Puck Soup - Loose Threads

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Sean and Ryan talk about Zeev Buium's new deal, and unanswered questions about Quinn Hughes, Connor Hellebuyck, everything in Detroit, and more. Get bonus episodes and more at Patreon.com/PuckSoup Sponsored by Raycon (buyraycon.com/puckopen) Mint Mobile (mintmobile.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from the Perfect Takes newsletter from the hockey news and my brand new job as the face scan guy at EA Sports. That was you. Good work. I'm learning on the job, you know. Yeah. I'm learning on the go. Okay. But I feel like, you know, it's going really smoothly.

I haven't heard any negative feedback yet. Yeah, you were off social media all weekend. Well, it's a long weekend, you know, yeah. I'm assuming, you know, I log in tomorrow morning. Yeah. He's done it again. I've never seen a guy look more like Mason Lurye in a video game in my entire life they're going to be saying. Dude.

So. I'm old enough that this all seems very, like, I'm not buying this game because John Tavares, his face doesn't look right. You're like, yeah, his face used to be a pixel, man. That's, that's what we're doing that. the the the the the the the face scan stuff is certainly the most shareable and I mean just outrageous every time you see a new one you're like that guy's bald he has a full head of hair what are we doing here but even beyond that everything I've seen about this game is it doesn't work good you know I saw a clip the other day where like Nathan McKinnon went to steal a puck from the guy and like his face went off. while the rest of his body did not. Yeah. And it was like, I don't think it should be doing that.

But I thought this was the year that they told us they had, they had fixed everything. I could swear in the summer, I remember reading stories about how this is the most realistic version ever. I'm not kidding. I have seen people, the new thing now is people taking clips of like, you know, cut scenes of this is what it looks like when you get drafted. This is what it looks like when you win the Stanley Cup compared like

this year's next to 2010s and they're like the 2010 one looks and feels more realistic. I don't know how they did it. So it's going great over there. Does the Pokemon game that constitutes 90%? Oh, that one works better than ever.

That one, you wouldn't believe. I can still... All you're going to do is give them $40 and they'll be like, oh, you get a Mario Lemieux card. Yeah, I get a Macklin Celebrity that I can evolve into year two, Macklin. And the Mario Lemieux guy looks like Kevin Stevens, but that's just a coincidence. It's tough, man. I don't know how else to put it. Like, I haven't been happy with that game in 10 years more.

And it just seems like they're also like, we agree, and this sucks goodbye, you know? Like, it's, it's truly, it's true. Are you an every year purchaser? Oh, I mean, I used to be. And I think the last one where I was like, I'm buying this every single year was the one with Claude Giroux on the cover. So what's that, like 12, 13 somewhere in there? And then I'm a more, I'll check it out every, every year, I'll say this.

I can't remember if I bought it last year. I might have, and I might have played it for like 20 minutes, I'm gone, well, that's the same exact game. Okay, forget it. It's a tough, man.

I have not, it's a tough sell. I don't even remember when. Like, it's long enough that it wouldn't make me sound like a discerning consumer. It would make me sound like an old guy. Because I used,

I used to play the EA games, NHL and Madden religiously. And then they just, got, they just get too difficult. They get too, too complicated for me. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. Sure. Yeah.

Pass button and a shoot button. That's all we needed. I feel like that's not my problem with it. It's the, it's the sameness, you know? It was, it was definitely more of a Madden problem. Sure, yeah. I don't really play. I don't really play.

Point one percent of the people got super good. And so they were like, no, we will make it hard for you. Right. And then the rest of us were like, oh. So I just finished a game with 14 yards passing. Right. On rookie mode or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the good news is that there are like non-NFL branded games out there that you can get that really do capture the like early Matt, like the Sega Genesis Madden feel. I can't remember the name of it for the life of me, but I have one for my Nintendo Switch that's like all pixel art.

but with huge playbooks, like, you know, a lot of the modern feel, but like the old school buttons and, and, uh, presentation and all that. That's who we're looking for. I'll send you the name of that. I can't remember it for the fucking life of me right now.

But I, I had a lot of fun with that. You can customize every team and logo and stuff like that. So it's fun. Um, but yeah, there's just not good hockey games anymore. And I'm sure there's some indie one that I don't know about.

Yeah. The whole thing were the, where EA bought exclusive rights to the leagues? That's exactly the problem. So terrible for the rest of us. Yeah. And for a while there, they were even making it work with MLB, the show. Like that, even though that got the exclusive,

um, and actually edged out the EA product, the MVP baseball. Um, those were really good for a long time. There's nothing wrong with them now, but they do, again, kind of just have that same-ness year-to-year where they're not really innovating on anything because there's not that, you know, the free market isn't deciding anything anymore, you know what I'm saying?

Mm-hmm. But I was just saying to a friend of mine yesterday, like, why don't we need 2K back in the NFL and the NHL games. NFL 2K-5, the greatest football game ever, anybody ever made, and it's not even close. I'm with you, man. I don't want to hear about Mike Vic level Madden or whatever. No. I don't want to hear about it.

Give me Chris Berman doing half of my lights. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Anyway, there's like real hockey stuff to talk about also. We can do that now. If we must. Okay. How about this?

Big Zee booing him out there. Vancouver goes eight years, 9.38 million bucks per. Again, man. I'm getting, I feel like, I want to say I've started to adjust to the sticker shock, but I feel like what I've actually done is I've just started accepting every contract as fine. Yeah. Without doing actual further analysis. This one seems, I mean, in three years, nine million bucks will be like okay second pairing money.

So when this when this kicks in it's going to be less than eight and a half percent of the salary cap It's like not anything you're like you're saying it's just a second pair con so if he I mean if he hits His ceiling yeah it's a great deal for the team obviously we say that about any max like the deal for a guy this age if he lands in the ballpark of what's expected probably still pretty good. Especially in the back half. You know, I saw Merrick saying that he talked to a GM or an executive or something,

and they were saying like, you know, like five, six years from now, $150 million salary cap is extremely on the table given the expansion plans and everything. And it's like, okay, well, then who cares about $9 million? Yeah. And it does, you know, it's, it's, front loaded and it kind of like they pay them extra when they're rebuilding

and the cap doesn't matter as much and then once they're ready to contend theoretically he's in his prime he's a good player obviously the cap hit stays constant but cash is a little less and the cap hit is less because

cap's gone up I get it but also it's like I don't know It's $9 million. Well, let me say this, too. And I think this is a really important, you know, like, oh, he kind of struggled when he got to Vancouver last year, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, he had like the worst coach in recent memory coaching him. You know what I mean?

Like, we don't know. We don't know what Mani Malhotra had, like, what effect he has on his players. It kind of can't be worse than what Adam Foote had on his players. Right? Like, even. even if he improves only 5% I think again you're going to feel like it's an overpay

but he's what 20 is even 22 yet he's 20 I don't see the problem here you know like you you combine it's not going to matter with it will matter in so far as they're in a position to give him huge reps

and plenty of power play time because they don't have a better option. And so, you know, if he can get to whatever, like 55 points every year, even if it's kind of low calorie, like it doesn't really matter points. 55 million bucks where a guy who plays, whatever, 23 minutes a night and the cap's going up crazy over the next like three, four years, you're looking at 9.4 million and you're going, this is nothing to me.

This is exactly what we should be paying this guy. And that's if he doesn't improve significantly, which I think he probably will because he's 20 years old. Yep. So. Very fair. Yeah. Like, you know,

I saw people just kind of going, that's a lot of money and it's like, no, it isn't. Like, if you look at it devoid of context, then yes, absolutely.

But if we want to be serious. for a minute. You know, we want to think about it, put our thinking caps on. That's a different thing. But I guess that's not the real big defenseman news of the week here, because young man lives in Minnesota for now. Quinn Hughes, the rumors are flying. Feels like we really hit a tipping point with the rumors,

the panic level even. Well, panic slash excitement, depending on where you are. what you're hoping will happen here. Yeah, so, you know, what's your, what's your take on this? I'm not, I'm not panicked until we get to camp starting. I've decided I'm not worried about the September 15th CBA change, because it seems very clear Quinn Hughes is not signing an eight-year deal. Yeah, oh, it's funny.

I was, I was looking at stuff. like going because I wrote about this over the weekend. And so I was looking at stuff going back like to the middle of the summer, even the early off season. And there was a quote, I think it was from Craig Leopold Leopold, the owner basically being like, yeah, we hope he takes five. That'd be nice. Yeah.

Which says to me he doesn't want to take five. That says to me that two plus two is four and he's trying to get three years to coordinate with with his brother and Minnesota doesn't want that but they'll give it to him

I mean I really feel like this is now the this is just who's going to blink first and the team's going to blink first here I think so the team has to believe like I don't think

we're in a situation like I'm sure Quinn Hughes wouldn't mind if Bill Garon called up the devils and just said, hey, just spitball something. Like, what would you give us? But I don't feel like that's imminent. I did. So I read your piece and I thought it was, I thought the really good point you made was about

how Kail McCar setting the salary bar at basically the max takes that Trump card out of Minnesota's hands where they could go well, all right, if you give us the length that we want, we'll actually make you significantly higher pay than Kail McCar. You can't do that now. You can give them something a little higher, but it's only a little. So that little piece of leverage is gone. I mean, I just don't know what Minnesota ends up doing other than greeting their teeth and giving them three years at whatever the number.

Yeah, I mean, they were really hoping that that McCar would go 18 million. Like going into the summer and then obviously that gets blown up with the Carlson offer sheet where they're like, well, now he's definitely not, he's not going to take Leo Carlson money to stay in Colorado, you know? So it was just always kind of going in this to. and now it's just like, whatever. The quote from everybody you talk to is basically something along the lines of,

you know, there's no acrimony here. There's no contentiousness. Guys want to get it done. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it and blah, blah, blah. And so I think the thing that's interesting is that Hughes is scheduled to do like the league-wide media tour that the biggest stars in the game do. And that's in New York over the next, at some time this week. And then he's supposed to report to Minnesota on the 10th or the 11th, which I think

is Thursday or Friday. And then there is whatever, four days till camp opens. So he gets there. They have that little window to negotiate. They probably announce sometime around the start of camp, like, don't forget to buy your single game seats or whatever. And off you go for the next three years. But every day that passes, don't you just get a little more nervous, right?

And I think it was Rousseau said something along the lines of, um, the only time you should really panic about this isn't even the start of camp. It's the start of the season. If it's not done by the start of the season, huge fucking problem for Minnesota. But it probably won't get that far. Yep.

It is, I mean, it's still ultimately, mostly in the category of nice problem to have. How do we get this? Yeah, you have one of the two best defensemen. How do we get them signed? We may only have them for the next three years instead of 13. That does open a window, though.

Go in a cup. Go in a cup. and then he ain't going anywhere. Well, and that's the other thing to say is like, honestly, three years is kind of doing the wild of favor just in terms of the age of some of their better players. Obviously, like Boldy and Faber are on the younger side. But Folino, Hartman, Caprizov, these guys are all in their 30s, I think. Caprizov might not be there yet.

most of their defense, apart from Faber and Hughes, is, like, quite old. Like, 33 plus, I want to say. And, you know, I guess it remains to be seen what they do with Gustavson, but Walstead, which guy are they choosing out of that? I think still remains to be seen. So three years is probably just what their window to compete is anyway. And so if you get him lock. up for, or four years, I guess, three years beyond this one.

So if you get him locked up for four years, the next four years, maybe you start to see the cracks forming and you can trade 29-year-old Quinn Hughes to the next team he wants to play for. Or what, you know what I mean? Like, it gives them a lot of flexibility going forward. I don't think it's the worst thing for them. Obviously, given his age, you probably do want the five. year deal, but if he's just not going to take it and he's not even going to meet in the middle at four, you're like, eh, three probably shouldn't be a problem for me. That's kind of my

view of it. But also, nothing prevents them from getting Jack Hughes, you know, four years from that. That's it. Would you, would you give him like three years at McCar slash max money if that's what he demands. I mean, typically, yeah. Quinn? Yeah. Even if you're not buying any of those nice, you know, extra UFA and not buying, not that you're not buying any UFA years,

but you're not buying the most of his prime. Like, typically longer term, higher. Well, he's, he'd be 30. He'd be 30 at the end of that three-year deal. So basically anything you're buying beyond the three years, obviously he's going to be a very good player deep into his 30s, you know, in all likelihood, right? Like, even though the aging curve works on old guys the same way it does young guys, but old guys, when they're aging, like, they're starting from a way higher level, right? So, like, that's why Sidney Crosby is still an effective player. You know, like, you can go down the list of guys who are really effective.

into their 30s and even 40s, like Nick Liddstrom, right? But I don't know. Like, there aren't a lot of players, and Quinn Hughes is certainly one of them, that I'm like comfortable paying $35 million, or until they're 35, sorry. You know? So like, again, if it just becomes a thing where him and Jack want to sign at the exact same time, you know, I'd probably take that as a package deal somewhere, even though they're going to on the older side

because you're getting two borderline elite talents in Jack's case or actually elite again I think Hughes is better than McCar and has been saddled on worse teams you know so like I have no problem giving you want the max money that's fine

who cares especially because if I'm Minnesota the choices between him at Max money or we don't have Quinn Hughes anymore and our window has slammed shut. Those are your two options. So just give them the money and then figure out the rest later. I think it's a good case.

Yeah. It's, okay, let me ask you this and then we'll hit a break here. But scale of like one to ten, how likely is he to get traded because they, Bill Garin's trying to drive a hard bargain. Like traded this year?

Yeah. I still think that maybe a three out of ten. Yeah. It's certainly not impossible. Not zero. But it's also not more likely than not. It's really interesting. He'd be doing New Jersey such a huge favor if he was just like,

me, not Minnesota for me. Like, even with what New Jersey would have to give up to get him, And we'll talk about some other trades, New Jersey, made recently in a minute. But, like, you know, you'd assume like Dougie Hamilton's going back the other way if he would wave. Yeah. And you made, another good point that you made was that guys not waving to go to terrible Vancouver is not the same as guys not waving to go to contending Minnesota. So maybe that does open it up. But I still, I don't know.

How about this? How do you feel about all three Hughes boys combined making like almost 40 million against the salary cap? Not bad. That'd be pretty fun for them to be all on one team doing that. Has there ever been three brothers on the same team? There has been. The Stasdney brothers on the Nordiques. Oh, sure.

And I feel like there have been some other ones. There's enough Sutter's out there that it probably happened. All three stalls ever get on the same team? I don't think so. No, although, you know, now that you say that, I feel like the youngest one, Jared, did play a game for them, maybe. I'm going to look this up really quickly, but now that you say that, that's, that's sounding right to me. He played two games in 2012, 13. Let's see if he played with his brothers in those games.

Yeah, at the very end of the 12-13 season. Eric, Jared, and Jordan Stahl all played together. Yep. There you go. There you have it. But not like on a long-term basis, I wouldn't think. There were this many brothers on the same team. Yeah.

And certainly not three brothers making, as you say, 40 million. Well, you know, I think it'd be like 38-ish, 38 and change. Oh, in that case, yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's actually all the flexibility in the world. All right, why don't we take that break? We'll be right back. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon. And folks, it's September.

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capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. All right, we're back. And let's talk about, that aforementioned New Jersey trade. They go out and for the cost of a 2028 first round pick and a 2028 second round pick, they get Luke Evangelista.

That's a fun trade. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I'll be honest, my first thought was that's a lot to give up for a team in New Jersey's contention window, you might think. But the more I saw on it, the more I started to come around to what the devils were doing. I think I, as an East Coast media guy who only watches East Coast teams, I probably was not as familiar with your game, Luke Evangelista, as I should have been. Yeah, he had a really nice season. And it's not the first time.

Like last year was kind of the breakout year, it feels like, where he had. 56 points, but like, you know, stop me if you've heard this before. He had a lot of, he had some difficulty staying in the lineup, uh, the year before that. Um, he missed like 15 games or something. But even in doing that, he was like a 40 point player or on pace to be a 40 point player with like, you know, 15ish goals maybe. And so he does that last year. And the underlying numbers are all really good. And that's not necessarily a team that you think, of as being able to put a guy like that on the ice, you know? And he's cheap for this year.

And so it makes all the sense in the world for New Jersey to do this, especially because the first round pick they gave up isn't even theirs. Yeah, which is important. It's Colorado's, to be clear. So that's going to be like the 24th overall or something like that, probably. Maybe, maybe worse, yep. Yeah. So I really like this for The Devils. They needed a guy who can provide a little extra scoring pop.

I think the stat I saw was they had the worst PDO in the league last year in all situations. And so you need guys who are going to drive the offense. And obviously part of that is like Hughes was hurt again, missed another like 20-something games or whatever it was. You know, like, here's what I would say the devil's mission has been this summer. They go out and they get like Evan Rodriguez. They go out and they get Anthony Mantha. They go out and they get Luke Evangelista. This is them going, we need secondary scoring badly.

And I think all those guys that they got for, you know, various picks and, obviously Manta, I guess, was just a UFA signing, but I think they addressed that concern. Yep. And it's, you know, very new GM, obviously. Yep. And, yeah, like, I feel like we're past the point where we go, oh, like a analytics guy became the GM. Therefore, they're going to be looking for Corsi and, you know, all this stuff. But Evan Rodriguez, Luke Evangelite, like, they're kind of filling in some of those.

But it is, I don't know, what lane is Nashville in as far as adding or rebuilding? Because, you know, they added a couple guys from Colorado after Chris McFarland came over. Yeah. Now they're trading guys in their prime for high picks, but I don't know. I think this is a little bit like you were saying Nashville going, oh, this is kind of an offer we can't refuse a little bit. But the other thing that I thought was interesting, and I got to pull up the quote here.

So here's the quote from, like you say, New Predators GM, Chris McFarland. Anytime you trade a good player that's got a lot of cachet and been part of an organization for a few years, and as a dang good person that's done a good job here and played good hockey for the prets for the last number of years, it's just a tough part of the business, blah, blah, blah. We felt that with our depth of winger prospects, we feel we're very forward heavy, and we've got a lot of good young wingers that are going to wear our collars over the next few years.

And one of, I think, the challenges that we ran into this summer and in trying to improve other positional silos, I'm weird way to phrase that, but okay, was we just didn't have the right mix of darts to throw, and I think that that was certainly part of our rationale. We think Luke is a good player, he's a proven player, but we're very happy with the return. What I do think this trade has given us is additional pieces to offer that we didn't have yesterday,

that we can potentially now be involved in, whether it's next week, two months from now, or three months from now. Again, our goal is to try and build something that can have some insane success in right, now, we think that while the roster is improved, it's got a long way to go in certain silos for us to get where it was to get it going to where we want it to get to. So I think this arms us with the draft picks, draft pick darts high in the draft that are

going to potentially be attractive in a lot of different ways. But when that will be, we don't know. So basically, they're not going to hold on to these things. It doesn't sound that way. but they looked at what Evangelista can do versus what they're expecting some younger winger, like maybe Matthew Wood, for example. Maybe Brady Martin's a winger, right?

I'm pretty sure he is. And or certainly they can use him there for the near future. If they want to, but they're saying, we have wingers or guys who can give us 80% of what evangelista gave us plus whatever value of the picks we give to get better at center or better on the left side of our defense where I think their top guy is probably like Nick Hay or Brady Shea right now. That's kind of a bummer, but... Am I right about that? Hmm, I think so.

I'm pretty sure. Oh, no. God, what am I thinking? Yosey's a left shot. So I'm talking about their right shot is a real... Okay, let's pull this up. Oh, God. Okay.

Yeah. I just gave myself a jump. I'm scared. Nick Purbix, Ilya Lubbushkin, Justin Barron. That's the right side of their D. It's an embarrassment of riches. Woof. It's an embarrassment of something.

So, okay, now they're going to trade picks, maybe prospect, something like that, for a right D or a center. And also, this is the other thing that I think is important to keep in mind here. These guys could just suck this year. These guys could be awful. Would you be surprised? I mean, I don't have them making the playoffs. Let's just put it that way.

Like, I don't. Yeah. And so, who are they running down the middle? Bork, O'Reilly, probably Jack Drury, right? Yep, yeah, the Stamcoast isn't there anymore. So, like, it isn't the center anymore, I should say. It isn't the center. And so like, okay, well, Ryan O'Reilly's a pending UFA.

Don't you just trade them if you're not good? And then you do need to go get another center at some point. So now you have the picks, plus the picks you might get from the O'Reilly trade or whatever it is. And then, you know, you're kind of more back on your feet. But what this all says to me is that McFarland is pretty realistic about where the team's at. you don't trade a 24-year-old guy who's coming off like a 50-point season for picks, unless you're kind of going, we know what the score is here, right? You would think.

So I don't mind this at all for Nashville either. I think it's pretty clear-eyed in a way that, let's say, Winnipeg maybe hasn't been about what their future looks like, just to pick another team at random from the Central Division. You know? But I guess we didn't talk about it on the main show here. Still no progress on the Connor Hellibuck public trade request. Yep. And they have about a week to camp.

Yep. And that's where it gets real messy. So I don't know. I'm surprised that this is dragging on. And I'm very curious to see. how we get it to the finish line. Yeah, you know, it's funny because Elliot Friedman was on NHL Network

talking about the challenges for the Jets with this situation. And he said, the biggest one basically, and I'm not quoting him directly, but I'm just, you know, this is the outline of what he said. The biggest problem for them is that the trade options they had at the draft when they tried to make this deal aren't there anymore

for the most part or are different than they were. And, you know, I saw a lot of people saying, well, that's because, you know, Buffalo isn't going to have the fourth pick in all likelihood this coming year. And like the certainty of the fourth pick, blah, blah, blah. And I was, as I am wont to do,

I was just looking at Puckpedia yesterday. And do you want to know what I think? think is the trade chips he's talking about, Sean? Go ahead. Josh Norris and Ucockeloukinin both had no trades kick in on July 1. Yep. And they're both, I believe, 10 team no trade lists. Oh, with Lukin, it's a 5 team no trade list.

You think when they submitted that list, he was going, and obviously I'm not going to win a peg. Number one, two. I got a five team no trade list. One, two, three, and four are Winnipeg. Well, especially since he would have known at the time that's exactly right that he was in the middle of that. Like I, if he had submitted this list a year ago and you said, well, Winnipeg wouldn't be on it because he'd know that they were never trading hellabug. Sure.

Then, yeah, but that's not the case. So, yep, that's, I mean, before those two no trade. kicked in and when Buffalo still had the fourth overall was the kind of conditions are perfect. And I know there's a lot of Sabres fans who still think they're getting them. They just think it's going to be cheaper now. I mean, they might be right. Shoveled have made. I don't even want to say like overplayed his hand or whatever, but he may look back and say I could have got a, I could have got a lot more back in.

Yeah, I mean. Again, just looking at the Buffalo roster and guys who don't have trade protection that they might be willing to give up from the roster. The downgrade from Norris to, say, Ryan McLeod, or Lukin to Alex Lyon to Alex Lyon, you know, it's kind of tough to say that he didn't overplay his hand with that. Now, he could go somewhere else. You could go to Carolina. you know, there are other teams that could make it work in all likelihood. But we don't know what, what Hala Buc, like if he got his heart set on Buffalo and then it didn't go, what does that mean? Mm-hmm.

You know, if he got his, like, if he's still going, yeah, Carolina, Vegas, who gives his shit? Send me anywhere. Fine. That's great. But if he kind of, you know, got the little taste of that, of that Buffalo. sauce. Does that happen? Does anybody like just laser focused on Buffalo? I'm not trying to knock

a lovely city, but I don't I feel like you could twist his arm into taking Vegas to if he... Or again, Carolina. Are they a successful team recently? You know? Like it's it it just it depends right? Because if he you know, who knows what goes goes through the minds of these guys of like,

I can't win in Winnipeg. I can win in Buffalo. He wanted to go to Buffalo. He was willing to go to Buffalo. Was he willing to go to Buffalo because he thinks they have a bright future or because it wasn't Winnipeg or because it was in the United States or like, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that.

But it sounds like maybe the Jets don't either. Mm-hmm. So again, like, Like, what's interesting is that Carolina can afford his cap hit without giving up a single roster player. Obviously, Winnipeg wouldn't go for that. They'd want like Cochetkov or somebody like that at a bare minimum. And obviously, I think Carolina would be like, yeah, we can't carry four goalies or whatever it is. So that's fine.

Yeah. But who knows? Again, we have a week till camp, a little more than a week. And it's the only thing I'm going to be thinking about all week unless there's like another big trade. It's the only thing Kevin Shevold-Diaf should be thinking about because this is, you cannot afford to miss on this one if you're the Jets, which is not great considering decks stacked against them. I don't know, I don't know that I can think of a team. deck is more stacked against. Although I can't think of a contender,

and that's a team that still doesn't have a general manager, the Detroit Red Wings. Yeah, speaking of, like, storylines that we're supposed to be wrapped up by now, which is kind of the theme of this episode between Hughes Hellebuck and now, not having a GM as we enter

the second week of September. I don't know, man. Don't they have some guys that they need to sign? Was there a trade thing that they had to deal with? Yeah, so let's go one at a time on that. We have not heard a word. Okay, what we've heard about the GM search is they have been calling around and saying like, you're out, you're out of the race to people they interview.

Does that mean they're going to do another round of interviews? Does that mean they have their guy and they're waiting until after Labor Day weekend to announce it? maybe. Hell that, you know, by the time, it could be a classic puck soup curse thing. They tell us, oh, it's Chris Draper or whatever, 45 minutes after we stop recording. That happens to us all the time.

At which point he announces the three-way Lark and Hughes Hellebuck trade. Mm-hmm. And somehow they all end up in Vegas. Yeah, yeah, it was weird, but, oh. Um, so. In addition to not knowing who the GM is, that also means we don't have any clarity on whether they're going to trade Larkin, when they're going to trade Larkin, if Larkin would even want to be traded. Let me ask you this.

Do you think they have to trade him now even if he doesn't, if he's like, I actually don't mind this new GM? I mean, I would have thought so a month ago. I mean, it's gone so quiet. I don't know. I don't know how you come back. But if, well, I mean, there's no one to trade him yet. He's going to, you would think, get to camp, right? Like, well, I guess a new GM could debut and just drop a lark and trade right away,

especially if it's somebody internal or somebody that's already in place and they just haven't announced yet. But that seems like a big ask. So once he gets to camp, now we're in kind of uncharted territory. I mean, could he come back? Like, would the Red Wing fans who've been dumping on this guy for three months? I think you can't risk putting him in front of the fans. At a bare minimum, he can't be your captain. No, you wouldn't think, yeah.

He just can't be. But I don't think you can put him in front of the fans. Every time he touches the puck, it's going to be like Brady Kachuk going back to Ottawa. So is that, do you have to trade him as quickly as possible? I think you have to. I think you have to sit at home and say, like, don't come to work until we figure this out. I don't know who that, I don't know who that helps, period.

That doesn't help him. That doesn't help Detroit. All it does is just keep people from booing him. You know what I mean? And, and I guess keep the local media who are just as amenable as any local media is to, like, what the team wants them to do. like they'd still be like, you know, he shows up day one to camp. Dylan, what's going on, man?

Are you getting traded or what? Like, they have to ask that question. You know what? I'm realizing now for the first time is I'm picturing him showing up at camp and then being like, I just want to talk about hockey, man. I don't want to talk contract or trade or anything. So don't ask me about that. Oh, okay.

Do you think you can play hockey in Detroit? Like, that would be my question. Okay, you want to talk about hockey? Let's talk about hockey. How is it possible that you're going to play for this team this year? Are you concerned that you will be distracted by being the most hated player? Doug, his first shift is going to look like when the NWO fucking formed. They're going to be throwing full drinks at him.

Are you kidding me? I mean, they should be. Is there any chance that these wings fans just fold on it and, you know, give them a smattering and then go, well? You know, here's what I think the possibility on that is. They were so willing for years to be like, he actually is a number one center. That maybe they just go, bygones or bygones, this is our guy. We love this guy. I don't think that's actually going to happen at all.

I'll be so disappointed in an original six fan base if that happens. Yeah. Yeah, it would be any fan. The Utah fan base, like, somebody asks out of there and then comes back and they're like, we love you. We kiss you still or whatever. And it's like, I'd be pretty disappointed in those guys. I'd be like, you guys are fucking marks. This is crazy to be acting like this.

And you just got a team a year ago, two years ago. They only got a name a year ago. but with like original 16 whatever it is just like what okay what's interesting to me about it is they kind of didn't forgive sergey fedorov for a really long time i mean the organization like even the fans were like the fans i were cooler with him or maybe maybe like a yager style situation where everybody was mad at yager for a while in pittsburg right and then they were like 92 though, you know what I mean, man? And Yager obviously became like a

folk hero in the sport. So you're saying they'll forgive Larkin because they'll look back on all the winning that they've done with him. Well, and isn't that the whole problem here, right? Like, the, man, I just don't know how you let him through the door on day one of camp. We expect you to be there. You fucking do? Really? Okay.

So do you tell like if he's still giving you a list of three teams do you tell him to show up and put him through that as that's your leverage to get him to expand the list make him miserable hope the fans tear him apart and then it comes back to you with a couple more teams yeah you know I hadn't I hadn't considered the like punish him aspect of this but I suppose that is plausible, yeah, that they could do that. But again, like, you need a GM to do that. And they so don't have a GM right now that they still haven't signed Simon Edvinston. They don't, he doesn't have a contract. Got the de Brinket thing to still figure out. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that was a thing they were, that whoever gets hired was going

have to I think that frankly I think that's part of the interview process if I had to guess of like what would you do with Alex

Debrinket and I'm screaming I'm jumping you know I'm I'm jumping on the fucking desk screaming I'm trading him immediately

package him with Larkin really get something going you know we'll take every prospect in your system for Larkin

and to Brinket don't look up how we've done with those guys as our two best players. Two best forwards anyway. So yeah, I don't know, man. It's not great for Detroit.

I don't know how they fuck this summer up so badly. Well, I do. They're the Red Wings. That might be it. Nevertheless. You might have seen in the news, folks, that Atlanta expansion was going to happen. Then that was all bullshit.

That wasn't real. Oops. Do you see this? This little hubbub? Yeah. No, and the fairly strong response from Bill Daly, I think, given, you know, it didn't seem like it, it seemed like there was some annoyance. Yes. It didn't seem like a just run-of-the-mill, correct-the-record sort of deal.

Yeah, I'm going through. Okay, so it was from the Twitter account, NHL to Atlanta. And they were like, we've seen some documents or whatever, basically, that kind of imply that the Atlanta, like, ownership groups are ready to enter into, like, a bidding phase or be able to actually get, construction going on a new rank, at which point the league would allow them to enter in 2930. And this picked up a lot of steam because, like, he was, this is a person who apparently has, like, access to emails and things like that. And it gained so much steam that NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly says, quote,

Atlanta is not even remotely close to an application phase to Mike Russo over there at the athletic. But this is the interesting part, Sean. So that report comes out and it gets also vehemently denied by the ownership group that is allegedly building this rink. If they get approved, whatever it is. And this guy just like posts the email. He's like, this is why I said that. Here's the fucking email. And Mike Russo, like, um, kind of get into a, him and Mike Russo getting to a back and forth about it.

And, um, even Russo seems to go like, yeah, that is kind of weird that they sent that email then. Now that you say, now that you show me the email, okay, I get, I get why you said that. And that's where it got left. So I'm not going to read the whole email. It's long. Um, but it just. does kind of, you know, significant progress over the last few weeks. Final Gathering Project, the gathering, in addition to being where all the juggaloes hang out,

is what they would call the like Arena District they're building from Whole Cloth. So it says the Final Gathering Project financing packet has been submitted to NHL for review and approval. What's happening now? Blah, blah, blah. What to expect? next couple of months stage month is moving dirt and leveling the site continuing through January 31st. So I can see where you read that and go, sounds like they're making serious fucking progress. Like if the NHL is getting information to look at for review and approval and they're talking about let's start moving some dirt around.

Like that I can totally see why you go, sounds like they're fucking building a rink because the NHL is going to sign off on this. The entire buildout is phased in over the next seven to ten years is the other thing to say there. So it's, I would, I would have read that as not 2930 because that's not seven to ten years from now. But you can see where the like A to B to C happened on that. So I just thought that was really interesting. And again, like vehement denials from from the league and the group. the statement from what it's called Krauss Sports and Entertainment. Since announcing the gathering, we've remained committed to keeping our neighboring communities informed.

Unfortunately, information shared during a recent community update was premature and incomplete, leading to inaccurate statements on social media. So they're going, we fucked up. Yeah. Inaccurate and incomplete. Those social media statements about our project suggest the NHL is in the final stages of evaluating our, quote, financial packet for, quote, approval of an NHL expansion team that is not accurate. To clarify, the NHL has made no decisions with respect to our project, and we are not in the expansion application phase. Our ownership group has strong interest in making this vision a reality, blah, blah, blah.

So it sounds like, you know, A, it sounds like we now know what happened. how the report got out there. But it also sounds like there was maybe one or two not so friendly phone calls from the NHL going. That would be my... We are not impressed. Yep. Yep.

So just Atlanta expansion fake for now. And then I saw a thing the other day just to, you know, stay in the expansion lane where the Houston mayor was like, they shouldn't have a team in Austin. We're the city that should have the team. So that, we love a mayor fight. Yeah.

That's right. One last thing we should talk about here on the show this week is the continuing situation down there at Arizona State with Blues prospect Matthew Mayich who collapsed a few weeks ago now during a team drill outside and it's it seems like he's in a coma or some sort of state like that where he's

incapacitated but they said like don't use the word coma and it sounds like it's getting pretty nasty down there with how this is proceeding it's really scary it's really sad that this kid they're basically saying like no hope of recovery, I think, was the big quote going around. And it's wild. You know, there's a lot of, like, he said, she's, like, the lawyer from one, for, for, for, uh, Mache's family has been very out there in the local media getting, um, you know, getting that, like, just getting the updates out there, basically.

But you got to say that's obviously his side of the story. and who knows what's going on at Arizona State side and like the coaches aren't on leave at Arizona State and apparently we're like out there scouting the last little while here. It's, this is something that's been very strange in this story. Yeah. The lack of focus, it seems, on the coach and the coaching staff

who presumably were involved in, at the very least, setting up this workout, if not. Yeah, so the workout was hosted by like a military style, like guy who comes in and host military style training exercises. And there are reports out there that like before this workout was even over, he was like not there anymore. He was like, okay, see you later, basically is what some of the reports have said, which is weird. Sounds very weird, yeah.

And, you know, it was about, like, guys not having access to water or enough access to water or not enough access to cooling and were protocols for working out outdoors at Arizona State followed and was enough time given for God. Like, it's called an acclamation period. Like, you get down there and the weather may be so different from where you're coming from that you're supposed to have, like, a week or two basically for your body to get used to that climate, I guess. And there has been some question about whether those rules were followed. And like, it's just you kind of can't get to the bottom of who fucked up and where and how and all that. But it seems like more than one person fucked up really badly, in my opinion. Very much, yeah.

And I mean, we haven't really seen any accountability yet, partly because the situation's still playing out. But you would retweet it somebody saying they may not play hockey this year. I mean, that has been some of the speculation. And there has also been speculation that like multiple kids who are still like WHL or, or C HL. eligible, I should say, might just go play there and or I guess the USHL as the case may be. But there has been speculation that that might be the move for a handful of players on the team. Otherwise, guys who don't have junior eligibility can transfer out of Arizona State, but they wouldn't be able to play until like January. but again, like the coaches aren't even on like administrative leave yet.

They're still going about their business apparently. So it's tough to say what action, if any, will be taken by the administration. I'm just going to look really quickly to see when their first game is scheduled for. I'm assuming it's like the first week of October. That's when everybody else is playing here. Um, but, uh, yep, they're, they're at, they're at Lindenwood on October 2nd. So less than a month away to figure that all out.

Um, really, really strange situation that this has been handled how it has, I guess is what I would say. Mm-hmm. Um, again, like, you just feel so bad for the family and obviously May itch himself is like, you know, the, the reports of like his or the quotes from his lawyer where it's like his life is ruined and and you know no hope of recovery or whatever it is like it sounds like even in a best case scenario like nightmareish yep so you know we we still don't have the full shape of what's what's going on down there but i again my opinion, none of it has sounded good. Not like one second of the reporting has sounded like they have it under control.

It's going great. Yeah. So. Yeah. It's pretty awful. I don't know what else. Unbelievable, man. Yeah.

Well, on that note, why don't we do some plugs and we'll wrap it up. Can find me over at the athletic. Next posts are going to be. We're breaking out the Bizarro meter for the offseason. I don't know exactly when that's going to run. It may start at the end of this week. It may start early next week. To be determined.

We got our annual getting everyone from the athletic hockey group together this week. So we'll all be hanging out in Chicago. And I think that's what they call it, the windy apple. believe. And I think I'm back with Frankie and Sean maybe next week. Not this week, but maybe next week. It might be almost there. Seems impossible to say. Wow. Soon. Stabbed in the back once again. That's the life I lead, I suppose. And then for me, you head over there to perfecttakes.bhive.com where you can sign up for my newsletter. It's seven bucks a month, but if you pay for a full year in advance, hell, I'll give you a month for

free. I'm a nice guy, you know? But all kinds of takes. And obviously, we're going to be ramping up a lot of stuff as September continues. NHL, college hockey preview stuff. And then once the season starts, very regular, you know, posts about college and the NHL all season long. And that's in addition to stuff I've been ranking my top 100 Simpsons episode.

and I've written a couple of things about pro wrestling over there. So like, I'm, you know, I'm hitting all the quadrants you would think I'd be hitting. And then all my stuff is also on the hockey news. I've been writing a ton for them lately. So you can check that out as well. And then to support me and Sean and another Sean and a guy named Greg, you head over there to patreon.com slash puck soup, where you can get all kinds of bonus episodes all month long,

every month forever, apparently. the way things are going. So, yeah, like I said, check all that stuff out. Patreon.com slash Puck Soup, perfect takesout, beehive.com, and whatever the hockey news is. You are at thehockey news.com. I don't know where my stuff is on there.

Slash authors or something. Who knows? Check all that out. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening to Puck Soup. I think we're just back with regular episodes every week now, but don't quote me on that. That's still TB.

Do not quote them. So I'm begging you. If I see a book of quotes by great philosophers and that one from Ryan is in there, I'm going to be mad. You can use all those other ones. Okay. Yeah. The rest of them are fun. I love that.

But yeah, that's fine. But not that one. Please. Okay. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a good one. Bye bye.