Puck Soup - League of Rats

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

The boys discuss the stunning firings of Gerard Gallant in Vegas and Ray Shero in NJ, their replacements and what it all means; debate the state of goaltending in the NHL; discuss Matthew Tkachuk and the "rats" in hockey; break down the All-Star Game events; talk Nicklas Backstrom contract; and look at the Oscar nominations, but mostly talk about JOKER. Sponsored by Away!

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You're not the only one Sands employment this week Gerard Gallant Some of us still have a Don't have a contract That extends through the end of next season though For some reason That is true

I mean he does have a lot of millions of dollars He's doing a little better than you I feel like Jack Adams Award money probably stashed away in some sort of high-yield CD. But he's fired. And what the fuck?

Why do this if you're the Vegas Golden Knights? Yeah. Well, I think the answer we all understand is he didn't convince Mark Andre Fleury to make more saves. When it happened, they were 25th in the lead save percentage in like top three in every other underlying number. So. Yeah. Yeah. This is the second, I was going to say, this is the second time that we've seen a coach fired recently, because Avilette was the same thing, where the underlying numbers were not all that shitty.

It's just that some things weren't going as well as maybe as expected. Yeah. Well, both teams had like 37-year-old goaltenders, and who could possibly imagine that those guys might see a decline? That's clearly a coach's fault. Well, so the issue in Nashville is they were always like, Yossi Soros is like the goalie of the future. And Soros was dog shit to start the year too. I don't think anybody in Vegas was like, and Malcolm Suban is our guy for the next 15 years. Like, they haven't had a backup goalie who could play, you know, at a reasonable level for two, three years now.

And like this was an easily-for. foreseeable problem for them and they were just like, ah, whatever. I'm going to ask this as a devil's fan. Why is my team boring? No, I'm going to ask this as a devil's fan. Are there just not enough good goalies? Like, it seems like we are constantly talking about teams that didn't go out and get insurance policies for their shitty goaltending situations.

There are more goaltenders. There are probably more NHL caliber goaltenders than there are NHL jobs. the problem is that goaltending is so unpredictable that the odds of you having two or even three NHL caliber goalies who none of whom have NHL caliber seasons is pretty pretty high like I was talking to someone yesterday tweeting at them and I said it's it's almost starting to feel like goaltending is like kicking in the NFL where if you were a brand new NFL fan you just dropped in and you were, like, they showed you that sport. You'd be like, oh, the kicker must be the most important guy on the team.

He scores the most points. The kickers are the leading scorers every year. The game can come down to him. Teams with good kickers always seem to be good. Teams with bad. These guys must be the biggest stars in the league, but they're not. They're almost interchangeable because there's just so much inconsistency that it's, and every year there's a couple teams who just don't have a kicker and they're screwed.

And it's becoming the same thing in the NHL where, you know, I agree with Ryan. There are certain situations where it is foreseeable. I mean, the Malcolm Subin has been an adequate backup level goaltender, I think would be probably the best you could say about him. And Mark Andre Fleury is in his mid-30s. So this was a foreseeable problem. The situation in San Jose was foreseeable. But there's other ones where it's like you look around at teams and you're like, oh, they don't have goal tend. And then you get teams like Carolina who just grab a couple guys off the scrap heap and they're pretty good.

And they make the playoffs. or they're not pretty good, and they miss the playoffs, and we're all like, ah, I can't figure out this mystery. The mystery is that goaltending is all over the map, and you either have guys or you don't, but a lot of times, with the exception of a handful of very elite guys, it's just a question where you just roll the dice and you get what you get. The Nashville situation is definitely more in the crapshoot-like category.

Because no one, I mean, even if you want to say there was going to be regression with Pecorone, like you see soroski if you know indication that he was going to be this bad for most of the season yeah that's right um yeah i'm willing to go there i just i don't know man like like like the rangers have three goalies and it seems like their teams don't have one right now it seems like there's always like two teams where it's like what are they going to do with all these goalies in every other team right is like can we please have a fucking goalie please for the love of god but then how often do you see you know it's it's the scott darling situation somebody goes aha i can finally get one of those goaltenders and then it's like, oh, now he's not good. Or maybe he, I mean,

UCS has played 20 games this year. Yeah, yeah, that's the other side of it. Doomnick is like, oh, he's been dog shit for two years, three years. He was so bad. Let's get him out of the organization. He was awful. He got traded to Montreal and was like, you know what, I don't even want to go. And Montreal was like, that's fine. That's fine. You don't have to go. We trade it for you, but we really are just, it's all the same to us if you don't even show up. And now three, years later, I'm sure, without looking it up, he has one of the five, three years saved percent, five to highest three year save percentages in the league. He's been unbelievable for two years. I feel like we haven't had enough of the understudy goalie become someone else's

starter thing happened. Like, okay, so Corey Schneider was. Camt Albert was one. Cori Schneider was one. Martin Jones was one, right? In both two of those cases, it didn't really work out all that well. Yeah, in the long term, but for like three or four years, they were unbelievable. Yeah. Well, I mean, Frederick Anderson would be one. And I know that as a Leaf fan because it was the third of the trilogy of the Leafs trying this trick with California teams because they went and got Vesatostascallo, which was a disaster. And then they went and got Jonathan Bernier, which was not much better. And then they tried it again with the third team. And Frederick Anderson has seemed to work out. So that would be one example. Right up until the playoffs anyway. Yeah. That's why it's kind of crazy for me that like, and this isn't necessarily an understudy, it's more of a deposed starter thing, kind of that Steve Mason category.

It's surprising that no one has tried to go and overpay for Jake Allen, isn't it? No. Because I think the blues tried overpaying for Jake Allen and it has not fucking worked out. But I mean, wouldn't Jake Allen be better than some of these situations? No. Maybe. I mean, no, because you can't defend it with. say no to this fucking question, right?

But I would say the odds are that they wouldn't, that it wouldn't work out. And he is expensive. Like that's a thing people don't really remember because Jordan Bennington seems like it was a good gamble after all. I was a little dubious. Oh. But. An admission of fault?

Yeah. Because again, Greg, we're talking about goaltenders in the National Hockey League. Like, you know, you're just got to look at their whole. history. And, you know, this is, this is not just in, in the NHL. This is in the AHA. This is in even college where it's like, oh, a guy can just go off for 30 games out of nowhere after being incredible or terrible. As we'll talk about in a few minutes, Keith Kincaid for about three weeks a few years ago was that guy. Andrew Hammond. Like, Andrew Hammond was a below average college goalie his entire career. He goes to the

NHL and suddenly he's 930 for a month. And everybody's like, well, Andrew Hammond's unbelievable. The senators give him a contract. And oh, it turns out, no, he actually isn't good at all? Isn't that weird? Yeah. So the thing with Jake Allen is he's making north of four million through next year. 4.35.

Yeah. And so, and yeah, you know what? You could bring in Jake Allen. He might be good. He might be good for a year and a half. Michael Hutchinson might be good for a year and a half. Like, who knows? You bring a guy into a new situation.

Don't, if you're going to roll the dice, roll the dice on the guy making 800,000 and not the guy making 4 plus because, yeah, there's, it's a mess. And it's, you know, there's that old Harry Neal quote, whatever it is that, like, goaltending is 75% of hockey until you don't have it. And then it's 100%. Exactly right. Bang on. Like that. And you see it all the time. And even like, you know, again, to take it back, I'm a Leafs fan.

So there, Kyle Dubus is just getting ripped to shreds over the backup goaltending. How the hell are you supposed to get a backup goaltender in today's NHL? Like, other than going and signing a starter for starter-ish money and having him sit on the bench, like, how do you figure out which random 35-year-old in any given year is going to just, or which random 20-something who's, you know, Tristan Jerry guy who's never done anything in his career suddenly is going to turn into Steve Penny? It's kind of be maddening. You have to move your team to Anaheim and then have the goalie's wife be an actress.

That's how you get a great backup goalie. Gotcha. Like Ryan Miller falls under the duck's lap because of that situation, right? But like other situations are never going to be like that. That's a very good point. Or you sign Robin Liner, obviously. It would have been the start thing to do for a lot of these. Well, Ryan Lader's a guy, the Sabres let walk for nothing.

And he had had pretty good seasons for them. The one, his contract year wasn't any good, but he'd been good. And they were like, we traded, what, a first round pick for this guy and we're all set with him three years later or whatever it was. And then he goes to the Islanders and, you know, drags that team to the playoffs. And the Sabres are a classic team that like every year they don't have an elite guy in the system. They don't have, you know, they've ever since Hasnick and Miller left, they've been trying to scratch. by and every year they're like, all right, these two guys. Carter Hutton was a pretty good goaltender in St. Louis.

Let's get. And then they come in and every year it's like, nope, you're not getting good goaltending and there's your whole season. It doesn't matter if Jack Eichols the MVP. It doesn't matter if the other guys develop. You don't have goaltending. You're done. And like Brian mentioned Camtabut.

Like a year ago, we're all making fun of Camtelba. What a joke this guy. What a, you know, this guy. Can you believe the Oilers think this is the guy. Ha ha, ha. Then he gets shuffled around. He winds up in Calgary. He's great this year.

Would you have banked on that if you were, you know, if you needed a goaltender, if some GM had needed a goaltender, Doug Wilson or whoever, and they'd gone out and got Cam Talbot, we all would have been like, what are you doing? That's not making the position any better. Well, turns out, he's one of the better goalies in the league. The pattern that seems to be emerging in this conversation is take a goalie who has a solid track record, whether as, you know, in development leagues or in the NHL, who is on a bad team and roll the dice with that guy.

Maybe. Don't roll the dice on a guy who has a good track record with a good team. You want a guy with a good track record, but a bad team in front of him, like a Camp Talbot, like a Robin Lainer. And, you know, that might work out for you because, you know, it's going to always make a guy look worse to be on a bad team. Send in Seal Team 6. go rescue Arindell from the Sound of Zay Sharks and get him to be... Well, again, I said good track record, and Arindell at no point in his career has had a good track record. Here's a question I wanted to ask, though, about this conversation, because I think it leads directly into one of the more interesting topics in the off season.

What to do with Braden Holpe? There have been calls from the Edmonton media, the exalted Edmonton media, taking a break from their Matt Cachuck campaign to talk about the future of the Oilers, and their says, saying, hey, Kenny Holland, fuck off with all that Taylor Hall stuff. Get us Braden Holpey this offseason. What do you think about that? Oh, yeah. What could go wrong? Signing a 30-plus goalie long term for a bunch of money.

It sounds great. Don had a fantastic piece on the athletic about this. And it was about Kerry Price and what we could learn from that. And Sergey Bobrovsky and, yeah, and Braden Holby is the same. And Frederick Anderson is going to be in the same. about a year from now or even this summer when it's extension time. Yeah, I think Washington is handling this exactly right, which is when you have a goaltender who's at the top,

but he's at that age, you get a succession plan in place, and you are okay with letting him walk. You just let him go if you need to. You don't necessarily have to trade him. You can take a playoff run with your guy and then you move on because, yeah, I think some team out there is going to throw a lot of money and more than the money a lot more years than they should. And a goalie that I like a lot.

I like Brighton Hopi a ton. But, I mean, you just look around. And yeah, I mean, every now and then you get Dominic Hasick, who's great until he's 40. But much more often, you get guys who hit that decline. And, yeah, this feels like a very Edmonton kind of mistake to make. Not that Ken Holland would ever sign guys to way too long of a contract in order to get a short-term benefit. But yeah, this feels complete move, clause. Yeah.

Now, Ryan, Ryan, quick question. In this succession plan, would Bradenholpey be Kendall Roy, Ilya Sampsonoff, Roman Roy, and I guess Phoenix Copley would be Shiv, I suppose? Well, I just think, you know, Ilya Sampsonov saw the Edmonton Media's plan and Brian McClellan's was better. We need like a billion percent more succession talk in this. podcast. I'm down with that. That's fine. I think, I think, here's the thing. Like, I think if you give Brad, if you're the Evanton Oilers and you have your goal attending situation being what it is now, and you can get Braden Holpey for four years, sure. Why not, right? It's a bit dicey. It's special, well, just because that would probably raise the price. Like, if you could give,

yeah, but if you can give him the Flurry contract, seven million dollar cap it for four years, right? I don't know, man I would do that if I'm bedbiting because I think beyond that you're looking at falling off the cliff but maybe for four years you might be all right and you might shore up that position

but the whole point is right well A, I don't think he would sign for that money and that term but the whole point is in that market anywhere but especially in that market

yeah I mean like who would want to go to the frickin oilers if they didn't have to They were drafted there That's what I mean Yeah When's the last time they landed a

Reach? Come on I was going to say A really good free agent Without overpaying them Insanely Yeah Wow

No Pronger wasn't No Like it's been More than a decade probably Like they Well they got Andre Secaira Who was good when he wasn't hurt

But you know Always hurt And they overpaid And they overpaid and, you know, so it's definitely a situation where it's like... Is Gritsky coming over from the Indianapolis Racers, technically a free agent signing? Or, no? I think they probably got one or two in the 80s that I don't remember because I wasn't watching hockey then.

Yeah. But it's definitely a situation where, you know, we've seen it a million times. If you can go out and get a guy from, well, you know, an underperforming team who has... has a decent track record, you know, let's put it this way. I'd be more apt to give a Thomas Grice type a whirl than a, than a, than a Braden Holpey, just because it's like, you can get out from under a Thomas Grice and like, you know. The reason with that, like, you're right for, for pretty much any team.

But if you're the Oilers, like, this, this Connor McDavid thing is ticking, man. Like, you got to, like, and it's going to demand a trade. Yeah, like it's just even if he, even if he doesn't, even if Conrick David's totally happy to stick around in Emmett in his whole career, like you've got the best player in the league in his prime, are you going to roll the dice on a guy and go, you know, we can get out of it. Like, if it doesn't work. But you're rolling that, my point is you're rolling the dice on Holti, too. I mean, you go, well, you know, when's the decline going to come? It's possible the decline's already here because he's not having a good year. So, yeah.

It's happening. That's right. Right. And it's not the first time. he's not having a good year. That's the point. For some reason, he was willing to go short term, I'd blow the cap hit to get the short. I don't want to do an eight-year deal.

I don't want to do the carry price deal. But if it's a short-term deal, yeah, I'd be willing to do that if I'm Edmonton, even though I don't think it's on balance in the big picture a smart move. Braden Holpe, the last three seasons, including this one, 907, 9-11, 899. I'm not fucking with that, dude. Like, that's, that's real dicey territory. Do you think he can get Bobrovsky money based on the work history, though? They can get $10 million?

Probably no. I don't, I just think that, you know, especially after Brobrovsky, like, who's going to throw around that kind of money on a goalie? Like, that was the Panthers needed a goalie. They had basically called their shot. They had the coach. They were saying, we're going to spend. We got to get in. We got to get the playoffs.

That felt like a situation. that was ripe for an overpay. Great job by Sergey Babrovsky and his people to see that and take advantage of it. But, yeah, I don't know. I think you have to have all that situation plus rather, you know, do I want to live tax-free in Miami or do I want to go to Edmonton? That's almost more of a premium. Yeah, that's still, in hindsight, that contract is so fucking nuts, isn't it?

Like, granted, we have a little bit more hindsight because the way he's played. When it got signed, everybody was like, I mean, that might work out for the first couple of years, but, and it hasn't even done that. And it hasn't even done that. Yeah, at most it was going to be that, but like $10 million in a place where everybody gets a little bit less because of the tax situation. It's crazy. The number of suitors for Sergey Brobowski were how many that he would actually go to? Two or three? It's kind of crazy.

It's full no move, too. Best of luck. Well, there you go. That's why, and that's why Gerard Gallant got fired. Oh, wait, there probably should talk about Vegas a little bit more. The way it was explained to me by somebody in Vegas, I thought this is interesting. There aren't a lot of GMs with the coaching experience that Kelly McCriman has. And I said, the reason I asked about McCrimand, I'm like, this is obviously Bill Foley saying, you know, drop the guillotine on this dude.

And the person I was talking with was like, well, not really. I mean, like, Kelly McCriman isn't taking this gig. without autonomy to the point where he's not being dictated terms by people. And so the idea that McCremant was just a willful idiot here, as someone else made the decision on Galant, seems unfounded. The really interesting thing about McCormon is that he coached for a long fucking time in the WHL and was pretty good at it. So he's not only coming at this perspective, I think, from,

I am somebody who put together with this team from a personnel's perspective. He's coming at it from a perspective of, boy, if I was behind the bench, I know they'd be scoring more goals. And so I thought that was kind of interesting and maybe speaks to why this kind of off-the-wall bat should move was made. Well, look, they've had a little bad injury luck this year for sure. And, you know, their shooting percentage is lower than it reasonably should be, right? Yeah, yeah. And I don't know how that that. plus the goal-tending thing is on Galant when all their underlying numbers are good to great to elite, right?

Like somewhere in that range pretty much across the board. And, you know, it's a situation where, look, you know, reading the quotes from McCriman was just like, yeah, sometimes you just know in your gut, whatever the fuck he said. And it's like, yeah, that's not a good reason to fire a coach who, You know, the last two years I've had one of the best teams in the NHH. It had a very 200 hockey men vibe to it. And I'm going to say, I,

100% be honest and kind of fess up here. When last off season, when there was this talk that Kelly McCrimand maybe could be a target of Seattle, maybe the Oilers. Remember he was the big candidate before they got Ken Holland? And all of a sudden, the Golden Knights say,

okay, George McPhee is going to step back and Kelly McCriman is the new GM. And I was like, sure he is. Sure he is. You know what? Nice job. He got the title. He gets probably a raise.

That's how you keep your guy happy. Make sure he's not looking elsewhere. Good job, well played. But George McPhee is clearly still running the show. This is still, they've just changed the titles around. Apparently not. Apparently this is. I thought the opposite.

I thought it was a situation where they're like, internally, oh shit, we can't lose the guy who does all the work. Yep. I really, sure. I really thought it was the other way. I thought it was like, McCriman did the heavy lifting and finding a lot of these guys and putting the, you know, the organization together. You were clearly closer to being right than I was.

It's like a puck daddy of somebody. Yeah, it's like a puck daddy if somebody tried to poach Leahy. They're like, we can't let the guy who does all the work go. I'll just say this. When this news broke, whatever, Wednesday morning, I was, I was, I was, I was, Sitting in front of my computer, I looked over at Twitter, and I saw right away, like, four or five tweets in a row that I think was like the Golden Knights announcement and then reactions from like three or four different media types. All saying that Gerard Glein had just been fired. And my first thought was, wow, this is a really well-coordinated and executed fake tweet spree that somebody is on.

They got, like, that's really good. The first one looks official. They obviously got a few. And it took me a few minutes to get my, to be like, wait a second, is this actually? I don't, I don't get it. I will say that with the caveat. It's the caveat that I always put on really crazy to me. You never know what's going on behind the scenes.

And I'm not even talking like the, like the Bill Peters type stuff. I'm just saying, you know, who knows, maybe the players have turned on and maybe some of the key players or key guys in that room have said, you know, we got to make the change. You never know. But just from the outside looking in, it makes no sense to me. And I think it's a bad move. And I like Pete DeBore a lot as a coach. I think he is certainly stepping into a great situation. I think it's very likely that three months from now when the nights are in the playoffs and they're the best team in the Pacific.

Everyone goes, what a great move they made. What a smart coaching change. Pete DeBore is a great coach. And he turned things around. I think things were going to turn around. And they didn't, I mean, this team was already like three points out of first place. So I don't get it. and I know there's no loyalty in this business,

but for a guy to come in as an expansion team, build that team immediately until it take you to the cup final. And then last year, they were a real good team. They lost Game 7 in one of the craziest set of circumstances we've ever seen. Like the fact that he got basically three bad months and see you later, buddy, thanks for everything out the door is just shocking to me. And I don't think, you know, I'm not going to shed too many tears for him because he's getting hired pretty much the second he wants to. There's at least two or three teams out there that I think should give him whatever he wants, including Seattle, if he's willing to wait that long.

So he'll be back. But, man, even this year with like as crazy as it's been, with people getting fired left and right, it's, I thought it would be tough to surprise me. This was one that really surprised me. because I wrote a thing in September. I was like, here's the coaches and GMs that are on the cold seat and they're not getting fired. And I had Glenn on the list. And I was like, what's the worst case scenario? Even if things went totally off the rails, they're not going to fire him after the last couple of years.

They got to let him hang in there and sort it out. The fact that he wasn't even given a chance to dig out of what was a pretty minor hole compared to what we've seen other places. It was shocking to me and I don't like it and I don't get it. And I think it's a mistake, even though Pete DeBoer may very well get good results out of this team. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, the DeBoer thing is the only thing that keeps me from really, like, hating this is, I'm a huge Pete DeBoer fan. I think he's a really good coach. And it does speak to one of those.

You know, we say this a lot about coaches in the NHL. It's like, oh, man, if this guy gets fired, how many teams in the league would hire this guy instantly? and like, De Boer's kind of close to being at that status, in my opinion. But Vegas apparently thought he was at that status. I think that, you know, McCriman punted on the question, but I think that it's a situation where if DeBoer wasn't available, I'm not quite sure how quick they pulled the trigger on this. But I think that, like, for what you're looking for,

which is for him to maybe get something out of guys that have plateaued, for him maybe being a bit more of a better tactician, than Gerrard Galant is. I mean, him being the end of the equation is the only thing that makes sense about this. Because otherwise, like, you're right.

I mean, they kind of shiv the dude that helped build the franchise and in less than three years, it's kind of fucking crazy. Somebody this time one year ago had come to you and said, a year from now, Gerar Galant and George McPhee

will both not be in their jobs. with Vegas anymore. Like it, it would have blown your mind. Where do you think he winds up when? Right. Where does he go? How is this French?

Despite the name. Despite the name, you would think, very good. Not really. He can get to La Bibliotech, but I don't think he can do much more than just, you know, your basic out of the travel guide shit. Yeah. a real Randy Cunningworth.

Randy Coneyworth level. He is from the Ghee Bear School of French-sounding people who aren't as French as you think they are. He's probably got a little bit. He's an East Coaster, so I'm sure he's got a bit, but not enough for Montreal. Although, who knows, at this point, they may take what they can get. Guy A. Bear always reminds me of when I was a kid, and the New Orleans Saints had a quarterback named Bobby A. Bear.

and I would be watching a Saints game and they'd keep talking about this A bear, A bear, A bear, and I'm like, who the fuck is A bear? Like, the quarterback is Herbert. And that is what I realized for the first time that they were French pronunciations for last names.

There was a revolutionary moment for a young guy. My favorite thing is that isn't it, like, Ghi Bear, like his actual name was Guy Hibbert. Like he was, it wasn't pronounced that way, but he just showed up at his first day at hockey. And everyone was like, oh, you're Ghee Bear. Yeah, that's right.

No, no, I'm not. And they're like, yeah, you are. And that was just it. He was geahe bear for the rest of his some American kid. That's like when I would play NHL, you know, 07 or whatever and make a creative player, they would say Lambere and you wouldn't have the option to be like, no, no, let's anglicize this, please. Oh, that's fucking great. I would love for Montreal to hire someone based not on their ability to speak French. Like, that'd be awesome.

Well, I have bad news for you guys. There was something in, I want to say the Gazette, like a couple of weeks ago about, like, you know what the real problem here is, is that the leaders on this team, like Shea Weber and Carrie Price, don't speak French. So I don't think you're getting out from under that. Great. Yeah, that was a real headline I saw. There goes my dream Montreal Canadiens coach Joey Mullen.

One day. I keep saying it, man. Mike Babcock went to school in Montreal. Just saying. Zoot a lorce. Oje, Andre. The pencil at un de table.

That's the pet is on the table. That's good. Thank you. So, I don't know. Like you said, he's going to get a job like he split. The Seattle part of the situation is, interesting. If you're Detroit, do you not?

Like, I think Seattle makes a ton of sense, but does he want to wait a year and a half to get back out? And does he want to fucking go to another expansion team? Yeah. And have that, like, because we've said it already, but, like, Seattle's going to have unrealistic expectations placed on them because of how good of a job, uh, Galant did in his first year and, you know, save percentages and all that kind of stuff, too, as we were discussing earlier. But now, like, he's also going to be like, I'm going to take on those expectations as well. I wouldn't want to do that. That seems crazy to me.

So, I mean, to me, the one is Detroit because you've got the history there. It's Steve Eisenman, you're former linemate for Pete's sake. You've got, you used to be there. They need a coach. Everyone, I feel bad for Jeff Blashehl because it's like he's dead man walking at this point. I don't know anyone who thinks he's the plan going forward. Well, what's interesting about that, sorry to cut you off, is that, like, I saw a bunch of Detroit people going, I didn't think it would happen this year. But now that Galant is available, I definitely think it's going to happen.

Yeah. So I, like, and the objection I've seen from Detroit fans is they're like, well, but this year is the tank. This is, you're trying to like, you don't go and get, yes, you do. First of all, you're already 10 points up or down. however you want to raise it her last place. Like you're not getting Scotty Bowman from 1977. And if the guy's available, yeah, like you need a coach going forward. Normally I'm all in.

It's a lost season. It's a right off. Let Jeff Blashe'll finish the season. And then do it in the off season. Because in the off season, you get more choice. You can talk to assistance. You can, but if your guy falls out of the sky and is there, grab them now, give them the nice contract going forward and you've checked one thing off of your

list in this rebuild. If he wants to do it, not every guy wants to go back to the market where they're known and all of that. Not everyone, he may not want to do the rebuild thing again, but if I'm Steve Eiserman, like I'm, I've already been on the phone probably a few times to see if I could twist this guy's arm and he can coach for me this weekend if he's if he wants to. Yeah. I think it's the best spot. I think it'd be the best sort of continuation of his story to go back there and work with

with Stevie and try to fix that shit. Last thing on, oh, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say, like, the thing that drives me insane about all this is when Galant got fired justifiably in Florida, because that team stunk when, apart from, you know, the previous year, they made the playoffs unexpectedly check their PDO. and the next year they're bad again because they didn't have a good roster and he got fired because they were however many points out of the playoffs everybody in the hockey media

oh the computer boys this is an outrage Kelly McCriman does it when they're actually fucking good they're in the playoffs already all this stuff well you know these these are decisions you just have to make sometimes nobody says a word about that ray shiro may or may not have gotten forced out of the job because the ownership wanted to listen to the analytics guys more. And, oh, how unfair. Poor Ray Shiro. How many fucking years does this guy's rebuild need?

You know, like he's in year six. Come on, man. Like, that shit drives me crazy. Now that you bought it up, Ray Shiro also was fired. That feels like forever ago. And it was like five days ago. Yeah. It truly is.

Like, we're starting to get. that sort of Trump timeline now in the NHL with all these firings where firings that happened two days ago seemed like they happened fucking three years ago. So that happened on Sunday. It was really delightful. I was in Vegas on a nice little weekend trip with Ruby. And then I come to find out while we're at the bar like watching a football game, the race show you got fired and I'm like, oh, fuck. Then you go back to the hotel room and start working with a massive hangover. So as you said, The computer boys are playing a role in this firing, according to some.

And by some, I mean two people in particular. Rachel Dory, once in future guests on Puck Soup, basically said on her podcast, the staff and graph podcast that the analytics department may have gotten Ray fired. Quote, quite honestly, ownership decided that the team either really had no direction or there were differing directions from what the owners or what Tyler Delo, that's our good friend who's the head of analytics for the devils, believed where they should be going versus what Ray believes. And nothing ever gets done. You end up going in circles. People have to be removed. And it's probably not going to be the people who are like-minded to the owners.

I have to think this has a difference in philosophy between ownership and hockey operations. And that sentiment was echoed by TSN insider Darren Drager on TSN 1040. Quote, there's a lot of speculation. Wait, I should do my Drager voice. There's a lot of speculation around the organization about what happened. I think there was an internal tug of war between the analytics department and Ray Shiro. I'm not saying that Ray Shiro is anti-analytic. But the analytics people had considerable influence and maybe had the ear of ownership as well.

And he added that Shiro was probably going to be fired at the end of the season. and perhaps somebody pushed ownership to do it sooner than later. So as Lambert said, the inkling, the speculation, the inference from a few people inside the industry is that the computer boys, be it Tyler Delo and Matt Kane, be it the computer boys in the Harris Blitzer organization overall, are the ones with their hands on the axe for ratio. And I mean, I've got no inside information on that, but that to me, it's going to be fascinating if this narrative takes off true or not, whether it's true or not, if this gets out there that a team went out and invested in analytics guys and they contributed to the GM getting fired, that really changes the equation for a lot of front offices as far as how far as, how far they go into this? Do you invest in it? Do you bring in guys of your own? Like, it's one thing to say, you know, yeah, of course you want the smartest people possible who can look at this stuff

in your front office helping you out. But if there's a perception, especially if I'm the sort of GM who's looking for an excuse not to go down this road, if there's a perception that they could be responsible for me losing a job or that they could be a piece of that, then yeah, that potentially changes the cost-benefit analysis for certain guys. And that's going to be interesting to watch. I mean, we said it with Galant. Like, you never know what's going on behind the scenes. Sometimes we find out later. Sometimes we don't. It's an interesting situation. But clearly, like, I get, New Jersey's been a mess. They've missed the playoffs a bunch of times. This season's been a disaster. A lot of the moves in the offseason haven't worked. But it's,

it's extraordinarily rare to fire a GM midway through the season. You don't let your GM fire the coach, let him trade away your former MVP, and then suddenly decide a few weeks later, this guy's not a good GM, we need to move in a different direction. Something happened. There was some blow up, there was some turning point, there was some straw in the camel's back, whatever you want to phrase it, something happened. And whether it was analytics or whether it was something completely different, and this is a smokescreen or whatever it is,

it's something because the devils didn't suddenly get worse in January than they already were in December and November. And this is a very weird time to do this. It's a weird time, but here's the thing. And I like the whole game of nerds that's being played behind the scenes where everybody's gunning for the throne. Like I love that obviously. Maybe not so much that it's happening to my team, but I do love it. it's entirely conceivable that it just became apparent that when Ray Shiro was hired, he was hired to rebuild a devil's team that Lula Marillo had left sort of baron.

And that was five years ago. And then fast forward five years. And the devils are back in a completely different rebuild. Right. And the problem is Ray Shiro didn't draft anybody, well, not anybody, but Yesper Brat is like, I think the only guy who wasn't a first overall pick who has become a definitive, solid NHL player. Right. And then also, I mean, you don't simply just build through the draft. I mean, you trade some assets. You do some things. You bolster your roster. I mean, the fucking penguins, yeah, they were built on the backs of Crosby and Malkin and Flurry and Stahl and Latang. But they also added pieces to the puzzle over time as well. So like, he made two great picks. They were no-brainers. Hughes and Heeshire. I mean, congratulations for staying off Nolan Patrick, I guess.

That was a good pick, because that wasn't a no-brainer. Nolan Patrick was the guy that a lot of people thought was going to be. Yeah, I mean, the big thing with him was the injury concerned. So that was, you know, and that's- It wasn't a no-brainer, but it was a little brainer. I mean, he-sure at that point, I think, was the clear number one going into that draft. Yeah, I agree. But, but like Lambert said, like he didn't really bolster the team through the draft. And again, I completely understand the idea that, you know, like some fucking worm tongue, you know, Tyler Delo slides up to Josh Harris and says, you must fire this man if you want the kingdom to survive. And that's cool. I love that idea. But I also think it's very

obvious that five years after this man was hired to rebuild the team, they are in another rebuild. Like, it is, it is fucking unconscionable that this team isn't more successful. And the all-in summer happened. I'm just going to, I'm going to believe this until someone convinces me otherwise, because he was pretty sure he was going to lose Taylor Hall. And so he wanted to do the Yarmo Keck-Kalainen thing and go all in and see if they can do something while Hall was still here. And of course, that didn't fucking work.

And now you don't have Taylor Hall and your team sucks. So it's like, I think they're this, like, I noticed a lot of the old school guys that use Ray as a source. I mean, come on. It's obvious. were like taking it back by this and you know oh how dare you do it during the season fucking shit his tenure was a failure it just was that's right fucking five years and they're back in a different rebuild now and why would you possibly keep the guy around who you hired to rebuild

the team he couldn't rebuild it to then rebuild it again it's nuts that's right now here's the question tom fitzgerald is very respected hockey man i i have gotten over my phobia of giving the job to the assistant because I used to think, like, what's the fucking sense of that? He was there during all of the bullshit. But then Brian McClellan turned out to be a great GM and the Capitals won the Stanley Cup.

So, oh, come on. He's a very good general manager. Don't even start. They want the cup? What the fuck does a guy have to do when you're standing to be a good general manager? He built a cup winner. He built it?

I mean, a lot of those guys were... And Ray Sher, built a cup winner too if we're doing it that way. I mean. But recently. I'm sorry. We'll discuss this another time, but I don't know how you don't give Brian McClellan credit for helping to construct this team. I mean, Niskin and in, or pick.

Brian, my view, he's done a very good job, but he built that cup winner the same way Brian Burke built the cup winner in Anaheim. Yeah, Stan Bowman had a lot to do with, or more to do with building a cup. and having guys that Dale Talent had drafted and all that kind of stuff. Okay, but in both cases, like, they were there during the building of the team as well, though. Like, McClellan was McPhee's guy for the, like, years. Sure. So, I mean, you're also cutting him short on that, too. McClellan's fine.

He said, let's not necessarily. But great. I mean, and, you know, we'll see how this backstrom project works out. But what I'm saying is that I thought that he would be an extension of the problems that they had. He wasn't. He made some smart moves to bolster the roster and they won a cup. So I'm not willing to necessarily just say a pox on Tom Fitzgerald's house for having been a party to the Ray Shiro years. I'm willing to say that, you know, maybe he could be the solution at GM.

But what do you think? Like, Bredor is not taking the job because he wants to be with his kids. He might be like president of hockey operations, but he's not going to be the day-to-day GM. And he shouldn't be because he doesn't have anywhere near enough experience to get this job. And he would be being hired 80 percent. because he's Martaic, because he's a popular former player. I mean, even the fact that they're putting, they've moved him over to hockey ops and, you know, let's make him the face. I mean, this is, again, it's yet another team finding the most popular former star player and putting them front and center as basically a deflector shield on an angry fan base and be like, you can't be mad at it.

Look, you know, this guy, you have his poster. He's your favorite. And what a face. He makes me want to rent a car. I'll tell you that. Yeah. So, yeah. Looking good, boys.

It's going to be really interesting to watch Tom Fitzgerald try to navigate this over the next few months because he doesn't know, like, I don't know. I, from a team perspective, clearly the seasons are right off. You sell what you can sell. You get what assets you can get. But you approach it very differently if you think you're the GM for the next five years versus whether you think you're going out the door to two at the end of the year. And this is your audition for the rest of the league. It's a very tough position to be in. Well, it's also the thing, you know, we're talking about ownership's, uh, predispositions and stuff like that.

These are the guys who owned the trust the process sixers. They are not shy about, well, fuck it. We'll just be terrible. Who cares? We're, you know, uh, investment banker billionaires or whatever. They, however they made their money. Um, like they, they have the, they don't need, but to count on like gate revenues for, for this team to, you know, you know, be headed in the direction they wanted to be in.

I disagree. I think, I disagree on two points. One, I think that they were embarrassed because they probably sold a fuck ton of season ticket packages this year for Suban and for Hughes that aren't going to be renewed. I think that this was a financial disaster for the Devils, and I think that definitely played into this. The other thing, too, is that if you remember, they only trusted the process to a certain point.

At one point, they just said, we got to get out of this rebuild. We can't be doing this forever. they actually went out and hired Jerry Colangelo to run the Sixers, and then he hired his son to be the GM at one point. So it's like at some point they do have a point of intolerance for the perpetual rebuild, and I think that's why they were looking at the situation and saying, what the fuck, five years were back in the same shit? Well, so two things on that.

One, I mean, the Sixers were bad for, and like trying to be bad for a lot longer than the devils were trying to be at. Oh, without question. Yeah, without question. And the other thing to say about that is the people who bought season tickets expecting the devils to be good this year, these are suckers. These are, these are robs who, you know, like a fool in his money are soon parted. It's, you know, caveat emptor. Anybody who thought this team was going to be, even, I thought they were going to be better than this, obviously, but like I didn't have them in the playoffs. I didn't have them particularly close. to the playoffs. And like, you didn't need to be a hockey genius to understand, oh, they actually

still have, like, a ton of holes in their roster. And maybe Suban's washed. And Wayne Simmons definitely is, you know, these, these weren't big mysteries to me. Well, I didn't think, I didn't think Suban was washed that they could get a couple good years out of it. Well, again, like, there was a big maybe there. Because coming out of Nashville, a lot of people are like, he just can't skate anymore. And, you know, what made P.K. Subang great was his skating. So, I had him in the wild card. If the, if the Blackhawks fire, if the Blackhawks fire Stan Bowman, I think he'd be the, the Devils will hire him in a millisecond. What do you think? Yikes. Okay. Well, have fun. Well, don't you think they would? I would hope there would be

smarter than that. Who do you think we should be the GM of the Devils? I don't, I don't mind it being Tom Fitzgerald, whatever. All right. Fitzgerald is, like, he's a guy, he's been on these lists for years of a guy who was next up. The thing with him, and again, we don't know what's going on. The fact that Shiro was fired midway through a season under these circumstances or what we presume are some circumstances, that puts a cloud over to me everyone who is in that front office.

Clearly something was wrong. Now, maybe Tom Fitzgerald was one of the good ones who was fighting the good fight. and trying to make things better, and that's why he's still there. But I, maybe not. I mean, maybe he just was the guy who knows how to get the lights on, and so somebody had to stick around and run this team. Yeah. I don't know.

That'll be interesting. The fact that they didn't immediately say he's the new GM is probably not a great sign for him. But yeah, maybe. I mean, I think at this point, give him a fair shot, let him audition, let him interview, let him try to tell you why, show you why you don't need to go outside. And then you go from there. But yeah, it's not like there's a ton of super splashy GMs out there. But at the same time, there's always guys that shake loose.

And there's always guys that either get fired or maybe aren't happy or, you know, who know, maybe George McPhee isn't thrilled with getting pushed out in Vegas. And suddenly he's a million things that could, a million ways it could go. The two guys I always lobby for. One is Bill Zito from the Blue Jackets, who I think has deserved a job for years and just hasn't gotten one for some reason, probably because he didn't come from, you know,

a traditional background. He used to be an agent. The second thing is, the second guy is Ron Hextall, is a guy that I've always hoped could get a gig. He did a great job in Philly. I think he did a fine job in Philly And then Obviously you could hand the gig to Eric Tolski

Immediately in my opinion and just go all computer boys Or hear me out How about a guy that's finding a lot of success In the Metropolitan Division Lula Marello Okay, now we're talking about Heard of them, yeah Okay

Anyways So there you go. Pack your shit. Draw a galant. Pack your shit. And if you're going to pack your shit, you best use in a way bag. Pretty good. You know. Pretty good. All right.

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It's awaytravel.com slash puck. Use the promo code puck. Again, that is awaytravel.com puck, promo code puck, P-U-C-K at awaytravel.com. Tell me, if you're looking for a bag for travels coming up, maybe this summer or what have you, Get yourself in a way back. You will not be disappointed. Were you disappointed by the brouhaha over the Kachuk-Kassian affair, boys? I think it really, a lot of people showed their asses on it, is what I would say.

And on both sides, quite frankly, because, you know, I think the first the first Kachuk hit should be. be a penalty, but isn't. I thought the second one was, you know, perfectly clean by the, again, by the letter of the law, but also like, just more generally speaking, like even within the code, it was clean. But at that point, Cassian was pissed off because he got lit up earlier in the game. And so he flipped out and, you know, it led everybody in Edmonton to say, well, clearly the NHL doesn't like passion and all that shit. And it's like, shut the fuck. Come on. Yeah. Here's my view on this. Because I'm like there was a lot of, this brought out a whole lot of old school thinking and people who were proud to tell you how old school they were. And and you know what? I get that.

Like I have time for that and I, I've, I've been there. Parts of me are still there. So I kind of get. that if you, especially if you're an oilers fan and you want to defend this, you want to say, hey, look, you play with the bull sometimes you get the horns. You're going to go out there, you're going to throw a bunch of big hits, clean or not. Hey, you know what? Eventually somebody might get up and you got to answer the bell, and that's just part of old school hockey.

Maybe it's not the way it's played in 2020, but it's the way it would have worked back in the 80s and 90s, and so it's old school. Okay. All right. If you want to go that way, you can. But the thing is, like, I'm, I've been old school enough to know that I remember how it works. And yeah, part of being old school is you throw enough big hits. Sometimes you got to answer the bell. Also part of old school is when you're on the ice with somebody who throws big hits,

you've got to keep your head up. You've got to be aware of where they are. And that means that if you're a flames fan, you can't be telling me how old school you are and then at the same time turn around and say how terrible it is that, that these hits got thrown on somebody who was a defenseless player who didn't, you know, if you're an Oilers fan, oh, Zach Hasion was engaged with another player. He was defenseless. He didn't know the hits are coming. Hey, old school is, you got to be responsible for yourself out there. You got to keep your head up. You got to look around. And same thing. Flip it around,

you know, Flames fans want to say, oh, those are great old school hits, but then they want the Department of Player Safety to jump in when a guy gets up throwing punches. Pick a lane, guys. Like, I'm getting tired of hockey fans who are old school. when their team is dishing it out, but then get very modern as soon as their team takes one back. Like pick a lane, one or the other. If we're old school,

then it was all fine. And if not, then, yeah, they probably should have thrown the book at everyone a lot more than they did. I'm not even picking a side on that. I'm just saying, this isn't something where you can just dabble in it

when it suits your team and expect people to take you seriously. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing to say about the old school thing is, what's another old school thing? Stars don't fight scrubs. And, you know, Mack, Chuck, star player on the flames. Zach Cassian gets to play with Connor McDavid, but he's not great. And Zach Casson even said that because he's mad because they have a history where I guess last year,

Kachuk told him I'm not going to fight a fourth liner. Now he's out there like, I got 13 goals and he still won't fight. It's like, dude, come on, man. Come on, man. We know how this goes. I'm amazed all of this happen. I thought that I was told. that Milan Luchich being in a game

prevented any of this from ever happening, but apparently not. I tell you, I was a little bit surprised that they gave him two games because by missing two games, he's still back for both the games that are going to be at the end of the month. These two teams play twice more.

And that's going to be real interesting because there's, I got to say, putting aside what you think of what happened in that game, somebody in Edmonton needs to pull Zach Cassian aside and say, dude,

you need to stop talking because he's putting himself in a position where if something does happen in those games and it definitely will because Maca Chuck is Maca Chuck. Yeah, and it might. He could be looking at a

real big suspension the next time if this happens just because of all that. He's shown no remorse. He said, I'll do it again. He said, I can't wait to see this guy again.

And this is something this league is really sensitive ever since Todd Bertusie and all the other stuff. They're very sensitive about anything that sounds like premeditation and anything that sounds like guys are calling their shots. And I suspect they're probably behind the scenes through back channels. That's been communicated to both teams. Without question. But the fact that Zach Cassian is still talking, and, you know, Matthew Kuchick's running his mouth too.

But the fact that he's out there saying, I have no, you know, he said after the game, I have no regrets, I'd do it again. at some point, like, there are a lot of good sound bites, and I don't want to be that guy. You know, we always say the players are boring, and then they're finally got some interesting sound bites, and I don't want to tell them not to, but somebody in Edmonton, and maybe it's already happened because he hasn't said anything in the last couple days, but somebody needs to tell him, do whatever talking you need to do on the ice, because you're really not helping yourself with what you're saying out loud in front of microphones. I said it the other day, Cachuk has a moral obligation when Cassian approaches him as he does. undoubtedly will during the game and tries to actually get him to fight. Cichuk has a moral obligation to go, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Yeah.

Who are you? What are you so mad about, dude? Yeah. You're okay? Is something happened? Because Cassian will 100% lose his shit, get himself thrown out of the game because the rest are going to be looking for it and get himself suspended for 15 games. Yep.

And I was like, you know, whenever something like this happens and people are always like, oh, we get revenge on the power play. I always kind of roll my eyes at that. The flame scored the winning goal on that power play. That was so cool. In a game that was for first place, that's a four-point game. That game was a regulation game. Four-point swing in a very tight division. Like that could end up deciding the season for one or both of these teams. Uh, man, like, I don't know. I don't know the three-three was the spot for that, but I guess that's, um, my call. As I've, mentioned before the first jersey I ever owned was a Claude Lemieux jersey. So I am someone who's always appreciated the right kind of pest. And by that, I mean, a pest that could... The one who plays for your team.

Well, that's exactly. That's exactly what it means. No, no, no, no, no, no. That is not true. I respect any pest that can beat you with his mouth, with his borderline illegal actions. I'm not a fan when pests cross the line and try to say like a cripple cam neelie. Or when they can score a goal. And that's the ultimate pest, right? Like, that's why I love Claude Lemieux is that he

would act like a fucking scumbag and turtle, but also score a game winning goal of the playoffs. And take up guys knees. And injure people. There's always the moment when a pest becomes a thug. And, you know, Claude Lemieux had that moment. Dale Hunter had that

moment. And you don't want to see that. You don't want to become a thug. And Claude Lemieux definitely in his later years was, you know, defined as a thug because of the draper thing. And all the other stuff he did. But in Kachukch's case, he has across that line quite yet. I don't think he's a thug. He's a great player. I'm, I'm the flip side of you. I hate the fact that there is such a thing in the NHL as an agitator. That that, that concept even exists. I hate it. You don't see it in any other sport. There's nobody, no baseball team has a guy they send out there to second base to kick dirt on the shortstop just to try to piss them off and see if they can get it in basketball. There is a, yeah, basketball, there's, there's, there's some of it. It's not a thing in the NFL,

like, and, and yet in the NHL, there's, there's dozens of these guys. Speaking of the Sixers, Joel Embed is maybe like the league, not that he plays necessarily dirty, but he's the guy that, boy, he is good at pissing people off. Who is the guy that blew in the dude's ear? Like, that, that's kind of the one. That was sort of the exception that proved the rule. But the NHL's got a million of the, you know, Matthew Barnaby and all down the, all down the road. I hate it.

I hate it exists. I hate that somebody who's clearly as talented as Matthew Kuchuk, that is an all-star caliber player without it, has that as part of his game. But I also understand and accept that it's, it is. I've lost on this. The agitator is part of hockey. And he's really, really good at it. He is really amazing.

It seems like you're separating out agitation as not being part of his skill set. It's what makes him effective, that kind of stuff. Like, I buy that argument 100%. It certainly helps, but I don't think, I think if for some reason the NHL came out and I, you know, said, hey, new rule, if you're out there trying to get guys to punch you in the face, we're just going to let guys punch you in the face. And, you know, it's not going to, we're not going to give free power plays to people who go out there to start. That's what was amazing about the Cassian thing is they kind of have that. Like the fucking Colin Campbell's in the world. I don't think Matthew Kachuk fails to score 34 goals last year if he can't go out there with a shit-in-gryn and try to get people to punch him.

But part of the value he provides is he takes penalties, but he also draws a ton of them. And so to like, I think that is definitely where his, where part of his value lies is just like. Part of it. But he's a 34-goal 77-point player. I think that I get that there are... How much of that is on the power play on penalties he draws, you know? I get that there are fourth-liners who have to do this to stay in the NHL. Yes.

And look, like I said, I wish it wasn't part of the game. It is. So someone's going to do it. He's really super good at it. So I have full credit to him. I just, you know, when I hear Greg say, you know, I, that you like these guys, guys, I just want to represent the other view because I can't stand. Oh, no.

I understand. I understand there's another view. And, you know, the view is the people that like call it, call them rats and the rats are taking over the league and not to hear this shit every few years. I just think that it's remarkable that it's a remarkable skill that can change the complexion of a game. I mean, that's a fucking talent. Yeah.

Like, because we let it, right? There would be a skill to sending a defensive lineman out and say, hey, go out there and draw a holding penalty, but that doesn't exist because that's not in the nature of that sport. And I wish hockey kind of was the same way where we don't send guys out and go, hey, get out there in a scrum and give a guy a face rub and try to get punched to try to escalate a situation that we wind up with a power play. It's part of the game, but I hate it. But how is that any different than drawing a penalty on, say, a drive to the corner?

What, one is virtuous and one is not? Like, is that the thing? Drawing, because you're drawing a penalty based on your skill. If you're faster than a guy and you can get around him and that draws a penalty, that's a skill. And then you go down easy. Sitting there and rubbing your glove in a guy's face and smirking at him and knowing the ref doesn't call the first penalty and hoping that he punches you so you can then immediately look at the ref with your hands in the air going, do we get a power play now? That sucks. I hate that.

And I love tough hockey. I love guys punching each other. That's not the kind of hockey I like. See, I love the hockey. There's no skill in that other than just being able to have a punchable look and face and be willing to take a ball. punch. I love hockey as a by any means necessary kind of sport. I mean, again, like, there are exceptions to the rule. Don't use fucking homophobic terms. No, but by any means necessary can be, can be defined as, you know, don't be homophobic,

don't be racist, and don't try to cripple a guy. But I think that by any means necessary could also cover, like, do anything you can to get the other guy off his game. And I think that's a beautiful part of the sport. Right. What I would say is it's, it's the argument. of Matt Cook, who was a good defensive player, but crossed the line way too often, versus Brad Marshand, who is an elite offensive and defensive player, quite frankly, and who occasionally crosses the line, but gets the benefit of the doubt because also he scores 40 goals a year. Or what, you know, like, it's...

It's the same thing as when we had goons. It's like, it's like, if you have some virtue beyond your ability to throw a punch, and there is a clear separation between someone like Bob Probert and someone like David Cochie. You know, like fucking, you know, that's, I can respect that. If you're just somebody out there who's throwing spears and has absolutely no fucking value other than being an agitator, I don't necessarily have as much time for you as I do with somebody who is productive and can do things beyond that. And it's just, that's part of their skill set. But it's a very, very, very, very powerful part of their skill set to be able to do that to another player.

And as much as I hate Sean Avery, basically for existing, I will forever be in awe of the shit he pulled against Brador in that series, against the devils. I mean, it was genius. Yeah. And it was changing the series. And did that, did you watch that as a fan and go, this makes me like hockey more? Do you think a lot of people had that? It really did. I mean, it's wrestling shit.

That's what it really boils down to. I'm sorry to bring up wrestling for the one millionth time on the show. It's wrestling shit. And like, I think, you know, if you can do that shit without hurting somebody, and that's where Matt Cook, like, Matt Cook was really good as a heel, but only because he was the kind of heel where it's like, oh, he's going to put somebody in the hospital. And, and, you know, if you're Brad Marshand, you know, he's not going to put somebody in the hospital necessarily or 99% of the time. But he is going to piss you off. He's going to lick you, you know, and like guys are going to get mad about it. But, you know, that's his goal when he licks you is.

And being able to straddle that line is a skill. Yeah, but you straddle the line because the line is in the wrong place, is all I'm saying. I wish the NHL treated this the same way a parent does when you got your two kids and one of them suckers the other one. And you go, you know what? You're both wrong here. So you know what? Yeah, you lick the guy and then he punched you. I'm not giving your team a power play because of that.

I'm going to call both of you and get out of here. And it's, I don't know. Again, I acknowledge this as how it is. I know I'm kind of on my own on this. I just, if I could wave a magic wand and get this crap out of the game, I would happily do that because I don't think this makes hockey better and more fun to watch other than in a very kind of awkward and, yeah, wrestling heel type of way that we can do it. Everybody anticipating Flames King's games and Flames Oilers games in ways they wouldn't otherwise anticipate them.

Because of bad blood, because of legitimate bad blood and the fact that these guys, yeah, the hits and the goals and the fights and all of that stuff. Yeah, not because anyone's like, ooh, I wonder if Matthew Kachuk will make us, we'll smirk at Drew Doughty and draw a two-minute rough-and-liner. Like, I don't think anyone's tuning in to see. I think the Doughty, I think the Doughty Kachuk thing was why people gave a shit about those games. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Yeah, because guys are scoring overtime goals and, you know, stuff like that.

It wasn't just because, oh, who's going to give someone a face wash and, you know, that's like bad blood is fine. And sometimes, yeah, these guys are the reason the bad blood starts. I like a game with some passion. I like a game with some bad blood. I don't like a game where guys go over the boards just to start crap to try to get their team a cheap power play. And then we all follow over ourselves going, whoa, what a great, what a great job he did. What a wonderful.

I don't need it. I don't. Speaking of Brad Marchand, this is the last time we did a podcast. He had the worst shootout attempt in NHL history against the class. What is it the worst? I mean, it was bad. That was bad. That was even worse than the guys falling on their ass.

That was that, yes. That's what I mean. Like, I, like, it's the kind, I feel like I've seen. maybe not to that level where he just completely overskates the puck initially. But I've definitely seen the puck get stuck in a rut and it rolls away. And like, I think that's a little bit comparable. But I think a guy getting to the goal and just like falling down and the puck slides into the corner. Yeah.

I think that's more embarrassing almost. Okay, but here's the thing. If some random guy had had this happen to him, I think there's an argument to be made. But the fact that it was Brad Marshman did this. You're right about that. That is 100% This moves. This moves.

Yeah. Merrick Malik out of the way of the greatest shootout moment of all time we've had now like, like, I think that makes the list like five interesting shootout moments in the 15 years that we've had this thing. Yeah. All right. So better shot attempts will probably happen at the NHL All-Star game this year, at least in theory. The skills competition stuff came out this week. and as I broke the news on Tuesday, I guess it was, or Monday, it's all, again, bleeding together, they're going to shoot the puck from the stands.

It's going to be like dude perfect and or top golf and or that video of Gino and Sid in Pittsburgh doing the same thing. But it's going to be them, NHL players and two women's players, shooting puck's from the stands, over the netting that will be placed over the heads of fans below them. onto the ice, onto targets, and that'll be the last event of the night. I think it's, it could suck, it could be awesome, but I think it will be something that people should definitely tune in to watch. Yeah, I'm with you. I think this has high potential to be disaster, especially as the flight.

Like, this could be guys just sitting there over and overtaking shots that miss. Like, I got a nine-year-old, and he's super, into Dude Perfect and we watch the hell out of that stuff. But the secret of Dude Perfect is it takes them like a hundred tries to get one of those shots. They're not doing it live. So this could be an absolute garbage fire. But you know what else is a garbage fire? All-Star Weekend.

So try something because it might work. It might also be very cool. So roll the dice, take a shot. Yeah. They get a lot of reps in with it like before they actually do it. Like I don't want them walking into the situation. like never having really done it before in this type of a setup. Like I just,

you can't let that happen. Have a plan, whoever's putting this together. Like, it can't be like when they have to do those passes into the mininets. And if somebody's struggling, it just goes on forever and it just becomes, and you're just like,

geez, can you just, or the ones where they had to lift the puck and put it through and then the players just started like using their hands to do it because it was taking, like, have a backup plan that if they're not making the highlight real crazy shots right away.

And it sounds like maybe they will. There's going to be a lot of targets and stuff. So maybe guys will be hitting stuff just by accident. But, you know, I'm curious to see it. I'm interested. I do kind of want to tune in, even though I think there's a non-zero chance that this ends up being a debacle. The good news, by the way, is that they are, they've gotten rid of both the mininets and

those stupid fucking gates. Good. The way it was described to me by a couple of people around the league is that they came to the conclusion that maybe they'll be able to get the players more excited about the All-Star game if they make it more fun. Weird. And not embarrass them. And not make them feel like their shit because they can't put the puck in the tiny net.

And so this is one of those things where, like, in theory, it should be super enjoyable. to stand above the crowd with your helmet off and hurling pucks onto the ice. Like, might be something these guys are doing anyway when the arena is empty. I think it has a high probability of being something the players would enjoy. Yeah, I think it should, although, boy, that's a high bar if you're like, yeah, maybe they'll show up if we make it fun. Like, you're competing with, like, a weekend in Vegas or going to Hawaii and sitting up, like, the fun factor is pretty high on the alternatives. but, sir, toasted ravioli, my friend, is the key. It's the one thing you own, like, I think it's the only thing you know about St. Louis.

Weirdly, sliced bagels. They also have those sliced bagels. They also have the Budweiser Brewery, which I've been to once and saw the horsies. There's like, listen, I spent a lot of time in St. Louis last year, more than I ever have. And there's at least five places that I can say. I'd like to revisit none of them, the arena,

like other than the arena, when I go back there for All-Star. Like, it's fine. It's not the worst, but it's not Tampa for these guys either. Let's be honest. Women's hockey, three-on-three,

Canada versus USA. I can tell you that there are people upset about the payments being not made to these women? I think there's like... What do you mean by that? Payments being not made.

Like they're not getting paid to do it? So there's this... I saw it on Twitter last night, there are some people that are pointing out that the women's players, there's like a donation being made in their name or something. I imagine they have to be getting compensated for doing this. My problem with it,

and I received some blowback from the league last night for tweeting about this, was... It doesn't seem like there's going to be any branding on the event for the professional women's hockey players association, the association that's been putting on these barnstorming tour games between Canada and the U.S., which I find ironic because one of the main grapes that the NHL has with the event they used to send their players to for little compensation in order to gain more exposure. one of their problems with that event was that they couldn't put the NHL logo anywhere on Olympic ice. So the idea that these women, the vast majority of which are playing in this tour for this organization, aren't going to get any branding in this event, seems a bit, I don't know, hypocritical at the end of the day. I mean, hypocritical but not surprising.

Right. This is true. Yeah. It's stupid and it sucks, but. And it does. And it also, just the cynic in me is like, guys, like, do you remember last year? Do you remember the whole like paydecker thing? Like, how did nobody in that NHL office go like, hey, you know what's probably not going to

play well about this otherwise really cool idea that our fans will like is if we're viewed as not paying the players? I don't know. I'm surprised that I get maybe they thought the $100,000 donation would cover that. I don't know. I like the idea, though. Here's my other problem with this idea, and I tweeted this, is they're doing it. My understanding is they're doing it as part of the skills competition.

I would like to see it as part of the All-Star game. I would do it if they do like the two semifinals for the men's, for the NHL players, and then there's always that weird gap in between where we're all just kind of standing around. Put the women out then because, A, I think it would be great. entertainment and B, my problem with the All-Star game is always that the players are just half-assing it and clearly don't care. So let's shame them into caring by putting out some players right before they go on that are going to care because I'll tell you that I've said before, I think U.S. versus Canada women's

hockey is the best rivalry in hockey right now. I'm not saying they're going to go be out there crushing each other, but the intensity level is going to be a lot higher than what we're used to from the men. And I would love to see them go on right before the men's final and hopefully just by osmosis kind of raise the intensity for that game as well because you're watching the women go out there and actually play real hockey or something close to it. Yeah.

But it's good to see them get involved. It's good to see the women get spotlight, like, you know, unlike when the hockey news puts together a list. Nick Baxter represented himself in negotiating a contract with the capitals. He proudly said he didn't bring any paperwork to the meetings in order to try to get the new contract. And he got himself a sweet little deal and gets to keep his agent fee. Yeah, he did better than Drew Dowdy with his negotiation, that's for sure. Well, except that he did really well on the cap number.

that's the length of the deal that I think is is the key in these. And to me, five years from a capitalist perspective is, is not bad. That's, that's, what worried me was that they were going to have to do like an eight year, seven or eight year deal. Five years is at least manageable. Probably still takes you into some years where you're not going to be getting the full value, but also, but it's too long, but you're, I mean, you never know with any individual player, but these days, star players aren't signing three-year deals when they're in their 30s. They're trying to get as long as possible. And the fact that the caps didn't either have to or decide to stretch it out to seven or eight years at a lower cap hit,

I think makes this a little easier to handle from their perspective. Plus, obviously, the fact that it's the same thing we've seen with other teams, Chicago and L.A. in that where a guy wins you a cup and, I mean, Nicholas Baxter, it's not like he was some third liner on your cup winner. This is a guy who was key to the whole thing. You're going to show some loyalty. You're not going to want to let him walk. I get it.

Yeah. But, I mean, if you go ahead. Yeah. You can let a guy walk. You can just fucking let him. You can let him. And they're like, they're going to do it with Brayden Holpey. And it's like, well, they have to pick one of them.

They didn't. They did not have to pick one of them. They could have let both of them walk. And obviously, that would be a big setback for them in 2020, right? But, you know, in 23, 24 and beyond, ooh, that's not so much of a setback anymore because this is a guy who's going to be 33 in November. And Alexander Ovechkin is 34, but he's still an elite player. Well, he's an elite goal score.

I mean. Okay. Yes. Do you not, are you really that worried about three or four years from now? Or are you saying, like, we've got one cup. You got one more kick at the can with this group for sure. Like, I get it. Let's do it.

But five years from now, when this, when he's, or three years from now, when he's 36, I don't know, man. I think, I think it's a real, I think it's a real dicey proposition. And, and, like you said, the thing with, like, Chicago when they kept Tane and Cave, Tane and Cain and Cain. Kane and Taves. You know, when that happened, they were, what, 28 when those contracts kicked in? And now everybody's looking at those contracts going, I don't know, man. And okay, well, Nick Baxterm's four and a half years older than that. Yeah.

Do you buy the idea that he could be, the line they were selling is that he's Joe Thornton, basically? Yeah, I mean. Is he? Lots of guys are not Joe Thornton. Yeah, because you know what Joe Thornton did was? He won an MVP award. He was one of the most productive players of the Deadpug era, consistently among the top scorers in the league. And, you know, if his team had been a little more successful, I think he would have been in more MVP conversations and things like that.

and it wasn't his fault that those teams weren't successful. Nick Baxter, he's a really good player, right? But at any point, has he been considered anything close to, I'm not even going to say, no, no, no, no. He's playing in the shadow of Ovechkin, though. I'm not going to say anything about top five player in the world. Has he ever in his career been broadly considered a top five center in the NHL? Borderline, a couple of years maybe. Yeah.

I mean, I think he's... Borderline, a couple years maybe, and that is where the discussion ends of, well, you know, he could be like Joe Thornton. No, I think there are very few guys who could be like Joe Thornton. His value was always that he was like, you know, the next age, Louis Erickson, like, famous for being so underrated, right? Like, that's part of his gig. Right, and how's that Louis Erickson contract aged? Yeah. Oh, shit.

Walk into that one. Yeah. Nick McIffach, just for the record, has been finished in the top. five in all-star voting after the season, like real all-star voting twice. So, and once sixth. So the answer to your question is, you had it right. There have been a few years where he's been around that conversation. And how much of his is he gets to play with the greatest goal score of all time?

Which, but that works two ways, right? Because he helps the numbers, but it also pulls all the attention to everyone goes. He has, like, he sees the ice very well. I think a lot of the things he does well are going to age well with that. I said that about Louis Erickson. That's the thing, right? That's, you say the guys who have the vision and the hockey sense that that tends to age well, even if they lose a step.

And that's where you get to, you know, he's going to be another Joe Thornton. But the flip side of that is some guys like that who are the great setup men become Joe Thornton. And sometimes you become Jason Spets. who was putting up huge numbers too and then turned 31 or 32. Now, I mean, he had injury problems and that sort of thing. And is now at an age where Nicholas Baxter will still be on this contract and he's like a fourth line minimum salary guy. So that's that's you got to present both ends of the spectrum is what I'm saying if you're going to try to project where he's going to wind up. Yeah.

Like I just the idea of first ballot hall of fame or Joe Thornton is your comparable. for this guy who, you know, again, really good player, but, you know, how often has he been anything close to a top player in this league? You know, rare if ever. And let's, I'm just going to look at his stats really fast here, but I can't imagine, like, I think probably the four best Joe, yeah, Baxter has one hundred and one point season, and it was the season Alex O'Vetchen scored 65 goals, if I'm not, if I'm not much mistaken about that.

So, you know, let's go down the list. A bunch of 70 and 80-point seasons, that's really good. That's really good. But is that the kind of thing that holds up? You know, he's less than a point of game the last three years, and he's only getting older. I also think that the age, that his defensive prowess is also something that the age argument plays in favor of. No, I don't agree. Part of it, right?

Like the thing they said about Corey Perry when he elbowed, what's his name in the face a couple of weeks ago is, you know, he was just a split second too late on what would have otherwise been a perfectly okay hit. And that's true. And you, if you lose. But was Corey Perry ever like a Selky worthy player, though? Like fucking Nick Baxter's one of the best defensive players in the league. But if you lose that step, if you lose that step, you know, like that. Well, Eiserman lost a step and he became a. a fucking dynamic defensive player deep into his 30s.

Right, but is Nick Baxter fucking Steve Eisenberg, Greg? Are like, you're trying all these comparisons. Hey, look, look, I'm not saying we shouldn't sign, uh, you fucking Nate Schmidt long term into his 30s, but Nick Lundstrom did it. So look, like, come on, man. Ryan, all I'm saying is that Gordy Howe played into his 50s. That's right. reason why Nick MacStra can't do the same thing. Right.

And like, look, I'm, again, this is making it sound like I think Nick Baxter sucks. I think Nick Baxterm is very fucking good. Okay. With that having been said, I, I remember one time, Greg, that you yelled at me on this podcast because I was like, because I was like, I wouldn't have one player over 30 on my roster unless it was like a Sydney Crosby level player. Yeah.

You start getting into a real dicey area, even with elite talent when you're talking about 33, 34, 35 years old. And Nick Baxter just signed for his age 33 through 38 seasons for $9.2 million. I don't know, man. I really... If your argument is that there's a certain amount of services rendered to this contract, I will not disagree with you. They are certainly compensating him for, you know, feats of greatness in the previous contract. Right. Because he took, he took a, he took, you know, he's only been making six point whatever million for years, you know. And like, at the same time, that, that again, like, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, we conned you into taking six million for 10 years or whatever the number was. A couple other topics real quick. Uh, should Bruce Bredro be fired for, uh, forgetting which player he's,

scratched. No. But it was hilarious. It's utterly hilarious. Very funny. And it did. And it did, it is a big reason why his team got annihilated in that game. But, you know, I think the track record's there. It's lovable goofball stuff, you know. We, we all love Bruce Boudreau. He's the fun guy. Yeah. I mean, I would prefer to have been an actual, you know, Bruce Boudreau story where, you know, he's got the lineup card. Then all of a sudden he, you know, spills a tub of barbecue sauce on it and he's wiping away the barbecue sauce and oh shit, what are the name supposed to be? And he writes in the wrong name.

Like, that's the true Bruce Bredrow shit. This one's a bit more fuddy-duty. This one is a bit more Randy Carlyle in my opinion than it is Bruce Brew. Yeah. It's just, it's not his fault. They got Sidney Crosby in a comeback game. That's it. I mean, that's the only problem.

I would agree with that. Real briefly. how hilarious is it that the NHL is putting out there all decade shit 24 days after the beginning of the new decade? Again, you say hilarious. I think that's par for the course.

It's like, I'm really surprised their top 100 wasn't 98 guys. Like, that's how little I think of the NHL organizationally. So time is an issue with these guys. I had a thing last week where I pointed out that the Canucks and Sabres

are both celebrating their 50th anniversary. this year, even though it is not their 50th anniversary until next season. And I had like this, all this feedback from like, even like Canucks and Savers fans who were like, wait a second. Yeah, you're right. That never occurred to any of us. It's like Liz Warren the other night saying, well, that was 30 years ago, right? And Bernie's like, yeah. And she, and like you see her doing the math in her head.

And she's like, oh, fuck, I guess it is. Yeah, 30. Oh, all right. So, yeah, there's two things that open this league. math is hard and geography is hard. So we'll get a break on this. All right. And finally, a little pop culture for that ass.

Oscar nominations came out this week. Terrible. Really bad. Great if you're a fan of twisted clowns as Joker gets all of these great nominations. Now, are we talking about freaking Peter DeBore and Gerard Gallant? I thought you said this is the pop culture section, Greg. As we're doing the podcast, by the way, Pete Dupor is doing his introductory

press conference. And I swear to fucking, it's like it is literally like when Lex Luthor dressed as Superman. Like, it looks so out of place to have this guy who was the public enemy. And a guy that I think Ryan Reeves would have punched if given the chance. Yeah. It's now the head coach. Yeah. It's very cool to me.

And I will always respect the big, the big face turned, the big heel turn. That's cool. Yeah. Because now he's got a men fence. No, we're not talking about fucking the Oscars all of a sudden. But now he's got men fences with Ryan Reeves and all the Vegas fans who fucking hated his guts. And also, everybody in San Jose is like, fuck you. And that rules.

Yeah, it's insane. I tweeted this, but how awesome would it have been if, like, for the first practice, he just had them work on nothing but five-minute penalty kills? Yeah. I'd be like, I don't know, guys, from what I've seen, this is a bit of a weak spot. just really lean into it. Do you want to know how I got this job? Everybody booze.

Shut the fuck up. We hate this. I mean, like, we did really go into that too much, but, I mean, there was no love loss between the sharks and the nights. They hated each other. Galat hated DeBoer. That's got to be a real fucking sand in the wound type thing being like, oh, by the way, that kicks ass to me.

I think that's the coolest shit imaginable. The most plum gig of your life just ended it. And oh, by the way, this guy you fucking hate. hate is going to take your job. It's, it is, it is such a weird dynamic. I should not have mentioned this, by the way. We're trying to wrap the show off. I'm glad you because, like, we didn't really talk about like, like, Vegas is kind of like a little trolley here with their players.

Like, it's like saying, you know you got this guy fired that you liked, right? And they're like, yeah, we know. We weren't playing great. And we like this guy. And now look who your coaches. This motherfucker. It's the evil camp counselor from the camp across the lake in meatball. Like becoming Bill Murray, getting Bill Murray's job and everybody's like, what the fuck?

Yeah. It's, oh, man, what a, what a crazy situation. Yeah, but like we said, Joker did really well. Perfectly all right movie that, you know. I actually saw that movie. So what did you think of it, Sean? You know what? It worked for me.

I didn't go into it with any kind of, like, I'm not a comic book guy, so I didn't go in with any kind of baggage as what it had to be. I felt like in the first half, it just felt like, Phoenix especially was just like acting so hard. And like Todd Phillips was directing so hard. And it just felt like I was watching this two hours sizzle reel of like, you know, when somebody gets nominated for an Oscar and you see the 30 second clip?

And like, what if that was a whole movie of just like really hard? But I got to say it got close to the point of being too much, but it didn't get there for me. It did work. and the ending worked for me. So I liked it. I came out of it going like,

yeah, that was a good movie. I enjoyed it. Best movie of the year, I can't say that. Yeah, no, my problem with it is, in terms of it getting the,

again, I thought it was perfectly good and Joaquin Phoenix was incredible in it. But my problem with the movie was that it was like, you ever see a Scorsese movie? And it's like, oh yeah,

I have. And they're like, great, this is three of them and we just jammed them together. To the point of, we hired his cinematographer to shoot this movie.

And, like, boy, you have De Niro playing the flip role of King of Comedy. But King of Comedy is one of my favorite movies. So I didn't mind seeing a... I made the mistake of revisiting King of Comedy before I saw Joker. And then, like, Joker gets knocked down 17 notches on my scale because it's so clearly trying to ape King of Comedy and taxi driver in and no way, shape, or form gets close to the, the, the underlying stuff of those films. See, that didn't bother me because I'm, like, every damn year.

there's like a new reboot of Spider-Man and I'm like, don't we already have a Spider-Man movie? And it's just the same movie coming out. So if we're going to do tributes to actual really good movies from 30 or 40 years ago, like I'm okay with that. I'd rather see that. But nobody's giving, but like Spider-Man won wasn't like the Toby McGuire first Spider-Man. People aren't going like sick, you know, whatever it's been, 20 years later going, fuck, that's one of the best movies ever made.

This was an Auteur, Sam Ramey, anuteur at the height of his powers. Like, like they talk about... No, you're right. You're talking about Spider-Man, too. That's actually the thing they say about it. Well, even still, though, like, I agree with the Spider-Man,

but you see what I'm saying. And they're not like... I do. And they're not like... But it's also not taught, like... I don't know who directed the new ones, but like hiring all the people who helped make it.

Yeah, no. I think, no, but I think Sean's right. But I think the difference, here, I'll draw the comparison. The difference between aping King of Comedy and Taxi Driver for Joker and Christopher Nolan aping Michael Mann movies, heat in particular for The Dark Night is that one has something to say and the other one has not a fucking thought in its head to use that template for anything but titillation. And I'll say this about Joker.

The last 20 minutes are fucking phenomenal. Like, they're really great. And I loved it. Like, once we get there with him, it's everything I want out of a, out of a Joker origin story that frankly I never really wanted in the first place. But everything else leading up to it

is such monotonous, emotional torture porn. And it doesn't really lead anywhere that I didn't like it. I mean, I think overall, it's a movie that I'll probably revisit it because Ruby hasn't seen it yet, and I'll revisit it for the last like 20 minutes, but the rest of the movie just didn't do it for me. What I was going to say, though, go ahead, Greg.

What I was going to say, though, is the reason it got all these nominations is it just did a really good job of reminding people, like, of movies that are already in capital T, capital C, the canon, right? And so, and so, like, we go, oh, these are two of the greatest Scorsese movies of all time. Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. and this looks and feels a lot like that, so we have to give it every conceivable nomination it could have gotten,

which like is fucking insane to me because if you're just going to rip stuff off, which they clearly did and they made no bones about we are ripping off Scorsese, I think that should get points deducted from your movie making. And again, I liked it well enough, and I thought the Joaquin Phoenix performance was like an S-tier performance of any superhero movie ever.

But superhero movies are not typically known for their phenomenal performances. So, like, I think, you know, especially because we already got one guy winning a fucking Oscar for Joker, for playing Joker. Like, I don't think we need to keep revisiting it. Speaking of nominations, I was watching aliens last night while I was right. and I kind of had it on one like HBO or some shit. I looked back. Did you realize Sigourney Weaver got a best actress nomination for aliens? I did.

And she, well, she should have gotten one the first time around. So she lost to Marley Matlin that year. But like that's, that makes, that warm was my heart that that performance was, was acknowledged because she held the movie together. Every once in a while they will do that for a movie where they're like, ah, I mean, the movie's good. But like this, like, and I mean, a perfect example is. is Heath Ledger in the Dark Night. That movie sucks if the Joker isn't great. And he's incredible in it.

How dare you disparage Aaron Eckhart? Real briefly, Best Picture Nominations. Ford versus Ferrari didn't see it. Did you see it, Ryan? Yeah, it is a movie that Bill Simmons is going to say was fucking incredible. And I've watched it 25 times on TNT. It's like, Mackey of Racing movies. Yeah, and like, it's really good, and there are good performances in it.

but like I walked out of that movie going, this is a movie for dads. And it's, you know, like I was really excited for it. And it kind of underwhelmed me. And so to see it show up on a best picture list was like, what the fuck? I'm so fascinated by Quentin Tarantio, Tino, doing the rewatchables with Bill Simmons.

I haven't listened to any of them yet, but I imagine it's going to be like, you know, the Misan of the scene, but fucking, it's brilliant. If you look at the lighting. And then Bill Simmons is going, yeah, it's the Robert Parrish of movies. Right.

It's the, it's the, it's the, Hater thing when he was on the Simmons podcast and just flat out asked him, have you ever seen a movie that wasn't on TBS? Like, that's, that's 100% like the aesthetic there. And it's like, you know, typically the movies that end up on TBS are pretty good. But to what extent are those movies seen as being as good as they are? Because we've just seen them a hundred times on TBS, right? Like, Shawshank Redemption, I think everybody acknowledged at the time, like, that was a pretty good movie. But now people are like, it's one of the greatest.

fucking movies of all time. And it's like, no, it isn't. All right. And somebody whose favorite movie of all time is a few good men. I have no standing to complain about this genre. That's really, that's fantastic. Irishman I haven't started yet. I'm intimidated by the run time.

Jojo Rabbit didn't see it, but it stinks. I saw the Irishman. Are you telling me I have seen a Best Picture nominee that Greg has not seen? I have not seen it. Greg, it's a pop culture podcast. man, put some effort in, would you? Fuck. I've thought, it's a long sit.

And like, I got to commit some time to it. I did the miniseries approach. Have you seen that where somebody was like, here's where to cut it? And you watch it in like four, 45 minutes seconds. Yeah, you watch, you watch Star Wars and Empire. And then you jump back and only watch certain parts of the fandom. Oh, you mean the Irishman? No, I haven't done that yet.

But it is, it is very good. It's fucking so good. I look for it. Screwed on Best Actor, not getting a nomination. He got screwed. rude. He was incredible in this movie. You didn't like Jojo Rabbit. I like Tyka. I'm happy you got a nomination. Yeah, sure. I like

I like to see a weird filmmaker get rewarded, but I think that movie was not good at all. Did you see Little Women yet? Of course I did. It's great. Okay. Love it. Should Greta have gotten a best director nomination? Yes, she should

have, and she didn't. Ridiculous. She did not. It was Oscar So Male, hashtag. I saw a marriage story, and I was surprised that it was actually more divorce story in the sense that it was much more about the function and the process of getting divorced than it was about

the actual marriage. And that kind of was fascinating to me because I didn't really see that on film before. And I enjoyed it and Driver's great and Scarjo's great. I feel like she gives like a drama 101 level

performance of like, I'm really sad about all this. She's not as good as driver. He was great. I enjoyed it, but I got to be honest to you, like, Noah Bombach's gotten writing nominations. It's almost expected he might win for writing this film. I so much prefer the toxic, bioless, Noah Bomback of the squid and the whale than I do to this movie, which actually ends up on kind of an upbeat note. Going to see 1917 soon, have not seen it yet.

You loved it, yeah? I liked it a pretty good amount. I think I liked it better as like an, an idea. achievement, you know what I mean? Like, I did not love Birdman because I thought, like, this is, like, they're doing the gimmick of, you know, it's, it's all one shot or two shots or whatever. And it didn't really like serve anything other than like, oh, we're going to do it because it's kind of like a play, I guess. Whereas with this, it's like, you know, you have this mission. You got to, you got to follow through on it. And it's about, you know, the unremitting horror of war and

all that kind of stuff. And so it made a lot of sense to me that, okay, this is now granted, like, they stitch together way more shots than Birdman did, I'm pretty sure. Like, it's 42 shots presented as two in the whole movie. But, like, even getting 42 shots. I will say this, though, the CGI in this movie is almost bad enough to make, like, it's noticeably bad. There's a part with a CGI rat that looks horrible.

And, you know, the scene. Is it dance or something? No, like, it just is like this is a comically bad CGI rat. And then there's CGI explosion. You know the scene from the trailer where he's running toward the camera and there's all the explosions going on in the background? There are a couple of those explodes. There are a couple practical explosions in that shot, but there are also CGI explosions.

And anybody in the world could tell you which was which. They were that, they were that ugly. And it was distracting in. you know, what turned out to be the climax of the... That shot is the climax of the fucking movie. Yikes. All right. Once upon time in Hollywood, I loved.

I would have no problem if that one best picture. Awesome. Loved it. And the best movie I saw all year was Parasite. That's correct as well. Fucking phenomenal. And again, much like watching King of Comedy made me not appreciate Joker, watching Parasite, which deals with many of the same themes that Joker is going for, and Joker does

it a very ham-fisted surface superficial way and parasite like really really nails uh in a much more impressive way so uh that's right class all that other shit so i love a parasite one but it's a foreign film so it won't uh but there you go oscar talk on puck soup we'll definitely do more on the oscars i had a cool quiz i had in mind i'm going to keep that until we get closer to it um and then we'll do it then but uh yeah this is a very long show um That covered a lot of topics. Is there anything else that we missed? Can't think of anything.

Probably, but... Oh, Uncut Gems. Didn't get one nomination. It was the second best movie of the year. It's a ludicrous decision. Like, even if you didn't think the movie was great, the extent to which Adam Sandler was great, like, he should have gotten a best actor nomination.

And he should have, frankly, won. Oh, and the thing that made me happy was that Knives Out got a best. screenplay nomination, even though obviously Daniel Craig was robbed for Best Supporting Actor. Thoroughly OK movie. It's a fantastic movie. I don't like a movie that's about Twitter, so I'm all set with it. And it also didn't get a best costume nomination despite Chris Evans' sweaters, which I think is really insulting. All right, that is a puck soup for this week.

Our thanks to nobody. Nobody was the guest. We had too much to talk about with all these people getting. fired and such. You could read me on ESPN.com in my column The Wishlist published this every Thursday, and we covered pests and rats this week, so it was a lot of fun. Not the big CGI kind, though, right? No, no, the ones that look like Matthew Kachuk.

Oh, and my other podcast, ESPN and ICE with Emily Kaplan, we spoke to, this was a fun interview, the dude behind scouting the refs this week about the state of NHL officiating. Interesting to see how he got into doing that site and also interesting to hear about his thoughts on the fact that, like, we're losing a lot of veteran referees these days and where is it all going. So that was cool. Yeah, you can keep listening to this podcast, sign up for the Patreon. And I also have given the career limbo I am in right now. I've expanded the number of times I will write the Puck Soup newsletter until, such time as I get another job.

All right. Which I, you know, I think I have some irons in the fire on that, so I will let you guys know when I know. But, yeah, in the meantime, sign up for the newsletter. It's an extra four bucks a month if you just want the newsletter or an extra three bucks a month if you're already signed up for the puck soup bonus stuff. You can find my stuff on the athletic. I had a bunch of stuff this week.

I debuted a, what I hope will become a running feature. I call salary cap court where I take players with questionable contracts and try to figure out if they're actually bad. Nicholas Baxter will probably be there pretty soon. And I also took the idea if you're on the Patreon and you listen to the mailbag. I was given a cool idea for figuring out which draft class from the cap era would have the best team right now. And so I did that today.

and on Friday there's going to be the grab bag, which is going to be a headline by Brad Marchand Excuses. My spies have come up with a list of what exactly went on there. So, yeah, check that. Very good. Very good. And while we don't normally kind of predict what's going to be in the mailbag edition of the Puck Soup podcast, which you can find on the Patreon,

I will tell you that if you are somebody who is thinking about, hey, what do these boys think of the Houston Astros scandal? That'll be covered in a mailbag question this week. So do sign up. It is patreon.com and it's puck soup and it's easy to find us. And thanks to the ever-growing fucking 1,830-some-odd people that signed up for the Patreon each month. It's really flattering and an honor that you guys dig the bonus material that we give you. So anyways, that's the show.

Thanks for listening. Bye. See you. All right. commute, but we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in twos, it's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet. Park Sue.