Puck Soup - Hooray, Training Camps Maybe!

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

The boys discuss the NHL and NHLPA announcing a training camp date that maybe they'll hit depending on conditions; examine John Tortorella's shift on national anthem protests; explain what went wrong with that Tyler Seguin "BLM" video; handicap the NHL Awards, including the tangled Hart Trophy vote; the latest Eugene Melnyk soap opera; an overrated/underrated look at Mel Brooks movies; and an epic quiz with millions of fans. 

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Bootsu. Hey, everybody. It's me, Greg Wischinski. I'm with ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports.

You may know us from such documentaries as that Michael Jordan won. And you're talking about Jordan rides the bus, the one about when he played for the Birmingham Barron. Absolutely. That's the one that everybody remembers. I'm Ryan Lambert from this freaking podcast where we do the game show stuff. Sean McAdoe from The Athletic. And you're in Puck Soup. Let's start off.

Before we get to the breaking news that happened just before we did the show, which is the training camps scheduled maybe for July 10th. let's talk about the important stuff, which is John Tortorella now believes that it's okay to protest during the anthem. As long as you get his permission and it's not in an international game. I mean, there are certain caveats. Yeah, he, speaking of fucking patting people on the back, like, everybody was like, oh, how brave of him to reverse his stance?

It's like, I don't think he did. I think he... I know. He's sorry. He softly did. Like, he sawed, but he did not reverse it. And some people did play it that way that he had changed his mind and admitted he was wrong. And he didn't fully do that, but he did acknowledge.

Yeah, but he did acknowledge. He went probably as far as it was realistically. Hey, look, if John Tauterell, a guy who would, like, bench, like, scratch his player for protesting during the anthem in 2016, acknowledges that the protests aren't disrespecting the flag. Like, that's growth. I think that's important. I think that's a good step forward.

I think it's actually... It's that thing where he saw the fucking video on Twitter where it's like, here's an army veteran saying it's fine for Colin Kaepernick to have done that and everybody going, well, I guess it's fine then. If an army veteran says it's possible, then he's cool with us. And yeah, okay, man, sure.

But I do it. To your point, though, Ryan, like, I could, listen, I think, I think he should be applauded for growth. I think that I was really curious as to how he would react to all this stuff going on. Yeah, because he was, he was clearly, like, on the other side of the issue and on the wrong side of history back in 2016. But I do think that, like, there's a certain amount of detail that's been left out about some of these reports on Tororella changing his stance on the anthem. I mean, like, like that entire paragraph that Aaron Portsline had in that story where it's basically like, well, you know, they're going to have to come to me and explain what it is. And then we're going to have a consortium of people that they're going to talk to. And then they're going to explain it to the locker room.

And then they're going to maybe do a short audition as to what they're going to be doing during the anthem. And then we're going to have a panel of judges. Maybe Paula Abdul will be involved. I don't know. They're going to judge whether they like it or not. If they do like it, then they will move on to phase two. Like, there's a whole fucking thing they got to do before you could raise your fist on the anthem. Like, let's be honest.

Oh, and that was only for kneeling. I don't know if you're allowed to raise your fist yet. That's true. That's a whole different can of worms. But again, like, I'm not going to shit on him. Like, I am, we, listen, we have spent the majority of this podcast history shitting on John Tortorello for various reasons. I'll say two good things about him. One, this shit that he said is good.

It's a positive thing. If you're Seth Jones, who I asked about this to Seth Jones in 2016 while covering the World Cup, and Seth Jones wanted to be anywhere but there in answer that question about his coach saying the shit. If you're Seth Jones, maybe you're feeling okay about life right now a little bit more, that you know your coach would actually have your back if indeed you wanted to protest or in the anthem not saying Seth Jones does. The other thing I'll say about Totorella is as much as we want to give him shit and deservedly so in some case, is he's kind of shown the ability to grow. Like,

yes, it is very clear that he is not the same guy that he was in New York. It is very clear he's not the same guy that he was in Vancouver. We've talked about it before that the experience in Vancouver kicked his dick in the, in the dirt, and he realized he needed to change. He's done work on himself. He's become a better guy. And I think you can look at this situation and say, this is a guy who will at least listen

and reevaluate shit and grow a little bit. It's not perfect. It's clearly not, you know, go do as you please, and there won't be any repercussions. But at least, and I'm not really crazy about the idea of, hey, why don't we create a separate part of the anthem or you can do this shit? Like, what the fuck is that? That completely defeats the purpose of protest. But I mean, all the people in the hockey media who was like, I think John Tortorella deserves an N-A-C-P image award. Oh, okay.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I do, but I do, I do, I do, I do want to congratulate him for showing growth. For getting to a baseline understanding of a thing that was very clearly explained four years ago. Congrats, John, you did it. If there's some, if there's some guy in Ohio who's like fucking, you know, go torch, show them motherfuckers, what's up? You know, four years ago and all of a sudden sees his personal hero grow a little bit. I mean, yeah, I love all those guys in Ohio who just fucking love John Tortorale. Like, he's their, he's their biggest thing to watch hockey for.

They're like, oh, when he's behind the bench and he's wearing the little sweater under his suit coat, oh, boy, that's the only reason to tune into a Columbus Blue Jack's game. I'm sure there's some people that think he's a man's man, and I like the way, look at him telling him people not to raise your fists and shit. And now all of a sudden, like, he's turning heel on it. That's good. Again, like, some of this stuff is performative. Some of this stuff is sort of half-assed. But most of it is good from a representation standpoint. point. Like, for example, like, I don't know how the fucking NASCAR thing is going to play out, but I do think it's kind of cool if they stood up and said Confederate shit's not allowed at our races anymore. Yeah, that is cool. What'll eventually happen is the same thing that happened the last time they tried to do this a few years ago in this article that I found from the free press. I put it on Twitter, which is, you know, the entire parking lot will be filled with Confederate bootleg shit now and people wearing it because, you know, when you're trying to ban the rebel flag, it's a problem when people look at it and say, well, this is my

signal to rebel. But again, at the end of the day, it's a positive move to have them at least attempted. It's a positive move for John Torrello to be like, I see the error of my ways in some way, shape, or form. It's good. It's good growth. Right? There's a thing that I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the last few years for obvious reasons is this this whole kind of gridlock that we all seem to be in where everybody just picks their side, they pick their opinion and it just feels like you can't change anyone's minds. Even with facts, even with new evidence, it just feels like even when you point out new information or existing information that may have been missed, people just retreat even further into their own little bubbles. And one of the things that

they have found, like people have done a lot of research and studying on this sort of thing, is that one of the only things that can make people who are in that partisan trap, change their minds is when somebody they perceive as being on their side changes their mind and does it publicly that can sometimes have an impact. And so I think there is value, even though I know a lot of times when a torterella or a Drew Breeze is on the wrong side and then comes over and changes their mind, it's tempting to go like, well, yeah, well, what about all the people who are on the right side all along? Why are we giving this person any credit for showing up way too late? But there is value in it. And I think there's value in promoting that, if only because that might be the only thing that can get someone to change your minds.

I don't think Torcarelli is necessarily that guy, both because of his profile and also because of the fact that he did kind of half-ass it. It wasn't, it was. That's my whole thing with it is the number of cats. He's like, I accept this kind of protest as long as it meets the following 15 conditions. And it's like, well, then I guess you don't accept it? And the climate essentially started at the World Cup, right? You don't unconditionally accept it. Yeah.

The controversy started around the World Cup and he's still saying it's got to be not at the World Cup. So all of that. But the Drew Bree's thing, like I think there is value to elevating that into saying like, hey, if this guy has legitimately changed his mind or even if it is performative. If it's performative in a way that is convincing, then, you know, then there's value in that. And I think there's value in a little bit of, you know, people say forgive and forget. I don't think you forget, but you have to at least up to a point be able to forgive crappy past opinions if they can be corrected into more valid ones. Right.

It's about best intentions sometimes, which brings us to our second topic of the day. That Tyler Sagan video that the NHL released this week. Now, did you guys get a chance to see it before it disappeared into the Ethan. Yeah, oh, it was so good. All the little old quotes, like, I'm a black guy, and I think Tyler Sagan's cool now. It's like, ooh, okay, man. Sean, did you get a chance to see it? You know what? I actually had it go across my phone. I saw it, but I didn't have the volume. So I have a feeling that probably would have made it even worse, but I did, yeah, I did see it cut across my story. Now I don't remember what the soundtrack of it was. Like, I feel like it was probably

just like soft piano music. Is that right? No, it was actually Fear of a Black Planet I literally knew you were going to say that I knew you were going to say fear of a black planet Well listen You know it's funny Not to sidetrack but I was trying to think about

Like where I've been thinking a lot about my kid And my kid right now is very much Anti all these protests No no she is fucking pro as pro man Like she on like TikTok has like a Black Lives Matter avatar and shit. And sick.

And it's and it's because of, of, you know, and believe it or not, it's because like a lot of her TikTok favorites are, are, are have, have been, you know, performatively supporting these protests. And because she looks up to them and, and she, you know, does the advances they do and shit like that. She's kind of done the same thing. She follows John Tortorella on there. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, she and I have had a lot of conversations about this as well. well so she can kind of understand what's going on and why things are happening. And I want to believe that, you know, in my role as a parent, I've helped, you know, her understand this stuff, too.

But I was trying to think back to when I was a kid growing up in the Jersey suburbs, a predominantly white Jersey suburb, like, where did my like notion of maybe the police or bad come from? And I think it might have been public enemy. Like, I was thinking about it the other day. And do the right thing. Those are your two lynch pins. You were a white guy in the late 80s, early 90s, yeah. Which is, I mean, again, it's the, it's the whitest thing you could possibly say is, like, I didn't realize cops were bad until Chuck D. told me, right? But, like, that might have been it when I was a kid in Jersey growing up.

It was listening to PE and understanding, you know, like, the first time I ever realized that not everybody celebrates Martin Luther King Jr's birthday was when I listened to by the time I get to Arizona. Like, it's, it's, that's just how it was. I knew, I knew that because when I was growing up, New Hampshire did not have that day off from school, but Massachusetts did. And I was like, why? And my parents were like, well. So I guess my point is that you come to this stuff in different ways, which is why, which brings you back to Tyler Sagan.

So the way I understand it in talking to some people this week, this was not like a social media intern putting together with Tyler Sagan. Oh, no. This was one of those. This was like when, when you like, when like hamburger helper puts the little glove guy in front of the 9-11 memorial. And it's like, how many fucking people had to sign off on this? I understand it did come from sort of the side of the NHL that's doing these diversity groups,

like these study groups and stuff. Like, it grew from that. And here's what I'll say about the video. I understand the intention. The intention is there's all these. No, no, no. I love a white savior movie. No, it's all these complaints about.

it's hearing all these complaints about are these teams and players that are speaking out about George Floyd, they're speaking about Black Lives Matter, are they actually going to go from words to deeds? Are they going to go from statements to action? And here you have one of the most prominent NHL players in the league, Tyler Sagan's a star, both literally and figuratively, and he is attending a protest, and he's there, and he was part of it. And that's, you know, taking it from just, you know, a performative statement to actually going in and marching and shit. Like, that's an impressive thing for an NHL star to do. I completely agree with that. So if they're trying to put the spotlight on this and say, look, our guys aren't just like

putting fucking statements out on notepad and screenshoting it, putting on Twitter, they're actually going out there and doing shit. And wouldn't it be cool if more people did that? I completely understand it. And I think using say again, even though he's white, and I know there's a fuck ton of problems with trying to put the spotlight on a white player at this moment, completely understand what they're trying to do. Where this thing went off the fucking rails was where it went from being a statement in support of protest against police brutality and racial injustice to a fucking commercial for the NHL.

Yeah, it was like Tyler Sagan, brave ally is here to help. And it's like, I, no. Yeah. I think it would have been cool to have that video where it's like, oh, here's Tyler Sagan talking about what he learned going through. Yeah. There's a million ways to do it. You're completely right. Yeah.

Exactly. But they were like, what if we did everything exactly? And look, like, this is the league that brought you the, like, samurai return from the lockout commercial. Like, they're not, they're not cool. They're not with it. I get all that. But it's like, again, how many people signed off? on that. I completely agree. And the moment it went to like, you know, here's what black people are saying about the National Hockey League. Oh, that was not great. But that's that's that's insane. Like that was a part of it. It was like taking social media comments from like Sagan's Instagram. I think it was. And it's like, you know, John Smith says the NHL understands my needs as a black fan. And it's like in the corner it says actor portrayal, you know. It's like fucking what are you even doing? Why would you even do this? It's so dumb.

Again, I completely agree. Like, who, where, where was the sign off on it that they thought it was a good idea to, like, do the, you know, you know, black guy in Columbus says four stars would see protest again. Like, what the fuck are you thinking? Yeah, that was, that was awful. I don't think there's any defending it. I'm curious, and maybe you know this great, because you seem to have some insight into where this came from. Was this intended to be like the first of a series? Were they going to have like an Evander Kane and they just figured we'll lead with Tyler's again and then we'll do a bunch of different voices or was this a one-off?

I was like, yeah, this is the guy we want front and center. I'm curious to know that. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. And I don't know if it was part of a larger campaign. I don't know if it was a one-off. I will say this though. Like, to their credit, they have been amplifying every voice they possible. can on their social media feeds. And you're talking like 6.2 million followers on Twitter,

right? And they've been putting players, they've been putting graphics together of players and their statements. So it's not simply just like the notepad to the, to the iPhone kind of shit. They've been doing a really good job of amplifying all the voices that have spoken out on this stuff. So it's not as if they've been completely tone deaf. But this was just like, again, best intentions, yes. Horrible execution. undoubtedly. And you live and learn. You live and learn what you should and shouldn't do. You should do more of this. And I think the people just taking a run at the NHL for using Sagan in this situation are being really naive about what the NHL audience actually looks like. And that doing, using him as the pivot for this message is, is a pretty smart thing. But it's the execution of it that was fucked up. I think you can, I think it's definitely important in a league that's whatever 92% white to be. like, here's a white guy who's doing more than just putting out a notes app thing. Right.

But when it's like, thank you white guy for saying that black, like that, that's when it crossed the line into like, what the, and that's what I don't understand. Like, how many people at the NHL, and I'll keep going back to this, like, saw that video and was like, looks great. Good idea. And, but honestly, that's part of the fucking problem with this league is that like, however many people saw it and said, yep, perfect. Like, is part, like, it's the same thing about, you know, I never really thought about

how much of a problem this was. And it's like, how did you not think about it before that? I'll just read it. I mean, we've been kind of like talking around it, but I'll just read it because Hamill from USA Today had screen caps. One of the comments was, so much respect for Tyler Sagan right now, if there was ever a sign that people could change for the better, it's Tyler. Tyler Sagan is the definition of character and development.

Ooh. Although now his Mark Messier Leadership Award candidacy begins in earnest. Here we go. You know what? I'm not even kidding. He'll probably win it. He'll win it now, yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad my son picked you as his favorite player years ago.

He's a Boston boy, but a full-on stars fan. And now you're even adding opportunity for me to teach him to care about his neighborhood. Go, Tyler. What the fuck? It's so wrong. Like you said, it was like best of intentions. I won't even say that. This was the wrong intentions.

The big picture, their intentions are good. And I think the league has, we talked about last week. The how far this league has gone into this would have been amazing even a few weeks ago. They deserve credit for that. I'm not going to write it off based on one misfire. But the intention here was to pump the tires of Tyler Sagan and by extension the NHL. And it was the absolute wrong way and wrong time to do that. Yeah. The other big news, obviously, in the aftermath of all of the statements on the protests and the killing of George Floyd that we covered in last week's episode was the formation of the hockey diversity alliance, the HDA, co-headed by Akeem L.U and Evander Kane. By the way, Akeem L.U. and Matt Dumbah with Ron McLean on hometown hockey or whatever they're calling that show that SportsNets doing.

sort of like Ron McLean talks to people on Zoom really fucking good. His interview with them was really good. And even, I mean, Don Cherry's name didn't come up, but there was some self-reflection on Ron's part about, like he was talking about when they do hometown hockey and I guess they like honor a kid everywhere they go as like their kid of the game or whatever the fuck.

And like examining how many white kids they've chosen in the last like three years. I was like, wow, that's, That's introspection I didn't expect. Yeah. But the conversation was really good with them. I highly recommend it. You can find it on YouTube.

So the HDA, you have Matt Dumba, Trevor Daly, Wayne Simmons, Chris Stewart, Joel Ward, as the executive committee. Our mission is to eradicate racism and intolerance in hockey, and we will strive to be a force for positive change, not only within our game of hockey, but also within society. A couple of things about this group that's really interesting. One, apparently had a marathon zoom. call with Colin Kaepernick, and Kaepernick was extolling the virtues of minority players' roles in the creation of hockey. Like, fuck, man. That kind of blew me away.

He's cool, man. Colin Kaepernick fucking kicks ass. And then the other thing is the formation of this group happens at a time, like I reported on Monday, where the NHL is going to be forming its own committee of players to examine diversity of hockey. There's going to be four groups. There's going to be an executive group. That's going to be your GMs, your team presidents, some owners, what have you. Your players group.

It's going to have a fan group, which I don't really agree with their approach. It's going to be more of about a marketing perspective versus an actual fan perspective. So what have you. And there's going to be a youth hockey group. To have this group come out, I don't know if that means that they can't participate in both, but I found it really interesting that now there's this external force that can work with the NHL to exert pressure, to point out inadequacies. And to me, that's vital.

Like, thank fucking God this is an independent group and not an NHL creation. Because at the end of the day, like, can you imagine if this group existed during the Bill Peters shit? And what a difference that would have made to have a group like that commenting on it? Like, I think that's vital. I applaud all these guys for forming this thing. And I'm very interested to see where it goes. Yeah, I, like, it's encouraging, right? that they're kind of, and what I really liked about the NHL's group formations was that there is one about youth hockey,

because I mentioned it on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, like a big part of the reason there's a racism problem in hockey, and it's 92% white or whatever, is because hockey's really fucking expensive to play, and the league doesn't do enough to support youth hockey growth in heavily minority markets. You know, I'm not going to get into like the Canadian because I don't know the demographics of whatever small Alberta town they do hometown hockey in. But like whenever they do craft hockeyville in the U.S., it's always like, here's a place where they used to have a minor league hockey team and they don't have one anymore. Right. And it's like, is that really, you know, like the place that that should be, that kind of outreach needs to happen? I don't think so.

So I asked this question only because I've been asked the question. Are you, you all curious that the most prominent black player in the league isn't a part of this in PKK-U-Ban? I mean, do you need them to do everything? No, you don't. Like, that's the thing, right? Like, you know, there are only so many black players. And, you know, how many is it on this committee? Six are involved?

Is that half the black players? in the league? Like, yeah, no. And a couple of, like, at least one retired guy, too. No, I, I was asked and I don't know the answer. I don't know what the dynamic is between these guys. I mean, my pet theory is that maybe when you include PK into a thing, it becomes a PK thing. Maybe, you know, and that maybe that's it. But I, I, I, the two things that struck me as curious with the release of who's behind this effort were one, obviously, there was no women involved in a, but that's going to be rectified pretty quickly according to the, to the executive committee. And that PK wasn't signing, what was in a name on the sign-off sheet, which I thought was weird.

Does that strike you was weird at all, Sean, or no? It did. I'm not going to read anything into it at this point. Yeah, me neither. I mean, you can't. There's any number of dynamics. It is a little unusual, but, you know, I would not expect, I mean, I think just from a PR perspective, Danny Jill, you don't necessarily want to be like, here's our,

we put together a small committee of. every single one of our black players. It kind of becomes you're telling on yourself maybe more than you would like to publicly there. So yeah, I don't know what the dynamic is. I'm not going to read very much into it. I mean, you know, I think that

just cutting a check or whatever doesn't necessarily deal with things the right way and it kind of maybe gives you an out to be like, see this is I you know I gave a bunch of money but like he gave a bunch of money and and that's not nothing I guess yeah that's true um they canceled cops that's a thing that happened this week too but you know cops yeah it's terrible because now if they just rerun old episodes everyone's already seen those and you'll totally know it's out of out of order and the chronology will be all messed up you won't be able to follow it I have to admit that, you know, when I would watch cops, I would only actually really enjoy the ones that involved white people in Florida for the most part.

Those were the ones I enjoyed the most when they were like drunk at a gas station and trying to get away from the cops. But it's off the air. It was taken off of Fox in 2013 and then I guess I'd been airing on like the Paramount Network since then. So no more cops. Which is the ex- Spike TV. That's right. It used to be Spike TV. Former home of both TNA wrestling and briefly the WWE, I believe, was on Spike for a while.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. Monday Night Raw was on there. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, moving on. A lot of that stuff is still bubbling under the surface, and we'll see where it all goes. But some continued positive stuff from the world of hockey when it comes to racial injustice and things of that nature.

Also positive news on the actual playing front. Like we talked about at the top of the show, July 10. is the target date for a return to training camp for the NHL and the NHL PA. Now, it's the target date. It ain't the date because that, as you know, is phase three. And the chitter chatter behind the scenes is that the NHL and the PA want an approval vote for both phase three and phase four at the same time. So it's not a situation where the players are back at training camp.

They decide they don't like Q-tips up their nose twice a week to figure out if they have COVID. they also want to see their families and they decide not to actually come back and play. So the training camp is wasted. And so they want everything kind of signed off at the same time, which hasn't happened yet. We still don't know the Hub Cities. There was some reports this week that Vegas is definitely going to be one of them. And then we don't know about health and safety protocols. We don't know about being able to see your families.

I don't know about all that other shit that has to be decided before they return to play formally. But at least the target date has been set. A little bit of a ticking clock, not only for the negotiations, but also to let the players that are scattered to the four winds around the world right now know they've got to get back to their host cities, or at least to the places where the training camps will be held by July 10th. It'll be interesting. Earlier today, I think, or maybe late last night, Woj tweeted that there's a group of maybe 50 NBA players who are like, I don't know if I want to fucking go back. And I think what he said was like the league is looking at like how they can get, let them do that without facing any repercussions, basically. Because in theory, they're like in breach of contract or whatever. And they want to be fair about like if guys don't want to come back because they have kids or for whatever reason.

And all I could think about was would that happen in the NHL? And I honestly don't know what the answer would be. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's progress. If you're rooting for the season to resume, this is another step that had to happen. But, yeah, even in the big press release, which is obviously being presented as a good news, there's a lot of caveats and conditions in there. So we've got a long way to go, but at least now we've got a clock ticking on, in theory, when we're going to see players on the ice. We're a month minus a day to go. Let's see if they get there. Yeah, and I do think that I found a couple things interesting in the last week about all this stuff.

One being that John Tavares thinks that it's going to be essential for these training centers to ramp up their capacity in the next couple of weeks to get us ready for training camp. But you can't jump from like six guys on the guys at one time to 40. I think it's a really true point, but I do wonder exactly what has to happen for that to occur. because you are still dealing now with those local and federal restrictions on mass gatherings and stuff as being a factor in this. And then the other thing, too, is, like, how many guys aren't going to these training facilities? Because they are finding it easier to find ice time and to go to training, use equipment and things like that, wherever they are, versus having to come back and be in restricted groups. So I found that to be really interesting, too, in the sense that, like, you had teams like, I think it was Montreal and Carolina.

of being two of them, where they didn't even have enough guys locally that wanted to come and use the facilities to reopen them. Right. Which was really interesting. And then, of course, the other thing, too, I guess, and Sean, you can maybe speak to this a little bit, is the idea that some of these Canadian teams are going to be looking to open training camps in the States because of the quarantine issues at the border. Vancouver, Edmondson, and Calgary are three teams that are supposedly actively scouting locations

in the U.S. to potentially hold training camps there with the assumption, I'm sure, that the hub cities won't be in Canada. And then also with the assumption that the quarantine restrictions at the border are going to make it hard to get guys into Canada. Right. None of which we know yet and into Canada and then back down to the U.S. and do you have to, what sort of quarantine do you have to take on every time you cross that border? Are there exceptions that are going to be put in place for pro athletes? Is that going to differ in province to province? Is it going to differ based on where you are in the United States? These are all open questions. And yeah, I mean, it doesn't, there's, there's really no benefit to the Edmonton Oilers. If the hubs are

going to be in the United States, there's really no benefit to the Oilers of having camp in Canada, Other than that might be where the most players are. Yeah, like if that's where most of the players are now, then that makes it easier. But, I mean, there's not going to be any fans. There's no reason to do it locally. There's even local media is going to be presumably pretty limited as far as what they can do. Yeah, there's no reason to make it a hard and fast rule that you've got to have your camp in your local market and then head down to a hub that may be in a different country and may have all sorts of,

extra difficulties involved in in making that trip. Yeah. Yeah, it should be interesting. We'll see what happens. I mean, this is obviously a very optimistic development, you know, as far as return to play. There's still a fuck ton they've got to figure out, including all the CBA issues. But the fact that they got to sort of a, almost like a memorandum of understanding

about the date for training camps is a pretty important point and at least kind of indicates that both sides want there to be an end date to this stuff, maybe for the benefit of the negotiations, but it's a positive development. I do think that the CBA issues that are bubbling in the background are going to get louder. In particular, figuring out how the players are going to handle escrow with the revenue losses the next two to three seasons. And that becomes not only an issue between the players and the owners, but the players and the players. Because you're going to have guys that are, you know,

wanting to spread this thing out for several years. You're going to have guys that don't. The ages of the players doing these negotiations are a very big part of it. It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out behind the scenes. But positive developments on the training camp front, for sure. Sure. You mentioned the NBA. Was you Lambert that mentioned the NBA players thing? Yes, that's right.

Is that going to work for hockey? Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's a legitimate, like, I wouldn't fault anybody who was like, oh, I'm not, I'm not getting involved with any of this. This sounds crazy to me. I have two young kids, whatever, whatever excuse you want to come up with, that checks out. And, you know, in the NBA, 40 to 50 guys, I, out of 22 teams.

That's like a pretty big chunk of, there's only 12 guys on an NBA roster, and they'll obviously have allowances for G-League players to come onto the rosters as needed, if guys get sick or whatever. But, and the NHL would certainly do the same thing, but, you know, it just adds a lot of questions that don't have good or tidy answers of if the NBA is already looking at ways they can be like chill about letting those guys do that, that's a pretty good indication that like four or five or three or four teams worth of players

would just be like, I'm not showing up. Yeah. That's crazy. You know, in the NHL, it's the equivalent of like legitimately like 80 or 100 players on these 24 teams being like, no thanks. Yeah, and it does sound like with the NBA, it's a mix, right? There are some players who may not want to play because of safety and health concerns, and there's others who may not want to play because they're like, no, I don't want to be locked down for two months.

Yeah, right, right, right. Away from my family, away from all the, you know, other things I'd rather be doing. So it's kind of an interesting, it's sort of coming from both sides, but it ends up in the same place. Yeah. You know, it does get back to that issue that we always talk. about in the show of hockey culture, right? Like, if you are legitimately worried about yourself or your family and you don't want to come back and play, do you still come back and play because hockey

culture forces you to? Right. That's, I mean, that's, that's an unavoidable conversation at all of this, is not only the pressure to play through it, but also the pressure to not be the guy who bags out when the rest of your boys are trying to win a cup. It's a lot of pressure on these guys. So it's a tough call. Yep. And I mean, to even get, like what happens if somebody on one of the low-seated team says, no, I don't want to go back? Someone on Montreal or New York or Chicago says, I don't want to go back.

And then that team goes on a run. And now they're into the conference final and somebody gets hurt. And they're like, dude, we need you to come back now. Like, okay, maybe I will. Like, is that allowed? Is that there's a lot of open questions about it? It's going to be very, very, very hard to be the first one who says no. and then each player that says no, if there are any,

will make it progressively easier for the next one. Right, which is why, I mean, again, the NBA's number was like 40 to 50 players. And I don't think they're even saying no necessarily right now, but they're thinking, they're saying, like, what if we said no? And that's like they're, I would be shocked if those kind of conversations weren't happening behind the scenes. Like, I don't know that the NHL has a woge who's just like, there's literally everything that's happening behind the seeds.

I know everything about every player in the league. Like there are guys who, you know, are certainly insiders and know way more than they ever put out in public. But do we know that definitively, like that those conversations aren't half? I would be shocked if they weren't. No, and I'm sure they're looking at the NBA. Oh, yeah. They're 100% just going to do whatever the NBA does.

They're, the NHL, I don't believe, is going to make their decisions. based on what the NBA is doing. But there's definitely these conversations that happen between the leagues. And the NHL has been candid about this to kind of figure out what they're thinking and what they're thinking on things are. There's definitely an exchange of ideas. Here's the thing that Woj reported. Players who decide against participating in Orlando, that's the NBA hub, could be replaced by a substitution player. The NBA plans allow plans to allow replacements for players who test positive for the coronavirus or suffer injuries, uh, sources. say those players who are replaced become ineligible for the rest of the 2019-20 season.

There you go. So that's interesting. Which I think is probably the way you have to do it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you can either, yeah, you could either, if you're injured or you test positive, you can play shorthanded, I guess, or replace that player and then that player is gone for the rest of the tournament? Wow.

If I'm reading it right, that's really interesting. Sean, you participated in another chapter of our favorite soap opera as the Eugene Melnick turns this week. Yeah. With a scathing column. I always like when you write about Melnick, because I always like getting that paragraph on the athletic where it's like a thousand words long now of all the things that have been horrible under Eugene Melnick. And people get mad at me for leaving stuff out. Yeah, right. And like, it's, like, half of it would be enough to drive any fan away from the team that they follow.

But then it just keeps going and going and going. And this, what's the latest on Eugene Melnick? Well, so, I mean, we've got the whole situation with the charity that I think, if I remember, I kind of broke at the very end of last week's show. So we may have mentioned it very briefly. But basically the Ottawa Senators and the Sends Foundation, which is, a local charity here in Ottawa that does a lot of great work and is not run by the senators, but is sort of an arm's length partnership.

Obviously, they use the name and the logo and they run the 50-50 draws at the rink and all of that. And they announced that they were parting ways. And initially, that's all we knew. And it's since come to light that essentially the contract, the license for them to continue using the senator's logo and name was set to, expire. There was some, there's a new, yet another new president in the senator's organization, and he was involved. There was some talk about that maybe there was disagreement on what issue

should be pushed for, that the, the Sence Foundation tends to have a fairly limited scope as far as the sort of things they support, and that Eugene Melnick wanted to expand that to include things like organ donation, which is obviously important to him. And that, uh, and that, uh, it's, uh, The senators basically went to the foundation and said, we want you to put in an RFP to basically compete for the ability to still be our charity with other potential organizations. And that the foundation said, no, we're not going to do that. And it, I guess, reached an impasse where they both publicly declared that the relationship

wasn't going to go forward. I don't get the sense that's necessarily set in stone. There's still two months to go for everyone to make up here. But it's a weird situation. And then you head on Tuesday this, I think it was Tuesday, Rick Gibbons in the Ottawa Sun writes a piece where he digs into Eugene Melnick's own, I guess, not personal charity foundation, but the one that he set up for organ donation, which apparently had taken in something like a million dollars and only spent 5,000 as far as actual charitable giving, which is obviously

not a good look. And it's been interesting because that was Tuesday. We're recording this on Thursday. I assume that by now there would be some sort of follow up from Eugene Melnick's side or correction or here's what's going on because it obviously looks bad. Shake down. Rick Gibbons didn't come right out and say, you know, Eugene Melnick's stealing from his own charity or anything like that because we don't have evidence of that. But it kind of hung there as there were some not very nice conclusions. you could draw. We haven't really heard the other side of it. So I don't, I don't know, but it's,

it's one of those, go ahead. That was one of those situations where, like, I actually didn't read the story, but I saw enough people who are like, you know, I'm familiar with, like, the way nonprofits work or whatever. And in the U.S. at least, this would 100% get you investigated. Like, if these numbers that are in the Ottawa newspaper are accurate, this is the kind of thing. that like the authorities get involved with. And there's, so there's talk that, you know, this could draw the attention to the CRA, which is basically the Canadian IRS. But the bigger, you know, from a hockey perspective, like I wrote on Tuesday, the thing is,

like this story breaks last week and then kind of breaks again on Tuesday with the Givens article. And there's all sorts of reactions around Ottawa, but nobody is surprised. Like nobody is like, wow, I can't believe that something, U.G. Melnick would be accused of something like this. Or I can't believe he'd be involved in this. Or, you know, our team would never, like there's none of that. The credibility is already so low here. And like I wrote in the piece, that sucks as a fan. That is the absolute worst to have an owner that you don't trust, that you don't believe in, that you don't think is either there to win or has any idea how to win.

because it just, it's, it's the worst place. Coaches get fired. GMs get fired. Players come and go, but the owner can stick around for pretty much forever. And Eugene Melnick says he will. He still insists he's not selling. He's not, he's not going anywhere. It's a mess.

And I, like, look, man, I'm a lease fan. I am a least fan. I was here in Ottawa during the Battle of Ontario years. I'm, in theory, I should be the last one to feel any sympathy for Senators fans. I feel terrible for them right now. Like, this, this is awful. This is just, it's an awful place to be in a time where there should be a lot of optimism. You know, they've got some young guys on the roster.

They've got more guys coming in. They've got the picks, the two picks this year. There should be a ton of excitement for the future, but everyone's just kind of going, yeah, well, what's the future going to be? If it's just Melnick writing the checks, why bother getting excited about new guys who might come in? They're just going to get shipped out in five years because the owner doesn't want to pay them. The part I don't really get is that, like, it's a charitable arm or, or, you know, a charity that worked with the senators, correct? Like, it's their foundation, yes.

Yeah, it's essentially, I mean, it's, and out of all the issues that they could have dealt with to use their money, like one of them was the fucking organ donation thing, just because Melnick had a liver transplant? Am I reading that right? Well, it, it sounds like, and again, I'm putting all sorts of caveats on this because I don't feel like we know the full story yet. But it was suggested that the Sense Foundation that basically works with local youth programs. That's their focus. That's what they chose to be their, essentially their area where they focus their giving. And that Eugene Melnick, having had the liver transplant a few years ago, wanted, and I think we can understand, to shine more of a light on that as a charitable cause. And that he may have gone

of the sense foundation said we got to divert some of what you're doing into this cause that the owner likes and that they kind of went no we don't you know it's a good cause but we're focused on that we can't branch off every yeah and and there was also talk you know again also that there the senators wanted uh some some giving done in the area of domestic violence again great cause worthy cause but that the foundation may have felt like you know we we have to stay focused on on what we do and there's other avenues to do that. And, you know, Melnik went off and, in theory, did his own thing, but maybe didn't. This whole thing sounds like if Terry Bougula said to the Sabres Foundation, you know what, we should really refocus our funds to fracking.

Like, it just, it's a very odd. I don't know, man. It's really, as with everything you can say about the senators the last several years, it's really weird. It's just like you. And let's. You're always surprised by the latest twist. Yeah, but if you got this blind, you're just like an NHL team has is going to part ways with this charity foundation amidst claims that the owner may have misdirected charity. Like, you would be like, oh, that's Ottawa.

That's definitely. That's not even a hard blind item. That's, yeah. Speaking of Ottawa, Bobby Ryan for the Masterton, to me, that was the easiest vote. If I had a vote for the Besna, that'd be the. easiest vote I'm going to cast, but Bobby Ryan for the Masterson was the easiest vote I'm going to cast. Well, I mean,

the guy got diagnosed with cancer would be the other one. And then you've got to think about all the guys who are like 38 and still in the league that get nominated every year. Well, and the other one is Jay Beaumister. And the thing with the Masterton is they've tried to sort of remind everyone that this is not supposed to be the tragedy award, but it kind of is.

That's sort of what it has grown to over the years, which always makes it feel kind of gross in a way because you're honoring these guys, and yet you're like trying to pick like whose tragedy and whose redemption stories. Now, listen, you did overcome addiction, however. Right. But that's why for years I've said it's the Lifetime Original Movie Award. It's just, yeah. The one thing with Bobby Ryan and the reason I do think he's going to win is Masterton voters historically. they like the comeback. They like the guy who comes back.

They like to have that final scene, that redemption of, okay, now he's back. And, you know, for him to come back and score the head, whereas Boe Meester and Oscar Lindblah, we haven't seen that yet. God willing, we're going to see it soon, but we haven't, it hasn't happened yet. So I do think Bobby Ryan probably wins, but I think those three are your, are going to be your finalists. And, yeah. For me, it was also just the fucking shit this kid's. put up with in his entire life. Oh, yeah, sure.

No, of course. Nobody's saying it's not, it's not like a worthy, like he's not a worthy candidate or whatever. It's just such a weird award that like, I get why it exists. It probably shouldn't because, again, you're just like, now listen, I think here's how I would rank these tragedies in terms of most deserving of reckoning. Like, it's very fucking weird. Yeah. It's like the worst game of poker ever. Stroke beats cancer.

Yeah. Does it? No, crazy. Well, I have, I have a testicular cancer. Well, that's not as bad as brain cancer. Right. Like, yeah, you're going to really dig into, like, some very strange territory to determine who should win the award. Like, it should be, like, given at the team level, maybe.

Yeah. Or not at all would be the other. That's why my favorite Masterson nomination of all time was the year that the Winnipeg writers nominated André Pavlik for not quit. hockey because Right, or Ryan O'Reilly getting nominated because he was nice after he drove a truck into a, like, you know, it's just, like I said, every year there's like, look, this guy, I can't remember who, but I feel like I saw somebody where they were like, we don't have like a tragedy on the team this year. Let's, let's pick a guy who, he really worked on his defensive game this year. Yeah. Yeah.

It is like, okay. It's, I like the Masterton as an award. I think, you know, we talked on the other show on the, the patron show about how there's too many awards for character. But I feel like this is the one. I don't mind. If you're going to have one, this would be the one to have. Have one.

This is the one. But it also does strike me as weird because each chapter of the Hockey Writers Association makes its nomination for its own local area, which may be the right way to do it. But then they each write like this glowing sales pitch. Here's why he deserves it. Which always strikes me as weird. Like to me, that's not my role as a local writer to write the sales pitch for somebody to win an award. So that always seems a bit strange.

And obviously you get this wide variance in, you know, this guy's 35 and still comes to the rink. And this guy almost died and came back. and it's an odd award. This doesn't feel like the best way to do it, and yet there's probably, I don't know. This is the part where I should give my idea of a better way, and I don't really have that, so I guess we go with this. Yeah.

Yeah, that's weird. Sean, you wanted us to fill out your ballot for you. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, you know, we got an award ballot, and I don't remember any hockey players, so, yeah, you could just. I got it. Well, you got it? Just write it down. Did you solve MVP?

What? Did you solve MVP? Yeah, Connor Hellebock. Oh. So you would put him first on your ballot. I would, yeah. So you're not making a pitch for him to be like on the ballot because we get to name five guys. You're saying, no, he should win the award.

Because the way, you know, and you get into the whole thing of, well, what is value? What are we defining it? For me personally, it's what if you talk? this player and replaced him with an average player or like a replacement level player, like what does the team do in the absence of this guy and you replaced him with just a standard type of a player. The Winnipeg Jets are last in the league, probably. Right?

Like that's how bad the Jets were in front of Connor Hellebuck. And, you know, when the season ended, granted they had some extra games played, but they were in a playoff spot. Hold on. I wrote about this on the on the Patreon yesterday. You know, it's funny. I have all the stats on there. I can pull it up. Sometimes we talk about like measuring what you're trying to prove by saying, okay, well, how good was his backup when he didn't play? In 19 games, Laurent Brassaut had an 895, say, a percentage and a 3.28 goals against.

Right. There's something to what you're saying about Conner's value of the jets. The thing with Pelibuck that, again, you can put whatever. kind of spin on this you want. But like, goals saved above expected, Hellebuck had, I want to say, like, 20-ish, and the next closest guy in the league had nine. Like, I mean, that's the argument for Hellebuck, is that he faced, I want to say, like, the third most shots per 60 in the league in all situations, the third most expected

goals against per 60 in all, at five on five. 16th worst in three on three And the Jets Despite those things The Jets gave up the 12th fewest goals Per 60 at 5 on 5 And the third fewest At 3 on 3

And like the PK was horrible And he still bumped them up I think two ranking spots Yeah And he's great And yet he tied carry Price for the most appearances in the league this year. They both played 58 out of 71 games.

And Kerry Price is the best goaltender in the world, so. And we know that, right? And so, like, then the argument becomes, well, goalies never win the, the, the, the, heart trophy. And that's mostly true. The last one to do it was Carrie Price in 2014-15. Let's put it this way. Connor Hallibuck, let's see if I can find it really fast.

But basically, Conor Halibuck faced maybe 160 fewer shots in 700 fewer minutes than Carrie Price did that year. Like, remember how we all thought, oh, my God, the fucking Canadians that year are so bad, blah, blah, blah. They allowed like half an expected goal fewer per 60 minutes than this year's Winnipeg Jets team did. And by the way, you mentioned goalies almost never win the heart, which is. true, defensemen as well. There's nothing in the Hart Trophy that says that it has to go to forwards every year. For some reason, we're locked into this thing. We're not just, not just the forwards win every year, but most years it's three forwards are the nominees. And there's nothing in the intent or description of the award that suggests that should be the case.

I mean, the other argument I think you can say is that the best goalie in the league every year is always the most valuable player in the league, with very rare exceptions. Where, you know, if you're playing behind, like, the best defensive team in the league and you have the best save percentage, like, okay, fair enough. But, yeah, I mean, they were, like, Chicago and Detroit level bad defensively, and they were in a playoff spot when the season abruptly ended. And I think that's the ultimate argument for Hellebuck. And they weren't just bad defensively because some teams are bad. They lost half their blue line, including arguably their best. Four out of six, actually.

Yeah, they lost four out of six. And the two that stuck around were, I think, Josh Morrissey and, what's his name? He stinks, though. Like, Josh Morrissey's pretty good. Kulikov. Yeah, and Kulikov, who's bad. So they lost basically, you know, four defensemen who are any good at all. They had one left.

Including two pretty good ones. One of whom walked away. Truba Bufflin, Sherat, and Myers. Yeah. So Trubah forced to trade. Bufflin walks away. In theory, that should result in a team missing the playoffs. In fact, that's what most of us pick them to do.

I think you would say, too, that only maybe two other players on the Jets didn't have down years. And so that's why I think it's Connor Hellowbach. I think, again, like if you're talking about, obviously they didn't finish in the top six team by points percentage, but it's a weird year, and that's the kind of the situation with, you're just going to have to accept that the teams that qualified for the play-in round are playoff teams. Like, I think everybody's going to have to accept that. Now, Ryan, let's just say, for shits and giggles, let's say somebody wanted to vote, I don't

know, Artemi Panera first in their ballot. Like, would you have a problem with that? No, no, I wouldn't. Okay. Because, again, like, goalies never win this award. I think, okay, so here's the argument for Artemi Panarin, who I would put second on my ballot if I were voting, which I am not. So Artemian Panarin led the league in power play points this year, and he didn't, unlike Leon Dricidal, get to play with Connor McDavid. He played with, and like Chris Kreider and Mika Zabandajad, they're good players, definitely, definitely. Trubber ran the point, I think, on that paraplegation, too.

That was obvious an improvement. But, like, wouldn't you put them more on a Ryan Nugent Hopkins level of player? Zabandajad's probably a step above that. But I definitely think of... Man, is really good. Like, let's not trigger-cote it. So, you're right. But he's not Connor McDavid.

No, and also Zabandajat had a career high of 74 points last year in 82 games or 81. or he played basically the full season. Hey, I don't want to get my shit wrong. DeAngelo is the guy who had all the points on play. Okay. Yeah. That was the guy. And again, we think of Tony DeAngelo as like a game changer on the blue line for sure. I actually just follow him for his political view.

Sure. But Zabanajad had 74 points. It was a career high last year. This year he had 75 in 68 because Artemi Panarin is a fucking star maker. Um, and, and so, yeah, like, are, are you going to say that, that, uh, Panera, well, you know, Panera got to play with Zabanajad and, and Crider? Well, that was only on the power play. His, his two most, his two most common, uh, line mates at five on five. Ryan Strom and yes for Fost. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, and, like, we're talking about like three times as much ice time with those two guys as, as with Sabanajad or Crider at five on five. three times as much. I'm at a point where I have to figure out where I'm putting dry-sidal, because he's not going to be first. He shouldn't be first.

He's probably not going to be second, I don't think. I mean, there's a chance he could be fourth. I think you can make an argument for him in the four to six or seven range, honestly. Like, okay, we're going to do now the anti-dry-sidal, like why he shouldn't win it, even though he was on pace to shatter the cap-era scoring record. And the answer, in part, is you got to play with fucking Connor McDavid for 60% of his minutes. On the power play mostly. Listen, he was his own man at five on five.

Let's be honest. Well, for the first, like, I think like a third of his minutes at five on five were with McDavid. But overall, he played like 61% of his minutes with McDavid in all situations. So that's going to boost your numbers. And yeah, he definitely, you know, he definitely. know, it's the Corey Perry thing where he played well, even without McDavid, when McDavid was hurt. When Perry won the heart trophy, it was because, in part, because Gets Laugh missed a bunch of time. And it's the same deal here where McDavid, I think, the seven games.

And when Henrik Sidon won, it was because Daniel missed a lot of things. Correct, yes. And so there is definitely that to consider, and he was great with Kaler Yamamoto and New General Hopkins, I think was the other guy on that line. They were all great together. So what's the death, though? What's the thing that you pull the thread on dry-sadling out-arvels? Didn't play any fucking defense, Greg.

Oh. That's it. I mean, look, obviously plus-minus is a bullshit stat, and people shouldn't pay attention to it, but people do pay attention to it. And Drysidal was a minus player. You know how many Hart Trophy winners have been a minus player in the history of the Hart Trophy. Fucking zero. Or maybe one. Maybe Ovechkin won one as a minus player.

But I think, and, you know, if you're going to make the dry side, well, you know, look how well he played without Carr-McDavid. Well, then you got the Nathan McKinnon argument. Rantanin missed 28 games. Landiscaug, 16. McCar missed 13. Cadre missed 19. Burakowski missed 12. The, you know, the, if you want to do the Taylor Hall thing, of look at the gap between his points and the guy below him, like, it wasn't even close that, that, I want to say it was like

40, he was 40, McKinnon was 40 points clear of the next closest guy. 43 is what it says here. To go back to your original argument, though, like, I think the thing that Oilers fans are going to have to understand when they start to see some of these ballots come out about dry-siddle is that, like, it's a fucked up year. And the, the playoff pool is, expanded larger than it's ever been. I mean, you're talking about 24 teams.

So, I mean, in a normal year, maybe the, would the jets have been in if it wasn't 24? I don't think so, right? I think they were on the outside looking in. Well, they were in a playoff spot, but they did not have one of the top 16 points percentages. Points percentage, right. And then obviously the Rangers. Like, an extra two games or something. Obviously, the Rangers aren't in.

So, like, that would have changed things a bit. So it's a fucked up year. And the other thing to say... If he ends up being third or fourth on a ballot, it's because you're dealing with a much larger field than we've ever had. Well, and the other thing to say is, I think the... At five-on-five where, like you say, Dry-Sytle was mostly his own man. The Oilers were, I think, plus seven when he was on the ice at five-on-five.

And, you know, part of that was playing with McDavid, but he mostly drove his own bus. but again, like if you want to talk about it from that point of view, playing mostly with Ryan's Rome and yes for Fost, uh, frickin Panarin was a plus 37. Yeah, at five on five. And he led the league in power play points,

which people again are pointing to with Drysidal. Oh, the Oilers had like a historically great power play this year. And Drysidle was definitely important part of that. You know, who else was is the best player in the world. Yeah. So like, Like nobody, the thing you have to say with all this is nobody's saying dry Sidal had a bad season. Dry Sightal had a great season.

He didn't have a good enough season defensively for me to put him legitimately in the top three in the league this year. I would go Hellebuck, Panarin McKinnon. But again, like, at the end of the day, I think I'm fully prepared for Dry Sightle to win because people are going to go, well, you know, he was 15 points clear of McKinnon as I think the top scorer in the league and that kind of thing. That wasn't on the Oilers because you kind of have to ignore the whole Connor McDavid had 0.02 fewer points per game than McKinnon did or than dryside. Drysalt did, yeah. So real quick, that's my anti-drysidal argument and people aren't going to accept it because they're just going to say, well, look at all the fucking points he had. And I get it, but, you know.

It's a good argument. Real quick. Shaw, did you have anything to say about the heart or no? No, I mean, that, that, obviously those are the four guys, I think are top. I think who shows up in the fifth spot on ballots is going to be interesting. I'm kind of going back and forth. There's some strong cases being made for Elias Patterson. I think Conradict should get some votes.

I mean, Conner McDavid is, especially if we're, especially if we're, we're kind of taking some credit away from Leon Dressadle for the fact that he plays with the best player in the world. Maybe the best player in the world should get some votes and maybe some other guys as well. Who probably also draws the toughest defensive assignment, let's be honest. Yeah. So I'm, you know, I don't think that necessarily made it any clearer for me, but I came into this week still leaning slightly to the same guy I voted for in March when we did our

athletic poll, which is Nathan McKinnon. but I'm my mind can be changed so I'm still mulling. It's a fun field. It's a fun field. It's not fun at all. I hate it.

I'm just going to get yelled out by people and it's Oh yeah for sure. Absolutely. I don't want to drill down too deep on some of this other stuff, but suffice it to say it's either McCarr or Quinn Hughes for the Calder. The Norris is either Yossi or Carlson. Well, the Yosey Carlson thing is the same

doesn't really play defense argument but he has a ton of points. Yeah. With Drysidal versus Panarin or McKenney. It should be said an historic number of points. Yeah. And again, like Drysidal was on pace to set like to hit like 140 or something. No, that can't be right.

But like the way they were talking about it was he was going to destroy the number. Kutraulte put up last year. Yeah. So you got those are the two. Those are the two. we don't vote on the Jack Adams, but I think it's going to be interesting to see where that goes.

I think Elaine Vigno's got a real fair tight case. But I mean, we'll see where they go with that. But like Bruce Cassidy. Yeah. He deserves a man. The Selke is interesting because I think all the Normies are going to put Coturier and all the smarties are going to put

Sorrelli, from what I understand. And then the asswell, the act. actual answer is Valery Natchewskian, but, you know, or you... And then Joe Haggerty will put Bergeron. Right. Yeah. Or Sean Thornton. And that's it. I don't care about the Lady Bing.

Am I missing any of them? No, I don't think so. No, Lady Bing, vote for defensemen. That's my only, my only thing. Yeah, and actually, actually... It's bad that we only give the Hart Trophy to forwards. It's completely ridiculous that we only give the Lady Bing to forwards. Our good friend, Demetri Filipovich, makes the point that Jacob Slavin, give some attention to Jacob Slavin. I think Jacob Slavin is a guy who definitely deserves that kind of consideration for sure. Yeah, for sure. I think that's an interesting one.

All right, let's get a little quiz action going here before we do the overrated, underrated for the week. So I mentioned my daughter before. I mentioned that she's a fan of the app TikTok. I know that a lot of people love the really in-depth games that we do on this podcast, but sometimes we just do shit that involves, is this person a thing or a thing? And that's where this game show falls into this week. It'll be Sean versus Ryan in a little adventure I like to call TikTok star or 2019 NHL draft fifth round pick.

God. Love it. All right. Okay. So let's get to it. I should point out, I've got a teenage daughter, so I should have a little bit. If she talks to me about TikTok, I pretend to listen, I don't actually listen, so we're going to see how much of it sinks into the subconscious versus what I suspect is going to happen,

which is I'm not going to know any of this. Okay. This is exciting. I'm excited for all of us. Let's start out with Cooper. I'm sorry, who goes first, I should say. Sean, I don't remember. You won the toss, Sean.

Okay, I'll go first. Okay, so the first one we're going to deal with is named Cooper Moore. Cooper Moore. I don't know. Again, these are all very interesting names. If you need clarification on how. How to spell them? I'd be happy to.

No. Coopermore, that's giving me more of a TikTok vibe. I will say TikTok. Okay. Cooper Moore was drafted 128th overall by the Detroit Red Wings. But is he a TikTok star? A defenseman from Brunswick prep.

Cooper Moore is an 2019 NHL draft fifth round pick. Ryan? Yeah. Quentin Griggs. That's a TikTok guy. Quentin Griggs is, in fact, a 17-year-old TikToker with 4.7 million fans on TikTok. Quentin Griggs.

TikTok star. All right. I'm going to get smoked. Sean, Chase Hudson. Oh, that's definitely a TikTok star. That's correct. You're, of course, talking about Lil Huddy. 20.9 million followers on TikTok.

Chase Hudson, TikTok. Now, you seem to know that pretty quickly. How did you know so quick? I didn't. I said it authoritatively to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about. That's a common strategy that I use. I mean, Chase Hudson, obviously, a member of the hype house, as everybody knows, 20.9 million followers.

So get cracking, little huddy, to get to that 21 mark. Ryan, Caleb Coffee. That I'm going to say TikTok. That's correct. 5.7 million followers 15 years old. According to Wikipedia, he is known for his looks, cute, smile, style, and amazing personality. Great. Coffee.

Sean, Charlie Demilio. Charlie Demilio is a, oh, wait, I'm not doing my... That's definitely a TikTok star, Greg. I'm insulted you would even ask me. It feels like you were signaling. No, I wasn't. I just, I realized I forgot that I was supposed to answer authoritatively when I completely flipped the coin in my head and guess. All right. I'm sorry for accusations of cheating. Charlie Demerio, of course, is like one of the two most famous TikTok stars. I have now. She, she has 62.3 million followers. Also, if you had asked for a spelling, you would have found out that she spells her name C-H-A-R-L-I.

Uh-huh. Okay. So there was like a hint. So there you go. All right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Trying to fool you there. Ryan, Reese Newkirk. Ooh, that's, that's ringing a bell. I'm going to say he's a draft pick.

Reese Newkirk was selected 147th overall by the New York Islanders. A center for the Portland Winterhawks. It was correct. Reese Newkirk. All right. Stay alive, Sean. All right. Harrison Blaisdell.

You know what? That sounds TikTok-y, but I feel like I've been getting all TikToks and not very many draft picks. Draft pick. Harrison Blaisdell was selected 134th overall by the Winnipeg Jets, a center from Chiluac in the BCHL. Harrison plays Dell. He's a college hockey player. NHL, 2019 NHL draft fifth round pick, not TikTok star. Who does he play?

North Dakota, right? Am I right about this? Yeah, North Dakota. Oh, everybody knows Harrison Blaisdell. All right, Ryan, for the win. Okay. FTW. Cole LeBrant.

TikTok guy. Said with confidence. I like it. Cole LeBrant started first gaining stardom with his Vine collaboration channel, Dem white boys. Cole LeBrant, 14.5 million followers. followers on TikTok, 23 years old. He has the phrase God first on his TikTok account.

Ryan, you have won this edition, perhaps the only edition, of TikTok Star or 2019 NHL draft fifth round pick. Did you have any more? I want to hear if you had any in the tank. No. No. In fact, the tiebreaker, the other, the other Titan of TikTok, is Addison Ray.

She and Charlie DeMille are the two biggest stars. And the tiebreaker was closest to the Tee, how many fans does Addison Ray have on TikTok? Okay. So go ahead. Closest to the T. 17.8 million. 17.8 million.

Sean? I'll say I wasn't paying attention when you said how many of the other people had. So I'll say 20 million. Sean, you would have won the tiebreaker. She has 44.6 million fans on TikTok. Wow. Good job, Addison.

Addison Ray. Addison Ray, 19 years old, Lafayette, Louisiana. Full name, Addison Ray Easterling. So disappointed in me. This is terrible. Listen, I think you acquitted yourself quite well. You didn't fall into any of the traps. Yeah, I just ran into a buzzsaw on Ryan when it came to TikTok.

They guys just unbeatable. Ryan has his finger on the pulse of the youth of today. It's definitely, like, it's funny because when Sean was like, oh, my daughter talks to me about TikTok people, and I might have heard their names or whatever. I was like, I'm going to guess at least 30% of that draft round was college hockey players. So I feel like I'm pretty good. I was waiting for like a guy who played in hockey east and I was just going to be like, I can tell you everything. about this guy, but... Okay.

Final category, overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite for the week. Our friend Jesse Specter from the rebooted Deadspin had a very interesting category. Because I was surprised that there actually are only 11

choices. So there's going to be some overlap. Overrated, underrated favorite, favorite, favorite, Mel Brooks movies. I like that. Geez. Yeah.

Now, in honor of the parody of cancel culture that was going viral this week where people were like, Blazing Saddle should be canceled even though it's a satire on racism. Overrated, underrated, favorite least favorite. Yeah. By all means, don't just do it from memory. Yeah. I'll go first. I'll tell you what I think is overrated.

History of the World Part 1, I think, is overrated. I think History of the World Part 1 has a lot of really classic, amazingly funny scenes, like the Inquisition song. But I think as a whole, it doesn't really do it for me. So I would say overrated would be History of the World Part 1. For me, I think the answer is space balls. Oh, shit. Why is that? My God.

Stone Cold Class. I feel like we've done this, right? I feel like we've had the Spaceball's argument before. You know the episode of South Park that ruined family guy for a lot of people, including me? The Manatees? Yeah. There was, I think it was, Dan Harmon had like a Twitter rant about how Spaceball sucks. He called it the first draft of Spaceballs.

I got to find that. Well, he has since, like, deleted his Twitter, I think, so I don't know that you're going to come up. with very much. But his point was largely that every joke in the whole movie is basically like, here's a phrase, like, comb the desert where they literally had a big freaking comb. Do you believe it? And like jam the radar and everybody on the ship is an asshole and that kind of stuff. Like, oh, yeah, it just kind of was like, oh, a lot of these jokes are like needed more time in the oven for sure. sure. They're sort of like,

they're like puns versus jokes. Not even, they're not even, but they're not even puns because it's like jam the radar and they throw a big thing a jam at it and it's like, okay.

Yeah. Well, listen, my argument, my kind of argument to that would be that even though they're making like replacement level puns, then the next layer of the joke is always great. Like,

it's not simply just combing the desert. It's using an Afro pick to clothe, to comb desert. It's not. simply just jamming the radar. It's fucking Rick Moranus saying, you know, who would give me the raspberry? There's a second layer to that joke. Yeah, but, but again, like all of them are just so like, okay, in case you didn't get it,

here's, so like with comb the desert, he's like, comb the desert, do you hear me? Come the desert. And smash cut to, ah, these two guys have a big freaking comb. Now that's crazy. These guys, the people who came up with this movie are wacky. I completely understand. All right, Sean. Oh, man, what are we even on?

Overrated? I don't, I mean, it's, I know this will shock you guys. I really haven't seen very many of these movies. You know, I'm kind of. I'll say, for overrated, I'm going to say Blazing Saddles only because I heard so much about how amazing it was. And I don't, I've never even seen it start to finish. So if you're a Blazing Saddles fan, you win, I lose. Don't even bother arguing with me.

but I've seen like bits and pieces and I was expecting too much and it was fine, it was funny, but it's, I don't know, I got to pick something, so. Blazing space balls should be the mashup. I think that,

I think that Blazing Saddles kind of falls into the, into the realm of a lot of both Mel Brooks movies and like just kind of screwball comedies from that era, where it's like, oh, we do not have an ending. We just straight up don't have one. Or they fight in the movie set.

Or like, you know, think about stripes, which is another like, oh, it's a classic comedy. The first 40 minutes of stripes are great. The last hour of that movie is like, they must have been doing a lot of it. The ending is the hardest part of a comedy. The all-time greatest example of that is Holy Grill. Like a movie that literally does not have an ending. Yeah, and I think that kind of is like, not only do we not have an ending, like, we know that we don't have an ending. So here's just like a cop showing up and arresting everyone as opposed to this, which is like, oh, we're acting like we have an ending.

It's just not one. Yeah, Police Academy, I remember being like that too, where they didn't really, like, what's the end of Police Academy? I couldn't tell you what the beginning or middle of Police Academy is. Underrated Mel Brooks. I'll go Men and Tites. I really have an affinity for Men and Tites, maybe because it was on HBO so much. But Carrie Elwee's as Errol Flynn is something you really can't go wrong with.

I really thought it was really funny. It's got some obvious issues now like every Mel Brooks movie does. But I very much enjoyed Men and Tites. Underrated is the producers. Like it took. the musical? It took the musical for people to really go like, oh, this is like, what a concept. Like, even just like the concept of it, let alone, uh, Sarah Mostell and, uh, Gene Wilder

as, as the leads. Like, I think they're both super duper funny. And like, at the time it was pretty appreciated. I seem to recall it's the film for which Mel Brooks won his Oscar. Yeah. Uh, but, you know, I don't think people are walking around like, oh, the best Mel Brooks movie or even like a top

three Mel Brooks movie, the producers but he I said I would If you family feuded it and had 100 people I bet like the majority would say that it's a Broadway show versus it being a movie. Yes, correct. Yeah.

And then it got turned into a movie of the Broadway show which was fine but the original exists so stick with the original. And it also was the basis for a really really great season of curb too. Yes. Yeah. That is a good season.

Yeah. Sean, underrated. Yeah, I'm going with Greg. I'm going men and tights. I've mentioned this before, but for a couple years in high school, I worked at a video store and I got to watch the same movies over and over and over again, and that was one of them. And yeah, I won't even say it's a great movie, but it's one I enjoyed a lot at that age.

And I'm sticking with it. And yeah, Carrie Always. bragging about how he can actually do an English accent. Yes. One of the best jokes in the movie. Favorite, do respect to Sean, but Blazing Saddles is my favorite. My dad showed me that movie when I was a young kid. Young Frankenstein has some of the best production design you'll ever see in a comedy.

Like, it's great. It looks gorgeous, the black and white, everything else. I just feel like Blazing Saddles has a higher. hit-to-miss ratio than does young young Frankenstein. So I'll go Blazing Saddles as problematic as it is. Well, again, like, is it really

problematic if they're saying it's like the message of like because I saw, okay, let me put it this way. I saw a list the other day of like oh, this is every, or not the other day, but like a couple of weeks ago of this is every kind of song in a Disney movie. And one of the categories was

problematic and like they lumped in the Dumbo, the songs from Dumbo, which which are insanely, like, racist, with savages from Pocahontas, which is like, no, they're saying, like, thinking like this is wrong, though. So I don't, like, I don't know that that's, like, problematic. Like, it's bad that they're saying the stuff they're saying, but the point of the song is that they're bad at saying that stuff. So I don't. I mean, I think that the Blazing Saddles has issues beyond the race stuff, though. Like, the entire, the entire crux of the finale is Dom Deloie is playing an outsized gay character.

Yeah. And, like, you know, like, it's, it's, it's, well, again, we're talking about the, the end of the movie is bad, but. Right. Yeah. No, but I mean, I think as, I mean, look, it's, yeah. Let me put it this way. I had completely forgotten the Dom de Louise part. So. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's young Frankenstein. It's so fucking funny. It's great. It's so fucking funny. And like, yeah, everybody says it's his best one. And, you know, sometimes, you know, It's like, oh, what's the best Spielberg movie? Well, now you're going to be mad that I say Jaws, but it's Jaws. Yeah, it's Jaws because Jaws is fucking amazing. So, like, sometimes you don't have to like outthink somebody on what the, what the favorite or best is. And the best Gene Wilder performance of all time.

Like, Willie Wonka is a great movie and he's great in it. I think he holds that Willie Wonka movie together. I think, I think the young Frankenstein is his best role. in his best performance. He's great. Look, I'm not saying he's not good in it, but I think, I think that movie, the Willie Wonka movie straight up doesn't work if Gene Wilder isn't weird as fuck in that movie. So anyway. I think it works if Tommy Smothers was cast. Okay. Now, how about this? What if it's, what if it's freaking Johnny Depp? How does that sound? I'm trying to think of whoever, whoever else would have been huge at that moment. Cheech. He's just doing the cheap character. All right. All right.

Listen. I'm going to say this right now. And you know I'm right. You put Richard Pryor as Willie Wonka. That movie is a hundred times better than it is. You might be right about that. Charlie would get called the N-word, though. So we do have to...

Augustus, I told you to stay away from that fucking pipe. Maybe shouldn't be doing the voice. That's just a Richard Pryor impression. Okay. All right. Sean? My favorite is Spaceballs. I can see it all the points where I made, but it's still my favorite, one of my favorite movies from that era. I like that.

Worst is Life Stinks, at least favorite. Life Stinks for those who don't know is basically like Mel Brooks doing a, it's like he's a rich guy and he gives up all his money. to find out what it's like to live as a poor person in L.A. Or like a homeless person in L.A. And it's just, it's not funny and it's dumb. And it came out almost a decade after trading, trading places. So it's not even like in that zeitgeist. So didn't like it.

I've never seen it. I will have to go with one of the very few Mel Brooks movies. besides the ones we've mentioned already that I've seen and say Dracula dead and loving it isn't good. Yeah, I think that one also falls into my video store window and yeah, I don't have memories of it being great and I don't think I've seen any of the other Melbrook's movies so by default.

All right. There it is. There it is. Perfect. Well, we've done it. Navigated the treacherous waters at Melbrook's movies. That's Buck's Soup for this week. Thanks to no one, except for us.

Well, thanks to Jesse for suggesting the overrated, underrated. You can read my stuff on ESPN.com. My column this week is the alternative NHL Awards, which we deal with, best team, best feud, things of that nature. And you can listen to ESPN and ICE. I had three really good guests on this week, Demetri Filipovich, Alison Lucan, and Marat Ettesh about the NHL awards

and all the shit that's swirling around in the world. And then you can listen to me and Lambert and Ruby, my beautiful wife, on Meism Pod. Our top chef podcast is we are in the throes of finale time. The chef testin' sir in Italy, and only four chefs remain. So, strap in, folks. It's a good one.

It's been a wild season, man. Yeah. Yeah, also sign up for the Puck Suit Patreon. did a bonus episode where we re-awarded some mistaken NHL awards from the past 10 years or so. And I have a newsletter on there, me and Sean Gentilly from The Athletic Do Stick to Sports on there, which we just did this past weekend, rightly described as the podcast about Chips and Blink 182. So those are, that's what I got to plug, Sean, you're up. You can find me on The Athletic.

I had a few pieces this week. I wrote about Eugene Melnik. And I have a piece up today in which I introduce a team I'm calling the off-brand NHL All-Stars. It's basically the worst possible roster you could make that kind of sounds like the best possible roster. So you check that out and you will meet people like Lou Robitai, Aleko Vendon, Josako, and the immortal Wayne Grotsky,

if you haven't, if you're not already on the Wayne Grotsky bandwagon, this is your chance. Joe Sacco is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

No, but it's good. Because Joe Sacco, Joe Sacko was a Joe Sackick knockoff was something I've never considered, and it's hilarious when you consider his history with the avalanche. Yeah. He played for the Leafs,

and that was a thing, but then when he went to work for the avalanche, it was unacceptable. He also, of course, had that great run with Mick Foley in WWE. Mr. Sacco.

Yeah. All right, that's the show for this week. Thanks to everybody for supporting the show. Do you check out the Patreon. The bad NHL Awards that we fixed is a really fun episode. And thanks to everybody who subscribes. Yeah, and check out the mailbag where we just talk crap about Greg for the entire time. Greg had to go right about the new, what, phase three or whatever.

So it was just me and Sean Flying Solo when we talked about. about our favorite sodas, for example. It's fantastic. Stupid fucking podcast. Was it, did both of you just say Fago? We did. Oh, perfect. That's why I thought.

Two crazy juggaloes. All right. Talk to you next week. Thanks to everybody. Bye. See it. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons.

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