No, it is not.

I feel like that's like 80% of things. job of being an NHL mascot. There's like 20% is operating the T-shirt canon and leading cheers and stuff like that. And then 80% is just not hauling off and giving into the urge to punch. Yeah, getting kicked in the balls by a nine-year-old. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. It's not like parenting. It would certainly seem weird that this is the moment he decided to apparently charge across a room, punch a child as hard as he could, leaving slight bruising. and but but the the weirdest thing and many people have pointed this out but the weirdest thing of this whole story is how actual news organizations are treating it as if gritty is a real guy like

gritty is under arrest in the basement of the flyers arena like it's not like a guy in a gritty costume who who may have done this but that just gritty himself is is going to be on trial, which I don't know, suggest to me that maybe even the media that is pretending to take this seriously is not taking it that seriously. I will say this. If it happened this way, it's a terrible story. But I think it's very, it's too weird of a story right now to be really drawing the battle lines.

But what I do like about this is that the media, like Sean said, is keeping up the k-fabe of Gritty is this like. Yes. They're like, no, gritty is just a guy. He, you know, like, like treating the undertaker circle like 1994. Like, nope, he's going back to the funeral home. He lives in with his dad, Paul Bearer. And it's 100% real.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, just because my client is a monster, doesn't mean he should be treated like one in the impending gritty trial. Is it possible that there's more than one gritty, performer. I would. And that there's like one that is the lovable t-shirt can and banging on a garbage can with a Houston Astros logo thing. And then once like the enforcer that they bring in.

Right. That should have been the kid's hint when he started smacking him in the head and suddenly Gritty like left and came back from a different door. He was smoking a cigarette when he came back in. Yeah. Well, you know, again, it was it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, uh, Ian Laperia actually. The cave of it.

This is like one of the ultimate warrior, died and got replaced by the other ultimate war, that big rumor for when we were kids. Yeah. Right. I always assumed that there were like multiple mascots. I would assume that if like, like, anyone, like Carlton the Bear, there were like eight guys. But then like when gritty appeared and remember we got that weird subgenre of stories about other mascots talking crap about them?

Yes. And it kind of became apparent. that or implied that, no, each, like, mascot is just one person and, like, that's their thing. And I don't, yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's only the one. I would let me see that group text, by the way, because you know all the other mascots are just absolutely ripping this dude. Like, and I'm assuming it's a dude.

They all think that it's a magician's code, right? So they all think that Gritty has stolen their tricks. Yeah. And, you know, like, you know, Bailey the Lion, from L.A. is like, I did the dumping popcorn on the opposing fans thing. How dare this man steal my heat? Yeah. So there you go. So they wanted him to do something original and apparently now he has... Yeah, they asked for him to do what original thing. But he's still at the All-Stra game, right? Like, they haven't sent him home or anything. They're just going through it. Yeah. Gritty's at the All-Star

game, which leads you to believe that maybe there's more than one Gritty. Like, there's one gritty that's on like administrative leave and then you know his understudy or maybe the main performer is here at the all-star game i can't imagine with a with pending legal action that the same guy that was in the suit during season ticket day is first of all this is the n-hl so yeah exactly absolutely would that's true bradm was at the all-star game when he was suspended for god's sense it's a brush it's this is all in the past he's a great guy let's just brush it off and make him the center of our marketing campaign So what's going to happen?

Like, if you're wandering around the arena today and you see gritty, like, do you have to run over and, like, try to ambush him with serious journalism questions now? Do you, like, are you obligated to try to rip his gritty head off and see who's under there? I am. I will be running around the arena with a hat that says scoop on it. Yeah. And I'll be, I'll just run after him with my microphone and Mr. Grit, Mr. Grit, you know. Any comment on the pending legal action? Yeah, it's important.

I mean, I could obviously probably interview the other mascots to get their opinions on this. Do you feel safe around Gritty knowing that he has potential impulse control problems? Yeah. You know, if you see, if you're a parent and you see Gritty, you know, walking around the concourse, do you take your child and run to the safe open arms of another mascot like that Oilers one? Yeah. I mean, you got to keep him away from the also. stars kids because if we know anything about the NHL, like that's the next generation of draft

picks. We're not making new hockey players. It's just the same families. So, yeah, it's a weird story. At the end of the day, I mean, listen, scandal can affect celebrities in different ways. I mean, sometimes you're pushed to the side and shunned and sometimes a little bit of scandal could add a little sizzle to your reputation. Does gritty emerge from what I assume will be a cash settlement from the fly?

liars to this family, unscathed or bigger than ever? A gritty reboot, so to speak. Okay. All right. Come on. I think obviously remembering where he plies his trade, probably bigger than ever, he's now in the pantheon of Broad Street bullies for having done this. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of like, you know, again, I don't want to, like, make big assumptions

here on like what may or may not have happened with with gritty attacking this child. But it's one of those things where it's like, isn't that what you sign up for with gritty? Like sometimes gritty is just going to punch a kid. That's how it goes. Like, you know, it's the thing of, look, you go to a hockey game, puck's going to come up over the glass sometimes. You've got to keep your head on a swivel. I don't know why you would ever turn your back to gritty is all I'm saying. You never know.

Yeah. The kid was, what, 13? The kid was 13. Punch the 13 year old following a photo shoot. I have a 13 year old and I know a lot of 13 year olds and I get it. Just say that. I know a lot of 13 year old and you sir are no 13 year olds. No 13 year old.

He's living the dream. Would Gritty be a good cellmate? That's my last question. I mean, the number of things he would like produce from. nowhere to try to break you out, file. You know, like, he's just, he seems like he really can just, you know, just keeps firing. Yeah.

Just firing the t-shirt can't until the bar is bent. Well, doing the thing where you get the t-shirt wet and then you bend, you twist them all up, like he has an infinite supply of t-shirts to do that with. Yeah. And he knows how to repel, right? So he can get him out a window. He can get down there safe. Yeah.

And obviously, it can distract the guards like no other. My God, he's a fucking mascot. They're all in the corner laughing while you scurry out of the... He's doing that dance where he shakes his belly around or whatever. Yeah, of course. That's right. I really need to see the trial of Gritty now. This is all I'm going to be thinking about from the next week.

Other mascots taking the stand as character witnesses and such. It's pretty great. But at the end, it's a horrible story maybe that will probably have a, yeah, Don't bunch children. And we'll probably have a happy resolution for the family as, you know, Chuck Fletcher wheels a giant pile of money into their house. And, you know, if you're looking to wheel a giant pile of money anywhere, may I suggest it a way back. Not very good this week.

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Away bags, proud sponsor of the Puck Soup podcast. Other news that came out this week, boys, the exalted members of the Professional Hockey Raders Association gave out their mid-season awards. They did their mid-season awards voting. Said friend of the show, Frank Sarvelli, were very proud of the work our members put in throughout the entire season,

crunching numbers, following trends, and speaking to sources to gather the best ballot material. That's a hopeful statement from Frank. False advertising, it seems like. Here we go. Heart Trophy, McDavid, McKinnon, Pasternak. That's the correct one. I had McKinnon and McDavid and Pasternak.

Yeah, that's insane. But hold on. Can I ask you that? Because, like, you are such a slave. Like, whenever we get into an argument on this show about this kind of shit, you immediately run to, like, evolving hockey. You immediately go to goals and wins above replacement. And McKinnon leads McDavid and both of those at this point in the season.

Well, I mean, again, look at who Nathan McKinnon gets to play with and look who Carmen. Connor McDavid is making Zach Cassie. Like, he's going to make Zach Cassian worth eight figures. I think we can have a conversation about, you know, what, how much better McDavid would be if he got to play with, say, Kail McCar, Gabe Landiscaug. Mika Ranton. But the counter argument is that he hasn't gotten to play with those guys for.

for a good chunk of the season. I mean, well, like, McKinnon is, McKinnon, like, didn't get to play with Landis Cog for, you know, 15, 20 games. And same thing with Rantinan. McCar was hurt for a hot second. Zach Cassian is on the Edmonton Oilers top line, Greg. Do you see what I'm saying?

Like, this is a borderline, a, like, if they don't have Carmen McDavid and Leon Dricidal, and, you know, to a lesser extent, like Ryan Nugent Hopkins and things, things like that. This is a very bad team, like one of the worst in the week. Let me share one stat with you. All right.

Kail McCarra has 37 points this season of 41 games, a fantastic season for what could be the rookie of the year. He is 35 points behind Nathan McKinnon for the leading score on the avalanche. McKinnon is 35 points clear of any other player on his team right now. It was because a bunch of them missed time. Didn't you say that? And McKinnon kept going and kept carrying the team. That was my point.

Yeah, he's really good. I think he's the second most valuable player in the league. Oh, how dare you? What about you, Sean? Do you care about anything? I had my ballot where I had McDavid first, McKinnon's second, but it's close. I had Jack Eichol number three. But if you want to do Pastor Neck, by all means,

There are a lot of guys in that three spot. I am increasingly willing to give Panarin the time of day on that. But I mean, the issue, of course, is that if the PHWA talks themselves now into, you know, well, Paneraan, you know, look how bad the Rangers are, look how good he is. He's having probably the best season of anybody in the league. But if the pHWA goes, you know what, we should give him a. bunch of votes. That's how you, that's like every confirmation you ever needed that East Coast bias is real and people

do not stay up late to watch the West Coast games. Because that, that never worked for McDavid before. The, you know, like how well he was playing on a team that isn't particularly close to the playoffs. And, um,

yeah, you know, now, but now it's a New York guy. So we have to have a serious conversation about it. And you're probably going to have the same thing with Eichel, right? Like, we're going to have, even if McDavid does make the playoffs, and God help us if he doesn't, and you've, at which point, well, I mean, if he doesn't,

then McKinnon will just win, but we'll still have this, like, overall, we'll have to do this whole debate again about what is value, and do you have to make the playoffs and all of this stuff, which I feel like I'm already sick of, even though it hasn't even started yet. Well, we did start getting, if the playoffs. started today yesterday. You know, if the playoffs started today, well, I mean, it would be fucking April if the playoffs started

today. Oh, no. That's, that's the stupidest shit in the world to me. Look, we've played 42% of the season. Let's have a serious conversation about what the playoffs would look. Okay, come on. I don't think a serious conversation, but I do think it's fun to think about the potential for all Florida first round.

Well, the fact that it went, like, I kind of start rolling my eyes when I see those things go through. And then I saw that we'd get Edmonton and Calgary. And I was like, no, I'm in. In fact, I'm good with starting the South now. Let's just, let's just do it. Right. But we can go, you know, if we go by points percentage and not where they are in the standings, then the matchups are. And it's like, you know what we could do is just wait a couple of months and see where we're at. Sidebar on Calgary. I talked to Matthew Kachuk yesterday here at the All-Star Day, All-Star Game Media Day. And he vehemently claims he does not read Twitter or press coverage of his antics, true or false.

Well, I hope so, because I'm making fun of them pretty much all the time. I would, I kind of do by that when guys, I think they see more than they let on. But like, I don't think he has a Twitter. I don't think I've ever seen him tweet 22, 23. something like that. He's probably not on Twitter. Twitter is an old man hang out at this point. Yeah, he's on TikTok.

He's watching all the nurses point at things. Is it weird that when you talk about old men on Twitter, my first thought is Darren Drager? Why is that? I don't know. Is he like the quintessential guy on Twitter? Drake is Drager? No, like Drill is the quintessential.

guy on Twitter. Like, what do you? I don't understand the question. I don't know. It's the thing. That's the first thing that popped into my head. I can't explain it. Maybe because he, you know, is the ubiquitous figure in my life as a, as a hockey consumer online.

By the way, when I was flying into St. Louis yesterday morning from, I had to connect in hot Atlanta. And on my flight was Brady Kachuk. sitting in first class. And I mentioned this because if you ever been to one of these All-Star games, the players have to like battle through a horde of middle-aged men running around with suitcases full of pucks and jerseys. They're aggressively trying to get signed as these guys fly in for the All-Star game. It's fine.

It's a hobby, I'm sure, for some. But, you know, for the guys that it's a business for, it's like, you know, let a little kid get through first. kind of deal. But anyways, he was on my plane and then I later saw him with what I would basically call like a motorcade's worth of police protection coming through the St. Louis airport past the autographed seekers. And I think he signed a few, but it was pretty impressive. Like, we must protect Brady Kachuk at all cost in St. Louis. Oh, because he's a St. Louis guy. Okay, that does make sense. I was going to say like the guy from the senators and we're getting

But you know what? I don't think Jonathan Hubertow is getting the same kind of Yeah, but it makes sense because I'm sure his dad knows every cop within a 50 mile radius. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Norris Trophy, John Carlson, Roman Yossi, Dougie Hamilton.

I didn't put Dougie Hamilton on my ballot because he got hurt. I put slave in instead. But otherwise this was... I did. I had Hamilton second on my ballot. And the thinking with that is, if somebody got hurt with two games left in the season, but if John Carlson gets hurt with two games left in the regular season,

he still gets the Norris just because he's hurt. And this was the first half. Yeah, I agree. Dougie Hamilton was going to make sense. The whole first half, but clearly he's not going to be on Norris ballots at the end of the year. And we should, like, this is one of these things. Like, the midseason awards are kind of new. So they're not super well defined,

but I think it's generally agreed that these are, these are the awards based on what happened in the first half. They're not our attempts to predict. This is not us guessing who's going to win at the end. This is just who's done what so far. You're making the argument that Carlson shouldn't win the Norris because of his defense. Yeah. You know, it's a huge, like, I, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I haven't looked at it recently,

but a couple of weeks ago I looked at like his expected goals for at, you know, five on five. it's like one of the lowest in the league for defensemen that play a lot. He was in like the 50s, I want to say, in the same areas as your Rasmus Ristolinians and Tyler Myers, which to me that's not great. And like, look, he's shooting the lights out. He's having a great offensive season, and that's why he's valuable. Like, that's what you signed John Carlson for.

But, you know, I think that if you look at what he's. does on all 200 feet of the ice. There's three, four defensemen who are having better seasons off the top of my head. Petrangelo, Yossi and Ellis. Victor Headman's having an unbelievable season. Like you said, Dougie and Jacob Slavin are probably in the same conversation with those guys, maybe a step below them. I really, you know, like I said, I haven't looked at the war lately, but I'm not.

I can't imagine he's even in the top five or six. I think Dougie and Slavin are both near the top of the pops. It's kind of crazy that Yossi's over a point per game this season. Is it really? That's really impressive. Yeah. Yeah, he's having a healthy here. And like I say, I think a lot of that is, boy, Ryan Ellis is, you want to talk about underrated players.

Ryan Ellis is one of those. Yeah, I think he's actually on top again in goals of us. Hold on. I just pulled it up. Ooh, I got to scroll down a bit. John Carlson, 19th in war among defensemen. 19th. Ian Cole is 10 spots ahead of him. Ian Cole is very important.

No, I understand, but it's like Ian Cole. Shut on Ian Cole. Like, I don't know, man. It's going to take a shortening of the gulf between Carlson and Yossey, which, by the way, is only 12 points right now. for that to be a race because I feel like 12 points is a lot default setting.

I was actually surprised because Frank tweeted out the actual voting numbers and I, especially for midseason awards, I just kind of assumed Carlson would run the table and there was a decent amount

like he got an overwhelming majority but there was a decent amount of support for Yosi already. So I don't think this one's done, done. Especially when you get to the end of the year and, you know, I can't. can't speak for everyone, but I'm guessing people put a little more thought and research into their ballots for the awards that count.

Well, I mean, according to Frank, that's already happened. They talk to their sources about it. They talked to their sources about it, yeah. Selke Trophy, Coutureeroy, Bergeron, O'Reilly. I got Cotterier, Bergeron, and Stone on mine. But Cotterier is the by far. Yeah, and the exact same ballot degraded. It's overdue. It's overdue, quite frankly.

he's unbelievable I agree Calder Trophy Kale McCar, Quinn Hughes Victor Olives Okay I don't quite know how that guy's still hanging on the ballot

When What's His Face in Chicago Is having the season that he's having Because he was third in my ballot What's his face? Yeah What's his face? Yeah That dude

That's who I had third on mine Yeah Kubla Khan there it is. Yeah, I think he should easily be there. But what do we, how do we think the great Hwin Hughes-Kale McCar fight will play out? Because I could already see our friends in Vancouver digging their heels in about.

They're laying the groundwork for this to be a tougher boat than it seemed like it was shaping up to be. They're getting their... More complete defensemen, plays in tougher situations. It's like watching a campaign like start to get the ground game out in advance where you can just kind of see that, all right, in a few months, they're not going to make this as easy for us as we maybe would have all thought it was going to be. And write yourself, that's what you should do. Macar had a hundred and one first place votes to 11 for Quinn Hughes. Yeah, I think that's going to be a real tough gap to make up.

And look, you know, I've said all season that I think McCar should be in the conversation. He's dropped off a little bit more lately. but there was a while there where he had a legitimate argument for Hart and Norris as well as the Calder. So I get why people are like really dialed in on that. I think over the course of the season, the gap will close, but my suspicion is it's probably a little too big. And I think either one of them would be a perfectly deserving winner. Yeah. Yeah.

it'll be fun. Our good friend Thomas Drance already gearing up the statistical argument for Quinn Hughes. By the way, Quinn Hughes, great kid,

brilliant player, has helped make Vancouver better than I ever thought they could be this season. I even thought they'd be a playoff team, but I didn't think they'd be this good. And the most vapid, boring interview,

I think, in the NHL right now, unfortunately. I really wish you wasn't. Yeah. we tried. We really tried yesterday. Now, did you get the feeling that he's just a boring dude? Or did you, were you like, this guy has already absorbed his media training lessons?

And he's ahead of the game as far as, like, being cross-by-ey-ey-ey-ey-y-ey. I think it's more option B. Okay. Because I asked him a Matt Kachuck question because they're like buddies. away from the ice. And he gave an answer that was very sort of like practiced and mannered. And like when it, when a kid, how old is this fucking Quinn Hughes? Like 19.

Like 20. Yeah. So like when a kid finishes an answer to a question with, and that's all I'll say on that. I mean, that means you kind of know where the line is as far as what you should be saying about somebody and what you shouldn't. And no, no 19 or 20 year old should be that. mattered and practiced, unless you're from like the fucking, you know, gentleman's south or some shit. Yeah, I, I, you know, in my, in my time covering college hockey, you, you definitely can see the kids who, uh, have been playing at a high level for a long time because they are like that, you know? I, I just remember Johnny Goddrow being like, I might as well just turn my recorder on and talk to a wall.

Like, I'm just getting zero from this kid. And, you know, he, like, to find out that somebody has surpassed him on that, black dread has filled me. Like, that's, that's scary to me. We did ask him if he was, you know, what his communications with his brother Jack have been like during the season. And he's like, you know, oh, we text, we text every day. It's pretty good. Like, cool, man.

Thanks. Is it, is it just, is it, is it, is it just, is it. constant condolences from one way to the other about how great one's first season is going and how unbelievably shitty the other ones is. Like, what is that even like? Probably is that, yeah. Is it like a text that from Jack who's trying to change the subject? Do you see the, see The Bachelor the other night? And he's like, no, I was playing.

We won, by the way. Yeah, we won. I scored a goal. Wait, I'm confused by both of those sentences. Do you think your GM would trade Pedersen for me? Winky face emoji? Lady Bing trophy. Who cares? Yeah, I'll give you a shit.

Doesn't matter. Well, I'll keep you advice. My lady Bing ballot was Highskin and Souter and Kilamacar only because I am, like, getting increasingly annoyed by how we only ever vote for forwards for the Lady Bing. So I'm like, this is me testing out. just going with an all-defenceman ballot and making that my new policy until we start, at least getting a finalist. I definitely had suitor on mine, too. It's kind of crazy that a guy plays that much ice time and has very few penalty minutes as a defenseman.

So I agree with you on that one. As we've talked about many times in the show, the people that should be voting on the Lady Bing are either the on-ice officials or the players themselves. How could you possibly allow a fucking professional sports writer to, judge someone's gentlemanly conduct. It makes no sense. The officials vote. Wes McCauley announces it at the award. Yeah, there you go.

Who has a problem with that? That checks out for me. Yeah, let's... Well, some people did have a problem with this top three for the Lady Bing. It's Nathan McKinnon first, Ryan O'Reilly, third, and Austin Matthews second for the Lady Bing. Now, leave aside the fucking offseason showing your ass to a security guard. business, which should be a disqualifier in and of itself.

But, okay, let's just say it's an on the ice award. Is the Scott Sabrin thing, like, because it was in the preseason, does that not factor into let's give this guy the second highest ranking for a gentlemanly player who fucking showed up a senator's guy by reading the back of his jersey on the ice? Who cares? Yeah. Who gives a shit? Yeah.

I mean, you don't. Here's how people vote on this award. Who's a really good player who doesn't have a lot of penalty minutes? Search by penalty minutes. That's the only. That's the only qualification. And that's fine. Who cares?

It's a stupid award. Everybody hates it. When guys win it, they're like, oh, this is kind of fucking embarrassing for me. So who gives a shit? It's a bad award. So, yeah, I mean, preseason shouldn't count for any of these awards, but who cares? Is there anything more debilitating than when you're doing Hall of Fame breakdowns for candidates and you're going scrolling through and you're like, did this person ever win the award? And it's, yes, he won the Lady Bing in 89 and the King Clancy in 92.

That's why you got to learn the phrase major awards. This guy never won any major awards. He won four Lady Bing's. I stand by my point. He never won. It's a major award. Messier Leadership Awards. Yeah, he's fucking great.

The greatest. Vesna Trophy, Connor Hallibuck won Ben Bishop and then Darcy Kemper. I had Bishop number one. The GM has voted this award, so I can't imagine that a Winnipeg Jet will ever win it. Well, it's the GM's vote, so it's just going to be whoever has the most wins. That's correct, yeah. Right. Yeah.

The Jack Adams, this is going to be a pretty hotly contested. It is. It's like, there are like five guys where it's like, he's got a pretty hotly contested. he's got pretty good claim on it. Yeah, and we don't have the obvious Jack Adams, like first year coach on a team that was supposed to be bad that's going to make the playoffs. That's the Jack Adams every year.

And we don't really have that, you know, tip it maybe, but I don't think, like, if the Oilers run away with the division, it's probably him. But if they're a wild card, I don't think that's overachieving. So the other guys, Kruger and Aiken's. At that point, he should just give the trophy to Connor McDavid. Thanks, Connor. We really appreciate this.

You also don't necessarily have guy who took over struggling team midseason and turned their shit around. No. You have a couple of guys. We're still going to have about six more guys probably. Right. You still have, I mean, you do have like bonus and Ward who took over. Ward could get into it. Bizarre situations.

Keith has been up and down, but it wouldn't be. in the mix right now. Yeah. But the thing you do have, though, is Mike Sullivan, who's number one in the ballot right now, coaching a injury, devastated team to incredible heights.

John Totorella coaching a team where, you know, three talented guys left via a free agency, and an endless parade of Latvian goalies have come through and the Blue Jackets are almost a playoff team. And then Brube's, like, you know, has a team with no cup hangover, almost winning in the president's trophy.

But here's the thing. The one name I didn't see, which I find kind of interesting, where does Quedville fit in all this? They got to get a little higher in the standings and then he's in the next. I agree. I mean, you can definitely say, well, it's obviously just because of the goalie, and that's why they're not higher in the standings. But at the same time, that's true for every coach in the league. Like, every coach in the league is a good or bad goaltending performance away from being fired or winning the Jack Adams.

So. And then like what of Jared Bedner? What of Travis Green? Yeah, no. Like I said, like there were like five guys where if they wanted, I'd go, all right. That makes sense. And is John Heinz one of those guys?

Of course not. But, well, maybe for his work with the devils, getting them closer to that number one pick. The anti- MVP. I always love that notion. But I really think that like, it's probably Sullivan right now, just given literally every good player on that team has spent like 10 plus games on LTIR. It's crazy.

Tortorella, because Tortorella is the closest to the traditional Jack Adams of we were wrong about this team. And since we couldn't be wrong, because we're so smart in the media, it must have been an amazing coaching job. So it's probably him. But I'll tell you, the one other name I had on my ballot, that doesn't isn't getting a lot of right. But Barry Trots, Barry Trots was the coach of the year last year, and he's got his team doing pretty much exactly the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. And there has not, it's tremendous. Again, the Adams has evolved to this award that you can't win back to back because it's all about expectations, not about the job you do. We haven't had a back-to-back winner since Shock the Marys in the 80s,

but I don't see any read. There's nothing in the definition of the award that says the performance has to be a surprise, you know, And so Barry Trott should be in the mix. If all the coaches got fired tomorrow or got, you know, released or whatever, Barry Trots would be quite possibly the first one hired anywhere. So he's one of the coaches of the year, I think.

And an excellent point. I mean, it is the broadcasters award. They vote on it. They all have, you know, attention spans of goldfish. We all know that. So it's hard to go back to back. But they also all love Barry Trots in a very specific way. It's just a weird award that, like, you can.

It wouldn't surprise me. Nobody would have a problem with Conrick David winning the Hart Trophy two years in a row. Nobody would have a problem with a goalie winning the Vezina two years in a row. But Jack Adams, it's like you just can't be done. I don't know. It's weird. Yeah. The Jim Gregory GM of the Year award, which obviously is what should be the Bill Tori GM of the year award.

Which is a terrible award for a full season, let alone a half season that doesn't even include the trade deadline. Joe Sackick, John Chaka, Doug Armstrong, are your three choices right now. I had them on my ballot in a different order, but whatever. I don't, it's... I mean, Sackick, at least you could say, you could, you have at least a half season of evidence that, like, the cadre train was really good, you know, and that Dotskoy was a good signing. The interesting name, and I didn't have them on my ballot, but if you're just, if you're

going by what the award is supposed to be, which is like just this half season and last off season, and that's it. Jim Benning would be in the mix, right? Like, I don't think Jim Benning's. We have to have a Jim Benin conversation. We have to. Yeah. Like, you know, I don't think anybody coming into the year would have been like,

now there's a good GM. No. And yet, that team, you know, he, I wouldn't be there now, but the Miller trade has worked. Yeah. Myers has not been terrible. It doesn't make good, but, yeah. Pieces, right?

Like, Jay Beagle's going to win the cell phone, you know? Um, You know, it would never happen for like a million reasons, but, you know, why are we not having a conversation about Carolina? There's this where I say, why aren't we having the conversation about Chicago? Well, it's because that team's not that very good, I think, would be the first. We're not having a conversation about Carolina because we don't know for sure that they have. a GM? Like, is Don Waddell? Like, is he actually... Right. Or is he just, like, hanging around the office, like the guy from office space, like,

that just won't leave? I prefer to think of him as the real Don Wadell died a few years ago. This is an animatronic Don Wadale operated by Eric Tarriske. I mean, look, again, I've said it before. He's the guy who picks up the phone and makes these calls, but these are all, like, decisions arrived at collectively and more NHL teams are looking to do that or already doing it where, you know, a GM is like the face of the, the greater body, I guess you'd say. But, you know, that Carolina team's fucking good, man. And they, and that leadership team has basically built it from scratch. So, do you think Tulski writes scripts for him?

And he has to, like, get on the phone and read them to other GMs. He's just sitting there next to the, next to his desk. like writing stuff on a legal pad and underlining it and turning it around like pointing Jonah Hill and Moneyball. Exactly. Exactly. Thought what else like shooting this shit with like David Poil? Now David, I mean, are you aware of his expected goals per 60?

Poil's like what? How about his grit? Rod Langway Award to the defenseman who best excels in the defensive aspect of the game. Which is an award nonetheless of us understand. Last year I spent like the whole, I spent hours figuring

out who like the best Rod Langway won the Norris like while having 25 point seasons in the 80s because he was just total once that one end of the ice, that was it. Locked down, shut down, stay at home defenseman. And I tried to figure out who that was.

And then everyone voted for like Victor Hedman. And so I, all right, now we're just going for a defenseman who is good defensively, but also really good offensively. I think I mentioned him earlier. You know who has a really good claim on this award this year? John Carlson, yeah. John Marino, John Marino. John Marino was third of my list.

He's been unbelievable in a shutdown role as a rookie this year. But as you mentioned, the top three for the award, best defensive defenseman, John Carlson, Kail McCar, and Oleg Tevrodovsky. that I thought was kind of a weird one to bring him back. No, it's Jacob Slavin, Victor Hedden, and Roman Yosi. The last two, again, like,

Sean, I agree with you, man. Like, the whole point of the award is to not put fucking Victor Hedman and Roman Yose sounds about that. The guys were scoring a million points, right? Like, I guess, I guess the argument has now become, well, look, you know, being in the attacking zone

is good defense. So those guys are doing it great. Okay. This is, well, yeah, I mean, listen, It's two separate ideas. What you just said is true. That's why Mike Green should have won the Norris.

But the award seems, it's the guy behind the guy award, right? Like, this is where you put Slavin and Anton Strauman back in the day and fucking Dan Gerardi before he became horrible. Like, this is where those guys should get, like, the love, right? Yeah. This is, I mean, you know, a few years ago or what, last year when they were still using the Vlasic brawn pairing in San Jose. go with one of those guys. Well, they, I mean, they were bad last year, and Flassick is horrible this year,

but you know who's actually been pretty good defensively and not offensively is Justin Braun in Philadelphia has been solid in that role again. So why not have a conversation about him? Or, you know, he's not scoring so much this year, but like Charlie McAvoy, I think, is having a pretty good, you know, defensive season. Helps who he plays behind, obviously.

But just something. to think about. Or we could acknowledge this is not a real word and we could not a real conversation. Nobody's getting it at the end of the year. So why have the vote in the first place? Did you see that the news came out of Boston that Charlie McAvoy is known as Chucky and Charlie Coil is known as Cici? That's his nickname.

That's his nickname. Cici? That's all right. Yeah, C C C C C C C. Is it like is that meant as an insult or what are we? No. I mean, I think... Oh, I get your saying. I was such a Cody C.C. Dilley. I can get it. Finally, speaking of Ill Defined Awards, the comeback Player of the Year award to the player who returned to a previous high level of performance that was interrupted by subpar play, long-term injury, or major illness.

Right. So subpar play being the key there, that this isn't meant to be like the mini Masterton where... Because I saw some people reacting to that saying, like, oh, it's a guy, like, guys have to be hurt or something. It's not that. It can just be guys who were bad. Yeah. Who are good again. Right. And that's who they, I mean, the top three are Willie Nealander, Anthony Declare, who's a really good choice. And Max Patrierty.

But like all three of those guys coming back from being not very good last year. Right. And none of them, though, coming back from like Ricketts. Right. You know, they're all, they were all just shitty last year. And now they're really good. I, the major illness part, I mean, the major illness part does set up the award to be like, who had cancer. Yes, right.

100%. He's playing well now. Yeah. But, I mean, I don't know, my ballot, I had declare first. I had Taylor Hall second, because he's kind of one of the few guys that had a major injury. Long-term injury. And came back. Yeah.

And I put Camp Talbot third. But whatever. Like, there's, there's, I know a lot of people were mad about Nealander because they, they thought that we were grouping the holdout in as being like the equivalent to an injury or something. thing, but it was more that when he did come back from the whole out, he wasn't very, or at least didn't have numbers last year. I think there's a lot of people who'd argue he was a lot better than you thought last year, but it wasn't reflected in the numbers, and now it is. Sure.

He wasn't on my ballot, but I don't. He was on mine, and like, if they were ever going to really define the award, it should be like, who's the guy that everyone said was cooked and turned out not to be cooked? Yeah. Like, and Nielander was like, fucking trade this guy. Why were you even paying him this money? And then it comes back and he's awesome this year. And Cam Talbot's a perfect example.

It's a good example, yep. It was like fucking laughed with ridicule at the flames for making that deal with him. So like, he's a really good choice of the award. So there you go. But I do think, I do think, do Claire should probably win it just because his coach, one of his coaches last year said he doesn't know how to play hockey. That's a Jack Adams winner right there. That's exactly right. All right.

In other news, Alex Ovechkin now sits as we do this podcast, a scant eight goals away from 700. That's a lot. In his career, that is a lot. It was amazing how many conversations were happening at the All-Star Game Media Day. If I could pause on that for a second. So for those who don't know, the NHL changed the way they do All-Star Game Media Day last. season where they started inviting fans to come sit and observe Media Day, kind of like what the NFL does for the Super Bowl. And so last year, it happened in San Jose where like all the players in media were in the middle of this like small arena and the fans were all sitting in a big circle around us.

This time, the Media Day happened on the stage of this theater. And the fans sat in the seats of the theater. So literally all they're being able to see is like camera setups and the asses of reporters. And then on video screens above, small cameras that are way too close to the faces of the players to the point where, like, you could see Austin Matthews up his nostril. And people sat there for like two hours and just bared this shit. It was, I don't quite understand it. I don't understand what the fucking appeal would ever be to be like, I want to watch the media do their. job for two hours. Yeah, I feel the same way about like just the open practices where it's like,

yeah, we're going to see these guys do battle drills for 15 minutes and then we're going to do a couple of like zone entry drills. And then the goalies are going to take shots for a little and it's like, yeah, I mean, that's boring. Well, like the thing about yesterday was that the stage was clearly too small for the thing that was going on. Like, at one point, I actually walked into a live shot on Sportsnet because I didn't know that there was like a camera set up in front of me. Does that violate your ESPN contract? It does, yes. We have to give them reparations now for my appearing on their station.

But it was just, it was way too small. It was annoying. At least the NHL got the fucking point this year where they turned down the music. Last year, you'd go back to listen to the tape of you talking to a player. and all you hear was the fucking black-eyed peas. But this time at least they understood that there were people trying to do their jobs and to not like pump the music so goddamn loud.

So anyways. My only assumption on this is that this is the sort of thing you go to if the All-Star weekend comes to your town and you want to go to the game or the skills, but you can't get tickets. So you take the kids to this. Do you at least get autographs from the players or something? Like is there even...

No. There's like from the media. Can you get, can you get, Can you get like Greg Wischinski's autograph? I mean, if asked, but no one did. I'm not, I'm not Paul Biznasty Bissonette, you know, or someone on that level of celebrity. I didn't even see any of the Canadian TV guys get asked. And it's weird that you don't get recognized because we all know what you look like based on your Twitter avatar, which people are constantly like, yeah, that's you.

I get recognized. I get a lot of whiplash. Didn't mean to imply that you didn't there. No, no, no, I get a lot of whiplash where people do double takes. Now, it could be that they think I'm Pat and Oswald. That's possible. But it could also be like, hey, I know that guy from that one gambling show on ESPN 2. That's possible as well.

That's the reason I lost my daughter's college fund. Get it. Oh, God, I don't. No, honestly, here's the funny thing. because of football, I haven't been on the Daily Wager like a lot lately. And every day, no joke, every day a different person emails me to say, when are you going back on the daily wager? You're the only person that makes me money. There you go.

It's very flattering. They people think I'm a tout. At least 12 people think I'm a tout. But, you know, he'll always be the best out again. Thank you. I don't know what that means. A tout? Yeah.

Atapped is a person who gives out predictions on games and stuff. Oh. Okay. Cool. You should track down that series that was on Showtime about the professional sports gamblers. It was eye-opening, like how these guys operate and how some of them are just really bad at what they do, but they put on such a good, like, production. Yeah. That people are convinced that they know what they're doing.

It's very shady. and yeah it's it's yeah but you know once you're on TV then you're then you're legit that's right I am considering my own 900 line

to start giving out hockey picks there you go yep half the picks for one half the picks on the other your gold I remember calling one of those lines once when I was a kid where it was like 99 cents for the first minute and then like

$2 for each additional minute and I was just like I'll obviously just stay on for a minute and get the picks Yeah, of course. It's that Simpson's joke, though, of just like, thank you for calling the sports pick line. Yeah. By the way, that's a Lisa episode I like. It's a good episode.

Yeah, it's a really good episode. 692 goals. All the players that were asked yesterday all basically said, yeah, he could do it. He could break Gretzky's record. The one thing I've heard, though, that I found interesting from a lot of the guys that I talked to, both yesterday and previously, is the specific reason they think he can break it is because he's a specific kind of goal score. Like, he's a shooter. And there's something, you know, brilliantly mechanical about a shot that makes it unstoppable.

If it was a situation where this guy was putting 50 goals on the board and, you know, 30 of them were breakaways or some shit. He's not a speed guy. Like, he's a great skater, but he's not, like,

if he lost half a step, it's not like, all right, that's, that's it. Yeah. So, like,

I was talking to Bernie Ferdurko yesterday about it, and he's just like, yeah, just he shoots, it's just the, the way he shoots the puck is probably not going to go away. And so because of the way he scores these goals,

he's got the best shot of breaking it. Right. Well, and I was explaining it to, I can't remember to who the other day, But I was like, you know, a friend of mine who is not a hockey fan, really. And I was like, you don't understand like, Ovechkin has scored, you know, 30% of the goals in the NHL for from the same exact spot for 15 years. And everybody knows he's going to do it.

They cannot stop him from doing it. It's incredible. It's amazing. Carlson at a good line yesterday. He said, I think you take it for granted a little bit, what kind of career he had playing on this team. We're used to hearing the crazy stats about him all the time. And then it becomes normal even though it's far from it. It's true.

Like, dude hits 50 goals. 51 goals is a 33-year-old. And you're just like, oh, that's what a Mexican does. It's not fucking normal. Yep. No. It's insane. This is not normal.

There is a part of me that, like, that hopes he breaks the record only because that will end the discussion and we won't have to have the greatest, is he the greatest goal scorer of all time discussion? Even if he finishes like fifth in the goal scoring. Oh, you don't think they'd move the goalposts. Everybody would move the goalposts on that? I have one billion percent waiting for the inclusion of WHA stats. Yep, absolutely. Oh, well, you know, Gretzky actually scored another 170 in the playoffs in November.

and only scored 40 in the playoffs. So, breaking news. 100%. Breaking news from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Researchers have uncovered an additional 150 Wayne Gretzky goals that were unaccounted for in the 1980s. Yeah. You're probably right.

That probably is going to happen. Hang it, Chad, bullshit. I just want to point out that I know like every time he passes somebody, it's like, ah, yeah, but that was a different era. They played in the 80s, whatever. But the fact, when he passed Mario Lemieux and then you're like reminding, it that Merrill Lemieux only played like 900 games. Yeah.

And it still took like Ovecgen 15 years to pat, like, Merrill Lemieux was just ridiculous. I remember I tweeted it and got a bunch of people kind of mad at me for saying it. But it's like, I, like when he tied and then passed Lemieux, I was like, you can start a stopwatch between now and when the next Pittsburgh, the first Pittsburgh guy to say, well, you know, games played, and, you know, four minutes later, somebody was like, now look, I know Ovechkin scored a lot of goals, but have you, have we thought about, you know, Mario only did it in 13 games. It's one thing if the guy did score the goals in like a hundred less games, but like, man, McMarley-Marie Lumeau, like just like retired for years at a time. Yeah, Mario was the best forward in the history of the sport. No, I'm not saying otherwise. Whenever somebody asks that question, like, if you could go with a magic wand and make any athlete healthy their whole career, like,

Lemieux is always my answer because we wouldn't even be having this conversation. We would be having the conversation of could Ovechkin catch Gretzky for second place behind Mario Lemieux's like 1500 goals if he had been fully healthy? Like forget even the games played. He played like 300 of those games with his back all messed up where he could barely tie his skates. And it's, yeah, Mario was ridiculous. And Ovechkin is kind of giving us the same. same opportunity to enjoy that kind of talent level at the time. And hopefully people are because at this rate,

it's only going to last another eight or nine years of 50 goals seasons. Right. Okay. So because the, the show falls into this weird, nebulous space between the, all-star break and the all-star game, where we can't really talk about skills of the all-star game because they haven't happened yet,

we decided to open up the the ask us anything vein and have you good pokes on Twitter send us in questions so this is basically like a chance for those who aren't maybe on the Patreon to ask their questions of us don't shame our audience

to ask questions of us and then we will answer them so it's like a mailbag type deal and we don't try to do these often on the regular show anymore because of the good people that pay for the content. But, you know, once in a while doesn't hurt. Nick Bova, Boffi's nuts. Name the team that needs a logo color scheme change the mostest. Now, my answer in perpetuity is the Colorado Avalanche.

I don't understand why they think that logo is iconic. It looks like a log flume or how children learn the letter A in a, in a, in a book. I do like the color scheme. It's unique in the NHL, but that logo does need to be updated. So the color scheme, it's a bit of a cheat.

Like, I might up the, the burgundy aspect of, of the colors a little bit more. But like, get that fucking look. Every other variation of that jersey I love, except for the main one. So that's who I would change.

But I agree with you on the color. Like, color scheme wise, they're on point. Just get rid of the logo. Change the jerseys. I'll go the opposite direction. I think the Kings is a good name, but black and silver.

Played out? Yeah. I mean, you know, go back to the forum blue and yellow. What are we talking about? The bruised banana? Yeah. You want to go back to? Yeah.

Look, it's a classic look for the Lakers, right? Just go back to that. How do we feel about Vancouver right now? Yeah, that was my pick. I'm on the record. I'm on the record not really caring very much about logos and uniforms, but I've, Vancouver had it perfect. The black and gold and orange and the flying skate is one of the 10, yeah, the Pavel

Burray, like 94, Kirk McLean, Trevor Linden era, is one of the 10 best hockey uniforms of all time. And I don't understand why they've changed it six times since then. I do. I will say that. I guess that it's a Pacific Northwest, like kind of. Yeah. Seahawks colors.

But sea hawks' time. But now's the perfect time to switch out of that, let clear that space for Seattle when they come in. And yeah, go back to the, go back to the skate, man. It's, uh, that was awesome. I will say this about the, the going back to the skate logo is, again, there's just too many, like black jerseys in the league. We got to, we got to eliminate two. And I, you know, Vancouver, if they, if they kept the blue and green color scheme and went back to like a skate inspired version of that, I'd be cool with that. Sort of related to what Sean was just saying, Zach T. writes in, say you're the owners of the Seattle franchise.

We're the owners of the Seattle franchise. What's your team's name, colors, mascot, and goal song? Now, we should say that the rumor and innuendo for a year now has been the colors are going to be black and red. So sorry, Ryan, probably another black jersey. That stinks. But were I to pick the colors? I would definitely pick the fucking Vancouver colors or Seahawks colors. No, yeah.

The deeper blue, the neon-er green and silver should 100%. Because the Seahawks have it. Seattle Sounders have it. So, what are we talking about? Just to be clear, though, we're talking about, like, Seattle Seahawks Sunday, not Seattle Seahawks Thursday. Correct. That, to me, gets a little overboard when they go, like, the total. Yeah, we're not talking about those ridiculous to color jerseys.

Here's the thing. If I had my druthers, their colors would be, like, like, Robbins Egg Blue and salmon. That's nice. That, ooh. And there's a lot of it. fucking nickname would be like one of them Look it. I know I've said for years that it should be the Sasquatch.

It should. It's a stupid name. I will accept that it should be the Kraken. That's a cool ass name. No, it isn't. That's epic bacon guy shit. But if you had to, if you had to pick one of these fucking fish names that they're going to pick, salmon, Robin's Egg Blue,

Sockey's. Sockey's is the correct name. Let's fucking go. Because they're not going to go. It should be Metropolitan's, For obvious reasons, it's not going to be. So sock eyes 100% needs to be the name. And Golsong, I've been reading Everybody Loves Our Town, A History of Grunge by Mark Yarm.

It's an oral history of grunge. And it's pretty good. It's a little bit, you know, too much detail in there for someone who doesn't know all the bands from the early 80s in Seattle. But anyways, goal song, I mean, obviously you go grunge. and here, why don't it go completely off the board and do rooster by Alice and Chains? Pick a Nirvana song. You can do smells like teen spirit if you want to, but there are a lot of really good, like, riffy Nirvana songs that you can go with.

The real answer, and this is for real, like, if you were going to pick a grunge song for your goal song, spin the black circle by Pearl Jam as your goal song. No pearl jam. Pro jam stinks. Come on, man. Pearl jam. The actual correct answer is that by the time Seattle's in the league, we're all going to be doing individual goal songs per player.

Oh, that's right. So it doesn't matter. And, yeah, as far as the nice... Oh, you know what it should be? It should be breed. That's the best neuron. Oh, that's a good goal song. I'm fine with whatever name. I actually don't mind Cracken, but I'm laughing because I'd never heard the term

bacon guy before, and yet I know exactly who Ryan is talking about when he says that. Like, there was no, that conjured, that's perfect. So yeah, that's, Salky's is good. That's a good name. It's a great name. But now you have me wondering, you know, what's Jakob Vorichek's goal song going to be in Seattle? One thing I'm thinking if it's Sark guys, are we going to get like an angry fish holding a hockey stick? Like, is that...

There's a long, proud history of animals holding hockey sticks when it comes to the ball goes. They go for the pun and give you, like, the hockey player with the black eye kind of thing. And you're like, I don't get it. And they're like, get it. No, I think it has to be one of those like implied puns. You know, it's just a cool looking, probably they'll probably go with some sort of Native American style, like, fish.

That'd be cool. Yeah. And then, like, it'll be implied that it's sock eyes. The implicit problem here, though, is if you go with a fish name, you go, oh, well, the sharks eat, though. was fish. And then it's like, shit, that's right. I forgot about that.

There was an episode, I don't know why I remember this so vividly, but the show Perfect Strangers. You remember this show? Fantastic shows. Come on. So there is an episode where Balkei gets into betting on NFL games using his Mipos logic, right? Where he's like, where he's saying like, you know, I can't remember who beat like the lions always eat the rams or whatever you know like he did it on the predatory animal scale yeah but then

the other one i remember was the joke of like the bills always catch up with the chargers in the end right and and so by that by that like same thing i do kind of think about sports team names like that sometimes and yeah sock eyes get eaten by uh by sharks same with like if they went with a seals or sea lions inspired name. Sea lions wouldn't be a bad one either, but same idea. And that's exactly why I would name the Seattle Extinction Level events. That's right. To take out all the other teams through plagues or a fucking comet or some shit. Yeah, but I mean, if it went by how tough your team name is, then the Maple Leafs would never, oh.

No. Oh, boy. Uh-oh. I'm just laughing because you guys try to talk about Star Wars and Marvel movies, and I have no idea, but Ryan mentions a mid-80s sitcom. And I, like, noticeably perked up, like, insulting that he thought I did. I think that was late 80s, maybe even early 90s. Let's look at this. Perfect Stranger Ender.

This is now a perfect stranger. That's a podcast. You're right. 86 it started. I think that is, is that part of the F.CU, the full house cinematic universe? Was that part of that? No, that would be, well, so I guess. I feel like they were, it's a spinoff of something.

I feel like they were friends with somebody. It's the other way around. Family Matters was a spin off of perfect strangers. Harriet. the mother from Family Matters was the elevator operator at the newspaper Larry worked at in... There you go. So perfect strangers. I do.

Family Matters are in the same cinematic universe. Well, and so the problem then is that they put, at the height of Urkel mania, they put Urkel on every single show. And so I think everything is technically a part of the Perfect Strangers cinematic universe. like full house, step by step, Erkel showed up on. See, the thing, the reason why I consider that the same cinematic universe, as I scroll through the Wikipedia, was that the show,

so the main theme song of perfect strangers, nothing's going to stop me now, which I honestly don't remember. Oh, come on, dude. That is one of these best, that's one of the best 30-second sitcom classic 80s opening. Can someone hame a few bars? It has a saxophone solo at the end.

Like, Like a three-second saxophone. Nothing's going to stop me now. And then there's like a fanfare and it ends. You don't remember this? This is, by the way, I show I have not seen since it went off the age. Greg, is this how frustrated you get when I don't know the new Spider-Man movie? Because I'm like viscerally angry right now that you don't remember the perfect strangers.

What do you mean you don't remember Babu Frick? Listen, Jesse Frederick and Bennett Salve wrote the show's theme song. nothing's going to stop me now. They also composed the theme songs for other Miller Boyette series, including Full House step by step and family matters. So it's kind of that theme song universe of the shows that had that theme song. You said it. It's the Miller Boyette Cinematic Universe.

That's what it is. The NBCU. All four of those shows. Right. And Ergel showed up on all of them. Like he was the unifying force for the whole thing. but I think Perfect Strangers was the first one. Yeah, they had that huge Friday Night thing

where it was Crisis on Infinite Urkels. Okay. Thanks for listening, everybody. We're out of here. That's it. No, Alex Novak has a question. Can the Murray-Jari combo carry the penguins through the season or will they need to separate themselves?

Okay, so remember the episode of Perfect Strangers when they tried to induce labor by sending Larry's wife up in a hot air balloon. Do you remember this episode? That's a real episode. I didn't make that up. Larry had a wife? In later seasons, they both married. The girlfriends.

Yeah, but I think like it was a thing where they both got married at the same time. Maybe. I might be making that up. But one of them was pregnant and they went up in a hot air balloon and induced labor. And the other one was like, damn, I'm trying to get this baby out of me. And I should also go up

in a hot air balloon. and then they got like stuck up there or something and the baby was born at altitude. Wow. Why do I remember the very specific plot points of multiple episodes of a show that went off the air in probably 1992? I don't know. This is very upsetting.

In German dubbing, Balke was said to be an actual Greek and Mipos a Greek island. Okay. Yeah. So he wasn't, he was, they said he just was Greek. That's canon now. Yeah. And in the fall of 2006, a Russian TV station, Ren TV,

Kylo Ren TV, launched a remake of Perfect Strangers featuring Andrei from a remote former Soviet Republic who moves in with his cousin Ivan, a Moscow resident. So much like everybody loves Raymond, Perfect Strangers exported to around the world. So they can all experience it. I'm now having visions of like a modern reboot of Perfect Strangers and how terrible that would be. Well, I mean, they rebooted Fuller House. Yeah. You know? I would watch a reboot with like the same two guys playing the same two characters.

Well, so that's what that's what Fuller House was. Exactly. I would do that. I'm not going to watch like, you know, some like modern take on the, yeah. But yeah, it would bring, first of all, Brunson Pinchot and, um, oh, shit. Didn't the guy who played cousin Larry die? No, Marklin Baker still alive. He was just in something that I said.

saw. There you go. Well, he was on the, the, uh, the leftovers a few years ago. Right. So he's, he's still, I think he's still around and kicking. No, the, the reboot of Perfect Strangers would be A, it would be two women. Let's be honest. And the, the, the bulky character would be like, probably like a Kate McKinnon type, right? Doing it like a character and it would have very deep messages about the experience of an immigrant, like that, and it would, and it would not be funny at all. Well, again, following the Fuller House model,

I think you have to look at the, like, you know, I don't remember the two children that they had toward the end of the series. But, like, it would have to be based around them where, you know, Balky's daughter or son has kept up all these Mipo's traditions and cousin Larry Appleton's. And then gets deported.

Right. Yes. And much like Fuller House, the Olsen Twins will have absa-fucking lootly nothing to do with the reboot. Oh, Tristan Jari is the new Jordan Bittington. Daniel Myers wants to know, what's your take on this? Offsides reviews shouldn't disallow a goal if the offside player has no impact on the goal scored. Offside should not exist. Yes, and offside should not exist.

Oh, turn it off off sides. You know, I used to not like that idea at all, but Demetrily. Petri Filipovich, turn me around on that idea and sort of like, describe to me what the game would look like if you took off off sides, if you put that on the off, if you toppled it to off. And like the idea of like, you know, basically a power play at one end of the ice, then there's one dude hanging down the other end of the ice just to cherry pick passes. Like how fucking fun would that be? That's cool as shit. But yeah, to answer his actual question, yes, obviously. Of course.

Anything that increases scoring. Isn't that the whole thing we've been working on for like 50 years in this league? The problem is that it's very hard to define like what matters and what doesn't. Like is it if a guy touches the puck, but what if he's coming in and the defenseman has to kind of, you know, keep one eye on him? Did that affect the play? Whatever it is. There just shouldn't be offside reviews. This is, it is not solving a problem.

It is taking goals off the board. It is going to eventually ruin a game seven overtime goal at which point we will then treat it like skiing. gate in the crease and get rid of it and pretend that we all thought it should have been gone all along. If we had real leadership in this league, it would have, it be gone already. So don't tinker with it because you tinker with it. That just gives it an extra couple years to see how that's going to work. Get rid of it. Done. Beach Ells wants to know, what's the greatest video game of all time? Who, boy. Now, this is, there's two ways to read this, which is, like, what's the greatest artistic achievement in a video game? And then also, like, maybe what's your favorite

video game or maybe what's the most influential video game. I mean, I would, I'd have to track it back to maybe, um, okay, for, okay, like, Tetris. I was going to say Tetris has to be in the conversation. They've made it 70 times and they're always good. It's always good and fun. Super Mario Brothers 3 was the first Mary Brothers game that really like created the modern template for a Mario game. Yes.

So I think I would probably put that as, as. the greatest of all time, but Tetris is right there, too. 1986 Legend of Zelda. The original Legend of Zelda was one. Yeah, that was earlier of it. Yeah. 80. A lot of those like Nintendo.

Would Red Dead be in the conversation? I don't even think it's the best rock star game. Wouldn't you say one of the Grand Theft Autos would have to be? You'd have to say that. Yeah. I think you can have a discussion about a number of the Elder School games. Red Dead is in. the conversation for the greatest achievement in

like making a movie wrapped around pressing a few buttons and doing some side quests. Yeah. Elder Scrolls? Yeah. Breath of the Wild, Breath of the Wild, was the best video game I played in like 20 years. But it's still like one of a series of sequels to another classic game. I don't know.

Influential ones that I'll throw out there and I don't, I wouldn't argue this is in the conversation for greatest of all time, but, but it kind of invented or almost popularized a genre. And I say it only because I'm playing the remake right now, but Resident Evil, when that first came out, was just completely like out of left field weirdness. And, you know, they've made 20 versions of it since and a bunch of rip-offs and all of that. So, you know what one series- Even though it doesn't hold up great as an actual game. Like, you go back in your- series people absolutely love, but I only played a few of them. And I always loved them when I was a kid. I used to rent them all the time from Video Plus was the Mega Man series. People love the fucking Mega Man series. They do. They certainly do. I think you have to talk about the Sonic series then, especially those first three games. I think you have to talk about, not Doom, but its predecessor from ID, Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein 3D was the first 3D, first-person, shooter.

And now that's what 40% of all video games are is FPS's. So I think you definitely have to have that conversation. And if I was going to go old school coin-op, I would proffer Ms. Pac-Man, better game than Pac-N. Definitely a better game than Pac-Man. Asteroids. And Dig-Dug, which is always... Dig-Dug kicks ass. Yes, absolutely.

And just to bring it back to if it's favorite games, I'm going to... in the sports category, and it's obviously the early NHL games. Yep. 93 and 94. TechMobil and NBA Jam remains to this day a near perfect sports video game. Once we're talking about arcade ports of the mid to late 90s, you also have to say your street fighters in Mortal Kombat really kind of changed the game for a little. I mean, fighting games are still popular, but there was a time when like,

Every game was a fucking fighting game. And you're absolutely right, because I never liked fighting games, and I loved going to arcades. And then, like, there was just one month where you walked into every arcade, and it was just nothing but crappy street fighter ripoffs. And that sucks. That X-Men game was fun, though. The X-Men game, like, the eight-person one? Yeah, awesome. The Simpsons arcade game is very, very good.

One of my favorite games was Gauntlet, and I always appreciated, like, those games where you could play with like five other people when you're in the arcade. You know what the best is it? You couldn't play with five people, but double dragon, when you got to the end of the two-player game and you had to fight the other player to become the actual winner, that was fan, especially if the other guy didn't know that was going to happen. And like, he's standing around watching the end.

And he's like, hey, we did it. And like, why are you sneaking up behind me waiting for the screen to change? And then you would just wail on the dude. Yeah. The other game that was super fun as a four-player game. remember when this first came out, happening to find it in arcade with a bunch of friends. And we spent the whole afternoon on it was a wrestle fest.

You remember the one with, like, where they had the Royal Rumble and, oh, that was, that was, that was, that was,

that was, that the one with Ben, Van Bigolo? Or, or, this was, this was the one that had, like,

Warrior, Hogan, perfect, Jake the snake. Right, right, right, and I remember, like,

when your buddy was, like, your buddy would, like, throw a coin in and, like, come into the rumble and charge at you, and you would just duck and flip them out, and that was like game over.

That was fantastic. It's one of those games where you put the coin in, the character flashes for a few seconds while he gets into the thing. Yeah, but like it was great because you put the coin in and you hit your button and then you were the next guy up in the rumble. And the rumble, yeah, that was fun. Anyway, my favorite video game of all time is Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim. There you go.

Good pick. And obviously, there you go. For Mark of discussion, we know the best video game of all time is Atari's ET the extraterrestrial. Best-selling game. Yeah. Casual Friday wants to know, what are your typical hours? Do you stay up late after all the games to write and not go to bed until 4 a.m.?

Waking up at noon the next day? Well, first of all, if I go to bed at 4 a.m., I'm still waking up at fucking 7. It's just how it works. Yes, we're old. Yeah. I mean, we don't get to sleep in. I was just talking to somebody about that, about moving to the West Coast and about how, I mean, I basically have to get up like six every day to make sure that, you know, I'm not missing any news to do this podcast to this other shit.

Because, like, if you, if you're in California and you're covering the news that is happening, like, back east and Toronto and New York and shit, if you sleep into 8 o'clock in the morning, it is 11 o'clock in the fucking morning back east. And 17 things have already happened. A dudes get suspended and coaches get fired and all this shit. So that new, my sort of sleep cycle, news cycle has certainly shifted where I'm definitely going to bed earlier than I used to. And, uh, but waking up really earlier than I used to. Yeah, I've got, you know, kids and I can't be shifting my schedule around. I'm up. So I typically don't.

Also, the type of writing I do, I don't, I'm not doing like breaking news stuff and I'm not covering games directly. So I don't necessarily have to have to do that. So, yeah, sometimes I stay up. Sometimes I don't. And sometimes I miss cool stuff. Like notably the Sharks Golden Knights game seven, I went to bed. when it was like in the second year mission.

Brutal. And then woke up and looked at Twitter. And instead of having like 100 new tweets, like I usually do, I had like 600. And I got to have the experience of scrolling through as that meltdown happened and just being like, oh, my God, what did I, what did I miss? So yeah, that, yeah. For me, it's two different things where, you know, I don't always watch hockey games live. I'll watch like replays or I'll, you know, on the NHL app, I'll pull up games. And obviously I watch at least the highlights of every game like throughout the day.

But that all changes once the playoffs start. And I will just like sit on the couch from whatever time they start to whatever time they end and, you know, figure it out the next day. But the regular season, I feel like you have a little bit more leeway. especially where it's like, oh, I'm writing about the Capitals. Well, I can go back on the app and watch like bits and pieces of three Capitals games, which I think is probably a bit more informative than sitting there and watching them play. I don't know, the Rangers wants, you know? All right, a couple more real quick.

This one comes from Ryan Walsh. what does the NBA do as a league that the NHL should take inspiration from? Allow players to have personality without being like, oh, he's a real problem in the room, all that kind of stuff, I think would be my first. Yeah. Which is easier said than done, but... Sure. But yeah, that is a big part of it.

I just, you know, like, the NBA, and I'm not a diehard NBA fan, and maybe if I was, I'd view it differently. but it just feels like the NBA is always focused on being an entertainment product. You know, what do we need to do to be a better product for our fans? You know, even to the point where they're thinking of some of these changes that they've currently got percolating, some of which are kind of weird, but, you know, the fact that they're even willing to do that. I just think back like a few weeks ago when David Stern died. And obviously when somebody dies, you're going to say the nicest things you can

say about him and all that, but I just remember, like, the word that kept coming up with him was that he was this visionary, like this visionary for the league. And I'm just sitting there going, like, man, when Gary Bettman's time, his commissioner is done, and hopefully it's because he's happy and healthy and he goes off and retires and does whatever, like, is anybody going to call Gary Bettman a visionary? Like, you'll talk about making money and being this. It's the difference between being a visionary and a steward. Yeah. Right. Exactly. He will be the, the firm hand on the wheel who guided the NHL and now we're going to hear about record revenue, but is anyone going to say visionary leader?

They might, you know, depending on how you feel about expansion. What's visionary about like every league does expansion? The NHL did expansion for decades. Because hockey is perceived as a sport that doesn't play well everywhere. And he went to markets that nearly were a little bit dicey. Based on a lot of the set. Like anyways, I'm not, I don't want to turn it into ripping on Gary Bentman. But it just, the fact is the NBA doesn't seem to sit there and say, we're perfect now.

How do we slightly tinker with things and make as few changes as possible because tradition and blah, blah, blah. Whereas the NHL just seems, it just feels like even when it's like you hear them talk about little rule changes, it's never, hey, we discussed a three point system or we discussed this change or that change. And here's why we did. It just comes down to, yeah, there's no appetite for it. Nobody brings it up. We don't talk about it. Everything's great. Everything's perfect.

And you're just kind of looking at it going like, you guys are like the seventh most popular sports. Are you sure everything's great? You sure there's nothing? No room for improvement? I would say my answer, I wrote about it this week in writing about the All-Star game, it's a functional answer, which is that I, the NDA does this amazing thing where it invites players that aren't in the All-Star game to participate in slam dunk and other skills

competitions. I've said that for a while now. fucking bonkers how the NHL doesn't have the fastest skaters in the fastest skater. And, you know, again, we bring it up all the time. There are like four guys who were originally picked as all-stars at the All-Star game this year. A, because, you know, guys want to go on vacation or whatever, but B, because they're like, oh, yeah, the All-Star game is in St. Louis. Last year, it was in Winnipeg. The year before that, it was in.

it was in a mini apple. It's like all the, you have a bunch of teams in places where guys would actually want to hang out. You can do what, you can have a game in, well, I guess Glendale, but the Phoenix area.

You can have a game in Los Angeles. You can have a game in Miami. You can have a game in Vegas. Like those four places should have the All-Star game on a rotating basis. And it's like fun. New York, I guess you could throw in the mix. Guys would probably like to go.

go to New York, but. Devil's advocate, though. I mean, like, just because places are kind of shitty in January, it doesn't mean they can't put on a good show. Like, for example, you know, and this isn't a weather-related thing or anything, but, like, I went to the All-Star game in Raleigh. It's fucking great. They put on a hell of a show in Raleigh.

And that's one of the places you would look at and say, why would players want to go play a game in Raleigh? Right, but if it's a question of, we want guys who are actually the best players in the league to actually go to this, Yeah. Like, you have to, you have to pick between those things. Like, they're not giving you the choice. And next year it's in Miami.

I bet 95% of the guys who get elected go, because it's going to be a blast to hang out with your buddies in Miami and party. I think somebody made, made this, this, I created this idea. And it may have been Emily, Kaplan, my SPN buddy, that they should just have a two-week buy in the middle of the season for every team. Like, just take two weeks off. Yeah, I agree. And especially they should do it every four years. Yes, exactly. Yeah, like, I mean, that's the problem.

They're just, they're never going to do that. All right. Finally, opera cat wants to know. Now that the blues are off the no cup ever list, which franchise would you like to see come off the no cup ever list next? Hmm. I mean, for me, it's that the Sabres and Canucks tied. They're kind of the next longest, and two great fan bases.

I mean, Buffalo winning a cup would be amazing. And Vancouver, already two heartbreaking game seven losses. Like, they've certainly, both those fan bases have paid their dues. And I always view it from the fan base. I don't care, like, what team, what organization. But it's the fans, like, who's been waiting. And I was, like, I was thrilled to see St. Louis get it. Washington, you know, we've kind of been going down the line.

Yeah, those are my next two. I got one for you. Seattle. There you go. Just first year they win it. Everybody's mad because the only way they could trump Vegas is doing. I can't wait. I hope that happens. Vegas is pissed off.

Yeah. It would be so funny. I want to hear Vegas fans complain about Seattle's expansion draft being too easy because they tweet. The long-suffering Seattle fans, they find the one guy who had like Metropolitan's tickets in 1921. And he's like, I've been waiting a hundred years for this. Oh, my God.

Amazing. Let's go. I'd go Florida. Because I feel like at some point they should take the mantle away from the Marlins as the Floridian team that is a, is fucking atrocious for like 11 years straight and then just wins. Like, that'd be great to take that mantle from the Marlins. Yeah, the Marlins did it twice, though. That's true. That was cool.

that was cool uh but yeah the panthers listen i think it'd be incredible if joel quenville got a cup like pulled the old the old you know jimmy rutherford and uh and and and and won a cup with another team be uh be fucking cool and and the other just and it's it ain't happening anytime soon but san jose have also that that's that's it feels weird to me to refer to that as like a team that for a long time has been it but it has been it's been a long time for them and They've been, they paid their dues, too. Do you, do you consider those fans long suffering based on how much success the team has had just falling short of championships? I would say San Jose long suffering in terms of playoff outcomes, yes.

It's, it's a different type of long suffering than being the Leafs or the Oilers over that same standpoint where you're terrible every year. They've obviously had a lot of playoffs. I mean, the Oilers are not really that long suffering. They had a pretty good run there for a little while. They did. But if you go back to when the sharks came in, right? you start in the 90s, then they're up there. But yeah, I do think they're, they've had lots of playoff misery and, yeah, I could, maybe down the road, maybe next year. There you go.

All right. Well, that's a spirited little Ask Me Anything discussion. Thanks for some great questions. And yeah, we'll talk to you next week. I'm Greg Wischinski. You can read my stuff on ESPN.com. You can watch me on the Daily Wager. My other podcast. It's called ESPN and Ice with Emily Caput. We are doing it post-All-Star game. So you're going to get a little bit all-star coverage on that podcast that you didn't get here. And that's me. Yeah, I'm Ryan Lambert.

You can sign up for the Puck Soup Patreon and especially the Puck Soup newsletter. After we're done recording this, I'm going to write one before the weekend. And then also this weekend, I will be recording one of our bonus episodes with Shepard John Gentilly, where we talk about pretty much everything that isn't sports-related. So check it out. There it is. Sean McHugh, the athletic, you can check my stuff out there. This week was one of my favorite annual pieces, which is the tank index, which of the bad teams is in the best position to get really bad, really quickly, and try to finish low for lottery odds. If that was a thing that NHL teams did, which, of course they don't. Gary Bettman has told us that that's something that the

media just made up, but in a fictional universe where teams actually did tank, who would be in the best position to do it. Nice. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Bye, see you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. It's in goals and saves and slapshots 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 Hage and Nansen. Oh, but too