Puck Soup - Here We Go Again

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Sean and Ryan talk about the Stanley Cup Final, take a trip to Losers Corner, play a game of Best of Seven, and more. Sponsored by Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean Magnau from The Athletic. And the Stanley Cup final is, I don't know, what do you want to say? 29, 30 hours away at this point? 29 more days of... Yeah. They love doing this shit. They do.

We had a question in the mailbag. This is true. We had a question in the mailbag that I didn't pick it because I don't know the answer. But it's, why did the NHL start doing this? I think it is a combination. of TV, obviously being a big one. Building availability, everyone always mentions. I don't think that's as big an issue.

I think they also do like to have a few extra days to, like, you know, I mean, in theory, you want to put your best foot forward, and that means, like, teams having a little bit of rest and recuperation. And then they also, they love these media days. They love having a full day to cram everyone in and get, to get all those juicy quotes. It must be today, right? Why didn't they do it yesterday?

Why the day before the game? I don't know, man. It gives a shit. Anyway, it's Florida, it's Edmonton. They're back. I will say this. The extra days between games bother me more than the extra days before the series starts. I agree.

I can live with, you know, if it's not. It would have been really bad if what? If the, if one of the series had gone six, then we would have gone like Saturday to Saturday. Yeah. That would have been too much. I can handle four or five days, but it's, once you're ready to go, dude, just every second day, let's go. I agree. I think the argument is it's a long flight from Edmonton to Florida.

and maybe they wouldn't be doing it if it was like, you know, St. Louis and Carolina or something like that, you know, but they would. And it's also, I'm looking up the schedule because I feel like it's kind of weird. Yeah, like game three and four, there's a three-day gap, no travel. And then game four and five, there's a two-day gap where they do travel. So, I mean, they're just, they're just,

making it off, man. Let's go. Some of us are trying to get the summer going and all of that. I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to be like, they should award the Stanley Cup on May 12th. I'm trying to fucking go on vacation. I can't be one of those guys. If they, I just hate all the time in between because it's like, what am I supposed to do?

Sit around going like, oh, wow, it's crazy. They won the last game. You know, like, who cares? They should award the cup on May 12th, just for the record. I'm not. I can't. be one of these guys. I like hockey. Start the schedule in mid-August.

Yeah, that's what they're always saying, right? It sucks, man. I hate hearing rich hockey guys being like, damn, it's crazy. I just want to go a vacation. Yeah, okay, man. With your million-dollar cottages or whatever. Not for me. Like I say, I like it. I like watching the sport. I'm one of those guys, you know?

Freak. Well, yeah, and the NHL is also like, no, we don't, we don't want you to want that. Yeah. It's the whole thing. Anyway, Florida, Edmonton, they're back. They're both ready to go here. Let me ask you this, because I've seen this idea floated kind of a lot in the last few days here. Are both teams better than they were last year?

I think that's quite possible. I think you can make that case. I think you can definitely make it for Florida because they, you know, they were able because of various captioned anigans and just like the way the injuries and suspension shook out for them and that sort of thing. They were able to add two players who I think are good to very good. Who are the most significant players who are missing from last year? Who did we lose?

Because both teams have added. Yeah, well, that's what I mean. I don't know that there's like a ton of losses where you're like, oh, you know, Oliver Reckman-Larsen, I guess you would say from, but I- Zach Hyman is the big one in Edmonton. Well, I mean, that's due to injury, though. Right. That's, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, half the Florida Panthers bench-warmer signed with the Leafs, and it, I don't think that has really had an influence. Right. And I'll say this, I, leaving contracts and whatnot aside, I'd rather have Seth Jones than Oliver Rickman-Larset, you know? Yep. The contract, obviously, it's a different thing, but like just which guy would you pick to be on your team for one game or whatever?

Who wouldn't pick Seth Jones? And the answer is Brad for Living, I guess. Yeah, apparently. And then obviously Florida added Marshand. They added Nate Schmidt. We're going to be playing a game of best of seven later, later on in the show. our famous game show that everyone I think knows about basically. Except me because I needed to remind me.

Well, that was the joke, wasn't it? But one of the categories that I put down and then didn't ultimately go with was guys who weren't, who are currently on the Florida Panthers but weren't last year. I had that as well as one of mine. It was for both teams, but. Oh, okay. Yeah. Scratch that one now.

Yeah, I do a really good job getting the Florida guys because I wrote them down and then was like, eh, that's a little, maybe that's a little too narrow focus. So anyway. But yeah, I can be very easily talked into Florida is better. Less so with Edmonton, although. I think Edmonton's better as far as addition. subtractions if we don't count missing Zach Heimann. Yeah. Which, of course, we should.

But I mean, you know, Jake Wallman, Trent Frederick, Skinner and Arvetson have kind of been in and out, but had some moments as depth scoring. Yeah, the Walman thing is the real, the real boost for me. Yep. But with the loss of Hyman, I guess I'd kind of call it a wash a little bit. Yeah. That's probably fair. Now, you could also say, are the Oilers better with just an extra year of McDavid and Drysidal playoff experience? They've been to the final before, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. That's getting a little. And you could say that less for Florida, maybe? I mean, I think there probably is a benefit to having been there before. Sure. Yeah, I think your second time is probably easier than your first. I don't know your third time is significantly easier than your second. Did you see, by the way, the stat, I didn't, I don't remember who came up with the stat,

but they were like, no team in the history of the NHL has played more games in a three-year span than the Florida Panthers. Oh, wow. As of game one. Like, they're currently tied, I think. Okay. And I don't remember with whom. but at once the puck drops for game one, no one has played more hockey

in a three years span in the NHL than the Panthers. Wow, okay. I'm surprised at that. Oh, yeah, okay, no, I was going to say, I'm surprised that Tampa isn't there, but then Tampa lost a chunk of the COVID season

and, of course, and then the 56 game season was the next year, yeah. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I thought that was, like, that makes a lot of sense. And it makes you go, wow, it's kind of crazy that they're not a little bit worn down at this point.

They made it look easy against Carolina, you know? You really haven't heard anything about them fatigue-wise. Obviously, there's some injuries in play, but I don't know. Maybe that's, I don't know if it's not a factor or maybe they're just, some teams are like, don't talk about it. Don't, we don't want to hear it. Oh, and they seem like the kind of team that would be like, don't talk about it, right? But yeah, I thought that was, I thought that was.

that was a very interesting factor in all this is like, it's only seven games, max, you know, but could it catch up with them? The second it does catch up with them. Oh, you won't believe how many freaking games we played.

Yeah. Oh, I'm so sleepy now. We all knew that would happen. Of course. Yeah, that's exactly right. Oh,

that's crazy. It never came up before. Yeah, you know, it catches up with you. You never, you never know. But,

Yeah, okay, let me ask you this. So we're coming out of a conference final where I'd say both the teams in the cup final, like I say, made it look kind of easy. Carolina didn't give Florida too much difficulty. Dallas certainly, you know, it all went wrong for Dallas, and we'll talk about the losers of those series after the break here. but what do you take away from the conference final that for either team, I suppose, and I'll do the other one, that like you think is going to carry over, affect things, whatever, in the cup final? I mean, if you're Edmonton, I guess we're back to having confidence in Stuart Skinner. Yeah, right. Which in a weird way makes me less confident about them.

but he's been fine. He has been... I would say he was down right good in the last couple of games of that seat. Better than Jay Gottinger. He said describing a sport that makes a huge amount of sense. So yeah, I mean, this is always the thing with the Oilers, right? If they get the goaltending, they're pretty good everywhere else.

Are we that confident about the goaltending going into this final? I guess we feel better than we did a series ago. I mean, remember, round two, Skinner, you know, he'd finished strong, but he had just come. He had lost the job, come in because of injury. Yep. There's still kind of a question mark. Yeah, maybe he's locked in. I think that's kind of the big takeaway if I'm Edmonton and certainly if I'm looking for something to be confident about.

So I'm kind of glad you said that just because, like, it has to be the biggest thing you talk about. For the Oilers, we don't know what kind of a goalie we're going to get on any given night. But the Oilers scored three goals or more in every game of that series. Right? Like, the offense, after kind of being occasionally so-so against Vegas, I thought, they scored, gosh, I'm doing the math here,

22 goals in five games against the Dallas stars, a team that everybody was like, good defensive team with a great goalie. And the Oilers just nuked them. Again, 22 goals in five games. That's a lot, in my opinion, you know? And yeah, you're mixing in empty netters and that kind of thing. But I think that for me, the thing that I'm most interested to see,

is if they like if Jake Otenger was broken like by them like they they just figured out Jake Ottinger and you know they made it look really easy they score on the first two shots in game five or whatever or is it a situation where um where they're just the whole the whole offense is rolling now you know um is it put another way is it you know is it you need to unique to Ottinger that they were able to do this because they weren't doing it so much against Vegas? Or is it just all clicking now? And, you know, obviously the Hyman injury makes you a little concerned about that. But if it's all clicking, I don't, you know.

Yeah. Which I don't know what to say if you're Florida. Yeah. But then you get into, you know, maybe it's all clicking against Dallas. But then when you give almost a week off, does that, does that unclick it? for both teams and kind of reset it and any talk of momentum or who's hot or cold is is a waste of time, which is quite possible. But also, we got to talk about something.

Yeah, it's this sport. Like you said. What about Florida? Florida, I mean, I talked about it last week where like I just think that at the end of the day, like they play a very similar style to Carolina and they were just better. add it with better players than Carolina had. And it makes you say

you know, again, like the Oilers don't play like the Panthers and the Hurricanes do. And so styles make fights like can the Oilers break through or can Florida, you know, throw a blanket over top of the

that hot Oilers offense and all that kind of stuff. Like that to me is the series, right? Like if they can if they can get the the oilers to play their game, quote unquote, then you would say, well, that's it. I mean, they can make it look as easy against anybody as they did against Carolina. But the styles clash makes it harder to see, you know, like,

they have to invite the Oilers into their style of play in a way that they didn't against Carolina. So that's the difference to me of how this could proceed. I think the Hyman injury just looms so large over this because he's so good around the net and like, you know, really strong creative partner with the best players in the world and all that kind of thing. And I don't know, you know, what kind of looks are the Oilers going to throw at Florida without him? I don't know. I'm very curious on the Florida side to see if this little bit of extra time off helps Matthew Kuchuk

get back to full health. Because he's still... He's been fine in the playoffs, but that's about it. I mean, he's scoring nearly a point of game. Right. A lot of... A lot of pucks in off his shin pad and that kind of thing.

Yeah. And, and, you know, and assists mostly, only a couple of goals. But he's, you know, he's been fun. He certainly hasn't been a detriment, but he has not been the guy. He caused a lot of penalties, yeah. Yeah, he hasn't been very, like I said watching seven games of the Leafs and Panthers, you really didn't notice him out there all that much between the whistles. After the whistle, yeah, I mean, he would do his act, same as always.

But he certainly didn't notice him as much as some of the other guys. And the fact that they're still here, despite that, despite a guy who is, I think most of us would say, their second best and second most important player, and maybe even some people, would try to argue that he's their most important player in come playoff time. I think that's a totally fair argument. Yeah, absolutely. To do that without him being anywhere near 100% is pretty impressive. Now, I mean, this guy's been hurt since four nations.

Yes. I don't think an extra couple of days is suddenly going to, you know, he's, I don't think he's suddenly doing the tech mobile running out of the, hospital thing and, you know, he's back 100%. But if he could just have more, almost any impact in this series, like what you think of when you think of Matthew Kuchuk in the playoffs, that helps a lot. You know, the possibility of Oilers minus Zach Hyman, Panthers plus Matthew Kuch is more than enough to swing.

a close series if it gets to that. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And, you know, the other thing that I think about what the Panthers is, let me hit you with this, Sean, since they started voting on the Vesna, which goalies do you think have multiple Stanley Cups and multiple Veznas? Ooh. So, Bovrovsky would join that club. Correct. Patrick Waugh would be a. in the club, I believe?

Mm-hmm. That's right. Martan Roder would be in the club. Correct. Is that the full list? There's one more goalie on the list. Okay, so since the 80s, it's... Did Fear get more than one Vezna?

No. No, I'm pretty sure he didn't. But he's not the guy I'm thinking of. We'll put it that way. Okay. Yeah, Fierre had the one Vezna in 88. Did Hassoc get two cups? Hasick did get two cups?

Two and eight? Yeah, okay. All right. So it's the Holy Trinity. Pretty good big three. The three consensus best goalies of all time. Yeah. And Sergei Barbarovsky.

That would be the list. Wow. Isn't that crazy? That's, yeah. Wow. That's unbelievable. But of course, because it's hockey, he could lose to Stuart Skinner, a guy who didn't have the starting job. He'll lose his starting job by game three

and be replaced by Florida Panthers backup question mark. Well, I mean, the whole fucking Alex Lion thing last year, remember this? Yeah. Alex Lyons saved the Panthers season, etc. What a bizarre, like, has, how many modern players have had, like, as strange, a career curve as Sergey Birovsky? Like, comes into Philadelphia, gets booted out of there so they can give Ilya Brazgalov a trillion dollars

and absolutely detonate the core of their team to make room for it. And, oh, by the way, they kick Sergey Barowski out to the curb. Gozeneghina in Columbus. That's right. Then signs a massive contract that everyone... It's two Vezna is in Columbus, by the way. Yeah, yes. Signs a massive contract in Florida.

Florida, everyone goes, ooh, that's probably way too much for a goalie. Turns out it is. Then it turns out it's totally not. We all love it. Well, I mean, it was, it was too much for a goalie because, like, other goalies were signing for less than that, even before he played badly. And then we all went, oh, I mean, this is, this is an albatross. This is an anchor contract.

You had Spencer Knight. You could have just used him. What fools? What dumbies was. I don't remember if they were the computer boys back then or if they were the post computer boys. That would have been post-computer boys. And then suddenly he's like, oh, you know what, guys, maybe I'm just going to go back to being amazing. And it was pretty much in the playoffs two years ago was when he just flipped the switch.

Yeah. Literally, Sean, literally went from this is one of the worst contracts in the league. And two years later, this is a consensus. his first ballot hall of famer. Yep. It's unbelievable. What a fucking story. Great sport.

Yeah. And the thing that's so funny about that is, you know, once again, we had the five days off or whatever it was. People got bored. They were like, oh, we haven't complained about the fucking state income tax thing in a while. Let's all get our stories out about that. Saw your piece about that. You have some feelings? Yeah.

I think shut the fuck up about it. I think that was the headline on the piece, wasn't it? Yeah, basically. Well, I had a really mean headline that got replaced by that got replaced by one that's actually just like a good regular headline. I can't remember what it was now. But mine was a little meaner. But like, this is my thing, is Sergey Barowski didn't take a fucking discount to go there.

And that was the one team everybody agreed he wanted to play for. Mm-hmm. Oh, he's going to Florida. Book it. Guaranteed. Lock it in. It's going to cost $10 million. Well, it's a cost to do a business.

You know, hey. But now that the Panthers are good. These state income taxes, it's fucked up. I can't listen to it, man. It blows my mind that this is what we, the NHL has to do something about this. Loser shit. Shut up. Get a life.

Keep going. I don't really have much. more to say. Oh, by the way, you know what? Somebody pointed out to me because everybody's like, oh, Vegas, Nashville, none of these guys, you know, they're always going to deep playoff run. Well, don't look up how Nashville did this year. You know, you know what's a state with zero state income tax? And I don't think you would have ever guessed this was the case. Washington State. Seattle. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. I made a reference to that in something I wrote that's coming out later this week where I'm like, is it, is it, is it, is it,

awkward for Crackens fans when we do the no tax talk and we point to like all the teams that have been successful. And even Nashville, I mean, they signed the two biggest free agents last year. I would argue neither of those guys took a discount, which again, kind of torpedoes the whole income tax thing. But they, you know, they got them. And then it's like nobody mentions the Seattle Cracken because then you have to say like, oh, yeah, they don't count though.

They really locked in that Chandler-Stevenson deal. Thanks. They got a huge fucking discount on that one, brother. But again, maybe that's just the thing where, like, the players are like, oh, we don't have state income tax? That's crazy. Yeah. But also, maybe they're paying.

I think it's more the two months off every spring that you get when you sign in Seattle. It's probably a big deal. Yeah. Well, we got some Seattle talk coming up later in the show as well. But, yeah, to me, I just think, like, correlation isn't causation. I think that's my main takeaway from all this, you know? Mm-hmm.

I don't look at like the first lightning team that won the Stanley Cup, not the like 0-304 Stanley Cup, the first Lightning, like, Stanley Cup winner. I don't think this is a team built through free agency. No. You know? But there is something to be said with not even necessarily free agency, but the contracts that people sign as extended. I mean, we all acknowledge that Sam Reinhart.

We're doing the their stuff's there thing. Yeah. Right? And we're doing guys want to take less money to keep good teams together. Sometimes. I have, I have moved on from this is a non-factor to it's a somewhat of a factor. But I have no idea. I have no idea.

And I do think it's a potential. bigger issue than I won't say it's a bigger issue than people are making it out to be because you're absolutely right. Some people are going way overboard on this. But if there is even a perception out there that

certain markets in the league have an advantage and those certain markets are not your revenue drivers. All your revenue driving teams are outside of that group then that's a problem for the league. Even if it's

even if the perception is not accurate or not completely accurate, it's a problem because what you really, really don't want is fans in your revenue driving markets to go, oh, well, this league is rigged against us and we're not going to win because all of these markets. You're not going to win because Brad for Living's your GM, man. Like that's the issue. Sure.

You know what I mean? I think it is, I think it's a non-zero issue. I just don't have any great ideas about what you could do about it. There's nothing to fix. There's nothing to fix. This isn't a problem in the NBA. This isn't a problem in the NFL. Nobody's going,

ah, fuck, man. Like, the Green Bay Packers could have signed that guy, but it's crazy. He wanted to play for the Miami Dolphins. Nobody's looking at the Jacksonville Jaguars going, we want what they have. Yeah. It can be a.

problem unique to hockey, though. Because nobody in those markets, nobody in those other sports is going, oh, I don't want to play in New York. I don't want to play in L.A. There's too much media. There's the fans pay attention. I don't like that. I want to go to Jacksonville and be the quarterback and nobody recognizes me.

That seems to be unique to hockey players. Well, again, there's also there's also the perception that having a centralized draft that everybody wants to go to at once, that that's bad. in the NHL, you know? Like, these are just dumb guys who make stupid... All I'm saying is if I'm Gary Bettman and I see this issue gaining traction in the way it is, I'm concerned. That doesn't mean you go and change the rules or the CBA.

It might be as simple as saying, like, guys, we need to do some, get some messaging out there to remind people that this is not... Well, now it's broken containment, right? Like, now... Yeah. I don't know who is the first... Like, I'd love to go back and find the first, like, the patient's... zero of advancing this idea.

But to me, it's just as simple as how many GMs, this is it, how many GMs in the whole league have a guy like Jonathan Hubertoe and a guy like McKenzie Weger and says, we're going to trade those guys for a Matthew Kachuk. How many GMs do it? It's a short fucking list. I'll tell you that right now. Because all these guys are afraid to, as you always say, actually do their jobs. And it is.

Not Bill Zito. Not Bill Zito. I'm 100% with you. But also, Matthew Kuchuk was on a Canadian team that had control of his rights. And he forced his way down to a limited number of U.S. markets that he was willing to play for, which were not all no-tax states. But were largely the no-tax warm weather states. That's right. And he is now spent.

the last two years being one of the most valuable players in the league when you factor in postseason, that's enormously frustrating for fans in a market like Calgary, as well as fans in similar markets that have similar disadvantages. Is there a team? Fair or not? I'm trying to think. I'm just trying to think, is there a team from like, say, maybe the same province as Calgary that is doing okay?

Yeah, the one that one that one, that one of. draft lottery and got a generational superstar player. Yeah. That one. And yes, that does work. That's interesting. If you get good players, guys want to play for that team. That's the craziest thing I ever heard.

Yeah. What, what, but I'm just thinking a lot. Calgary had good players and the players bailed on them. It sucks, man. It's great for Florida. And look, I'm one of those guys. I'm always talking about, oh, you know, Calgary had good players but never made the playoffs with them.

That's the, that's the problem. They did make the playoffs. They made the players with Matthew Cooke. He didn't do crap in the playoffs for them. Yeah. Look, I want to see more free agency. I like to see more player movement. But it does, it sucks to be a fan in Winnipeg or Calgary,

where you feel like we've got to have everything to come together perfectly. Or we got to win the lottery in the once every 10 or 15 years when a true generational superstar comes along. Yeah, I mean, Leon Drysitl is amazing. He took 14 million to stay in Edmonton. What do we think it would have taken to keep him in Florida or Vegas or something? It wouldn't have been 14 million. It is, again, like the perception here is almost certainly way beyond the actual impact. I acknowledge that.

But you're in the entertainment business, man. perception is part of the entertainment package. And if the markets that drive your revenue, the markets that put the money into the revenue sharing pot that then gets pulled out to pay Matthew Kachukh is no tax contract, if those fan bases get it in their heads, that they're facing significant disadvantage and the league doesn't care, and the league is just cashing their season ticket funds

and spraying it around to the teams that keep beating them, them, you have a problem. That doesn't mean you need to change your rules or your CBA. It can just be as simple as, you know, getting in the year of whatever insider and putting some, some better information out there. But you better do something because I, the level of frustration is, is growing. All these people just sound like the, the Kevin Adams palm tree thing to me. That's it.

You're a fucking loser franchise. You're trying to justify. And when Kevin Adams says it, that's loser talk because he's a guy who can actually change it. When a fan base says it, maybe it's still loser talk, but now it's a problem. It is. It's a big problem. You better get on it one way or another. I think it's crazy.

If Kevin Adams is doing loser talk, fire Kevin Adams and bring in someone who isn't a loser. If the entire Sabers fan base is doing it, big problem. Was this a problem when, I mean, the Sabers fan base, like check the fucking gate receipts the last few years and get back. me. But to me, I just like, this wasn't a problem. Yeah, because the Sabres fans are given up largely because of the results, but again, this is one of your best TV markets. You're not concerned about, about the, you know, them feeling hopeless. Like, the whole reason we got this hard, well, not the whole reason, but the whole reason we were told we needed a hard cap was for parity and all this because we

couldn't have the same teams winning all the time. And it used to be that there was a perception before the cap came in that certain teams had an advantage. New York, Detroit, you know, Toronto, etc. And again, it was a perception. It wasn't, certainly you looked at the Rangers and the Leafs and teams like that and you said, well, I mean, they may be have an advantage, but it's not leading to anything.

So we're overstating it. But there was a perception that there was an advantage for certain teams. Well, the advantage then was that they were willing to spend money. Yeah. It was a problem for the league. no question. There were markets that felt like they had no hope, and that contributed to some of the franchise churn and all of that. It was a problem for the league then. They've got the same perception happening now. The difference is now the perception is happening in some of your

biggest revenue driving markets and not in your smallest revenue-taking markets. That's worse. Now, I'm not saying you shut down the whole league for a new CBA, of course, but there's, this is This isn't something we can hand wave away anymore. Sure it is. Because it's this simple to me. If you have, like Carolina is a good example. I'm pretty sure North Carolina has a state income tax. And their problem isn't, you know, we can't, like we keep, their problem is they keep hitting the wall against a team like Florida, right?

but they're consistently, consistently getting deep into the playoffs. And the one thing they don't have is like the true superstar player. And they went and they traded for a big time goal score last year. And then what happened last summer with Jake Gunsell? He left and he signed in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. And then, but like.

So maybe not the best example of how this. This isn't really a big problem. No, but I'm saying... The team that lost their superstar to a Florida-based team. On a deal, on a discounted contract that everyone looked at and went, wow, that's cheaper than we thought he would get. But did he go to Tampa because he thought they were going to be better than Carolina? Yeah, there's no...

Like, Tampa and Florida especially, and I put Vegas and Dallas into this are super well-run organizations. Yeah. Yeah. They're super well-run organizations. How many guys are in Vegas do you think took a discount? I'm being serious. I don't think it's that many. Florida and Tampa, but I don't think, I don't think Vegas is like loaded on bargain contracts.

Not bargain contracts, but I mean, they got Petrangelo. They got, you know, Mark Stone to sign. Eichols deal was signed with Buffalo, right? So that's not to, but. But like Noah Hanofin didn't take a huge discount to stay. Vegas. They get players that are huge difference makers, but those guys, like, pay to play, you know, like they don't, they're not getting the, and Dallas, too, like, there aren't a ton of

bargain contracts on the Dallas stars, including Miko Ranton, by the way. Well, I mean, I think a lot of people would say Miko Renton, and I wouldn't say bargain, but the fact that he didn't go to, go to free agency and just took. from the sounds of it, again, the same deal that was being offered in Carolina, took it in a no-tax state two years in a row that Carolina's gone out and trade it for a superstar winger and then through various ways, see them go to a no-tax team. My point with bringing up Carolina, though, is it's the, I think you can argue that, and there's a quote from Sebastian Ajo that I'm going to read after the break here, but I think

you can argue that that's the system problem. Because everybody that likes it in Carolina is like, why would you ever live anywhere else? All these guys who like retire to the Raleigh area after playing for Carolina, like, I think that's real. You know, I think that's a real thing that like it's great to live there. But do you want to play for Rod Brindamore? That's a different question. Last point I'll make is I thought in your piece you pretty much.

you nailed it where you said like, I don't remember exactly what you wrote, but it was along the lines of, this isn't a big deal on most, like you're talking about a five or 10% difference on most contracts. That doesn't matter on one player, but if it's four or six or eight contracts, suddenly that adds up to you get to keep your second line center. Yeah, that's exactly what I said. That's a big, in this league, that's pretty huge advantage. But because that's like having an extra $5 million in cap space or $8 million in cap space. Yeah. And if we had that, if we actually, if the league had come out and said, these teams get an extra $8 million in cap space, but these teams don't, everybody would say that's something maybe you should look at and figure out if that's the right way to approach it.

But the other thing. And then this will be my last point on this. The other thing is, I think all that matters when the, when the cap goes up like $4 million over six years or whatever it was over the last little while. I don't think that's going to matter when the cap goes up like $20 million over the next year. And now we got a whole new issue, which is there's going to be some teams that can spend to that new cap and some teams they can't. And now those teams they can't are going to have that feeling of now it's unfair. against us. And the top part is...

And those teams are the revenue drivers that we're talking about. This is all cyclical. This is all... Except there is also going to be some overlap of the teams complaining now, the Winnipegs, etc. And the teams are going to get screwed by the cap going up. So you're doubling the problem for some markets and spreading it out among others. I don't know. I mean, maybe the league just throws its hands up and says, you guys were all on your own.

I'm just saying when your customers... The whole reason you do this feel like, hey, this product kind of sucks a little bit because we're constantly told that the only reason to watch is because your team might win and our team can't win. Like you just- I'd love to see Toronto just be like, how we're not going to Leafs games anymore because it's not fair to us about the Panthers. It's a world. It's not, it's not, it's not going to be an empty building. But if Toronto, if TV ratings go down 5%, if, you know, merchandise,

sales go down five that yeah that is a problem that's going to land on gary betman's desk it will and as i've said a million times it's we are wrong when we treat being a hockey fan like it's a switch you're either a fan or you're not on or off you're going to flip the switch off no shut up it's a dial and if if if big mark whether it's leaf fans or habs fans or rangers fans go from a 10 and they just turn the dial down to a nine in big enough not numbers, that's a big problem for the NHL. Okay. I mean, in this theoretical scenario, yeah, that would be a problem.

I just, I think it's complete, like I said, my hat's off to the one big market GM who came up with this idea and put it in the idea in the ears of every insider in the league, because now we're talking about it for 20 fucking minutes. My hat's off to him. That guy's a genius. My job's too hard. Someone should fix it for me. Awesome. Way to go, man. You killed it.

Anyway, why don't we take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about the teams that lost and then some other news and notes from around the NHL. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon and folks, it's summer. Sun's out longer, the weather's warmer, it's time for me and you to do all kinds of crazy outdoor activities, fun stuff like cookout, stuff that stinks, like yard work. You don't want to get involved in that. But no matter what you're doing outside the summer, you're going to want to do it with your favorite music, your favorite podcasts, even making phone calls, all with crystal clear audio,

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Losers Corner. We always talk about the teams that got eliminated. And would you rather do Carolina or Dallas first? Doesn't matter to me. Oh, let's do Caroline. Carolina, it is. I think everybody's on the same page about what we're wrong here. you know

um nobody too hot oh sorry no nobody is sitting there going damn that's crazy I can't believe that happened everybody's like yep we know why it happened we know what the issue is we got to fix it and this is a real quote from Sebastian Aho from like their media day get a what are they breakup day they call it right

this is a real quote from Sebastian Ajo last off season to be honest I was disappointed how it went. We lost a couple guys I would like us to keep. At the trade deadline, we tried to make a push, and we do appreciate the team wants us to get better, so there was, I feel like maybe making the right choices in the offseason

and picking up some pieces so maybe you don't have to throw a Hail Mary at the deadline. Everyone keeps saying we have a lot of cab space and we have assets. Hopefully we are able to take that next step in that department too. Not often you hear a top player. He's not their

captain. That's Jordan Stahl, but like, one of their, the faces of their, their franchise and all that kind of stuff. Not often you hear a player get that real about what an issue is. It's weird. Like each individual point that he makes in there on its own is like, yeah, that's, that's accurate, that's fine. But it does kind of add up to, I don't know if this feels like a criticism of the front office, but it's certainly expressing disappointment.

You know, and I'm sure he's very aware. aware that, yes, there's a, you know, they were up against the cap last year. That's just realistic. And they're not this year. But, yeah, you're right. It's a little jarring to hear something like this. It's a little more forthright than we're used to hearing star players sound. Yeah, and it's not, it's not wrong.

He's right. and I think the pointedness of it is when specifically when he says like so we don't like maybe we we do better in the off season so we don't have to throw a Hail Mary that doesn't work with Mika Rantan. Like that's the subtext there and he's right. You know, obviously I think every team in the league tries to get Miko Rantan if that kind of a player becomes available. but the fact that it didn't work, like that goes back to what I'm saying about like not everybody's built to play Rod Brindamore hockey and all that kind of thing.

But you can't say Rod Rindamore hockey isn't effective up to a point and if they had better players like that could play in that system, you know, I think we'd all feel really good about like Carolina's chances next year. I just won, I wonder how much it's, there's like kind of a learning curve to it, you know, like if they

get him in the off season instead of at the deadline. Mm-hmm. Does he feel the same way? Right. Which they, which they couldn't have done because of, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But. But I'm just saying like, let's say superstar X, you know what I mean? Like, if the, if you get that guy in the off season.

Let's just say it. It's, because Mitch Marner is the only guy, free agency-wise, who. fits that description. Now, they have, they've got those two extra first round picks to work with in a trade scenario. So that's possible too. But is it just as simple as go out

and get Marner and give them the $14 million? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think to my and Aho's point, you've got to be pretty sure this guy can play in your system. Obviously, if you're signing him in the offseason, you know he at least wants to try, or he at least wants the $14 million, you know.

Exactly. But I don't know. To me, like, I totally sympathize with where he's coming from. And I think, again, he's diagnosing the problem correctly. But if it's just going to be so coach dependent, I, you know, I don't know what the solution there is. And I'm not advocating fire Brindamore or anything like that. It works. Yeah.

It works. So let me just ask this. There's some plug and play to it. Can you win a Stanley Cup when Sebastian Aho is your best forward? No. I don't think you can. So then the follow-up question is which forwards are better than him that you can realistically get? Correct.

Yeah. No, that's exactly what their problem is. Yeah, absolutely. And Marner might be on that list? I would argue Marner is on that list, but can he be your best forward? Well, that's it. I mean, we've just seen a team crash and burn repeatedly with Mitch Marner as its second or third best forward. So I don't know.

But there's not that many other guys out there. But there could be some. And, you know, say one thing about Carolina. It's a creative front office. You talked about the timid little GMs and which ones are going to be like Bill Zito and which ones are going to be the other side of it. I think Carolina is closer to the Bill Zito approach. Sure.

We'll see. Yeah. They are certainly quite high on the interesting off-seasons to watch list. Absolutely. Absolutely. By the way, this isn't on the outline, Sean. This just came across the wire here. Do you know who's hosting the NHL Award show?

No, I do not. Oh, I can't wait. Give me a hint. Best known as a guy in a commercial. We'll start you there. Dwayne Jetsky. Okay, man. Nope, this guy is way less famous than Wayne Graham.

Wettyski. Way, like, like, you, I'll put it this way. You don't know this guy's name. Okay. It's just a guy. Straight up, you don't know his name. From a commercial. A guy from a commercial.

And by the way, a commercial probably 12, 15 years ago. Okay. I feel like Jared from Subway is busy. He's otherwise and disposed. Yeah. Who is it? It is. The man's name is Isaiah Mustafa.

And he, you might know him best as the. old spice guy. Remember the hunky old spice guy? Why? Why is he? He is currently, I'm being a little unfair to him. He is currently on an Amazon Prime Alex Cross show. Okay.

So like, you know, he's like the second build guy on that show. But I'll just read you the copy here. In addition to being an avid hockey fan in L.A. King's loyalist, Isaiah Mustafa is an actor, former professional football player, and the recent Old Spices sales skyrocketed at 107% in 2010. Okay. Best known as the man your man could smell like, Mustafa wrote a horse straight into pop culture legend,

shirtless, charming, and casually holding two tickets to that thing you love and body wash, while redefining what a commercial icon should be. I guess the Dosec's guy, the most legendary man in the world or whatever, most interesting man in the world. I guess that guy was, speaking of indisposed, I think that guy is actually not alive anymore. But, yeah, that's, I do think that some of the talk about NHL not attracting celebrities is a little overdone, but this doesn't help. Is Chaka Khan going to play? Or? Oh, great news.

The Arkells are the pregame, the pregame entertainment for game one. Great. They won a Juno Award in 2018. So get excited. I didn't realize that what you were reading about Isaiah Mustafa was, I figured you were on like his Wikipedia page or Zayette or something. No, this is the copy from the league. This is the four paragraphs of the NHL press release on this. And that whole part that you read is one of those four paragraphs.

As a league, we are facing a strategic imbalance in celebrity interest. Like, do you think they started? Timothy Chalemay following the Knicks around. He's like, yeah, I'll spend a week in Indianapolis. I don't give a fuck, go Nix. And this is like, hey, remember the old Spice guy? He likes the L.A. Kings. And you're like, is that true?

and they're like more or less, yeah, I guess. Did they call Old Spice and like start with like Ronnie Chang and Dion Cole and that and then just work their way back? Yeah. Until they got to. This is unbelievable. Again, if you were if you were being mean and making fun of the NHL and the kind of celebrities they get for these things, I got no problem with Isaiah

Mustafa or whatever. I'm sure that Alex Cross show on Amazon Prime is great. I'm never going to watch it in my whole life. But I, you know, it says here it won an. NACP image award, so my hat's off to him, you know, all that kind of thing. But like,

again, if you're leading with, this is the guy from the commercial from 15 years ago, in the press release, that's a fucking problem, man. There has to be a more famous person than this. You would think.

And we should say, by the way, it's a one hour show. Pre-taped also. Not a, we're not doing the Vegas, you know, and here's a magician and here's death leopard and all of that stuff. So who even cares? Def Leopard now, okay, I'm interested. My ears are open.

They were the ones who put the cup upside down, right? I remember. Yeah, okay. I'm just saying this is the level of star power we need is Def Leopard. You want to do Dallas now? Yeah. Or do you have anything else to say about Carolina? Okay, Dallas it is.

They got a whole thing going on over there in Dallas, my opinion. It's maybe not so good, you know? Jake Ottinger gets pulled in game five after. I think the way everybody's talking about this, you saw him give up goals on the first two shots he faced, right? Yeah, but it was a breakaway and like a... I understand, but it's the, you know, I think the reason that this is,

is an issue is I think a lot of people could kind of take it as they needed the shake-up, like they needed, coaches do this all the time. You pull the goal even if it's not his fault because the team needs to get their acts together. And this is a wake-up call. I think that the issue is that he started skating back to the bench and apparently it wasn't communicated. No, no, you're coming out of the game. Yeah. Or back to the, back to the creak.

I should say. And it was like, yeah, you're coming out of the game, actually. And he was like, oh, that sucks. And then after the game, Peter DeVore's comments where it's like, this guy can't beat the Oilers. I don't know what you want from me. Yeah. I mean, I didn't love it.

And I say that even as someone who has sort of, I've talked in the past about the lozo theory of treating your goalies, the way you treat pitchers and get. Game 7 of the World Series sometimes where the lease should be very short. I think that makes sense. I think it makes less sense when your starter is Jake Ottinger and your backup is Casey DeSmith. And I wonder how much consideration, if any, was given to going back to Ottinger to start the second period. Sure. Especially after DeSmith gives up a goal on, I don't think it was the first shot, but really the first.

Flurry for for Edmonton. I don't know. I mean, when you have an all-world goalie and you yank them after two goals and then you go on and lose five to,

what was the final? Five-three? I think six to three. Six to three? Five-three plus an empty-ne three. That's a sign that it didn't work. I think that's fair, yeah. Obviously, all of us watching it,

you know, you're, your thought in addition to how it impacts the game is, oh, oh, is this a rift? Does this do something for the future? And they seem to try to quash that pretty quickly. But I didn't like it. I don't think it costs in the series or the game or anything, but that felt like a panic move to me.

Yeah, I think, like I say, I get it from, I get it from he's trying to wake the team up. And I think if he goes, like you say, if he goes back in at the start of the second period, You know, we're not having this conversation. But that's not what happened. And again, it's the postgame comments for me where he's just like, it's a pretty big sample size, six out of seven games or whatever the number he said.

It was like, man, that's not a big sample size, first of all. Yep. But. You know what it is a big sample size? Jake Ottinger's whole career. Yeah, you would think. You would think. I thought, I watched the Ottinger Presser from their breakup day.

and I thought he said a lot of the right things. You know, he didn't seem to be brooding over it or anything like that. He was just like, yeah, I was bad. I don't know what you want me to say. I wasn't good in this series, which hard to deny. You know, he, I don't have it in front of me, but I'd have to imagine his safe percentage started with like an 88, maybe even worse than that, quite frankly.

But one thing I thought was interesting is everyone's like, well, they got to fire Peter DeBoer, right? Like if you're choosing between the two of them, you keep the goalie, which is true, if you're choosing between the two of them. But then their owner went on the radio and was like, yeah, we're not doing that. We're not firing the coach. Like, are you fucking out of your mind? Which I think is the right reaction. This is a coach, say what you want about a guy who can't seem to get out of the conference final.

He's in the conference final almost every year. Yes. And I, you know, I think if you talk about injuries and all that kind of thing, Look, the Oilers are going to be a uniquely bad matchup for a lot of teams, which means they're not a uniquely bad matchup. You know what I mean? Like, oh, we, they have our number or whatever. Yeah, they're going to have a lot of teams numbers, is my point. So I'm not like super worked up over it for them.

And I think DeBore is a really good coach. So what he should have done, and I just pulled it up here. Remember I said 880 something was probably Jake Ottinger's safer? percentage? 853 was his save percentage in the series. DeBore should have told him to stop 88%. It'd have been much better. That's what I would have done.

Pulled him aside. Now, I didn't read this, but I saw the headline and I was like, whoa, really? Did you see this yesterday about a potential Jason Robertson trade? No, I saw that in the outline you sent and I was like, what is this? I believe it was Jeff Merrick advanced the third. theory. So this was from, uh,

not just Jeff Merrick advanced this, but this was in, uh, the Dallas, like the Dallas morning news. Um, the case for and against trading Jason Robertson. This is from yesterday.

Pretty surprising that this is even a topic, but it is. Here's the thing. What's the case four? The case four is, he's going to be, he's currently an RF, or he's currently signed 7.75 million, but only for next season,

at which point he is an RFA with arbitration rights. Okay. And in theory, he's going to be extremely expensive. If you're paying Roepe Hints a little under eight and a half and Wyatt Johnson ate for, what do you give Jason Robertson?

Does it start with a 10? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Start with an 11? Mm-hmm. And do... And are you sure that he's a 10 or 11 million dollar player? I think...

Given, as we talked about last week, his kind of... Well, we talked about it, and then he had two really good games, even though the team sucked. Last week, remember this? We were like, what's he gonna get going? Isn't he? Isn't he supposed to be one of their best players? And then he was awesome. Scoring all their goals.

He was the only guy who could score. Yep. And so, I mean, that is the argument, though, is like, is he going to be worth it at age 26, 27, whatever he is when the new contract kicks in? It didn't even occur to me that this was the thing, but I get why people are talking about it now. Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting question. I mean, the thing with Dallas is. That I'm really interested to see is Jamie Ben. What happens there?

You got to let him go, man. Unless he's taking real short money for you and like not a lot of term. You basically publicly committed that he was a Dallas star for life. Right. A year ago. Right. Now, hey, what's that worth? Things change.

Miko Ranton's drop out of the sky. Stuff happens. Yeah. But and, and I mean, a lot of us when we saw the Miko Ratna thing went down, we went, oh, yeah, that's Jamie Ben's money. Jamie Ben's contract ends this. Totally. Yeah. So now you're swapping makes sense.

Good trade. I would also rather have Miko Ratan in right now. Oh, shit. Yeah. 35-year-old Jamie Ben. But it's, it's, it's tougher than that when you're talking about your captain and a guy who's been, you know, the, lifetime star, that'll be an interesting one to see. And you know what?

Like, if it was Vegas or probably Tampa, it wouldn't be a question, right? See you later, buddy. Thanks for 14 years. Get out of here. We found someone who's 3% more efficient on the dollar than you, so get lost. I guess we'll see if Dallas is that sort of team. or yeah I wouldn't give him like a yani gourd contract you know I didn't have that on the outline but he signed for six years at a little under three which like by the end of that six years that's going to be like next to nothing that's going to be like a a $1.5 million contract is today probably but I don't want to give a guy by who by the way Jamie Ben will be 36 in July um I don't want to give a guy like that four years no he you know he you know he successfully rehabbed his career.

He was an effective player the last couple of years after being really bad for a good chunk of this huge contract he had. But I just can't commit to this guy long term. Let me put it this way. If we're like, we might have to trade Jason Robertson, but also we have to commit to Jamie Ben, I got a great solution to this problem for you.

You know what I mean? to me, I just, you know, thank you for your service. We'll see you at the number of retirement ceremony. Yeah. Save a spot for Tyler's again on the buss out. Got two years left of the Sagan deal, by the way. Boofy, doofy. That's tough, man.

But other than that, I mean, you know, and the other thing is, too, much like Robertson, they also have to find big time cash to give to Thomas Harley. Yep. It's not going to be easy. It stinks. It's not going to be easy. Which is why see you later, Jason Robertson, one of the better players at his position in the world. But that is interesting because it's like, that is what teams have to do is they have to sit down and go, okay.

Is this guy, what money is this guy? reasonably going to be able to get, is he worth it? Mm-hmm. And Robertson's an interesting one. This guy was a hundred-point player, what, two years ago? Yeah, that sounds right.

Hasn't really been that since. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's... The standard way of thinking in the NHL is, well, good players are hard to find. You got to, you pay whatever you can. You certainly can't lose them for nothing. Well, okay.

So do you figure out if there's a trade to be made? And then what does that look like when you pick up the phone and call some other team? You find that GM answering that call. I'm like, my first thought is, holy crap, Jason Robertson's available. I'm very interested. And my second thought is, wait a second, what do they know that I don't know? Did you see over the weekend, did you see this article that was like, you know, the Leaf should not spend a ton of money this summer and keep it all open for Connor McDap?

David. I think I saw the article you were referring to. It wasn't quite that silly, but yes. No, but here's my thing. That's true of every team in the league. Every team in the league should be like, how do we get Connor McDavid on our team? 100% of the time. And, you know, we are doing that thing that we do every year where we go, okay, this current free agent crop in a few weeks from now isn't all that.

that good. But next year, look at this list of players. Right. And then a year from now, all of those players will have signed team-friendly extensions,

and then we'll go, oh, okay, but look at the next year. I was just making the point. You know, I said this on the other show, like, what is the percentage chance that you actually could get Connor McDavid, either in free agency or, you know,

however, and how high does that percentage chance have to be for it to alter your strategy going forward? And it's not 100%, it's not 50%. It's a low number, that percentage chance. If there's a 10% chance, then to get Connor McDavid in what's left of his prime, I think you actually do have to have one eye on 2006. And I think it's probably less than 10%. it's probably 10% that he becomes available and then divide that up among all the different teams.

And then he signs with the Florida Panthers for $7 million because, you know. Yep. I forgot to say this earlier. Speaking of odds, you saying that reminded me. I got an email with like the prop bets for the cup final and, you know, I don't care about most of them. But I thought this was an interesting prop. bet. Nationality of the Kahn-Smith winner.

Ooh. Canada, four to five. Uh-huh. Any other nationality, nine to five. And if you want to get specific, Finland is 13 to 4 in USA,

16 to 1. So what is that? I thought that was really interesting. Is that just McDavid versus the field? Are there any? That's, that is what it feels like. Yeah.

Okay. So I was going to say, I don't think there's any. I mean, I guess, you know, Reinhart could, I guess, do it. Stuart Skinner, like, absolutely stands on his head. Yeah. But, yeah, okay, interesting.

I thought that was, I thought, like, I would, I had never thought about it that way, you know? And I liked any other nationality. It's just like, yeah. Do you think it's Connor McDavid? And then Finland, it's like, so obviously you're vetting on Barkov here. Is that right? Which, didn't he win it last year? Didn't he win it last year?

Now, was this, this was, did this market just come out? Or I wonder, have they had this? This email was from a day or two ago, I wonder if they've had this the whole time. Because it would have been fun to bet on Finland when Dallas was still in, right? Like, they're probably, I wonder if they had those odds. Like, if they were doing that the whole, uh, the whole playoffs, that would have been interesting to watch that go up and down. This is from yesterday. It would have been, remember when we had already given it to Miko Ranton in after about halfway through round two?

Now, there's a guy I might think about trading if I'm Dallas. Yeah. And then he was like, oh, okay, so I'm done here, cool. I'm just going to, I'm going to check out for the rest of the postseason now. Yeah. Anyway, that's it. That's all I had to say about that. Hey, speaking of Barkov, he won the, he won the Selke yesterday.

Shocker. Yeah. He was surprised by a bunch of children. Yeah, remember when they were like, we're going to prank them. We're going to dump a big bucket of slime on his head and said, that's actually the selky slime. That's actually a good idea. That's actually a great idea. Thank you.

Kahn Smythe slime. But yeah, the prank was they got a bunch of kids from a children's hospital to be like, you won the King Clancy's like, oh, okay, thanks. Oh, actually, you want, like, what a prank. Yeah. Sean, you want a bike. actually you want a car. Did it like prank you? And then they all took like the bandages and hospital gowns off and they're like, we're just, we're just actors.

We're healthy. Yeah. But yeah, one thing that was really funny to me, and you can do this, you can do this a lot of the time. But they're, Alexi Protoz got a bunch of Selky votes or a bunch. He got five Selkeye votes. Two of the, one of them. was from someone who just covers the capitals. Okay, sure.

Two of them were from writers who cover teams in the metro. I think the Islanders and the penguins, if I'm remembering correctly. And then two of them were from two writers in Tampa. And I was like, what the fuck? That's weird. God.

And then I said to myself. What game did he shut down Nikita Kutra of? I said to myself, I guarantee they saw this guy have one good game. in Tampa. I went and looked at the game log, and Alexei Proto's had a game in Tampa where he had an assist in a shorthanded goal. And I said that's where he got two fifth place Selke votes. Right there. I love it. And you can do this with a lot of guys. That would be a fun gimmick. Selky ballot forensics. I think, and I think, well, I think this is the award you could

most easily do it with. Yes, absolutely. Because it is just the like, I saw this guy, like you said, back check one time. It's the Steve Casper when he won, like, back in the 80s. I think he was like a minus 20 that year, but he was the guy who shadowed Wayne Gretzky whenever they played the Oilers. So everyone was like, oh, this guy's, this guy's super good defensively. Because he just tackled Wayne Gretzky and sat on him because that's how he played defense in 1982. Yep.

But I thought that was funny. Okay, we got some moving piece. behind the bench in the in the front office, that kind of thing. Lane Lambert to Seattle, no relation, by the way. What do you think? Yeah, sure. I mean, he was on the Leafs bench this year. I never at any point was like, gosh, I hope nobody plucks Lane Lambert from us.

But I've seen some things where people have said, yeah, it might be a guy who, like Jeff Blasheld is a, a good second time around opportunity kind of deal. Certainly not set up to succeed in his previous job. Well, I got bad news about this next job. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's right. Yeah.

No, he's not taking over. Like, at least with Blasheel, you can be like, oh, Connor Bedard. You know, there's something to be excited about there if you're a coach. All these, like, 22 and under players who were first-round picks and all that kind of stuff. Easy to see where Jeff Blasheel's, like, a guy that could be. work with that and vice versa, right? With Lane Lambert, it's like, okay, he is the reason the Islanders kind of realized they needed, or he was the coach around the time the Islanders realized they needed to rebuild a little bit,

you know? Yeah. I don't put it, again, I don't put that on Lane Lambert. I think they were getting a lot of juice out of the Barry Trots thing, and then when the Barry Trots thing stopped happening, whoever was, you know, still around holding the bag was going to be in rough shape. It happened to be Lane Lambert. But yeah,

to me, if I'm Seattle, I don't know why this is the guy. I feel like I have to hire, you know? Yeah, I mean, you never know what the interviews and all of that stuff, but yeah, I don't. This, put it this way. If I'm a Seattle fan, I'm not like jumping up pumping my fist going, we got it.

And this is the problem for me. That exact thing, if I'm a Seattle fan, because the NBA this summer is going to get together and figure out how the expansion plan works. And the second they announced Supersonics 2, they're coming back. Anybody who sucks at that moment, aka the Seattle Cracken, are immediately going to be behind the Supersonics. Now, maybe that was always going to be the case, you know. Barring like a Vegas style Totally

Almost perfection Success story I don't know that They are third of three In that market In terms of people care about the Mariners more And people care about the Seahawks more I'd argue you could say they're fourth of four behind

The MLS team Seattle Sounders Um I I looked it up they draw like 30,000 people at night the Sounders. So, you know, they're not filling the stadium like they used to, but they still draw, whatever, 50% more people than the crack can do every single game.

And if you then add another team that plays during the same time of year to that mix, and you haven't established yourself as a team that fans can be excited about, that's a huge fucking problem. Now, I know they say that Seattle is like, up there in terms of generating revenue in the league, which maybe, you know, speaks more to the problems in the league than the market itself. But if I, you know, three years from now, if I'm looking at, oh, yeah, the Lane Lamberteers coming to a close, they maybe made the playoffs one time, that kind of thing.

And that's me being generous, by the way. Extremely. And I'm like, okay, do I want to like allocate my money and my attention to this team that has sucked for all but one season of its probably six, seven year existence by that point? Or the expansion team for the team that we're a basketball market anyway. You know, I'd feel really, really not excited about this if I was a Seattle fan and especially a casual Seattle fan. The diehards are the diehards, but man, oh man. Jason Botterill and Lane Lambert.

What could go wrong? With Ron Francis overseeing the whole thing. Even if you're willing to say, Lane Lambert will be better in his second job than his first. A lot of coaches are. That's true. you don't you cannot look at this roster and be like that's a group lane lambert even in an improved second job can get a lot out of i think i think this is a wild hire but who could they hire john torterella is probably the only guy where you're like if they hired him they could probably make the playoffs one time in the next three years i don't know man like i i feel like we've hit this, like, Gerard Glant's still out there. Jay Woodcroft is the guy that we keep mentioning.

Like, I feel like there are good coaches, even among the recycled coaches, let alone, you know, the next guy who needs the first opportunity. But, yeah. I just think the roster is so bad that, like, I'll ask you this. Do you feel like Gerard DeLant was getting all he could out of the New York Rangers when they fired him? Not when they fired him. He was good in the first year.

Yeah. Not so good in the second, and that was the end of it. And isn't that kind of the Gerard Clint story? It typically is. It's kind of been the Rangers story. You aren't kidding, brother. But yeah, I don't know. Like, I can see why they talk themselves into this. I don't know how they're talking anybody else into it.

That's all. Allegedly, the Bruins coaching hire is going to be announced in the next day or two here. Be nice. They told, uh, uh, what's his name? Joe Sacco.

They told Joe Sacco. We're all set, man. Thanks. So it's going to be a new hire. Someone from outside the organization. Jay Leach, Marco Stern.

Those are, those seem to be the two names that you're hearing the most. Mm-hmm. But as far, you know, I'm sure Puck Soup curse. One second after we hang up the, the video call here or whatever.

Uh, Here he is. Here's the new coach of the Bruins. Probably. It's Don't think that's going to happen. Maybe not. You never know. Stranger Things have happened.

But I was hoping by the time we got to this part of the show that that would be announced. But here we are. Coachless in Boston still. One other front office move here, Yarmou Keckleinen to Buffalo as like senior advisor to the senior advice. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. I like that. Sure, why not?

You know. Also a guy who, and I didn't really realize this until I was doing some research for some piece I wrote, he made more big trades than he gets credit for. Yeah, hard to deny that. That's true. Like, I feel like a lot of people remember him not trading guys in 2019, but he, I did like some sort of, you know, GM biggest trades. And like, his name kept showing up. So, I mean, God, anything in Buffalo helps. Can't be much worse.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure people saw in The Athletic yesterday. There was a big article that was like, here's what's going on behind the scenes in Buffalo these days and how we got here and all this. And I'll just say, you know, the I'm not a yes man shirt that Kevin Adams is always walking around wearing. You know, the joke. tough tough look in that article tough look especially since it was

like this was not just a columnist trashing a guy no this was reported out 10 different sources anonymously yeah it was reported including like and it wasn't even like

yeah we're going to get a bunch of sources talking about what a dummy you are and then we're going to reach out to you an hour before publication for comment. Like they, Tim sat down with Kevin Adams. For an hour, an hour long conversation. Kevin Adams got to give his side of the story.

I'm sure it was pitched to him something along the lines of, hey, a lot of people think this of you, let's sit down and you walk me through why that's unfair. And I don't know that I can. came away feeling like not not super confident did did you see the quote from from uh i think a

a guy who's no longer a GM but has been a GM in the past um was basically like what what what we talked about a few years ago where you or a few months ago i mean where you got you got to um you got to go in there and say to Terry Pagula I understand that you're going to want to be part of this you can't be part of this big dog that we got we're going to have a, we're going to have a real, uh, team where I,

I make all the decisions. Yeah. I think he, I think, oh, God, I can't remember the team, the player he said, but he was like,

if I got to come to you and say, oh, God, who, I can't remember who it was, but, uh, uh, um,

a Zemgus Georgensen's type. If I got to get a sign off from you on like, Zemgus Georgensen's for a fourth. Then what are we doing here? Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. Can't, can't,

can't, can't put it any better. that in my opinion. So. Yeah. Yeah, I did not come away from that article feeling confident as a. No. So, yeah, Yarmo will either help a lot or not last very long, I think.

That's interesting. In Buffalo, let's just say. He's a smart guy. Yeah. Smart guy, and he has wanted to, you know, to get another swing at things after spending a long time in Columbus. Obviously, I've had my criticisms of Yarmro. I wonder how much is the organization versus, you know, versus like his own philosophy, that kind of thing. I don't feel like we're going to get a real good, hard look at the organization versus his philosophy, unless things

either dramatically improve or, as you said, he's out in six months. You know? Yeah. There's, there's kind of no middle ground there, but yeah, anyway. What, you want to do the game show real quick? Yeah, let's do a couple rounds, sure. Yeah, sure. All right. So this is best of seven where I'm going to give Sean categories. He's going to give me categories. And we're going to get four correct from that category before we get four wrong as though we're a best of seven.

And then there are a maximum of seven rounds. Yeah. Sean, do you want home ice or do you want me to go first? You go first because I lost one of my categories. Fair enough. I may only have three. We'll start with this one. Mascots of the Western Conference by name.

You have to give me the names of Western Conference mascots. Oh, no. Okay. All right. And I did it by, did it Western Conference because I was like, I can't give him Carlton and Critty right away. Yes, fair enough. Right off the hop. I'm not a good mascot guy, but I know Bailey is the King's guy from our friend, Gerg.

Yep. I believe Harvey the Hound is still active in Calgary. Correct. Now I'm going to, is it still Wild Wing in Anaheim? He's three for three folks. The guy who got on fire, okay? Oh man, now I got to think I'm sort of scanning through. I don't know the name of the terrifying Lynx guy in Edmonton.

I feel like there's a moose of some sort in Winnipeg, but I don't know his name. It's an extremely funny name. Is it Mickey Moose? It is Mickey Moose. Oh, see, I almost feel bad because I feel like you nudged me back to that one. That's okay.

It's tough. But to be clear, it's Mickey Moose like Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, okay. So, like, keep those Disney lawyers at Bay. That's right. That's exactly right. And who's, okay, who's the Nashville guy? It's like, is it just Ganesh.

Yeah. G. Nash. It's Nash, but with the G, yes. Yeah. Some other ones here. Tommy Hawk. Bernie, the St. Bernard for the avalanche. Victor E. Green in Dallas.

Yes. Okay. Hunter is the name of the lynx, which I knew off the top of my head. All right. Nordy is the mascot for the wild. Okay. This is one I think a lot of people know is S.J. Sharky is the sharks. I love that name. Of course. Of course. Booy is the famous horrible mascot for the

Cracken. Right. Yeah. Louis is the blues. Finn is the Canucks. And Chase is the Vegas one. Chance. Chance. Chance. Chance. Okay. I wouldn't have got that one. Yeah, of course, chance. That makes so much more sense for Vegas. It does. And then there's one team in the West that doesn't have a mascot, and I don't remember which one it is. That's Detroit. They're not in the West. Detroit's not in the West. Okay. And I think they have an octopus mascot as well. The Rangers don't have a mascot.

I didn't think there was a Western Conference. There is one because I only have 15 written down. So I don't remember who it is, though. Maybe one of them got downsized. Oh, probably does Utah have one yet? Probably not, right? Utah does not have one. They were.

They were using the Jazz, the Jazz Bear. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, that's been mock called. That's exactly right. Um, okay. So you're up one nothing. Okay. Hey, you're not in trouble till you went at home.

Do we go two, two, one, one, one? Yeah, two, one one. All right. Players whose numbers are retired by more than one team. Ah, this is right up my alley. Yes, it is. Are you, are you even counting Wayne Gretzky here? Yeah.

Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. Patrick Waugh, Ray Bork, Mark. Mark Messier, Yep. Roberto Luongo. Roberto Luongo is not correct as far as this list indicates. Okay.

All right. So now we get interesting. Al McKinness. No. Okay, that's dicey because that's the, like, Calgary is super weird about what's retired and what's not. Okay, so hold on. I got a smart enough up here. Because I just, I did the Leafs against the Senators thing.

I just, like, peeled off three real quick. and now I'm in danger of blowing this thing. It's 3-2 now. Rob Blake. Nope. Oh, boy. Okay. All right.

Settle down. So which ones did you say? I said I got Messier, Bork, and, um, wah. Okay, great. I might need to go back to this way. Wayne Gretzky is the waved off. goal that I didn't challenge that I'm now, I'm now very concerned about. Okay. I'm going to think out loud

here a little bit. All right. There are, see, I don't want to get into any of the, like, Hartford Whaler guys. Like, Gordy Howe, I don't know if his number is officially retired by, by Carolina anymore. So I'm going to stay away from that. A lot of the old, like, I know Brad Park's number isn't retired, even though it should be. Espositos probably is. I mean, it definitely isn't Boston, but I'm going to stay away from that. Oh, boy.

Who else? A two-teamer. Hmm. Yager didn't stick around anywhere long enough to get a second. Ah, boy, I, Ron Francis is... No, I don't think Ron Francis is. Pittsburgh only has like a couple of guys retired.

Need an answer here. No, you don't. Settle down. Settle down. Okay. I'm working through it. Paul coffee, I don't think, wound up anywhere. Boy.

All right. I'm going to find a team and I'm going to settle on somebody. It's going to take me a minute, but I'm going to get there. I screwed up so bad on Wayne Gretzky. I screwed up so bad there. I was being so cute because of the league-wide thing, but he's obviously retired in L.A. and Edmonton. Yeah, so there you go. You got it.

You give him that to me? Yeah, because I was hoping that you would forgotten he had his number retired in L.A. Because he's technically, it is league-wide, but he does have his number retired by two teams. Okay. So I will give that to you. All right.

Yeah, you're very good. But I needed you to say it. You know what I mean? Yeah, okay. All right. Okay. The other guys, Bobby Hull. Bobby Hull?

Yep. Gordy Howe. Okay. Howe would have been all right. Yep. Tim Horton, Red Kelly, and Scott Niedermeyer. Hmm. Okay.

Yeah, Niedermeier, I should have got, but I don't think I would have. Yeah. Right. Kelly, I should have. Tim Horton was, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there you go.

tough, that's a tough list. Yeah, it's tougher than you think it would be for sure. It certainly is. All right. Okay, so for mine, I'm going to start with, I'm going to start with one that's sort of inspired by your first one, since you gave me the Western Conference only. Players in the Western Conference who received a Selky vote this year. Copatar. Drysidal. Yes.

Jack Eichel, Mark Stone. Jack Eichael finished fifth. Mark Stone. Mark Stone got three votes. Great. So there you go. It helped that I looked at this for quite a while, trying to figure out who gave Proto his five votes.

Yes, I figured that. That dialed it in for me. Very nice. That might have helped. All right. Well, I'll go with another theoretically easy one maybe. Okay.

Goaltenders who started 55 games or more this year. Hellebuck, obviously. I'm going to guess, Bobrovsky? Brovsky started 54 games this year. Oh, you fucker. Okay, Vasselovsky? Yes, Vasselovsky led the league. I wouldn't have guessed he let it over Hellebuck.

He was one game ahead of Hellebuck, 63 to 62. Hmm. Let me think here. There's another team that had it. Schisturkin probably. Schisturkin is number three in the league with 61. And Darcy Kemper? Darcy Kemper is not there.

He had 50. Wow. Geez, okay. Let me dial in. Let me really think about this. UC Soros? UC Saros had 58, so yes, that is correct. You know the other two with 60? Ilya Sorokin, who you would have got. Yeah, I probably would have got there.

But, you know, there were five goalies with 60 starts this year. Vaselowski, Hellebuck, Shosturken, Sorokin, and Sam Montembo. Interesting. Huh. And then Gustafson, Ottinger, Swayman, Joey Decord would have also been correct. This might come up later. Uh-oh. Guys drafted second overall in the 2000s.

Okay. There are 10 of them, of course. Oh, like just 2000 to 2010. Yes. Okay. Well, 2000 to 2009. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Danny Heatley was one. Correct. Jason Spetsa was one. Correct. Okay. Oh, who was in the 2003? Three and was it Nathan Horton that year? Nope.

I feel like he went. Okay. I think he was a third overall. I think he was third. Yeah, and I can't remember who was saying. The second was like another. player who ended up being good but not, I don't think, a superstar. And I don't remember who it was.

Okay, let's keep. Oh, Bobby Ryan. Correct. And then Victor Headman. Also correct. You missed. Carrie Lettenham, the guy you were thinking of was Eric Stahl. Yes, okay.

Evgeny Malkin. Of course. Jordan Stahl. Fun that they both went second. JVR, Drew Doughty. Yeah, I would have got to Doughty. It's very funny to me that I just completely missed over Malkin. Not one of the top 100 players of all time.

Why would you? Well, that's true. That's true. Okay, I'm up three, too. Okay, so this one, I'm looking for teams that have not finished first in their division for at least 10 seasons. The Buffalo Savers. Not including, I'm just going to throw out there, not including teams that have not existed for that full amount of time. Yes. Buffalo has a 15-year drill.

That one, that's the easy one. That's a little bit of a gimmy. Now I got to think. Wouldn't have finished first in their division? And these are current streaks, right? Current, yes. Yeah, okay. Just wanted to make sure, because I would have said like the Atlanta Thrashers or something.

something otherwise. Hmm. Ottawa? Ottawa. 19 seasons have not finished first since 2006. Wow. That's crazy. I'm going to guess Montreal, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

No. Montreal has did it in 2017. Yeah. I knew it was one of the Kerry Price years. That was a stupid fucking bet by me. Um, hmm. I'm just cycling through teams that I'm pretty sure didn't have like a PDO season too,

you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because like I'm, it's screaming, like my mind is screaming the Calgary Flames, but I'm like, ah,

they had a couple of PDO years in there. I don't want to say it. Arizona slash Utah. Uh, correct. 12 seasons. goes back to 2012. Okay.

So you're one away. It wouldn't be the Canucks. I'll try it with the Canucks. No, it is not the Canucks. That's what I thought. They last year finished first. Did they really? Yeah.

Wow. Good for them. And I'm sure it worked out great for him after that. Yeah, they've been good ever since. Okay. The Minnesota Wild. Correct. Yeah.

17 seasons for the Wild. Sheesh. who finish third every year, third or fourth. They love it. I'm going to throw the other teams out at you just because the build-up to the reveal is, I think, worth it. Okay. San Jose, Philadelphia, and Detroit are all on 14 years since they finish first. New Jersey Devils.

I wouldn't guess San Jose. Yeah. New Jersey Devils, not since 2010. Okay. Sabres, Wild, Senators, the one that I'm. I'm surprised you miss is Columbus. I have never done it, 24 seasons. And then the top three, all at over 30 seasons, which is pretty crazy.

Wow. Number three, the L.A. Kings have not finished first in their divisions. We would have never guessed that in a million years. 1991, despite winning two cups, although obviously did it as underdogs. The next one is maybe a little bit easier to get. They have not won their division, finished first in their division since 1988, the New York Islanders. Okay. And then number one blew me away.

With a drought of 37 seasons, they have not won their division since 1987. I have not finished first since 1987. Do you want to take a swing? There's no way it's the Oilers, right? It's the Oilers. Wow. that's crazy. Even though they won,

they've won two Stanley Cups and been to now five Stanley Cup finals. They have never finished first. Even 88, even the last Gretzky year, I think it must have been Calgary finished ahead. And then that, I mean, that's one of them where, when I saw that for something else I was working on, I feel like I could have got 25 teams deep.

I would have been repeating teams before I... I would have been like, I said Columbus, right, before I got to Edmonton. Right. It's wild. Anyways, we're... You got it. We're tied going into a game seven. Okay.

I have two categories left here, and I'm trying to be a little strategic. Okay. Head coaches of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Mike Babcock. Okay. They had to have coached a game. Oh. Come on.

Yeah. All right. I actually do have that in parentheses with it one coach, one game coach. So Brad Larson? Correct. John Tortorello. Correct. Did Doug McLean coach them?

It says here he did, I think probably on an interim basis. Okay. Dean Emerson. Correct. You did it. Pascal Vincent. Todd Richards, Scott Arneal, Claude, Noelle, Ken Hitchcock, Gary, Agnew, Gerard, Galant, Dave King are the ones you missed.

Wow. How has that team not won a division? The funny thing is, again, like, just the, it's always fun on this stuff, like, the ones that you miss or would have missed. I would not have got Ken Hitchcock. No, no, me neither. Was he one year there? Was that the one and done year for him? I think it might, I think that, I think he did two or three maybe.

Okay. God. Who did he coach one year? Edmonton, maybe? That's, I think that's exactly who it was, yeah. Wow. All right. The other category I had, a little too close to me, I was trying to avoid this, a little too close to most starts this year.

I had top ten goalies in losses this year. Oh, okay. Yeah, it probably would have been a lot of overlap. A lot of overlap. I'm assuming was Sam Montembow, the leader in that category? Not even close. He was one, two, three, four, five, six, seventh. Oh, wow.

Okay. I think, yeah. I'll just give them to you. U.C.S. A.gor Shasturkin. Jeremy Swamen. Alexander Giorgiyev. Uc, Uco Peckalukin, and Ilya Seroq, Sam Montabo, Joey DeCord, Lucas Dostole, Jordan Bennington, Carol Wilma. A bunch of guys were tied at the end there. All right.

But you win. I win. They say you're never in trouble until you lose at home. They're wrong. You never lost at home, and that held. serve. You know what? That's what I play all season for. Is the chance to get that home ice or not? I don't know.

Why you hit them with the plugs? Let's get out. I got I got all my usual stuff, podcast, newsletter, etc., etc. But the big news is Gentile and I have our annual bad commercial exchange post up today. So go ahead. I already read it. The consensus is that the American ads are much this year, and I agree with that. I think the Canadian ads were very bad this year based on repetition.

There seemed to be like only six ads up in Canada running during the playoffs, but as far as single serving, what the hell was that? Yeah, but now imagine those are repeated every single commercial break. Imagine you hearing Dwayne Jetsky and Biberty every commercial break. So it's not just, it's not just the quality. it is the repetition. Quantity and quality. Lacking.

You don't get accepted into the Hall of Fame. I'm, I don't want to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I think I should be in the Hall of Fame because. Yeah. I'm not doing this.

I've done my Liberty, Biberty rant like 50 times on various podcasts at this point, so I don't feel the need to circle back. And I never understood what you were talking about until. Right. But now you get it. Now he says Liberty Fine in the old commercial.

That's not the prop. Okay. All right. I'm not doing this. Elite Prospects draft guide is out today. I don't know if it's out like as of this recording. I actually haven't looked at the Slack today. So I couldn't tell you that for sure.

But I can tell you the draft guide is coming out on this very day, June 3rd. So not perfect time to sign up. There might even be a deal. associated with that. But yeah, their draft coverage kicking off. We have the QMJHL entry draft Top 50 coming today. A lot of coverage of like Gavin McKenna. Oh, we didn't talk about this.

Rumor is Gavin McKenna to Michigan State, question mark. Okay. TBD on that, though, because it seems like a lot of this stuff is going to get announced around the draft. like guys said, like Michael Mesa, I think is widely considered likely to play college hockey next year. Not sure where. Penn State, Michigan, BU, all in the mix, allegedly. But that probably won't be announced until the actual draft itself.

So stay tuned for all that, I guess. But then, yeah, elite prospects.com. Sign up for the draft guide. Sign up for all my takes and whatnot. You will not find better draft coverage anywhere. I'm telling you. Nobody's as comprehensive as our draft guide is. It's that simple.

And then go to patreon.com slash poxsoup, all kinds of bonus episodes, all kinds of different offshoot podcasts. You got Greg and his wife doing Top Chef recaps. I think the season finale is next week, week after for Top Chef this year. Me and SG doing Stick to Sports. me and Adam doing the wrestling podcast, all that kind of stuff.

Check it all out. Patreon.com slash puck soup. $5 for the puck soup bonus stuff. $8 for everything. And me and Sean are, in fact, going to go record a mailbag for the Patreon right now. So thanks for listening. Enjoy the Stanley Cup final.

Hopefully, you know, it's a good one. It was last year. I think they can do it again. All right. Thanks, folks. Bye. Bye-bye.