Puck Soup - Hockey's Back Baby, Gabe Polsky

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

The boys return from their summer Patreon sabbatical to talk NHL labor peace, Mitch Marner, Dustin Byfuglien, Patrik Laine, "The Princess Bride" reboot and to play another round of "The Down Goes Brown 'Is This A Movie?' Quiz." Plus, director Gabe Polsky on his new hockey documentary "Red Penguins." Sponsored by Away and Seatgeek.

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you'll commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wichenski of the Worldwide Leader in Sports ESPN and ESPN Plus, home of the National Hockey League. I'm Ryan Lamber from Yago. but we don't have any of that stuff.

I'm Sean McIndoo from the Athletic. And you're in Puck Soup as we return to the free earhole airwaves of wherever you get your podcasts. Happy end of summer, everybody. We're back for the exciting NHL season. What did you miss during the summer if you weren't on the Patreon a lot, frankly. You should probably go and pay for the Patreon right this second to see all of the things that you're going to do.

missed. But mostly you missed us to shoot in the shit on the mailbags and it was a lot of fun. So I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. It was an eventful summer, let's say. It was an eventful summer, yeah, exactly. What's going on? You know, this is issue one of the new comic run, but you have to go back and get issue zero, aka the summer stuff, to figure out what happened beforehand. It's a very simple equation. The one thing that we can say about this season is that it will not a year from now end in a lockout, apparently, as we are closer to labor peace in the... Let me ask you about labor peace. I was in college at the time, not to put an expiration date on your boy,

but why don't we talk about the fact that in 1997 there actually was labor peace? Like, they They actually got a CPA done without a lockout. I think we're all very default on saying that every time Gary Betman's gone into a labor negotiation, there's been a work stoppage. But I was reminded by somebody that in 1997, I guess it was, they actually did extend the CBA without incident. Can I be honest with you? I did not know that was a thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. It was, yeah. So it was, they extended it. They didn't reach a new CBA, which I think is the distinction. Every new CBA of the Gary Betman era has involved a lockout. In 1997, there had been the lockout in 94, the dragged into 95.

They got a six-year agreement out of that. Three years into it, they went, oh, we want to go to the Olympics and also do a bunch of expansion. It would kind of suck if we were in the middle of a lockout when we did that. Everybody knew that the big Armageddon was coming, but the two sides basically got together and agreed to kick the can down. the road and that's why you have a lockout that ended in 1995 with a six-year agreement and then the next one comes like nine years later instead of six. So I'll give them partial credit on that one, but they, it was not a new CBA. It was just let's keep playing under the terms of the old one. Yeah, I feel like Greg's source on that was Barry Getman.

Hey, you know, something nobody talks about. I actually, yeah. It was actually a reader who wrote in and said that my characterization in my column. It was actually Dill Bailey was the reader who, who chavded. I mean, at the time, I was on alt-dash, wreck dash, hockey, dash, NJ-Devles news group, yelling at what I would come to realize was Katie Baker later in life. You know, and like, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't interested in any of that off-ice shit until, okay, the only, the first time I was ever interested in any of it was when the fucking 95 lockout happened and it enabled my team to win the cup. Then I was interested in it. Then I'm like, why can't we play 48 games all the time? But then the 97 thing I wasn't cognizant of. And then, you know, obviously everybody became cognizant of it if you were of a certain age when they shut down the fucking league for a year. So this, but this, Sean, wouldn't this then feel a little bit like that? I mean, the talk out of the, the quote unquote, amicable talks has been the. idea that maybe they, you know, sort of revise a few things for the next three years, then

extend it three years beyond that and get us to like 2026. So this, this isn't a rewriting of the entire CBA kind of prospect. It does seem like this is more of a tweak year. Yeah. And it is, it, it is very similar to 97, which is potentially not great news, considering we know how the next CBA turned out in the 97th situation. But this is good news. Like, it's, I'm kind of a cynic when it comes to NHL CBAs and the way, especially Gary Bettman and the owners handle things. And I remain one.

But this is a good news story. This is the fact that both sides declined to opt out, the fact that we're, essentially guaranteed three more years of labor piece is a good thing. Now, it doesn't become a very good thing unless they continue to work together and they continue to work on a new CBA and we, in theory, can get a new CBA at any time. They can tear up the current agreement and put a new one in place with a eight or a 10-year term and guarantee us long-term stability anytime they want. And if they keep working towards that, great. If that begins to stumble a little bit and especially if it happens early on I think very much the players

are showing some good faith here as did the owners but if if the owner suddenly back off or start changing the tenor of the discussions I think the players might feel like there was a bit of a bait and switch here to just get them on board for a couple years and uh from these owners come on yeah exactly exactly so there's there's still ways this could go bad and it's it's it's not, you know, this isn't peace in our time and, uh, and that's the end of lockouts. And we all need to apologize to Gary Bettman for ever thinking that he would have a fourth lockout after following the same playbook three times in a row. But this is good news. This is, you know, if you're a hockey fan, you're going, should I feel happy about this? Yeah. You should. This is,

uh, this, this was better news than pretty much any of the realistic alternatives. Ryan, as, as, as the only member of the Puck Soup family with a subscription to the Daily Worker, how do you feel about this labor news? Well, I mean, it does feel like the players are, if there aren't going to be any tweaks to say how escrow works or whatever, you know, this isn't a great CBA for the players. It's maybe better than the last one, but not by a lot. And so, yeah, I'm a little dubious. Let me put it this way.

Anytime Jeremy Jacobs is like, you know what, I think they made a great decision. I feel like they didn't. So, and that was like, that was his quote the other day of, you know, sure, I've turned my team over to my family like, like a Logan Roy. Logan Roy. But, you know, I don't, I, I think he's still involved in some way with like, you know, decision making at the league level. And so, yeah, it's, how, how could you trust them? How could you trust them? Yeah.

Like when Jeremy Jacobs is like, no, no, no, you see, this Death Star is for mining. We're going to mine with the laser beam instead of blow up planets. It's a totally different kind of Death Star this time. You don't really want to trust it. Yeah, that's a tough sell for me. And in fact, I think part of the reason the players made this decision is that they don't trust the owners and that when they had to choose between, okay, we don't renew and we have three years to get a new deal, or we do decide to opt out, in which case they would still have had a full year to avoid a lockout.

They would still have had a full year to negotiate and come up with a deal. But I think the feeling was if we do that, Gary Bettman and the owners are immediately going to pull a big sulk and take their ball and go home and go right into adversarial mode like they always do. So is it in our best interest if we're not looking for radical changes or even if we are, is it in our best interest to do the, that over a little bit longer timeline rather than hand Gary Betman a chance to sit up in front of the media and complain about these nasty, greedy players and knowing that half the fans would probably take that bait and immediately jump on that bandwagon. Let's just do this over a little bit longer period of time. And it may well be the right decision. It's, I'm clearly, they put a lot thought into it. A lot of strategy went into it on both sides. And this is where we wound up.

But that's, you hit the nail on the head, which is that they're, they're scared. I mean, we've all known that the NHLPA is spineless when it comes to the big issues. They're not willing to fight. They'll always cave if when it comes to reevaluating and reconceiving and rethinking the current financial system. They're doing quite well in it in some cases, but it could still be better. like, for example, the abolishment of the salary cap and creating a luxury tax. But they're never going to fight for that because they don't have the stomach for it. And they don't have the spine for it. And they wouldn't win is the other problem.

Now, let me say this. The time that you do, the time that you fight, okay, is not when the owners are willing to shut down their league happily because they, in some case, it would, in some cases, would save money doing so, which was the case in 2005. Like, that was the thing about that lockout is that, like, half the owners in the league were like, fuck yeah, shut down the league. It's 2013, too. They, I'll save money. Guess what's going to, guess what would not happen in 2019?

They would not save money. Like, they, the league is doing, hold on, the league is doing well enough in almost every market where nobody wants the sport shut down. That's why the, the owners are playing ball. So if you were going to poll this, if you're the NHLPA, and say what moment of leverage could we possibly have against the owners, it's at a moment where they're all fat and happy and are going to the table and are being amicable and saying, let's just shake hands on it, boys, and go on and make our money. That's the moment when you fucking strike.

So two points there. First of all, if you're going to strike, I'm not convinced that the picture is as rosy as you're painting in, now or in 2020, maybe in 2022 when there's a new US TV deal, then yeah, at that point, that maybe they get even stronger there. But the thing is, if you're the players and you're looking to force that issue, you better be willing to miss a full season because the owners, even the ones who are doing well are more than happy to miss half a season. You miss half a season, which is what they did in 95 is what they did in 2013.

the players end up making half of their salaries and the owners make far more than half of their revenue because the playoffs are the profitable time. You've got to be willing to walk knowing that if you're going to inflict some pain on the owners, you've got to be willing to miss the playoffs, which means another full year, which means, okay, how much damage do we do to the league as a whole?

I don't know. I'm not convinced that there's a situation right now, realistically, where the players could win on those big issues, which doesn't mean that they shouldn't take the fight to the owners for a change on some other things. I just, to me, I'm not willing to try to fight Brock Lesnar. I don't know if that makes me spineless or if it just makes me not dumb and not someone who's going to get my face punched in for something I had no chance of having it go any differently. Well, I think the two things I'd say that are both related to the concept of fear. I read about it this week on ESPN and the two things that kind of stuck out to me are, one,

the fact that the power structure of the NHLPA, the players ages 30 to 33 that kind of drive the bus there have no desire to lose any time. They just don't want to. They're doing quite well for themselves and they don't see, they don't think the issues that are on the table right now for the PA are strong enough, uh, where they would ever want to, you know, encourage a lockout. And the sequence of events would have been that they reopened the CBA. The NHL gives them a shit offer. The players reject it. Then the owners lock them out. Like that's, that's the sequence of everybody in the sport thought was going to happen. The other thing I'll say is that the phrase poke the bear had been whispered at my ear for the last week by more people that I care

to count. And you're absolutely right where they, the talks right now are better. and both sides will say this, and they're completely right, are more amicable and productive and not shitty than they've ever been, maybe between the NHL and the players. And maybe it's because they're dealing with surface issues and they're not down to brass tax. It's a lot easier to just be like, let's not reopen than actually like trying to figure out how to fuck to fix escrow.

But I think that to a man, the players believed that if they reopen the CBA, the owners would have just fucking operation dumbo dropped every single concession they possibly could ever want from the players on that bargaining table and then they're fucked. And then all of a sudden long-term contracts are being debated and everything else. There was a legit fear of that and probably, like you said, a founded fear that that was going to be what was going to happen. Absolutely. I mean, you saw it even in the NHL's announcement on September 1st where they had the first option to opt out. and they didn't.

And they put right in the first paragraph of their announcement, we are not happy with the current CBA and there are things we want to change. Like, that was a very obvious, nice deal you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it. You didn't even have to read between the lines on that. You just read the lines, which was the NHL saying, we are not looking for a fight right now, but if you seem to be looking for a fight,

we're going to try to break this barstool over your head right away. And maybe, you know, the question is, is that fight worth having? If you're a player, what is it that you're actually asking for? Because if your big issue is escrow, that's not, that's one that you almost can get a long way to work just internally by figuring out how the system should work rather than by going to battle with the owners. So with that metaphor, are you saying they may invite Dave Portnoy to the bargaining table to try to affect change in the negotiations by bringing in a bar stool? That's exactly what I'm saying.

Distract them with pizza reviews and misogyny? Yeah. Oh, man, that's dirty pool. Dirty pool right there. I don't know. Like, labor peace is a foreign concept to many of us in the NHL. It's kind of good to have it. It's kind of good to not go into the season with a dark cloud hanging over it.

I do think the players did themselves well by taking the Olympics and pretty much a World Cup off the table and making that sign up with kind of a side deal versus having it be on the table for a 2020 expiration date. I don't know. And talking around, like, it does seem like there are a number of different sort of ways that they can figure out the escrow thing that are plausible and reachable on both sides. So who the fuck knows? Maybe they all got their shit together for once. And we don't have to go through this in two, three years. Can I just throw one other thing in there that I think kind of leads us into our next topic? But how funny is it going to be when this new CBA that will take effect in three years,

when the owners go and say, oh, by the way, one of the things we want to change is we don't want the last year of, the last salary year in the contract to determine your qualifying offer. And all of these RFAs who have signed below market deals because of the qualifying offer rule suddenly get screwed over by the other 95% of the players who go, yeah, sure, we'll take that. And, yeah, just keep it in mind. Also, the high qualifying offer year is a violation of the spirit of the CBA, and all of you have to give me a third round pick for it. Yeah.

That could happen to. Maybe since they've got three years to write the CBA, this time, they could actually write one that had functional rules instead of just vague spirit of talk. Maybe they could actually, you know, think of situations that might happen and account for that rather than whatever mood Gary Bettman's in on a given day. Well, I think what you're trying to say, Sean, is that there is still a lot to unpack in these CBA negotiations. And if you're going to pack anything, I miss you. If you're going to pack anything, make sure that it's in a way bag. Away is one of my favorite sponsors of this Puckookees podcast.

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Is he go by Mitchell? Is it a Greg on a succession thing where now Mitch has become Mitchell officially because now he's got money? I don't know. No, he still wants to be like the regular guy. Mitch. The regular guy. Regular Mitch. Regular Mitch gets his money.

Way to go, Paul. I guess the first, way to go, Paul. Right. Oh, and by the way, did Elliot Friedman have that story first? Was he the first one to break it? I think he was, yeah. Despite all of the groundwork that had been laid for months and months and months by a competitive reporter at TSN.

Mitchell Marner makes 10.893, the 93 for Dougie Gilmore, a million dollars against the cap through 2025. The drama ends, or does the drama just begin for the Toronto? beliefs. The drama's not any. First of all, I just got to say, I love the sheer balls to get 10.8 million and then need to tack on a cutesy number onto it, but not even tack on your own number 16, but to be like, I'm going to, we're going to use some other guy's number that was much higher. I love that. That is, uh, that is fantastic to me. Look, hey, it. It, We spent all summer kind of rolling our eyes at Paul Marner and Darren Ferris and they won.

They got their deal. They got their crazy number. They got a number that either will reset the market or in theory probably should because it's well out of bounds of what typically happens on these sorts of deals. Good for them. You know, this is. if you're a Leafs fan, maybe you don't love the cap implications, although you probably do love having the player back in the lineup. But from Mitch Martyr's perspective and the people around him,

they called their shot and they hit it into the upper deck. They got it. Ooh, like Vlad Guerrero Jr. Well, not so much lately with young Vladdy, but yeah. Struggling a bit at the plate, Greg. what'd you think Ryan I know that a lot of people are very mad that he got all this money

that he said he was going to get and would not sign for less than and you know I guess what I would say is I feel like this is a roughly fair valuation of the player if he were a UFA like you know he's making a million dollars less than Artemi Panarin

and I have a pretty good idea of who's going to be more valuable over the next six years between the two of them. And it's not Artemi Panarin, right? Because, you know, this kid's 22. He's signed for his entire prime. And, you know, he doesn't have to be as good as he was last year to be, you know, roughly worth the contract. He can be a little bit worse. And the good news is the way these things work, aging curves and what have you, he's probably going to be a little better or just as good. as he has been. So, you know, I can't, I can't see where the Leafs, like, made a mistake in giving

him this money, except to say that, yeah, you know, it probably does reset the market, but maybe the market should be reset. The market should, I was going to say, the market, like, was not fair for young players anyway, because it was just a bunch of, like, artificial, oh, we shouldn't actually have to pay you as much as your worth because of, you know, these reasons that we've all just agreed upon and they're 100% artificial. Yeah. And so, yeah, like, he is now being paid what you would pay if he were on the open market and maybe even a little less.

I can buy the idea that he took a little bit of a hometown discount if that's what Panarin's worth at his age. You know, so, yeah, I'm a Marner fan and I think he did well. The question is going to be if it does reset the market, because if we now see, like, If Braden Point signs a deal that looks kind of like this and Miko Rattenant and that, then yeah, that'll mean the market is shifted. And generally speaking, when we see deals like this and the market does shift, the deal almost always ends up being worth it, even though there's a sticker shock initially. Like it makes me think a little bit of Leondricidal where when that deal got signed, a lot of us went, whoa, that's a lot of money. A similar situation even in the sense that you had the big start.

our first overall pick teammate who was making this amount. So how do you reconcile that with what the number two guys should get? A lot of us thought, whoa, that's way too much money. That was two years ago. It looks like a steel now. Yeah, do you ever see Londisital on any list of bad contracts? No. Now, part of that is because he's lived up to it.

His first year under the deal was Soso, but last year he was fantastic. But also part of it was that it kind of shifted the market a little bit. And yeah, if this is the kind of thing where it's going to be tough for Mitch Marner to live up to this deal in year one, just because again, like the sticker shock of it is going to be there. Even if he has 94 points again, and, you know, Ryan, you said he's probably going to be as good. You look at some of his numbers. If he is as good on the ice as he was last year, he probably doesn't finish with 94 points again. Like there were some, there was some luck involved in getting him to that, that total. So, oh, sure.

Like, I'm basing it all around. Like, it's not, it's not just point production. Right, which is what you should, except from like a perception stand. If he comes in with an 85 point season next year, you know, there are going to be some fans going, oh, well, he's not as good. Oh, no. And, and like I said this last week, but, you know, if you don't think the second Leafs lose two games in a row, all the jackals in the fucking Toronto media are going to be like, now, look, you got $40 million to, you know. And the other thing, the other thing, the other way to frame this is, well, now you have Tavares Matthews, Marner and Nylander, and they're about $40 million. Like, on average, I'd say you're getting value for that money.

And maybe the other problems with the Leafs cap allocation are lower in the lineup, and nobody will bring that shit up because, well, Cody, Cici, you know, he plays 26 minutes a night. Yeah. No, and look, if this becomes like the Dracidal deal where two years from now, we're looking back going, oh, okay, then the Leafs are in good shape because they've got all their guys signed long term. Morgan Riley even is a couple more years after this. He's the next really tough one, but they've got the key young pieces signed long term. So if the market goes up and up and up, two or three years from now, the Leafs are looking good shape. the other option is that this becomes something more like maybe the carry price deal where that happened everyone went whoa that's a lot of money and it it kind of didn't reshape the market in in a meaningful way at least not right away maybe with brabrovsky kind of joining him in that that ballpark it does

now but it just kind of sat there on its home but yeah like i'm i'm i'm with ryan the objection here for the leaps is rfas are supposed to make less than ufas they're not supposed to make make the UFA full value. Yeah, which is, it might be, but it's also how it works everywhere else. So whether it's horseshit or not, this is how fans have come to expect these deals get done. But you're right that that's probably the wrong way to look at it. Because I saw something, and I can't remember who wrote it, but somebody wrote about,

you know, are the least paying too much to Mitch Marner, Austin Matthews, William Nealander? And then as an aside, they said, the one deal. nobody really seems to have a problem with is John DeVaris. Well, John Tavares makes 11 million against the cap, which is pretty much the same amount Mitch Marner makes. And they're both signed for six more years. Does anybody think John DeVaris over the course of the next six years is going to outproduce and outperform Mitch Marner? Maybe, but probably not, right? Like I would bet on Mitch Marner to be the more valuable player over the full six years. Over the full six years of that. And yet, we all just kind of look at John DeVaris and go, yeah, that's what players who are that good cost.

And yet here's Mitch Marner and we're kind of going, oh, that's a lot more. Again, it's just entirely based on what the market is as opposed to what it should be. And if this deal shifts the market from what it is to what it should be, it's going to work out fine for everyone involved. If it doesn't, for whatever reason, cause that shift, then the Leafs are probably going to be looking back and having some second thoughts. Yeah, and two things on that. First of all, thank you for mentioning that the market does change and the salary cap does go up.

It always does. Perceptions of contracts. Yeah, perceptions of contract can change over time. For example, the team that is bought up the most when discussing the Leafs and their current cap situation, Patrice Bergeron signed his contract in 2013. David Crouchy signed his contract in 2014. 12?

Around the same time, I feel like. 2014. Yeah. And then Brad Marchand signed, I believe, in 2016. Yeah, the Pasternak contract is great. I don't know how that fuck that got signed. But even the Pasternet contract, this is a guy who had played, I think, three years, was coming off a great year, but had two years where he was a 20-point player. And then has the breakthrough year.

I mean, that was a case of, do you bet on yourself or do you not? And he didn't. The other thing to say is that the. the contract, like, there's something to be said for a team with a great player who's signed for less than market value. And you go, well, I couldn't possibly give you more than Patrice Bergeron, although they did it with fucking David Creachy for some reason. But that's, that's a great point. They're like the Austin Matthews and John Tavares contracts, which I don't think too many people had an issue with as far as their A.A.V. Maybe on Matthews a little bit.

Like, once you establish that as your ceiling, like every, that's a magnet. And that does make it tough for the, like the Leafs, the young core is locked up, but they, for example, have got only one defenseman signed past this current season. They've got to get Tyson Berry done. They've got to get Jake Muzon done. They've got all these. It's going to be very tough for them to go to Tyson Barry and say, hey, you know, we're trying to build a Stanley Cup winner here. Can you take a little bit less? He would very rightfully look at that and potentially say nobody else is taking a little less. Everyone else is getting fair market value, but not less than fair market value. So why should I? Versus a situation like Boston where I think we give way too much credit to the Bruins for being the master negotiators or to the players.

The players are taking less because they want to know. The players took less. Like Brad Marchand, too. Like he had he signed his deal before he became a hundred point player. Now it looks like a great bargain. And by the way, that deal initially got like, how can you give him that much money and that much term? Exactly. That's what I was going to say.

Like, fucking people, we're all goldfish. Peter Shearrelli got run out of town because of his contracts. Like, that was the reason. One of the reasons he got turfed was because of how much money the Bruins had on their cap to their elite players. This was fucking just a few years ago, this was the case. Yeah. So it's amazing how things can change where all of a sudden the Bruins are like the model of economic conservatism versus a few years ago, where their GM literally got kicked out the door for the contracts that are on their cap for.

Yeah, and that great Tyler Sagan contract, everybody loves so much now. I wonder who signed that one. Oh, that was, that's right. Brad Mershan was a 20-goal 50-point guy, pretty much every year of his career, has a breakout 37-goal season at the age of 28, and the Bruins go to him and say, do you want an eight-year contract that pays you at the time towards the top tier of wingers? and he goes, yeah, I'll lock in for that.

You know, could he get more right now if he was a free agent if he had, quote, unquote, bet on himself? Yeah, of course he could. But at the time, it's not like he heroic, it's not like he, everybody was going, oh, Brad Mawcern's going to get $8 million and he signed for six because he wanted to win. No, he made a, what was probably at the time, a smart choice that, yeah, maybe, I'm sure he's still perfectly happy with. So this is kind of how it goes. Same thing with Tampa. I mean, when you talk about guys taking less, really the only guy really jumps out at me that I think maybe it does apply to is Stamcoast. Just because he had walked right up to UFA.

And he could have gotten 10 or something like that somewhere. And he did take less to stay in a situation that he wanted to be in. But most of the rest of these, it's a question of timing. It's a question of, you know, did Nathan, it was Nathan McKinnon stupid? Was his agent stupid? But no, he signed at a time where the market was one thing and it shifted. And again, it might shift and continue to shift. And the cap will probably continue to go up, maybe by quite a lot,

depending on how things go with the TV deal. And this all might look really good for the Leafs. But at the same time, all of their guys now, Marner, Matthews, Nielander, they all got, even if you look back and say they got fair money, it was at the upper range of fair money. And the one thing I do remember is a year ago or whenever it was when Brandon Shanahan kind of did one of his very rare media things where he got up and said, hey, when we were in Detroit, we all took a little less because it was about the Stanley Cup. And he sort of put that out there that he would like to see the Leafs players taking a bit less. Right.

That didn't work. I think we can successfully say now that that didn't work. Because everybody could read the parenthetical, which is parentheses, because we were old and rich. It was the reason that we could take a little bit off the cap. It's a nice thought to say, like, it is a hard cap league. Every dollar that goes into your pocket, if you're a cap team is a dollar, they don't have available to spend somewhere else. It is a nice thought to say, hey, if everyone takes two million less, that's another top pairing defensemen we can afford to help us win a cup. It is a nice thought.

but it's not the player's responsibility to do that. And also they weren't doing that in a cap situation. Exactly. Like the old Leafs team. I give him credit for trying. It was a nice thought at the time. It's a nice thought when we try to retroactively apply it to other teams, even if it isn't necessarily accurate.

But whatever you think of these deals that the Leafs have given out, they might be fair deals. They're not discounts by any stretch. They're not discounts by any stretch. And I got to, the other thing I was going to say is that, listen, I'm a card carrying Kyle Dubus fan. I want the best for this guy. I love that he's in the position that he's in.

Although life is much, much, much more fun with the Leafs as a perpetual loser, I wish nothing but the best for him in building a Stanley Cup champion there. I love the fact he came out and said, look, we're trying to do things differently. Like, we understand that this. is not the approach the teams typically take in building a championship team. We understand that having to hit the fucking reset button every year or two on your entire defense corps may not necessarily be the way to go about these things. But I love the fact that he's doing it.

The whole point of elevating Kyle Dubas to that job was to bring in somebody that was going to be a Steve Jobs think different kind of guy, right? And so this is the think different. This is, okay, we understand that we could, we could, You know, we have access to cap-friendly. We see how many of the contracts don't extend beyond this year on our defense on our defense and things of that nature. We're going to have to kind of figure shit out. But what a fucking foundation to build on when you have Matthews and Marner and Tavares and Nielander locked up for as long as you do.

Like that's a good starting point. And look, and I think that. The other piece of it is, you know, I know Dubas is coming in for some criticism on this, this Marner deal because it is high. It's higher than the market would tell you it should be. and that's fair. He's the boss. Buck stops with him. But there is an element of it where it's like,

okay, what was he supposed to do? Because the other option was Mitch Marner doesn't come to camp. Mitch Marner doesn't open the season. Because Marner wasn't going to suddenly cave and take a three-year, $5 million bridge deal. It was going to be a real high number no matter what. So is Kyle Dubas getting criticized now? Maybe rightfully so.

Yeah. But if Mitch Marner wasn't in camp, and wasn't starting the season, he'd get ripped for that too. So it was, again, like, I give, it sounds maybe like I'm being sarcastic and I'm not. I give credit to Mitch Martner's camp. A lot of us rolled our eyes at the numbers that were floating around. They held firm. They anchored the conversation at a much higher number than you would think would be realistic.

And they managed to drag it to that point. And that's exactly what you want from the people who are doing your. your negotiation for you. And if they, if they win a cup in the next six years, no one's going to give a fucking shit. Exactly. No one will care.

Nobody. How much he makes. No one will. So that's the gamble. And Dubus knows that. Dubus knows that people will be too busy building a statue of him in front of the fucking arena to ever worry about how much Mitch Martyr is having a, uh, on his cap, if they win a cup.

And that's the gamble that you take. Uh, speaking of money. And fucking chaos. How did, how did the chaos gene, somehow get transferred from Toronto to Winnipeg within the span of a week. How did that happen? No kidding. Yeah.

Jesus. All right. So let's start with the big news as we were doing the podcast today, which is the Dustin Bufflin news. Bob McKeown, but Bufflin took a leave of absence from the team, the venerable Bob McKenzie. We should always use that modifier when discussing him. Says that he is considering his future in the NHL, which I think we could all read as

potential retirement for Dustin Bufflin, which would take the Winnipeg Jets blue line from decimated to apocalyptic decimated if Dustin Bufflin all of a sudden is off that blue line as well. Chirac gone, Myers gone, Truba gone, Bufflin gone. Everybody already was sort of thinking that Winnipeg might be on the downslope to be outside of the playoffs looking in. This would certainly put them on the outside of the playoffs looking in if Dustin Buclin. off when is off the team. Especially if it plays out like it sounds like it could where he is taking time to figure out

what he wants to do, which on the one hand, as a T, this guy's been a heart and soul guy on your team, the players love him, the coaches love him, you want him to take all the time he needs and make the right decision. The flip side is that you're two weeks from opening night and you're up against the cap, you've got two good young RFAs you need to get signed. You need some clarity on this. And him kind of saying, geez, maybe I'm going to walk away for a little bit.

Frank Seirelli kind of tweeted out the ways that could affect their cap. There's a scenario under which Dustin Bufflin stays on the cap. But even if they suspend him and he comes off the cap, if he's still trying to make his mind up, what happens if he decides in November he wants to come back and suddenly you've got to plug that number? Like, it's, it's a complete mess. He can sign in Carolina if he wants to come back.

That's what I understand. That's how this works now. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, it's, obviously that first and foremost, you hope things are okay with Dustin Bufflin and just wherever he's at. And if he's, if he's done and he doesn't want to play anymore, then then that's, that's obviously his prerogative. And you hope that he's well enough physically, mentally.

everything to either continue his career or enjoy his life or whatever it is. That's first and foremost. But from a hockey perspective and roster building and how are we going to make the playoffs in the central division, this is just a nightmare scenario for the Jets because if they don't get some clarity soon, I don't know how they manage this heading into the season. Yeah, that defense stinks with Dustin Bufflin. So without him, they're going to have some real problems. Like Neil Pionk, number one defenseman, like, holy shit, that might be a real thing that they have to think about.

And Neil Pionk's terrible, so yikes. Oh, come on. Terrible. Terrible. And then you've got to go out to address that through trades with a GM who notoriously doesn't like to trade very much. My understanding is Rasmus Ristolin is available. And as we all know, teams that have him as their number one defensemen do well. And don't worry, Justin Falk may have Winnipeg on his list of places he'd like to go because it's close to where he hunts.

Is that with that? Okay, because I found that fascinating because we're always told that like Winnipeg is the team that shows up on every no trade list, that it's like Winnipeg, Ottawa and Edmonton before Connor McDavid and maybe afterwards as well. but yeah, I found that because Pierre LeBron said that he's, Justin Falk, has them on his okay list. And I was wondering if that's because he actually would go there or if it was because at some point they looked at their old blue line and went, Winnipeg's never going to be trading for a defenseman. We don't need to put them on the list. Whoops.

Well, like, or it could be maybe he's buddies with Lake Wheeler, who the fuck knows. But I know for, I know, like, in talking with Justin Fawf through the years, it did not surprise me at all that he would be like, no, I don't want to move to the beach. That guy is your deep woods, bow and arrow, living in a pile of leaves until a deer comes along kind of Minnesota motherfucker. And I imagine that kind of guy is attracted to Winnipeg and the Alburton, I'm sorry, the Manitoban wilderness is where he'd probably want to be. So I get it, if that's in fact the situation where he would take a trade there.

The other thing that's going on with, by the way, I don't mean to be flip about Bufflin. I hope everything's okay off the ice. You know, and taking the approach of what this means or the roster in no means is putting aside whatever the hell he's going through because I'm sure it's beyond hockey related to the decision-making process that he's up against. So best of best wishes to buff. The other thing Winnipeg's going through right now is the Patrick Line A drama. Not only the fact. Wait, hold on.

We got to also mention us, who was it? Sammy Niku and Christian Vassaline and got in a car accident the other day and missed a couple of days of camp. That's true, too. Yeah. Maybe they're veering closer to where they're becoming Ottawa senators west than they are at Toronto Maple Leaf Coast. So Patrick Linae is waiting on a contract. No one really knows what that contract's going to look like. And meanwhile, our beautiful goal-scoring finished boy goes to the local.

Finnish language media and says, you know, I would really like to, you know, play with much better players than the players that they give me to play with. And also, I decided that I need to play with maybe good players on another team somewhere. And it was very awkward for the Winnipeg Jets to all of a sudden have a guy be like, yeah, I should be a topliner. Fuck this. Well, it's hard to disagree that he has not been put in maybe the best position. Like, the thing it reminded me of is, Evgeny Malkin comes out over the summaries. Like, I was fucking awful last year, blah, blah, blah.

And then it comes out. Also, I wanted to not play with Phil Kessel anymore. Right. And now who's going to be on his line? That's right, Brandon Sutter. So it's like, oh, yeah, like, maybe be careful what you wish for because, you know, you might get it. And, yeah, it's a, it's a. weird situation where, you know, you can't really, um, you can't really, like, blame

Linae for, for wanting to maybe play with guys who are actually going to be able to get him the puck and that kind of thing, but, at the same time. But you can blame him for saying it out loud, knowing how. Yeah, I think you can't. It's not, it's, it's, look it. It's nobody's fault that Paul Stasney would rather be in Las Vegas than Winnipeg. They tried to give him a center. He had a center for like, uh, 20 games. then I decided not to stick around. I'm fascinated by what this contract's going to end up looking like. I have to imagine it's going to be a bridge.

It's going to be your Tim O'Meer special of a big final year on a three-year deal. I see shit like that. If I'm Patrick Blaney, I don't even want to do three years. I want to do like one or two. Two. Erose last year and get that out of there. The thing with this deal is it's always struck me. It's kind of weird.

It's the hardest one to do out of all the RFAs, because it's, it's, we have the least, we, we're still not completely sure what this player is versus some of the other guys who are a bit more established. So it makes it the hardest deal to do, but in a way that in theory makes it the easiest deal to do because you don't have to worry about do we do eight years. No, of course you don't do eight years at this point. You do, you don't do six, you don't do five, you do as short as possible and try to get some clarity on whether you've got the next Alexander Rovetchen here, which he, might be or something much, much less than that, which he also might be. It kind of reminds me of Teresenko. When Teresenko was a younger player, there was a consideration that he was a little

one-dimensional. And I think that's the knock on lining right now. Like, he is a fucking next-level goal score. There's no question about that. He is, except that for most of last year, he wasn't, even that, which is the thing. Like, he's going to be one-dimensional if one-dimension is scoring goals because they're so few guys in the league you can do it. You could be one-dimensional if maybe you do some other shit okay as well.

And that's the issue I think that they had with Lining last year is that when he's not scoring goals, he's really not worth putting out there on a regular basis because he doesn't do a lot of other things good. But when he is scoring goals, he's the second best goal scorer potentially in the league. So it's an interesting country because that was the knock on Terrace Anko that he was one-dimensional player. The Blues went whole hog, man. his second contract was an eight-year deal.

And now that contract looks pretty damn good because if anybody saw him play in the playoffs last year, knows that he's a fucking multi-dimensional player now. So I do understand the notion that you may want to take the gamble and sign them long term. But if you're Linae, you don't do that at all. No, no. Non-starter. You just get on yourself. Yeah, yeah.

A bit of a pickle. Mike Lute is the agent for both Linae and Miko Ranton. And he said today, actually, that Rennon, Ranton is comparable as Mitch Marner. So say goodbye to your quaint cap-friendly salary structure, Colorado Avalanche, because Miko's gunning for Mitch. Well, and he's not, that's not an unreasonable. This again, we get back to, did Mitch Marner actually reset the market?

And if he does, then Miko Rantin, yeah, should be getting an eight-figure cap hit. And if not, then, or if, if, as seems to be the case with some of these other deals, everybody's not quite sure, and so you just kick the can down the road on a bridge. I don't know. But yeah, I think clearly Joe Sackick's argument of nobody should make more than Nathan McKinnon is not going to have a good run. David McKinnon makes $6.3 million through 2023. Not as valuable as Bob Horvats deal, though, from what I understand in the Vancouver.

The best contract in the NHL, according to Vancouver. Like, how fucking great would it be if Joe Sacko was just like, no, man, you're going to take 6.299 if you want to sign with the Colorado Avalanche because nobody makes more than McKinnon through 2023. Good luck. He's got like a fucking $6.3 million against the cab. Oh, God, what a wizard he'd be. Yeah, I think this is going to be one of those deals where they're going to have to cave and pay them more than McKinnon, don't you? Yeah, of course they do. Even if it's a bridge, like, I know these three-year deals are now all the rage with the big qualifying offer, but.

I don't see how you're going to get him to, like, he's not taking the Brock Besser deal unless his agent is very bad at his job. Exactly. I mean, the bottom line is that when he is on that team, the team is quite good. He's a kind of player that puts fannies and seats. And speaking of fannies and seats, with millions of live event tickets from sports and live music to comedy and more, seat geek has the tickets you're looking for all in one place. I think does a C plus for this one?

honestly, like, it's fine. So, you know, I've, I've come to realize that it doesn't matter how great the transitions are. I feel like you're grading on a curve against me. Every time, we've established this last season. Every time Sean does a fucking ad read, it's like, oh, oh, my God, he shit out a brick of gold. Oh, maybe I do a little more effort into their transition.

I don't know. It's like, oh, what a, what a fucking hack. It's like, you know, the quality of, of the ad read at the end of a traffic report on news radio. Yeah, it sounds like you're really upset that you're about to get. fired from S&L right now. You know, I'm just trying to push the envelope

with like transitions. Well, the problem with comedy is he can't say anything anymore. You really can't. And that's true. And everybody agrees with that. Yeah. No one gave Dave Chappelle all that money to say anything he wants. You can't say anything anymore. You can't wait. Can you say it?

So anyway, C-keek rates each deal on a scale of 1 to 10 and displays them on interactive seabapap. The biggest problem with that was his name, Shane Gillis situation was it came out that Lauren Michaels was legit like or we have to have a comedian

on the show that plays to a conservative audience because we're too liberal. And it's like, let's go get a guy who says racial slurs. That's what conservatives actually do love 100% of the time. So, conservatives love featured players.

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I've found to find tickets. As you know, I'm a New York Jets fan. Things could be better. Our quarterback is mono. Don't know if you heard that. And I know if I want to see any good football this year, I probably have to buy a ticket to see the Niners who actually are good. And if I'm going to do that, I'm going to probably use a Seeky app.

No, check that. I'll definitely use a Ciki app because I know getting them Niners tickets to get a good seat at the game, mind you, is going to be a tough, tough task. Seekek will even give you $10 off your first Seekek purchase. All you have to do is use their promo code. Download the CKeeK app today. enter the promo code soup. S-O-U-P.

That's bill soup for $10 off your first purchase. That's promo code soup for $10 off your first purchase. Seekek, a proud sponsor of the PuckSoup podcast for multiple seasons. And thank you so much everybody who uses this offer and then tweets out pictures to us and to Seekek because they always love to see it. Apparently so, because they keep sponsoring this dumb show. Seekkeek sponsoring this dumb show. Who's our guest today, Ryan?

Our guest today is Gabe Polsky, who he's a filmmaker who you might remember. He did a movie called Red Army that was very critically acclaimed a few years ago about the Soviet hockey team. And now he's done a new movie called Red Penguins that is probably about to be critically acclaimed. I haven't seen any of the reviews. I saw the movie. It's great. And it's about basically what happened to the Red Army team after the fall of the Soviet Union. one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.

And yeah, like, it was a really good movie, like, very Cohen Brothers-esque in terms of, like, the characters and the scenarios that, like, literally have... This is a documentary film, and, like, you're not going to believe how wild some of the stories are about just, like, what happens when, you know,

the most successful hockey team in the history of the sport just no longer has funding and no longer has a... fan base and all the, you know, actual good Russian players went over to the NHL. And it's unbelievable. So just to be clear, because I was confused, Red Penguin, not a documentary about the time Yvgeny Malkin found out that Brandon Sutter was going to be on his line.

Boy. That had nothing to do with it. No? No. So, but what, so the reason Penguin comes into it is that the Red Army team basically made a deal with the owner- of the Pittsburgh Penguins to like make them a marketable club. And so they sent over like a marketing guy who's a real character to, to, you know, make them popular again and sell tickets and stuff.

And they sold a lot of tickets, but, you know. Well, you have to see the movie to see how it turns out. You do. You do. Here's Gabe. Hey, everybody. It's Ryan. On the line with me here is writer, director, producer, Gabe Polsky.

who you might remember his work from the, what was it, 2014 Red Army film about the Soviet hockey team. Yeah, yeah. And now he has a new one out. Or is it out now or is it coming out? No, it's actually premiering. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. I'm in Toronto and big hoopla over there right now. Yeah, so this one's called Red Penguins.

And it is about, you know, a lot of stuff, but it's mainly about this marketing guy who the penguins, the Pittsburgh Penguins, sent over to kind of make the Soviet or former Soviet national team after the fall of the Soviet Union more marketable, I guess you would say, right? Yeah, yeah, basically they You know the penguins Had this crazy opportunity When the communism fell and the Soviet Union fell part Where this great you know hockey dynasty One of the greatest ever Red Army hockey team was you know Went from being the greatest team in the world to almost a year later like

Facing extinction you know all the players have gone to the NHL and and and they were bankrupt basically So the military couldn't fund the hockey anymore. And so they went to the NHL teams and tried to get, you know, a sucker to invest in the, in Red Army and buy the team, essentially. And so this really kind of fun and eccentric owner of the penguins, Howard Baldwin thought it was a great idea to buy the team. And he thought that, you know, there would be a lot of, he'd get kind of a first look at a lot of the young players coming out, you know, know, from that Red Army system, not the older ones, but younger players and sort of get a first look at them. And he also thought that, you know, financially there might be an opportunity to make money

there in Russia, bring sponsorship and kind of transform this team. At the time, the team was, like, totally falling apart, and the building was falling apart, everything, and sort of, the Penguins came in and kind of introduced capitalism to the Red Army hockey team. Yeah, and, you know, in the movie, you show kind of like the backdrop of everybody's just scrambling into the, you know, the collapsed Soviet Union. And, you know, there's the McDonald's with a hammer and sickle under it and that kind of thing where it's like, wow, they just really went for it. Like, the extent to which just American capitalism kind of poured into this country with maybe not much regard for the instability, I guess you would say. say. Yeah. They wanted to be the first to get in there and really, you know, there's, I think,

180 million people there or that's a lot of people and money and kind of minds to influence. They obviously have a lot of resources. So there are oil companies coming in, all sorts of, you know, trying to kind of state their territory. They thought that, you know, it was the best time to kind of get in with Russia and collaborate at that time. Yeah. So, you know, they, you know, part of it too is they take, like you say, the most famous hockey, or the most successful, certainly

hockey team ever, like to this day. And they say, you know, we're going to rebrand you and we're going to call you the Red Penguins. Yeah, it's kind of an insane

proposition, you know, that this military, that the military would even allow that, obviously. Because, you know, to name them the penguins, it's like, you know, and then later on, obviously, in the film, you know, Disney takes an interest. I mean, can you imagine, you know, Disney owning this military team and they were going to change everything about it, which is sort of a farce, you know? Yeah. And the thing that, I mean, you know, for me, as a hockey fan, you know, I remember.

as a kid, I was, you know, maybe 9, 10, 11 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed and the events of this film take place. And, you know, you don't kind of think about, oh yeah, like, Victor Tietanov is still the coach of the Red Army team at this point. And

the idea of like Victor Tekinov just sitting there, because he was, if I remember correctly, a pretty hardline you know, communist or party man at the very least. Yeah, he was a carbidist. And, you know, the idea of him just sitting there, like, watching all this happening, obviously he's not in the film because he died in, what, 2014, 2015, something like that.

But just, you know, the idea of him sitting there and dealing with all this is, that alone was fascinating to me. Yeah, I mean, the idea that this guy, it's got to be the most humiliating. thing to witness for him. A guy who, you know, all he knew was sort of communism. And then all of a sudden, you know, the penguins come in and they start introducing all these crazy halftime shows and, you know, strippers and bears and people are drinking beer and the stadium's filling up. And it's just, it becomes this crazy circus happening in the arena.

and they had no fans before penguins came in and the penguins literally filled the arena but yet there was the the Tickenoff's team was absolutely terrible there was nothing really to see it was just a show and people were coming in the building because they heard that it was just oh wow we got to go here it's a show

they would get free stuff they would get free razors and beer and people were just coming because they wanted all the free stuff and it became like basically a party there which is absolute antithesis of what Tekinov cared about, which was like hockey. So he had the greatest players in the world before. Then he had absolutely nothing, but then the buildings were full. So people were coming and watching terrible hockey. It was almost like a total paradox.

Yeah, it reminded me of, you know, I don't know how closely you followed the NHL after the, or, you know, when the Carolina hurricanes first moved to North Carolina. Carolina, but like, you know, they were giving a car away every day and this like weird to end. And literally the Red Penguins gave away a Jeep. And a guy was like, oh, no, I will get robbed and maybe murdered. Please just give me like money for this and I don't want the car. Yeah, yeah, because literally there was mafia always in the building and anyone, that guy knew that as soon as he left with the car that he would get robbed

and you know he probably would never see the car again you know so he basically negotiated a deal with the dealer on the ice when he won the car to get his money to get a third of the price back yeah and yeah I guess we should

yeah but I agree with you yeah it is funny like you know comparing it to NHL cities like that don't necessarily like have a ton of hockey, like youth hockey, like, let's just say Tampa or, you know, like all those, those southern areas, Carolina, you know, it's not like you have tons of kids always playing hockey, there's probably more niche, but, you know, you don't know why people, people are going to the game, they don't even know a lot about hockey, you know, but they just think that it's,

like, the funnest thing, and I'm sure that's what they're selling, you know, so to think about how the penguins were even successful there after a country that they would watch, like, this great hockey. And the question is, how do you bring fans? It's more of a business case study. How do you bring fans to a stadium if there's nothing to watch, really, you know? Yeah, I mean, to that extent, it's like minor league sports, right? Where between periods, between every inning and a minor league baseball game,

except, again, this is the greatest team in the history of the sport. Or, you know, the greatest organization, I guess you would say, because as you say, the team is very bad. And there's one point where I think it's Valery Harlamov's kid is on the team. They're like, this guy sucks. He's so bad. But they were trying to promote him because of who he is and who his father is, I guess. Exactly. Yeah.

And so they're, and the Russians kept saying, but how could you be promoting this guy? He's not even good. And an American say, it doesn't matter. He's Harlamov. That's his name. So we've got to promote that. And so people would come and be like, what? But you know what the irony is that he was drafted in the first round in the NHL, which is.

Well, you know, back then. Yeah. The scouting isn't maybe quite what it is today. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, that was the thing to watch. Like, you know, at one point they do a tour of the year. US and they play a bunch of IHL teams when the IHL was kind of an independent league that was as

good as the AHL probably. There were some decent hockey players in there. And these Russian guys are just getting smoked every single night. And, you know, guys on the, like, you had, I don't know how you got this, but like the, like the, like the miced up audio of like one guy telling me, like, you guys are a disgrace or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, obviously a lot of these IHL guys hated the Russians too because, you know, at the time, at the time Russians were really like, it may have been the heyday of like how many Russians were actually playing the NHL.

And I think a lot of people were like pissed off that they were taking so many jobs. And, you know, it was not a good time to be playing. And to be playing against the IHL guys. They were just like, you know, they were trying to get to the show. And, you know, a lot of their jobs were being taken by Russia. You know, so these guys got the crap beat out of them. And their schedule apparently was like really brutal too. They were like playing, I don't know, like every night and going to different cities and getting smoked.

Yeah. But, you know, that the funny thing is, and it's actually a section of comedy, is that, you know, how could this, in Teak enough, you know, it must have been so humiliating to go from being such a great team where they're beating. NHL all starts to like barely not even being able to win a game in the IHL, you know. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, it's the thing. And it's Tickinov is the coach, you know. Yeah, I think if anything it shows, it shows without great players, you know. Yeah, and I mean, they might have been even worse, right?

Like if they don't have Tekinov, who at that point must have been, you know, fairly old, I guess. But, yeah, he would have been in his early 60s, maybe. He was born in the 30s, I want to say. So, yeah, he's, you know, that was one of the things where there was a lot of just, like, Tekinov hated that. But it's funny, like, the thing you mentioned about it's a bit of comedy. Like, I laughed pretty regularly throughout this movie. Like, it's a lot of the circumstances are those things of, like, you literally couldn't make up that, you know,

oh, we should mention, the guy who was kind of the central figure of the movie is a guy named Steve Warshaw. who was the marketing guy that the penguin sent over and came up with all the ideas of, like, let's have strippers on the ice and let's give away bearded teenagers, basically, to come to the games. Yeah, yeah. Like, he's a, you know, this is a kind of a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, but I feel like he's a real character. Oh, yeah. Well, they're all, they're all, everyone in this movie, I mean, it's kind of like I describe it almost as like a big Lebowski kind of, character movie where everyone sort of has their own like weirdness

eccentricity but they're all funny in their own ways uh it's kind of every character in this movie i mean i've got guys who are like you know where a guy was on interpoles 10 most wanted i've got a kjb prosecutor i've got like you know this really eccentric owner and steve who's the main character warsha who's very like almost like a woody allen imagine if woody allen were to like run a hockey team the Red Army hockey team in Russia.

You know, that's how funny he was. And, you know, he sort of had this no-holds-bar kind of marketing, advertising mind where the Russians knew nothing about marketing at the time. Nothing. It was literally foreign. He was like an alien. They never seen any. They weren't even allowed to put ads on the boards or they weren't allowed to run private businesses.

You know, so Steve, they just thought he was nuts. And he is, even for American standards, a little bit crazy. But the Russians just thought he was just, you know, this crazy guy running around, you know? Yeah. But he was successful. And as soon as he got successful, that's when kind of the mafia took notice. Right. And that's what I was going to say.

Like, I think the comparison to the Big Lebowski is a really good one because there is this element of danger at like every turn of this movie where, you know, they're like Steve. You know, Steve is kind of made to understand at one point. Like, oh, if you do that, like the mafia will be. furious and probably, you know, do harm to you. And he's like, oh, well, I guess I shouldn't do that then, you know. But like that happens every 10 minutes in the movie is, you know, something else is going on. And, you know, this all, part of the events of this movie take place during the 1993 constitutional crisis where, like, tanks are in the streets of Moscow, like firing on

protesters and stuff. It's wild. And he's like, well, got to go to the rink, you know. Yeah. Yeah, he was a little bit naive. You know, I mean, America, you could be that. It's one thing to be in another country and kind of you're just visiting, you know. He was obviously living there, but the people, like, living it through that time,

it was just, it was pure instability and chaos. You know, imagine trying to, like, survive and make a living and feed your family. And every day the country was changing, there's no laws or law enforcement. And everyone just had to, like, figure out how to survive. That's how crazy it was. Meanwhile, meanwhile, obviously

they were this team, they were trying to keep this team to make it, it became the biggest show at the time in Moscow. Yeah, and you mentioned Disney earlier. There was one part in the movie and I like basically had to write,

write down the quote, but it was something along the lines of like, we needed the Russian army to come in and protect Disney. And the Russian army is like, yeah, we're not going to do that. Like, we're, we're, you don't understand. Like, there's a, there's a, another thing around that part of the movie where they go, oh, like 40% of the Russian economy is like illicit trade of some kind, you know,

like that's how pervasive that kind of stuff was. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a wild, wild story that in a way, you know, for obvious reasons, I guess, feels a lot like kind of the sequel to the Red Army documentary. And so I just wanted to, I guess, talk to you real quick about what made you so interested in, like, A, you know, the history of the Red Army hockey team, the Cisco hockey team. And then, you know, to follow up on that five years later with this. Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody, everybody asked that. I mean, I knew, I kind of knew it was coming. I tried not to...

you know, think about it. Because honestly, I just, I always viewed this story as like something, you know, separate that if you watch it, you'd never have to see Red Army. You know, you could just think it's just a hell of a story. But the fact that the truth is that, you know, it does kind of take place where Red Army ends. And, you know, it is about this team and this time period. But I heard about the story kind of as a promoting Red Army. uh,

this Steve Warshot came up to me and kind of started telling me about it. I was like super reluctant to engage with them and like, you know, obviously because I just dealt with Russian hockey. I didn't want to be that guy, you know, like, right. But I just, when I read about the story, Steve sent me this like treasure trove of archival material. And I looked through it. I was just like, wow.

Like, first of all, yeah, I can't believe that this is what happened to this team afterwards. And I can't believe I didn't know about it. First of all, for your listeners, I, I can guarantee you not. a single one would know the details of what happened then. Like, everyone's going to be surprised. I guarantee you everyone who sees this movie going to be surprised with this story, which is crazy because, you know, it seems like it was so big.

I can't believe, but I think Pittsburgh purposely kept it away from people what actually happened because they wanted to make it look like it was a success, you know, like, oh, wow, look. The sponsors, they didn't want to tell everyone that, like, oh, yeah, no, no, no, there's mafia everywhere. It's a disaster. but this is what really happened. Yeah, like, and that's the thing.

Like, the extent of the mafia involvement, like, after the, after the penguins pull out, what was it, like, four or five people associated with the team just get, like, killed by the mafia for various, you know. Like, as... It's unsolved. It's unsawed. I mean, that's the same by, no one ever, yeah, they just got killed. Yeah. And, and, you know, like, execution style killings, too, not like, oh, you know, who knows what would happen to that guy.

like shot in a parking lot like that level of it. But yeah, so like, you know, I obviously was looking at various Wikipedia pages and it said that you're the son of Soviet immigrants. Is that kind of what informed the interest in the Russian team in the first place or the Soviet team, I should say? Maybe in the first place, yeah. I mean, obviously, well, I grew up playing hockey and I played at Yale. And I've always been, you know, I love the sport and sort of, I studied kind of Soviet style of hockey growing up because I thought it was so creative and dynamic, you know, the skill level and how these guys were training and so on. And I like that style, the finesse and everything. So anyways, that kind of got me interested and it starts from there.

And obviously my parents, you know, being from Ukraine and I kind of. grew up speaking a little bit of Russian and you know I kind of witnessed all the cultural differences that I kind of there were with like in my house the way let's say my parents behave and acted versus like other people's parents and I always sort of took note of them thought it was interesting and I always wondered why like what is it like the nature of culture is weird how does a culture inform how you think and behave and why are our two cultures so different you know and I think if any this movie is a study, a very strange one about, you know, who we are as like Americans and

who they are and are we, why are we different? What, studying the psychology and the behaviors and the culture clashes in this particular story. And so, you know, maybe better inform us about like what's going on in the world now and like why we behave the way we do and where, how did they get this way? And what is their culture like? what's the history, you know? Yeah. But in a fun way, in a fun way where you're not, like, fed all these facts. Yeah, no, I mean, like, you mentioned it earlier, but, like, there are real, like,

characters you just wouldn't be able to make up, like, the guy who, uh, who was the mascot, who would, he was, like, his introduction in the movie is, well, I fell down a lot so that people could tell it was me under the costume and, like, the head would fall off and that kind of thing. How did you go about, like, I don't know, connecting with these people who were involved in this team, you know, 25 years ago or whatever? Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, the Basco was really a funny character.

He turned out to be, like, one of the smartest guys I've ever met, you know, the way I would walk around Moscow. I think he told me all his sort of theories on, like, Russian people and the culture, and we talked about literature. The guy is like a genius, but he's kind of part genius, part madman, right, part fool. You know,

it's like just a perfect paradox of a character, you know? So that was cool. I thought, I got to these guys through a contact I have in Moscow, producer that I worked with that, you know, helped track down some of these guys, you know,

because obviously, you know, I'm not there on the ground, sure, you know, a lot. So, so I got some help there.

And we just basically like brainstormed. I arrived in Russia without a single interview that I had planned, but we just, I basically said, look, I'm not leaving. I don't, don't ever want, I don't want to go back there in the near future, so let's just figure it out. And we just started with, we got one interview after three days. I was there. I thought it was a waste of time. But then one after the other just was crazy than the next. Yeah, it really is, you know, you're talking to a former KGB attorney and at one point, like, the police come up and like make you leave for some reason. And yeah, it, yeah, that was scary. But, you know, at the same time, yeah, it's funny, but these guys, you know, there's a lot of, there's seriousness to it as well.

and, you know, it's, it's, it's, it is a little bit sad kind of what they went through. But, you know, I guess in hindsight, it looks kind of funny, but it's actually not that funny. Yeah. Yeah, it's the, you know, um, you, you can, you can read any, any kind of a history book about, like, a great tragedy. And there's, there's these weird little funny vignettes that, that pop up. And yeah, I don't want to say, like, this is a, this is a documentary. extremely funny. Like there are funny parts to it, but it tells a very, like, serious and, and kind of important story. Just, you know, um, another quote I wrote down by that KGB prosecutor

was like, you know, he was like, it's all about money, money, money. Like, this kind of thing like corrupts a person's psychology in, and, you know, you really do see that throughout the movie where there, there's the kind of push and pull between the Soviet ideology of like Tikanov, ripping up the Nike ads just kind of as a screw you to the to the ownership or the the management and and then also but like he does a commercial for like vix cough drops yeah i know that was bizarre strange just deeply strange yeah well imagine like also the society goes from like everybody's supposed to be equal and kind of have the same thing To like, all of a sudden, everyone's looking out for himself.

Everyone wants the most money they can. It's just kind of intense, an intense change, you know? Yeah, and, you know, you kind of, the movie ends. I don't think this is really a spoiler with Yeltsin going, hey, you know, I'm out of here, and here's this guy, Vladimir Putin. He's going to run things from now on. And it's just like, oh, yeah, you know, like, you know, people talk about the fall of the Soviet Union of like, oh, it was this great victory for America.

And, you know, early in the film you have, like, I think it's George Bush or maybe Al Gore saying, you know, we won the Cold War. And it's like, well, you know, at what cost, basically? Yeah, we won the Cold War. Then Al Gore says, you know, something like, what are we going to do at the end of the Cold War? We've got a lot of different choices, you know. Are we going to cooperate? and it was sort of this window of hope and opportunity.

And we kind of, it was squandered, you know, just kind of when Putin, I think, you know, it happened with so many companies there that tried to do something there and it just didn't work out. And they were just, it's just too difficult and possible to do business. Yeah. I mean, and really, really the kind of the thing that underscores that is Valeri Gushin himself stole like $1.1 million from the penguins in a year. Yeah, that's what Steve says, yeah. Yeah.

Right, allegedly. Yeah. But yeah, so it's truly like a real, you know, like I said, I really loved the Red Army. Your other documentary, sorry, it's like chasing. In Search of Greatness. Yeah, yeah. Your viewers would really like that. Yeah, that was one of my favorite movies of a couple years ago.

I really enjoyed that one. And yeah, this continues the trend of, you know, Gapolski makes documentary. Check it out. One thing that I would kind of say to your listeners is I don't know. I'd be very surprised if I'd do another hockey documentary. I would be, the odds are so low that you have to win the lottery, like a jackpot.

that's how low the odds are. So enjoy it while you can. Hey, you know what? You don't get too many hockey movies to begin with, right? That's true. So we got two really good ones here in the last five years or so. Folks, check it out. I think it's maybe because I didn't make the NHL,

I just said, look, this is my way of like making the NHL, and then I'm done. Now I'm retiring from hockey. going out on top. Exactly. All right, ma'am. Yeah, thanks so much for doing this. Have a good one, Ryan.

Really appreciate it. See ya. Thanks. Our thanks to documentarian Gabe Polsky for joining us on Puck Soup this week. Nice job by Ryan in chatting up a sports documentarian unparalleled these days as far as his hockey outputs. That's always good. speaking of films it's been a long hiatus

on the free and clear feeds of this show which means it's time to bring back one of what was by far one of the favorite segments that we did in this incarnation of Puck Soup it's a little ditty we like to call the down goes brown is this a real movie quiz in which Ryan Lambert

reads the description of a film and Sean has to figure out whether this film exists or it is a figment of Ryan's imagination. And this is born of the fact that Down Goes Brown, his pop culture intake would be, I would use the word infrequent. Yes, limited would be fair. And if I remember right, I think the first time we did this, I think I passed. Like I think I did.

Yeah. But only because you tried to sneak a pro wrestling one by me. That's right. That's right. Like triggered like the one of the few cells in my brain that actually knew anything. So I'm guessing you probably won't make the same mistake again. Well, you're right. I don't love my odds.

We have we have certainly learned in doing the show not to underestimate your pop culture, wherewithal. Like there have been times when, like, for example, the Avengers movie where, you know, Ryan and I have, like, just assumed that you didn't see it. And then, lo and behold, like, you'd see it. I still live in the world.

Like, I do occasionally, like, hear about things or even, even see things. Just not many of them. How many Instagram influencers could you know? Do you know who Caroline Callaway is? That's the... Did you, did you, did you, consume the Lauren Duka takeout piece on BuzzFeed News yesterday. I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

There you go. All right. Now we're back on track. All right. Let's get into it. The Down Goes Brown is the Surreal Movie Quiz, Returns to Puck Soup, and Ryan Lambert, take it away. All right. We will open with a wrestling one.

Playing with Fire. You've seen this movie a hundred times in which. a big strong guy has to take care of kids and learn to be more caring. This time, the big strong guy is John Sina, as a badass, no-nonsense chief of a smoke-jumper's fireman squad. I don't know what a smoke jumper is, but that's what the term that gets used in the fireman circles is. And he has to take care of three kids who don't know how to or don't want to play by his rules. This film also stars Keegan, Michael Key, and John Ligwezum. Mo. Wow. Okay, I haven't, I, this, this, I haven't heard about this movie. Uh, so this isn't, uh, this isn't like the last time where I kind of instantly knew the answer, but man, that does sound like a John Cena movie. And if the fact that, I'm trying to imagine a scenario where you yourself would write a fake description, including a term that you didn't know.

And if you did that, I'll give you all the credit in the word. But I'm saying that's got to be a real, that's got to be a real movie. Of course it's real. That is some awesome reading comprehension, my friend. As I was saying it, I was like, I can hear you like, oh, geez, all right. Who gets tripped up by their own fake description? I wrote all the descriptions for the real and fake movies myself. Like, these are all films I should say, by the way, I have.

seen the trailer for all the real ones and then like obviously you know um so like these are all like movies with which i'm because i see so many movies there is a familiarity level above and beyond and let's also be clear as just hearing about it in past quizzes the fact that ryan gives away the answer during the setup to the question does not mean i will necessarily get it correct that's true i forgot about that yeah you're right but i don't know but i don't know but But keep that arrow in your quiver for next time. The I don't know a word and the question thing. Stupid as hell.

It's like you're opening up Oreos next to your ear and rounders. It's a total tell. Yeah, I'm stupid as hell. Okay, the next one is called Jexe. And it stars Adam Devine from Workaholics on the Righteous Gemstone in a paranoid tech comedy in which a man uses his phone's personal assistant like a Siri or an Alexa named Jexe, which is voiced by Rose Byrne, to improve his life. life. But he becomes so addicted to using the phone that Jexie falls in love with him. And when he

tries to use the phone less, she attempts to ruin his life. That sounds terrible. But I'm going to say it's real because that sounds like a weird name and title to make up. So I'm going to say real movie. Jexe is a real movie. That's correct. Look at that. Two for two, baby. All right. Now, if I was Sean, I would have listened to that question and said to myself, a bit of a toss-off on the Rose Byrne reference. Like, that was an interesting parenthetical to throw in there. Let me follow up that question. Sean, do you know who Rose Byrne is?

Okay, there we go. All right. Okay, the next one. This is, this story, or this, this story. this movie is called Burden. And it is about a KKK Grand Dragon named Mike

Burden who runs a redneck shop full of racist merchandise and a clan museum. But he falls in love and tries to leave the clan. So they try to track him down and he ends up hiding in a black

congregational church with the Reverend Forrest Whitaker played by Forrest Whitaker. Oh. And then Mike Burden learns to love and accept black people even though he was in the clan. Wow. Does Shane Gillis star in this? Oh, man.

A controversial podcaster joins a black congregation. That also, I mean, I feel like I say this for everyone. That also sounds terrible. I'm going to say fake. Oh, it's real. Unbelievable. The guy's name is Mike Burden. He was a literal...

This is based on a true story, by the way. Really? A literal KKK grand dragon was like, you know what? I actually like black people now. Sorry about the whole having a museum that hosts a KKK meetings. Oops. Are you saying he's the actual embodiment of the white man's burden? Is that what you're trying to explain?

Yeah, like literally his... I could not. believe this was the name of the film. I couldn't believe this was actually his name, and yet here we are. Wow. All right. So two correct, one wrong. Again, I am a mere chair judge at a tennis match for this game. Can't help but observe that I believe Down Goes Brown thought you were doing the real, real fake sequence to throw him off. I think he was... I thought this was like a... playoffs at like your two home games, two away, and then you have to...

So you were doing a classic quiz mistake, which is to try to play the quiz master. And now he's giving me three reels in a row, and now I'm all shaky because the next one has to be fake, unless he's going for like the five straight reels just to mess with me, because he knows, he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he wouldn't do that. and it's that's right fastball fastball fastball forget the curve rickie giving the heater what's going to happen next this is like the we're doing the princess bride remake right here with the uh the battle of wits all right i'm going to stop thinking and i'm just going to go going to trust my my gut all right we're going to obviously the real movie is in my glass by the way people for

i love the idea of doing a remake of the princess bride because it's like everyone in Hollywood forgot that movie made no fucking money when it came out. Like, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it didn't, it didn't do well. Like, it found a new life on home video and cable and all that shit. And here's, here's the other thing like, now it has a brand associated with it that has to be exploited. What are they going to do? Not exploit it. Here's just the one thing that you could do to improve that movie. Because I, I love that movie. Everyone does. I'm just going to throw a suggestion out there. Maybe make it so we can understand what characters are saying this time, that would be good. Okay. Let's hang on.

Let's pause the game for a second. Chris Pratt or Chris Pine as Carrie Elwee's. It's definitely Chris Pratt. There's zero percent chance they cast anybody who is not Chris Pratt to be. What's his name? Wesley. Which one is that? The Dread Pirate Pirate Roberts.

Is it Roberts? He is the one from Guardians of the Galaxy. Okay. Thank you. Chris Pine is Star Trek. All right. Bronz Strowman as Andre the Giant. I was thinking him or the big show.

Oh, that's good, too. But Bronz Stromen obviously was like he was in that horrible Sherlock Holmes movie a couple months ago. The Will Ferrell one. So he's an actor already. Listen to that theater crowd pop when he's like, get these hands, hump or dink. Who else we got? Oh, who plays Mandy Patankan? It's got to be someone who's sort of dashing.

Antonio Banderas, obviously. Maybe a little too old, though. Maybe it's a little too old. Diego Luna, perhaps? Diego Luna, yes, obviously. There you go. Diego Luna as Enigo Montoya. Who's our princess?

Who's the object of affection? Who is the incarnate, the purity incarnate. that will be at the heart of this thing. Not to have too much of a Marvel crossover here, but it feels like Brie Larson. If you, yeah, if it's, well, if it's Pratt, yeah, I could see it. I mean, you could go with any number of ingenues for that role.

Yes. So you don't necessarily need a name there. Was Robin Wright a name at the time? Robin Wright was not a name at the time. So there you go. She was sort of a new discovery. She wasn't even a pen at the time. So that's how, like, not a thing she was.

She got the introducing in the credits to that movie. Ah, very cool. Who plays Humperdink? Who's the, who's the batty? Hmm. It has to be someone sort of loathable and swarthy. Oh, Thomas Middletitch. No, it can't be.

No, like, he's not swarthy enough. He's not, like, because the thing with Humperd think was he was a little imposing at least, right? Yeah. And by the way, Greg, like, thanks for the spoiler to everyone there that Hopperdink turns out to be a bad guy. I mean, thanks. Good job ruining the movie that somebody, some dude was waiting 30 years to finally sit down and watch. Well, I never, I never, I never, I never, I actually never saw the movie. I, Columbo read me the book once. And so that was how I discovered the story. How about, how about this one, Javier Bardem?

A little long in the tooth Oh Tom Hiddleston Well now it's just a fucking Marvel movie Greg Come on Well that's not my fault That every actor in Hollywood That's not Wonder Woman has been in a fucking Marvel movie

That's true Even the previous Batman was in a Marvel movie For God's sakes He's Daredevil Let's uh Hmm The child is Finn Wolfhard and the old man is, I don't know, pick an old man.

Tommy Lee Jones. Now I'm just doing a fucking no-country old men remake, I guess. And the other one that's... Kindly Old Grandpa Tommy Lee Jones. The other one that's the total slam dunk. Oh, he can play that. You've seen that movie. The other one that's a total slab dunk is,

and I remember what his name was, but the Wallace Shaw character, like that's clearly going to be Patton Oswald, right? like we all. Oh, that's really good. It was five years ago, I would have said Gilbert Godfrey, but I think Patton Oswald is a really good choice. It should be Wallace Sean again.

Probably could be. That's who it should be. It should just be Wallace Sean. We love him, folks. Finally, the Billy Crystal role. Billy Crystal again? Yeah, Billy Crystal and Carol McCain. Only if he's doing the Jazz Man character, though.

Oh, actually, let me update it. Larry David. Okay. He'd never say yes to that, though. Never in a million years. Maybe he would. I doubt it. I doubt it.

If you let's maybe one of his friends. If Larry Charles directs it, then obviously Larry David will be the new Billy Crystal. Fucking jazz, man. Fucking comic relief. The best. All right. Back to the quiz. Oh, yeah, the quiz, right.

I was kind of looking we would just like forget that and I would win. Two to one by default. We'll, uh, trying to run out the clock. We'll stick with the, we'll stick with the racism angle here. Oh. And, um, this, this movie is called, sorry, is that the quiz or is that the Republican slogan in 2020? Okay. Okay.

Now somebody's never going to be younger. That's my topical political humor for the. Swish. Um, this movie is called Jojo Rabbit. It's a story of a young boy in Nazi Germany who wants. to succeed in the Hitler youth, but is, like, very bad at all the things you would need to do. So he has an imaginary friend that's literally Adolf Hitler, played by Thor Ragnarok director, Taika Waititi. And the twist is that the boy's mother, played by Scarlett Johansson, is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

And this is, by the way, a satire. Wow. that I'm going to say real because if you made all of that up that's both horrifying and impressive okay yeah Tycho ITD also directed it and also the winner of the audience prize at TIF yeah it looks insane I can't imagine how it's any good but will I see it sure I will yeah not a big fan of Scarlett Johansson as a mother in two movies this year I what was the other one? She's going to be, she's in marriage story with, uh,

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which hopefully isn't one of your descriptions. But yeah, I mean, you know, an object of my affection in previous years, but now a motherly figure in life. Yeah, you don't, you don't like any mothers. That's true. That's famously true. I do not. I love mothers.

I'm just saying that it's, like you, you think all the stuff she says about Woody Allen is 100% true and she should never be a mother because that makes women unattracting. When your sex pots, your match point. Sex pots are now playing the mother-in-law. That movie came out like 15 years ago. Take it easy. That's true. I know. The passage of time.

Yeah. All right. Very last one here. Play-Mobile, the movie. Remember the Lego movie? Yeah. This is that, but with Play-Mobile toys, you may have grown up with. And just like those toys were a B-level alternative to Lego at best.

This film's cast looks like a dollar-store version of the Lego movies. Um, voices for this movie include Anya Taylor Joy, Jim Gaffigan, Adam Lambert, Keenan Thompson, Megan Trainor, and weirdly Daniel Radcliffe. Play Mobile were, were they the big blocks? No, those are duplos. Playmobile are like the little guys with like claws for hands and their arms just move up and down and their legs could move and like you could get them in all different. Literally shitty, shitty Legos. But they, there weren't even any blocks. It was just like play sets.

I told myself before he even started the description that I was going to say real for this one because he was clearly going five for five on the real movies. But that that's terrible. There's no way that's a real movie. That is a real movie. Oh, God. Oh, shit. So what's the final tally? He went three for five again.

Three for five. Fuck. There it is. Wow. The man. The man. The man stumbles into pop culture like he was a meme. Very impressive, Sean.

The second one in a row, by the way, where it was five real movies. How many times in a row could Ryan do that before I will catch on and not go three for two? You're really in your own head on that one. All right. That is Puck Soup for this week. It's glad to be happy to be back, free and clear in your earbones, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Greg Wyshinsky. You can find by writing on ESPN.com.

Myself and Emily Kaplan doing all of our season preview shit as we speak. And will our podcast, ESPN, and Ives will be back, I believe, the second to last week in September, with guests such as Henrik Lundquist and Matt Duchesne on the show. Not bad. I'm Ryan Lambert. Yahoo Sports. There's a complicated URL, I guess.

Just type it into your favorite search engine. Maybe Yahoo. folks and sign up for the Patreon newsletter, which I write every Saturday and which is very fun to write and people seem to like it. And because I'm going away on vacation in a couple of week, or end of this week, actually, next week's newsletter will be a very special surprise. So check it out. Cool. You can find me at The Athletic, where we're kind of back into full swing of things after the little bit of downtime in the off season, everything's back. So if you are a athletic subscriber, go check it out. If you are not,

now is a great time to get locked in, get all your coverage for camp, the season, off season. It'll be super good and very worth the couple of bucks a month. And I've got, this week was one of my favorite annual traditions, the annual Bizarro Meter, where we evaluate the off-season of every NHL team and try to figure out which one was the weirdest. And it was a tight competition this year. And I'll leave it at that. Do you feel like you hit publish a little too early on the Jets one? Yeah. That happens every year. There's always at least one team that screws all over. And congratulations to Winnipeg, which may be the only time we're saying that those words all the season long.

For the foreseeable future, yeah. All right. Thanks, everybody for supporting the podcast. By the way, if you dig the podcast, you can do one of two things, or both. The old unsubscribe, subscribe trick, courtesy of our friends of Barstool, to get us back into a lofty position

on the iTunes rankings, because typically in the summer we disappear for we are not creating new episodes. So you can do that. and then also leave a review if you dig the show on iTunes. It always helps boost our shit and makes advertisers happy and all that jazz. And also sign up for the Patreon. That's a better way to support the podcast.

Okay, granted, that is also an avenue as well, and you can do that too. You can do all three of those things. You can do all three. And you should. And if you're already doing all three, God bless. God bless you for doing it. All right. That's the show.

Thanks to everybody for listening. We will talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Later. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, It's and tunes.

It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nonsense. Park soon.