Puck Soup - Making Excuses

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Sean and Ryan talk about every series being close all of a sudden, Utah team names, and more. Sponsored by Hatch (hatch.co/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean Magndu from The Athletic. And folks, I was just in Hawaii for the last week or so, a little more than that, I guess. And you know what they don't tell you about Hawaii, Sean? You know what the start times are out there? No. It is six hours behind the East Coast. So we're looking at 1 p.m., 3.30 p.m. starts.

I got to ask the question. Is this the ideal start time? Like time zone wise? Is this the ideal time to... If you're on vacation... Or if you just have a fake job like we did. Or a fake job, yeah, exactly. If you have a real job, that's going to be problematic.

Yep, that's true. Like, if you have a real job where you do real things, but there's like six of those left in North America. Yeah. So I feel like for the rest of us. Now, could you find hockey? Like, were you watching everything on? your phone or could you walk into?

Oh no, they have cable. I wasn't going into bars. We were, you know, just like at the, uh, at the hotel or whatever. Yeah. Um, they had cable TV and everything. Two things about this, by the way. I know you don't know what this is, but for our American listeners, I didn't see a single what a pro wants commercial.

Oh, no spoilers, man, because I have seen so many references to that. And I'm assuming that if Gentile and I do our commercial exchange, that's going to be the cleanup hitter. So. Not one. Is this like, what is it? It's a Verizon commercial. And maybe Verizon's just like not a big thing on Hawaii or something.

But like, I literally, I, like, it occurred to me. Have I not seen this for a minute? And then, like, I was actively looking for it and they just didn't have it. The other thing is, sports gambling isn't legal in Hawaii. Oh, man. So I didn't see any ads for like, you know, throw your life away. You are describing a paradise right now. No, I know.

It was crazy. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I don't understand. If they don't have gambling ads, what do they do? Do they just, like, show a test pattern for 90% of the broadcast? It really is just like, different ads for cable TV and stuff. But, you know, a lot of, a lot of flow from progressive, you know.

Okay. You see her a lot. The Gecko, of course, is always up to no good down there. But yeah, for the most part, I was just like, this is the perfect sports watching situation for me. Wow. Yeah, it was great. I'm in. Let's do an expansion team in Hawaii.

You get back from lunch, you know, and you're just like, well, I guess I'll watch this Rangers game. Yeah. And what's it like to like watch an Oilers game and go, I hope this goes into overtime. That would be fun for me. I know, right? It's, uh, yeah, it was just, it was just like so unexpected. What was it like watching the end of a Canucks game for the first time in your life? Oh, I've seen one or two.

You know, they come like east every once in a while, you know? so I've seen it in the past That's true But yeah No it was It was really weird Being like well I guess it's dinner time Both of the fucking hockey games are over

You know Awesome I can't recommend it You have fun Oh I had a great time Yeah they're uh They got all kinds of stuff down there You don't have

My sister was telling me My sisters lived there for I don't know A decade or so And she was telling me They have like one ice rink in the Honolulu area and they don't really even resurface it. They just scrape it.

Okay. And I was like, but at some point, don't you just not have ice anymore? Yeah. It's like, I don't know what goes on in there. It's for figure skating only. There's not really hockey is what she was saying. Makes sense. That's going to put a dent in my expansion plans, but you know what?

Couldn't be that much worse than Mollett, though, could it? Exactly. Just give it a scrape. Yeah. That worked out awesome for... So you saw all the games. I was half concerned that you were to come back and be like I have not watched any hockey, which would have been fun because then I could have just made a bunch of stuff up. Yeah. You could have. You still can. I didn't, I'm not saying I watched every single game. I remember Stuart Skinner? Remember when you left how he was good? Yeah, sure. I'm not going to believe this. He's bad now. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about. about that. But let's first start with the game that was on last night.

The Colorado Avalanche, the Dallas Stars. Oh, actually, you know what? Hold that thought. I did have one other thing happen to me in Hawaii that I wanted to talk about. I was walking down the street and a guy says to me, hey, hey, buddy, you want to invest in a three-on-three hockey league? I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And then you rush to social media, too. Well, because here's the thing.

If that league didn't exist, wouldn't I not hear about it? Think about that. I heard about it. It must exist. It's got to exist. Yeah. They have a budget of $47 billion. Yep.

They are going to play at every major arena. That was, to me, the funniest part. And nobody. And if you try to talk to anyone who works there, you just end up talking to like a Max Headroom, AI generated guy. Yeah. Oh, I mean, that's a commercial we saw a lot. Was the Jennifer Coolidge, am I a robot? That commercial?

People know what I'm talking about down here in the U.S. That commercial played as often as what a pro wants. I'll say that for sure. It's exciting. Yeah, it was great. But no, that was just extremely funny to me because I had seen that they announced the schedule for three ice, the regular three on three league that exists already. And I got confused and was like, oh, they're expanding three ice. And now it seems to be backed by like Saudi Arabia.

That's strange. But the key difference is that they announced. like dates and stuff like that for when you can go see three ice. Yeah. This is a different thing. I don't know if it was ever confirmed that it was a Saudi thing. I guess you probably can't because it was also not confirmed that this exists. But apparently it is a real thing in the sense that they are going around trying to hire people away from NHL teams and NHL adjacent jobs.

Yeah. Not with a lot of success. it doesn't sound like, but they do have some information that they're passing around to people. I think the definitive take on this was Brad Schlossmann from the Grand Forks Herald does a great job covering the university in North Dakota. He was just like, okay, well, if there's supposed to be a team in North Dakota or in Minnesota, I will call every rink in Minnesota with a capacity of like 2,000 or more and just ask them if they know what the fuck this is. And every single one was like, what? What? What are you talking about? I never heard of that.

That was extremely funny and extremely good journalism. Yeah, no, it's just like, he's like, I talked to the guy, I got his phone number. He didn't want to tell me anything at all. He did not. And so I talked to, but he said there was a rink in Minnesota where they were going to have games this summer. So I called every possible rink. And they all said, I've never heard of this guy and I don't know what you're talking about. Please hang up.

It's a lot of just trust me, bro, on this whole story. So it was a very interesting story because when it was when it got, I mean, I don't, I guess you can't break a story that's not true. But when it was publicly discussed, it felt like a lot of people knew what was going on. And it also sounds like a lot of those people immediately started texting people saying, dude, this is not real. Wait a second. Do not put your neck out on this. We have a good colloquialism in Massachusetts for that kind of thing.

It's light dawns on marble head. You're just like, oh, wait a minute. Now I get it. Now I see what's happening here. This was all made up fake stuff. So end of the day, if you're an aspiring, professional hockey player. I don't love your odds.

Maybe don't put down the down payment on that new home in Minnesota. Who do you think, okay, let me ask you this. Who do you think would play in this league? People who can't make the NHL, but still want part of the apparently enormous amount of money that was going to be available to players. Well, I'm saying, like, what kind of players, though? Because it's like anybody that has, like, any kind of, future plans for the NHL,

I don't know that they're signing up. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't want to say it would be like a situation where, oh, you play in that league, you can never, you will never play in the NHL. Like,

but I just think it's kind of, um, my impression of it was like, those quadruple A, AHL guys where it's like he signs with an aHL team every summer for 400 grand. Mm-hmm. Those guys,

would make big fucking cash playing in this league. I feel like Robbie Shremp would be like the MVP of the first, first season. I was trying to think of like exactly what got, and I think the answer might be like Rocco Grimaldi. Remember Rocco Grimaldi? I think, I feel like Joshua was saying if he wants could probably light up a three on three. Four maybe. Yeah. And like, you know, anybody, anybody that like actually signs a contract with this league and gets paid out of it, like,

good for you. That's awesome. Because where are you going to work for, play a bunch of three-on-three hockey for like six weeks? The amount of money involved was reportedly. Stunning. Ridiculous. Yeah. Like there's no plausible way that that league could be remotely profitable. It doesn't have to be profitable.

It just has to like, you know. That's it. Well, it would have to be run by somebody who wasn't interested in. the bottom line so much is. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And then like maybe, you know, 40 years from now, it turns a slight profit.

And you're like, well, it all worked out. All we had to do was dump $8 billion into this. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, really funny. Had a big laugh about that one while I was in Hawaii. But let's move on to AvStars here. Yes.

This is good. Good series all of a sudden. I feel like it was going to be. A wise man once said. the key to success is to always be closing. We got no closers in this league, man. Yeah. Four straight games in three of the four series

where a team could close it out. O for four. No thanks. And it was looking, I mean, Dallas looked good last night right up until the third period and they did not. Yeah, I was going to say, like, right up until the very end of the second period. right?

Like that was, I mean, I don't even want to say it's a collapse because like, I don't know, that feels like it's unfair to Colorado because like Colorado is just a pretty good team in my humble opinion. But at the same time, it's just like, yeah, man, if you just wanted to make like

a save in the third period, that would actually work out. Are we, so this is my first question to you. Are we back to being worried about Jake Ottinger? I mean, what goalie are we not worried about at this point? Artur's seal-offs? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's the only guy that's a lock. He's locked in, baby.

Let's go. I don't think we're worried, but it is, I mean, this is what fascinates me about the playoffs. I mentioned this before. I am fundamentally incapable. You show me any playoff series. I am incapable of imagining whichever team lost the last game, winning the series. Sure. It could literally be three nothing like it was in Carolina, New York, and then the trailing team wins game four.

And I'm like, it's just all going their way, man. Like, there's... These other guys are finished. It's done. They're cooked. So I feel that way about Dallas, but I acknowledge that I don't have a good reason for that other than this is just how my brain works. Yeah. No, I mean, it is, and there are a few series where we're going to be able to talk about this.

I feel like, but it is just like, well, last time I saw these guys, they gave up a bunch of goals and they didn't score as many as I would have thought. They're finished. They're done. That's it. You know?

It's good for them. And, I mean, it's very easy to understand why people just react to incredibly small samples, or overreact, I guess. And the answer is, because there's only incredibly small samples. Yeah. If you fuck up two games in a row,

you are almost dead in the water. Now, don't tell Carolina that or whatever, but you know what I mean? Like, you feel like you're on the brink of elimination if you had two bad games in a row. And that's out of what you're going to play like, 25 max if you go to the Stanley Cup final, you know?

So that's why people overreact to it. And like you're not, well, I guess you are wrong, but also you're not totally wrong to, to be like, well, the last time I saw these guys, they sucked. So it's a big problem for them. But now we go back to Colorado. That's right, yep. And again, like, it's somebody, I don't remember where I saw it.

But it was a few places. It's not a brand new idea. But somebody said that if you're going to be down 3-1 in a series, you actually prefer to be the road team. Sure. You'd think you want to be the home team. because then you go home for game five, whatever, but that you get a real tough game on the road for game five,

but if you win that, suddenly the whole thing tilts. Now you're home for game six, and if you win that, you go back on the road for game seven, but it doesn't feel like a row game because that building is going to be terrified. So we're in that situation now in three of the four series, where we're waiting on a game six that's going to, there's going to be some, some clinching,

let's just say. Yeah, not so much clinching. Yeah. Clinching or clenching, pick one. You must choose. That's right.

But yeah, I mean, watching that game last night, you, like you said, up until, like, shots started going in

and you were like, oh, that went in, that's weird, you know? I felt like that happened, uh, at least on that first goal in the third.

Was it the first goal? I don't remember now. But, where it was just like, Like, whoa. Oh, okay. I guess we're scoring on those now, you know? Which isn't how you want to feel about your goalie. You don't. But also, I mean, Colorado, the big guys came to play, right? And that's ultimately what it boils down to, right? When that happens, like if it's going to be a game where the big guns are going to determine it, then Colorado is in better shape than pretty much anyone else, other than Edmonton. And even then.

You know, they have big guns at every position. Edmonton has big guns at one position. And it happens to be the number one and two center spots, so that helps. But, you know, Colorado has difference making wingers, defensemen, centers, you know, all that kind of stuff. Don't ask me about the goaltending. The goaltending's been good enough. Good enough. That's, yeah.

And that's all, you know, even when. they were winning the cup or whatever, that's all they were getting. They weren't like, in my recollect, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but like in my recollection, I wasn't like, oh, damn, Gru Bauer is like stealing this game. It just doesn't feel like that's what was ever happening for them. And that's, you know, I feel like that's kind of by design. They don't need to invest in goaltending, et cetera. So, yeah.

I just I don't know I don't want to count out the stars but I also don't want to count out the avalanche and like that's very wishy-washy obviously Yeah But we've narrowed it down to one of these two teams

Yeah but like this was This was the series that like going in You were like well this is going to be the close one Hmm You know This is going to be the one that goes seven And all the games are really good And that kind of thing

And I'd say for the most part that's been the case, you know. But I'd also say, like, taking on the hole, how many games has Dallas outplayed Colorado in this series? One, maybe two, you know? Yeah. Not, yeah, not remarkably outplayed them. But, I mean, we haven't seen it.

Colorado hasn't been very good. They definitely weren't very good in game four. And that was the game where the New Chuskin stuff had just come out. Right. kind of tied. Is this, are we seeing an artifact of that or did they just, because I mean, they just didn't show up that game. And that was part of why you sort of felt like, okay, Dallas has got the shot to wrap this up now because Colorado's kind of rolling over on them a little bit. And nope. Yeah, Colorado has had the expected goals advantage at five on five in the

first three games by a pretty wide margin. each one. And then not so much the last two games, but as you said, like the third period, they just looked like a different team last night. So you can't expect to hold Nathan McKinnon and Cal McCarr quiet for four or five games. And that stopped happening. They came close.

They had them for most of the game. That's what I mean. But like, you. in hockey it takes one play and you're like oh this guy's locked in it's a brand new series yep so um let's talk about the valeri natucikin thing obviously um you know it's the thing of like you don't want to comment too much because we don't know what happened and uh it seems like some of his teammates are pissed off at him and others are maybe a little more compassionate and who knows what's going on with all that.

And we still don't really know what exactly happened last year. Not that we necessarily have to in Seattle, yeah. Not that we have to. And obviously, even when you're talking about big time pro athletes, there's some level of privacy and discretion or whatever else. But it makes this in a way hard to talk about because we don't know, like, are we wishing all the best to a good guy or are we sort of like, maybe this dude isn't a good guy and we should be glad that he's gone?

I don't know. You're right that definitely some of the teammate comments about, is it Jack Johnson talking about like people make their choices and their priorities and all that? And he didn't sound like guys. Wasn't mincing words. Yeah, it didn't sound like guys looking to welcome him back with open arms. But that's not an issue right now. I mean, he's a six.

month suspension minimum. Minimum, yeah, that's right. He has to, of course, go and take care of whatever it is he needs to take care of. But even if he were to do that, there is no scenario where he's back anytime soon. That's right. Which, I mean, if you step away and just treat it like an injury or, you know, like an absence that you'd see under more normal circumstances, that feels pretty devastating for Colorado. Because that was, you know, you talk about the big guns, but he's, he's the one guy who wasn't a big gun that you could still count on to.

Oh, and I would say, I mean, what's he, what's he make? Like, seven million bucks? Like, he's not six million, something like that. He's not, like, elite money, but yeah, he's. And he was awesome for them when they won the cup. Like, he, I would say was a huge reason they won the cup, like one of the top two or three. And, you know, the way things were going early in this, you know, the first round and then early in this. one, same thing. Like, oh, he's their most, their most productive player, maybe you would say.

They're most, not necessarily always the most effective, but like he's been really effective for them and, you know, losing a player like that. Like I can, and especially, you know, again, we don't know the circumstances, but seemingly losing him on a game day. Yeah, I can see why Colorado kind of stumbled out of the game. Jared Bedner said that he found out after the morning skate. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah. Brutal.

Brutal for Colorado. I guess I don't have a lot else to say about just the timing couldn't be worse, obviously. And it will, I mean, and again, getting way ahead of ourselves, but it will be fascinating to see if there's ever even an attempt to come back. And if so, what does that look like? How do you fit in? Can you go back to the avalanche? can you go back to the NHL?

Like who's going to, you know, again, putting aside off-ice issues where we don't necessarily know the details. Like, you've, this is now two post seasons in a row. Yep. That you haven't been there when your team meted you. That's going to be a tough sell. Tough to come back from that, especially in this league where like that kind of, like being there for your teammates is like the number.

one thing you have to do in a lot of ways, you know? So, yeah, just really tough. Do we have any concerns for Dallas here? I don't. Obviously, like, not good to lose two games in a row or whatever it's been. No, I mean, I think, you know, stating the incredibly obvious, better to finish in five and be resting and, you know, all of that stuff, getting healthy. it was a big, big, missed opportunity,

but I mean, they're still in as good a shape as any team out there. Yeah. And right, it's not like there's nobody, there's a bunch of guys who are like, aren't contributing or whatever in this series. I just looked at, you know how many points

from you're highskine has in these four or five games? Nope. Eight. It's pretty good. Pretty good. From a defenseman. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's, I don't know, maybe I'm being overly simplistic here, but like I just feel like they probably like to see a little more out of Joe Pavelsky at five on five. Yeah, he hit the, I mean, just period. He had the goal the other night, but that's his first of the playoffs, only one. Yeah. Not great. But yeah, we always say this time of year, right?

Like you can go down the roster and go, well, this guy's not producing. That's not good. Except that he usually does produce. And if he starts producing, they're already winning without him. Boy, they're going to be in really good shape. So maybe it is a good thing. I don't know. Yeah.

It's never a good thing. That's the key to understanding the playoffs. Whatever. No, yeah. The worst possible. interpretation is probably true. Well, that and also, like, if you're producing,

you're playing well, and if you're not producing, you're a fucking bum and a loser. We'll talk about that in a couple other series here. And it's like, you know, with Pavelski, I'm sure you can look at like matchups or whatever. I can quickly look up who his most common opposition here in this, uh, post season, or this, uh, series is.

And, you know, If I had to guess, I would say it's probably he's getting a ton of, oh, Miko Rantinan and Nathan McKinnon. Huh, maybe that's why he's not playing that well, seemingly. You know, those guys have the puck all the time. And I feel like depending on who you are, they'll either give you a pass for that kind of thing. Well, look, I mean, what's he supposed to do? McCar, Ranton, McKinnon, McHarr, those are the four most common guys he plays against. versus like, you know, if you're, say, Elias Patterson, people don't want to hear it, you know?

Joe Bevelsky, you know, hey, look, what can you do? But, yeah. I think that, you know, you got to still like the stars in this series just because they only need to win one more game. That's it. but again, like you really would, if you look back at the beginning of this round, I think a lot of us looked at it at West and said, Colorado, Dallas is going to be a war.

That's going to go seven. Yep. That's going to be a battle. Edmonton, Vancouver, Edmonton should be able to put that away pretty quick. And then it sort of, the script sort of flipped. Where heading in the last night, Edmonton was getting all they could handle from Vancouver.

and Dallas was the team that had chance to get through quick. And it's, you know, it's become almost a cliche in the playoffs that you need that early quick series. And I'm not completely convinced it's always true, but it doesn't hurt. You wouldn't think. I mean, maybe it does hurt in that we do see teams be rusty sometimes in game one. But, yeah, they, it feels like a missed opportunity, but as long as that's all that it is, still get two more shots to finish this and then move on and play whoever comes out of that Oilers series, which is to say the Oilers, but.

Yeah, probably. The other series that happened, I guess, kind of most recently and isn't going tonight is the Bruins Panthers series. And I don't know if you know about this. there's been a little bit of controversy in this one. No. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

Because the reps are, of course, out to get the Boston Bruins. Everybody understands that's what's going on here. You know, all the... Well, I mean, the refs are just following instructions from the league because there's one thing the NHL hates. It's promoting an original 6th team. Well, I mean, you know what they... They can't stand. that.

Well, the other thing they hate is trying to prop up teams that don't necessarily draw that well historically in markets that are non-traditional. I'm sure, you know, hey, Gary Bettman, you can't blame him. I'm sure his phone's ringing at all hours with ESPN executives going. Gary, we need the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup final, please. It's just one more market that could be good six years from now, you know? It worked out for Tampa in 2004. Kind of did.

No further questions, you know? Yeah, it's just one of those things, right? Where it's like, when I see a bunch of reporters, I otherwise am like, oh yeah, that guy's good at his job or whatever. When they start counting the penalty differential, like every time there's a minor penalty, they're like, now it's like a 58 to 4 you know Bruins penalties to Colorado in the series and you're like is that because the the reps are like out to get the Bruins I got a bit 50 to 4 sounds extreme to me I think that is worth noting and maybe they're also just doing it because that way Paul Maurice doesn't have to hold up his fingers and remind everyone it's true it's true well so I guess my

My thing in bringing that up is when you're talking about that sort of thing, right? Like, I think, I think it's something like for every two Bruins minors, many of which have been too many men or whatever, you know. Most of which, I think. Are they up to three in this series? Oh, they might, I think they have. Three, four. Yeah, they may be up to like six in the postseason. Like, it's wild how often they keep doing this.

Yeah. But most recent one was very funny. Like, most of these are just like miscommunications or guys not paying attention. But the guy like skating as fast as he can to the bench and then veering off at the last second was a fantastic faking. Yeah. That was very well done. It almost worked too. The refs were almost fooled.

But yeah, like, I don't know. It's one of those things where when they're counting the penalties and then after the game, they go, well, look, the rest aren't the reason they lost, but penalties are this much and the Panthers are clearly the better team. And it's like, do you think maybe the fact that the Panthers have the puck constantly, and as you said, are the better team? Do you think maybe that's contributing to the penalty differential? Like the Bruins kind of can't keep up with these guys?

Oh, that's interesting. No? Interesting that you think that. Weird. Yeah. What was your thought on? Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand,

and the discourse around it. I mean, I wasn't looking at my phone that much, so I'm so fucking glad I missed a lot of the discourse on this one. Yeah, you're, you know, because I know, I just from seeing it,

like, just discussed on, on TNT or whatever, I was like, fuck, man, this must be so annoying to, to see this every, because now,

now it's like every time there's a cross check or whatever, everyone's like, oh, that, you know, Sam Bennett did that. That wouldn't have been a penalty at all. You know, that kind of, anyway, the thing that, that, the comparison reminded me of, is, like, the next day when they're like, oh, we actually found an angle that shows he 100% like Mike Tyson uppercutted him. It was the strangest thing. Like, the Department of Player Safety literally, you know, they, they didn't do a hearing

or anything. They looked at it because they look at everything. decided they were fine with that. And then the next day, like this different angle comes out. And the Department of Player Safety said through somebody in the media, somebody reached out to them. And they said, no, we never saw that angle. But it wouldn't have changed our view that this was.

And it's like, just do us a favor. Just say you had that angle, please. Because I don't know how many cameras are filming these games, but I'm pretty sure it's not a billion. Like somebody should be able to keep track of all of this stuff and Yeah can I can I give you a comparison that that immediately sprang to mind for me So people know I love them filmed JFK you ever know that you ever see this movie I've heard of it yeah it's it's a good one uh you got to watch the director's cut though

It's like four hours it's perfect um But the thing about the JFK film is it's depicted the trial of this guy Clay Shaw. And as part of it, the district attorney, played by Kevin Costner, his name Jim Garrison. This is all based on real stuff that happened. He shows the Zapruder film, like, in the courtroom. And it's the first time anybody's ever seen the Zepruder film, like, with the shot that basically blows Kennedy's brains out of his head, you know? And, you know, this is one of those things.

Like, growing up, I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen the Pruder film, sure, you know. But in 1969, when this trial takes place, no one had seen it in the six years, right? And so, like, the Warren Commission, that report came out in 64. And they were like, damn, the guy that shot Kennedy, he was acting alone. And then the Zapruder film comes out. And it's like, yeah, definitely his head moves in two directions on this one. And then the Warren Commission had to be like, oh, that's crazy. Wow.

I guess we didn't see that angle. And it's the same thing where it's like, yeah, we made a decision on this. And I'm not saying that like, you know, as much as the Warren Commission was a sham, you know. I'm not saying player safety like is doing a conspiracy. But like it's just how the fuck did you not have that angle? and then to say oh and it wouldn't have changed anything really

that wouldn't have changed anything if you saw him like that that fucking like I said the Mike Tyson uppercut so when I say here's my question yeah do you think does Sam Ben to see Brad Marchand come and go I'm going to Mike Tyson uppercut this guy

and I'll get away with it because I don't I don't think he could do it that fast. I don't think he can make that decision. Or did he just see him coming and kind of get his hands up and stuff happens? I definitely think the let if he can if he can read and react like that, he's in the wrong sport. He should be boxing for, you know, 80 million dollar purses or whatever, you know. At the same time, as much as I don't necessarily read like intent into it, I don't

think you're allowed to do what he did. Now, I guess player safety would disagree with me. Well, because I mean, you're not allowed to do it, but also the Department of Player Safety is not out there, like saying any missed penalty

call becomes their job. They're there to find things that are suspension worthy, or I guess fine. Sure. And I mean, you're, you get your hand up and you hit a guy. Your response, I it's the same as being responsible for your stick, right?

That's what I mean. It was an accidental high stick, but it's still a high stick, and it should still be a call. But accidental high sticks are almost never, Department of Player Safety matters. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Sure. So I guess that would be their argument. How many accidental high sticks knock out the captain of the other team with a concussion or whatever for two games? He did.

He was in the morning skate taking his normal line rushes this. morning apparently. Yeah, as we're recording this, we don't know, but he is looking like he has the potential to return. Yeah. But still, that's a big, it's a big name to miss. And it's not like this is Alex Barkov doing it. This is somebody who's got a history.

A little bit of a history. In fact, I'm pretty sure, I can't remember what series it was last year, but I feel like he maybe took out a guy and some certain fan base was going like, hey, Sam Bennett seems pretty dirty. I feel like I would have heard about that. Everybody just called that fan base a bunch of babies and whiners, but they turned out to be right. So, yeah. I don't remember what series it was.

Yeah, it's impossible to say. But yeah, I think that rises to the level of suspension, even if I think he didn't mean to, you know, like I said, I don't think he like clocked. Okay, this is my perfect opportunity to punt to Brad Marchand straight in the face and concuss him and knock him out for two games or whatever. I don't think that's what happened, right? But I do think that as a result of the thing he did, even if it was a split-second reaction and not intent or whatever, I don't know, that seems like he should have been suspended to me.

And then he goes and scores the winner in the next game. So it's not like, you know. Yeah. There are a lot of times this suspension debates and everything we get all worked up on, you kind of feel like we're giving it a level of attention it doesn't deserve

because who cares if your third liner gets like oh Michael Bunting's going to miss two games or three like honestly is that going to decide a series yeah this one might have what did you think of the goalie interference or lack thereof on the Bennett goal the one where he pushes Charlie Coil

into Jeremy Swamen so people are going to say I'm being a Bruins homer or whatever but like fucking psychotic to me that that's not goaltender interference. Push the guy into the goalie. I don't, I, I, I know that like, you know, I, I've read the, the Sean McIndoo articles, you know what I mean. I know, I, I feel like I have a pretty good feel for what goaltender interference looks like.

And I feel like if you cross check a guy from behind into the goalie, that's usually goaltender interference. Am I wrong about this? You're not wrong. wrong. Okay. I was somewhat surprised that it wasn't overturned. And I say somewhat because one thing that I will flag is as kind of the resident goalie interference guy, I can say that the league has more and more seems to be drifting towards, if we're not sure, we leave the call on the ice, which is what the rulebook says they're supposed to do, but they typically don't. They usually split hairs. So I'm never, I'm not sure that I can be completely shocked by a call in the ice

standing just because, I mean, it would have to be really over the top obvious for me to feel 100% sure they were going to reverse it. But I thought that one would come back. But again, this is where, you know, even the replay review guys are still hockey guys. It's the 200 hockey men. And I do think some of them are like, coil's got to be stronger. It went down too easily. Coil can't like, you know, he gets a little shove and, you know, he's got to be, he's got to be more set. He's got to be more dug in for a net front battle. and the result of the element. What does that have to do with him landing on the fucking goal?

Like, yeah, okay. I agree that he kind of went down a little bit easy there. Well, because if you go down easy, then it's not entirely Sam Bennett's fault that you're sitting on your goalie. If you're sitting on your goalie because you, you know, you've gone down too easy, then. And then the other piece of it was whether Swamen would have been able to make the save anyways, which my sense is usually they give the goalie the benefit of the doubt on those. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. And then there was the other call in the last game that did go the Bruins way again. But Brovsky, you know, a little bump. That one, that was another one where, you know, I was on Twitter. I called it in real time. I said, this is going to stand.

Yeah, I had that feeling as well. I think some people maybe saw the stick get knocked out of his hand. I thought he just kind of dropped it on it. Well, and he got bumped. It was Ekman Larson that bumped the stick more than anyone. Right. So I think Bobrovsky got caught a little bit trying to sell. So I thought that one was fun. You know what I haven't seen people talking enough about, in my opinion?

Is the fact that like after, I guess it was after the Marchand game. So what's that? Game three, game four? I kind of lost track a little bit. He got hurt in game three. That's right, yeah. So it was Don Sweeney like holding a press conference to be like, this is bullshit? You know, like, like complaining about the refs and all that?

He spoke to the media and, yeah, I had his comment about how the media should be accountable. And the referee, yeah, the media should be able to hold the refs accountable and not be asking the coaches about stuff. And that was sort of about Marchand and also about the review. Um, yeah, and probably about the penalty differential in the series and all that kind of to me, it's just like, dog, they're gonna only call more penalties on you because of this. What are you doing? Like, save that shit for the end of the series or whatever. Like the fact that he held what felt like an immediate, like an emergency press conference. You know what I mean? Whereas like I, listen, I have no recourse here, but to convene the extremely. sympathetic Boston media and say to them, isn't it so unfair how we're being treated? It's, you work the refs, man. That's, it is a skill. And some teams have it and some teams don't and some teams do it well and some teams go a little

too far. And you're right. As soon as it goes too far, it works against you because now the reps are saying. What were power plays in that, in that following game? That's a good question. I'll say this. It was, it was a lot of, a lot of Bruins reporters tweeting about what the penalty differential in the series was.

So I don't know what it is exactly. That is such a thing. I get why they do that, but I don't like that part of hockey culture. The idea of the penalties have to be equal. And if the penalties aren't. Well, that's what I'm saying. Because you don't see that. I don't know about the NBA, but you don't see that in the NFL.

Like in the NFL, they will put a graphic on the screen that says, this team has taken three penalties for 15 yards, and this team has taken seven penalties for 140 yards. And everybody goes, wow, they've got to stop taking penalties. You've got to be more disciplined. Yeah. Stop doing that. Whereas in hockey, if the power plays are five to three, it's like, well, clearly.

Power play. That was wrong. Power play time in game five, or games four and five, a combined about 20 for Florida and 10 for Boston. And like I said earlier, the thing, the thing is. and to your point, like, aren't you saying

that Flores is the better team? Shouldn't the team that is better and has the puck more be the one that's drawing all these penalties? Like, just doesn't that, like,

stand to reason? Doesn't that follow? You know, even, I'm looking at the game summary for game five. And yeah, there were nine minor penalties. One of them was the delay

a game on the Miss Challenge. One of them's too many men on the ice. One of them's closing your hand on the puck. Like, these are not. I don't care what level of game management you expect. At a certain point, those have to get called.

When you put the puck over the glass or whatever, like they're going to call the penalty. I don't know how else to put it to you. It drives me crazy when people do that. And again, they always go, the rest aren't the reason that Bruins lost. But, and it's like, well, then you have fucking nothing you feel like talking about because of the team you cover or the team you like got its ass beat. You know what I mean? Like, that's what that's what all those complaints effectively boil down to. I saw a bunch of it in the fucking Leafs series in the first round, too.

Whereas like, oh, you know, the rest aren't the reason they lost. But, you know, if they just gave the Leafs like three or four more powerplays, they were right there in it. And it's like, I saw that Leafs PowerPlay. What the fuck did have them out there for five on four through the entire game that's not making a difference? How bad the Leafs were on the powerplay. Okay, but if you called those four powerplays all at the same time and made it five on one, I feel like that power plate could have scored a goal.

Yeah, you're right about that. You got me. One goal. Absolutely. 60% chance. It's a different question. Five on two, they get scored on short-handed probably. And it says the guy's stepping out of the box, too.

It's not even, he's been in his own zone or whatever. But all this having been said, you know, the Bruins won, the most recent game in this series. And I don't know if you saw the piece I wrote today. I did not have a chance to. got to be one of the great hate watch series for all the reasons that we've just been talking about, I hope it goes game seven. I hope this series lasts forever. Because this is like, I'm sorry, man.

Having a good hate watch series in the playoff is vitally important to the rest of us. This is fantastic. If you're a fan of the other 30 teams, you're just watching this hoping of Meteor lands on the rink. It's great. Exactly. I need it to go quick. I want quadruple overtime again. game seven.

I hope this series goes to game seven because that's just, that's just one more opportunity to hear the damn F word. Oh. Okay. I mean, I can't say that. You can't swear at hockey game. I will say this. Him putting fucking Gorg Badootsky straight in the crosshairs.

Never liked to coach more in my entire life. It's like, this guy's a clown. Like, he's scoped out. Yeah. He was like, this clown. I need to, someone needs to put this bozo in his place. One of these, one of these New York elitists, you know what I mean? That's right. Yep.

Um, but yeah. The, the, the, the, the best part about that, like, where he did the whole, like, you got you need to fucking play better or whatever. The angle they keep showing of him doing that, there's like a guy who's in, must be in like the second or third row. and he's just like over Maurice or like the trainer's shoulder. And he's in a Panthers jersey and it's an older guy, but it looks like he's on the bench as well, just like from the angle. And he's like nodding sagely.

It's a very funny, he's like, yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about. But yeah, the whole thing of like, they needed me to swear at them or whatever. It's like,

all right. So who fucking, like, am I wrong that coaches swear at players all the time? Yeah. And the crazy thing is, but if you hit just, again, like, let's say, you're just getting back from Hawaii. You haven't followed any hockey. You just, plain touches down, and you see just the reaction online to that little soundbite and him yelling and all of that and how they scored right after.

Like, what percentage are you sure that they must have won that game for what a big deal everyone was making out. Like I, I said this on the other show, right? Yeah. I said this on the other show. Somebody was tweeting like, give the coach the Con Smyth.

And I'm like, did they lose that game? Am I? I'm pretty sure they lost that game. So what are we doing? You know, I am always really impressed, though. Like, every once in a while, there will be a timeout or something. And the assistant coach draws up a play on the whiteboard.

And they immediately. go and score on that play. I'm just like, this guy's a fucking genius. This guy should be coaching every, like, Olympic team. He drew up one play. It worked immediately.

No further questions. But this, it was just like, oh, you know, Paul, how did you, how did you get him to score like that? He's like, well, I said, I said they were,

uh, they were playing shitty. Yeah. And they got really fired up. And then, like, okay. In telling them that he swore,

he swore. Oh, man. It's so, I tell, someday I'm going to learn some swear words and then it's over for, for you, gosh darn, guys, because I am going to be unstoppable comedy. The thing where he was like, I am, I am good at one thing, and that's swearing. Like, for me, I feel like when people, the kind of people who say stuff like that are like, also fluent in sarcasm. Don't, don't be a fuckwaffle, you know, one of those fucking guys. You know what I'm talking about? Like, that's, I don't want to think of Paul Maurice that way.

I want to think of him as, like, the coach that turned around the Florida Panthers or whatever. I can't, I can't have him tweeting like David Simon at me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That sucks, man. Anyway. Why don't we, why don't we take a break?

We'll come back. We'll talk about the games that are happening tonight. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Hatch. Guys, let's talk about bedtime. It's the NHL playoffs. We all know the deal. It's late at night. You promised yourself,

you were going to get a good night's sleep tonight. You promised yourself that if the game went into overtime, you were going to check out early-ish. You can always get the score tomorrow. You don't need to stay up. And yet, here you are. Late at night. TV's telling you, man.

One more period. Just one more period. Your phone's begging for your attention. You got a list of things. things you were supposed to do instead of watching hockey tonight and that's starting to buzz around in your mind and get you distracted. You sort of get that sense of dread starts to settle then that says, man, I am not going to get a good night's sleep tonight. That's going to throw off my day tomorrow and then on and down the path that that leads you. It's not good. With Hatch,

you can learn to put your screens away and build sleep routines that help prioritize your rest. And you guys know I've talked about Hatch in the past and with my kids, a couple of teenagers now, being able to get them to sleep, get them up. Works great, but guess what? Hatch makes a grown-off version two. Hatch Restore is like a gentle nudge into a good mood. It's not a jolting, jarring sound first thing in the morning. It's a nice, smooth re-entry into the waking world. Hatch helps you prioritize rest and create bedtime habits to make you feel ready for sleep at night

and energized in the morning. Unlike a traditional alarm or a sound machine, Hatch Restore uses soft glowing light, paired with soothing sounds to help you wind down peacefully, brings that spot-like feel into your bedroom, and it wakes you gently in the morning with sunrise. Gradually changes colors. It gets brighter, simulating your natural sleep patterns.

Hatch has put over 5 million people to sleep, and we're talking babies through adults, and 78% of users say their sleep is improved since using a Hatch device. Right now, Hatch is offering our listeners up to 20% off and free shipping on your Hatch device purchase. Visit hatch.co slash puck. For up to 20% off, that's hatch.com slash puck.

All right, we're back. Do you want to talk about the Oilers series or the Rangers series first? I'll leave it up to you. Well, let's do the Oilers. Let's do the Oilers. Let's get some canned on. The number one thing we're talking about with the Oilers is what? Goaltending. Goaltending?

Sure. Yep, of course. Now, I'm going to say something, and I don't want it to sound like I'm trying to defend Stuart Skinner's play. Oh, boy. Hey, you'd be the first one to try to play defense around Stuart Skinner. Am I right? All right, folks?

That is kind of where I'm going with this. I'm going to read you a couple of stats, because, like, I saw all the discords. The Oilers game, for whatever reason, were the ones I saw the league. Maybe they just played the fewest while I was gone. They were only on. They are one game behind. They're on game two, I think, going into tonight's game.

And, yeah, no, like, they, this is, like, I obviously am kind of aware that Darnel Nurse and Cody C.C. as a pair isn't going to set you up for success. I feel like I'm one of the nation's, like, preeminent, darnel nurse skeptics, let's say. I think he's not very good. So this is the stat line. When not Cody C.C. and Darnell Nurse, one or the other or both, are on the ice, the Oilers are outscoring the Canucks 9 to 6, out shooting them 72 to 33, and Stuart Skinner is 818. 818's horrible, by the way. Oh, let me be clear. 818 sucks.

However. I'm sorry. I got a no-sell the. imitation. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I'll be making a big deal out of that for the next like three years. When nurse and or CC are on the ice, and this is, by the way, all these stats are just at five on five.

The Oilers have been outscored six to two, outshot 2722, and getting a 778 save percentage. Now, if the, if the 812 or whatever is bad, what would you describe? 7.78 is. Slightly worse. But the reason I say this, the reason I say this is very simple. Every game in this series is a one goal game, right? So I'm not saying that, like, they have a better option out there, you know, like, on defense. Like, I think you got to play nurse and CC somewhere.

Um, but what I am saying is that if we're going to act like Stuart Skinner has been horrible, which he has been, we got to act like Nurse and Cece are like fucking unplayably bad. Yeah. Right? Like they should be getting Matt Rempey minutes. And if that is the case, as bad as Skinner has been, that's a much easier problem to solve. You just tap your second goal.

on the shoulder and say you're the starter now. Yeah. And obviously, Edmonton's situation is that's not as easy a call to make as many. But Pickard was fine. Well, yeah. And the other thing to say is like,

I don't think anybody's like under the illusion that like Nurse and C.C. are playing well, you know? Like I don't think anybody, even the most deluded like Oilers reporters like writing an article saying, actually hold on. me defend these guys. You know what I mean? Um, they only played, well, uh, Nurse only played about 14 minutes at five on five the other night. That's the, the fewest of any, uh, Canucks or, uh, Oilers

defense. And, uh, Cody C C C only played 15, 16, and that's more than only nurse, Kulac and DeHarnay. So it's not like he's going to the well and like those guys are just going like, no, no, no, we we suck. Like he's, I think he's playing them as little as he feels like he can. Okay. But what I'm saying is, I would be giving Kulak and DeHarnay a lot more runout just because I know as much

as I don't trust either of those guys, obviously, I know they're not like as fucking horrible as CC and Nurse have been. Like, it's, it defies explanation the amount of, uh, like even giving them 14 minutes and

night given how bad they've played. Yeah. But very tough to, I mean, you can reduce the ice time, but you can't just Thanos them out of the series. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, you can't. Yeah. But I'm, but to me, like, if we're, if we're saying, like, who's, who's the big, the

most to blame for the oilers problems? I, I don't, I don't know that I can say Skinner. Wow. As much as, again, he's been fucking off. I don't know that he's been worse than Nurse N.C. I think it was Saravelli had the stat that basically of all the goalies who have made X number of starts in the cap era, Skinner has the worst numbers by this point. Yeah, they keep playing them behind Nurse and Cece, though, don't they?

Like, I, look, I'm not. But it is a point where you start worrying that, especially with goalies, like, we make too big a deal generally about this guy's a playoff guy. this guy's not. But goalie is such a psychological position. Sure. That if he's, you know, if he's got it in his head that he can't play in the playoffs, then he can't. It becomes self-fulfilling.

Totally. Totally. Absolutely. Now again, can, like, I would say there's been a, there was a market difference in the way, in the quality of defending we saw in game three versus game four. And it's totally because I would always. argue. The Oilers were like, we can't let anybody even look at Calvin Pickard.

This guy is not good. We don't trust him. And maybe they should try playing that same way in front of, uh, in front of Stu Skinner. You know what I mean? And again, not defending him. I'm just saying, I don't expect the Oilers to play good defense, but I expect them to not, like, keep going to the guys who stink really bad. I found it very, very funny when after game four, Chris Knobloch was like, was non-committal

on who he would start in game five. Yeah. I feel like at this point, we're just, we've, we've jumped the shark on the whole coaches being cagey about gold-ending thing. What if he found a way to be like, you know, it's actually a Canadian. guy who catches with his right hand and his middle name's Stephen or whatever like what is it. Wait a minute.

He could be saying either one. That's wild. Oh man. How'd he come up? I would love to see that. I would love to see him be like, yeah, no, like I said, I wasn't, I didn't commit. Yeah, game five, we're going back to Stuart Skinner. Fucking let's go, man. That would be really funny. Has a goal he ever been cold because he didn't look good in warm up?

I don't like how he's swaying for the national anthem. out. It'd be Jack Campbell again. Oh, okay. Now we're talking. It's so funny that even when they're like our starting goalie, the guy who's been so good

in the regular season, so good might be overstating it, who's been pretty good in the regular season in the last two years. He is unplayable. And so the goalie who costs $5 million, of course,

will not be coming into the game. Yeah. Awesome. I love that if I was an Oilers fan. That would make me feel great about the direction of the team. Hey, Leandro Sidel. Holy crap. What happens to this guy in the playoffs?

He's a monster. Yeah. He is unstoppable. Like, I mean, he's a monster during the season. I don't even know what he becomes, like, in the playoffs, it is ridiculous. Yeah, he's so sick. He's just...

I mean, McDavid's been fantastic too, but McDavid, I feel like I'm still just watching McDavid. I feel like I'm watching McDavid and you can't do anything about him in the season. You can't do anything in the playoffs. Absolutely. Whereas with, like, recital, I'm like, this is playoff Leon now. Good luck. Best to luck to you.

Good God. I mean, at some point, he's just going to stand behind the net on the power. play and take one timers and they're still going to go in. It's like he's, there is no, there's no angle that it isn't going to work. What do I have to do? Curve of the puck? All right. Do that.

What if I just think about it going into the net the puck, like lifts off the ice and teleports in, yeah. It might be the scariest guy in the playoffs, period. More than McKinnon, more than even McDavid. That's, hmm, do I agree with that? That's an interesting question. I don't know. I mean, as you say, just going psycho in this series.

What's he up to points-wise here? Let's see if we can find this really quickly. As he has, somebody tweeted that he has the, in the history of the NHL, the highest increase from regular season scoring rate to playoff scoring rate. This is a guy who's won, like, did he win an Ross? He's won an MVP. He's certainly been the MVP of the league. He's not a 45-point guy. Let's just put it that way.

Yeah. Good Lord. Ten points in four games. Oh. Three goals, seven assists. Only three primaries, though. I'm a little surprised it's that low, but. Selfish.

But, yeah. By the way, no goals at five on five. It's starting to think this guy's maybe a little bit of a bum. He might be. Oh, can we talk about this? I just look, the Oilers five on five goals leader in this series is Evan Bouchard. Can we just talk about how weirdly horny people are about this series? Yeah, you got to explain that.

That was your... I'm going to see if I can... You know, low tide, the... Mm-hmm. The, I would say very good oilers guy. Smart guy. He knows what the fuck's going on, all that kind of thing. I got to scroll back in his timeline for a minute just to make sure I can find it.

Oh, he might have deleted the tweet. God damn it. Somebody tipped him off. Oh, no, here it is. Here it is. If a hockey goal can be seductive, Evan Bouchard's late game winner on Tuesday night was sex on a stick. Don't say that shit, man.

That is not allowed to say. I don't know how else to put it to you. You're a psycho if you say stuff like that. All right. Well, let me defend Oilers fan. Also, not even like that sexy of a goal. He just shot it a million miles an hour. If you had to watch Darnell Nurse and Cody Cici 20 minutes a night.

Yeah. Wouldn't Evan Bouchard kind of look like Bobby Orr made sweet love to Nicholas Lidstrom? Ray Bork caught the baby. Like wouldn't it kind of look like that to you? Look, I'm not trying to do the thing of like that people do of like, Sidney's not even hot. Like I'm not trying to do that. Yeah.

You know what I mean? but like the past was really nice. And now I'm trying to remember who the pal. I was Leon Dreisle. But the past was really nice. I just saw a guy fucking crushed the puck into the goal. Yeah. He didn't go through four guys.

Like he didn't score a Kale McCar style. I'm just going to skate through the neutral zone. All five guys look like they're standing there like statues. So guys, for the next Patreon, I want you to get in there and I want you to vote for. Ryan goes through. the biggest goals of the playoffs and rates how seductive they were to him. I'm going to be pat-in on that idea, but thank you. To sex on a stick.

Sex on a stick. What does that mean, man? Ryan has to. What the fuck is going on? Fire up the hornometer. Am I crazy? Was that goal that fucking good? And then the other thing is everybody's talking about balls in this series.

I don't know what that's all about either. You got to put your balls on the. Crest. That was a Mark Messier thing. Yeah, we'll get into some fucking Mark Messier stuff in a minute. I'm sick of hearing from that guy. Holy shit, man. But to me, I'm just like, can everybody chill out about this, like, perfectly okay series?

Like, holy fuck. Relax. Again, maybe I'm crazy. Yeah, you know, I just feel like you're not allowing yourself to be seduced by. Sex on a stick. Hey, dude, take it back to the beginning. You know what the, how can you not be seduced by a series that features a naughty nurse? Okay, brother.

Okay. Patreon rates will be going up 200% as a result of... Folks, if that's not, if you hear a joke like that and you're not giving this man, five dollars a month. There's something wrong with you. I don't know how else to put it. Yeah. Seriously.

Where else is it going? Is that joke not worth five dollars to you? Come on, man. Anyway. The other thing I do want to talk about in this series is how we're all talking about Elias Pedersen. Did he like run over everybody in the media's dog up there? Um, no.

Okay. Because that would involve him doing something. So, okay, right. The idea that he's not doing something, do you want to get into, like, who his most common fucking linemates are in this series? Do we want to talk about this? Let's do that.

Okay, great. Let's pull it up. Let's pull it up. Hold on here. What's that guy's name, Elias Pedersen? Okay, most common linemates in this series. Elyamahe and Nils Hoaglander. McAev looks like he's not even going to play in the next game.

Yeah, and he fucking shouldn't. And he's playing with Elise Pedersen. Like, again, so bad he's unplayable. And yet, we're all sitting there like, you know, Pedersen's got to fucking pick it up here. I don't know what he's supposed to do. But is there not a level where at some point, if you're an $11 million player,

like don't you just have to be productive, like whatever you're like, whatever you're, line is. I mean, it's not like, and it's not like to plan it with Geno Ojic on both wings. Like, they're pretty fucking close,

brother. But is this not like the Mitch Marner thing where like we've got to put, we've got to break up the top line and get Marner on there to get them going? And it's sort of like, dude, you're supposed to be your own line. Yeah, well,

this is like if they were putting Mitch Marner with, I don't know, Nils Hoglander and Ilya. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. I'll give you the stats, brother. I can rate them to you here.

Expected goals percentage for Hoaglander. 89.9. Expected goals percentage for Mikhail. 60.4. The Canucks have been out. This is at 5 on 5. The Canucks have been outscored 2 to 4 when they're on the ice. The puck has to go in the net sometimes, man.

Again, I'm not saying like he's playing unbelievable. hockey and not producing. But I am saying that, like, they should be producing more. And a big part of the reason why they're not is that his linemates are stinky. Yeah. Apparently, he may be based on practice and that, he may be playing with Elias Lindholm. Next time we see him. Well, so that's the other thing I wanted to say.

Tough to break up any of the other two lines, because those lines are producing. You can't break up Miller and Brock Basser. Like, you can't. You cannot. Absolutely not. I agree with that. But it's just like, again, I understand the whole, like, shouldn't he be producing more than he has? Sure.

But with what help? You know what I mean? Like, I just haven't seen him get any fucking help from his, from his linemates at all. And. That's fair. to me like I again I'm just I'm just like a big fan of his I think he's like one of the most exciting players when he's going

he doesn't have a single point in this series at five on five you might have a couple um yeah he has a goal otherwise um like I'm not saying he's playing great or anything but just like I don't know I watch it and I say like he's he's being asked to do everything for for two guys who you know it's kind of like the the

the the Phil Kessel Tyler Bozack thing from a million years ago you know where it's like why isn't Kessel producing more it's like oh well maybe it's because Tyler Bozac like isn't very like whether it was their quality as players or how they were being used or whatever like it just wasn't a good fit and yet there was no attempt to change anything for however many years, right? Well, apparently we're getting that attempt from Rick Tocke. Well, it's about fucking time, man. That's what I'm saying.

Like, Rick Tawke can call him out all he wants. And I don't, again, I don't think it's unfair. I just think that, like, people are ignoring the context of, like, why he's underperforming. You know, I can't remember who tweeted it last night, but I saw somebody tweet, like, you know, it's not necessarily that, point production is like the best indicator of, um, of like your quality as a player or whatever. Like we've seen plenty of guys who aren't that good put up a bunch of points. And we've seen a bunch of guys who are very good not put up a bunch of points. But point production is often a good reflection of like your quality of a line mate, let's say,

you know. And I'm not saying he's going to go out there tonight and score, you know, a hat trick and two assists or anything. like that. But like, sometimes you've got to put somebody in a position to succeed if you're, if you're being like, damn, I can't figure out why this guy's playing so badly. Are you, like, are you doing the best for, to help him succeed? I don't know. And in this case, I would say they were not. I don't think that's crazy to say.

Yeah. And I hear everything you're saying. It's just, like, you see some of these numbers going around, like, his linemates have scored four goals and 40 games. I mean, at some point, you got to, I don't want to say make the guys around you better, because that's like the kind of magical thinking that we sort of do. I don't think you have to turn everyone into Zach Hyman, but at some point, if you're the highest paid player on the team by a mile, you got to produce something,

even if you're not playing with the best guys on the roster. I'm with you. And again, like, I don't. I don't want to make excuses. He said is he just did that for fucking eight straight minutes. But like, I don't know, man. It's just, it's just one of those things for me where I think that if it's a different player, people are a lot more forgiving with the context. Like, they do this in Vancouver all the time.

Remember all the eight the Siddins used to get? Yeah. And they were the fucking Siddins, you know? And, you know, it. It's tough to, like, I'll put it this way. Remember when David Pasternak wasn't producing? Was everybody like, what's wrong with this fucking guy? Not really, you know?

But like, and certainly, like, Jim Montgomery wasn't saying he's like not, like, not putting in the effort or whatever Rick Tock had said about Petterson the other night, right? Yeah. But it, these things are so context dependent. And again, we're talking about producing points, which. which we all agree is not the best indicator of much, let's say, right? Pedersen's underlying numbers are pretty solid when he's not playing with the two guys who are bad, let's say. And again, like, there are only so many spots in the lineup and you don't want to break up lines that are producing to get a line that could theoretically produce. going, right?

But like, I don't know. To me, I just look at like a guy who's on ice shooting percentages in like the single digits. And it's Elias Pedersen. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I can, again, it's small samples and that's all you can judge it on. But it's like, how much do I think this is going to last? I don't know, man. And it's not like they're losing in the series or anything. They're tied against a team that's much better than that.

them. What do we say coming into this series? The Canucks, like, couldn't play like they did against the Predators and expect to win. Yep. And everybody picked Edmonton, so... Yeah. And the Canucks are playing like they did against... And the Canucks are playing like they did against the Predators anyway. So, I don't know, man. I just... It's one of those things where I'm like, maybe I'm just watching a different game than everyone else. You know?

It would be weird if that way. was the case, but it would explain a lot. Maybe they got different games down in Hawaii. Yeah. I actually had the experience last night of, I'd done the, the Trader podcast with other Sean.

And we had, and I remembered that I talked about Colorado or Dallas closing out Colorado and could they do it. And I sat down to watch the game. And I turned on the TV. And it was, early in the first period

and at the top it said Dallas lead series 2 to 1 and I thought did I do a whole thing about that was completely and it turned out that they were doing like the game in 30 before the game

turned out the game started half an hour after I thought it did but I very briefly had that panic attack and then I was like oh I'm always a different game from everyone I'm always convinced that like, I don't know, like, I've missed something.

And like there's some important piece of context that I'm not understanding about a given game or whatever. Don't think like that. It's you have all the context you need. Roll with a strong opinion and scream at people. All right. Rangers, we should do. Speaking of screaming. Mm-hmm.

Guessing some Rangers fans are not. super happy right now. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. The Rangers stopped scoring on the power play and all of a sudden they look like dog shit. Isn't that weird? Who could have told you that was going to happen?

Stopped looking like the greatest team in history. And now, one game away, man. Boy, this is... Yeah, and again, like... One game away from... We're only... Waiting the series and one game away from a game seven

wherever it will panic. but yeah to me it's it's you know I've said it all year like I'm kind of a ranger skeptic I know they win a lot but like I think that in in a series where you're playing like very defensively responsible some would say boring teams if you can't get them to take a lot of penalties this is a this is a team the Rangers that I think is going to find itself in a bit of trouble. And this is the thing that worries me if I'm the fan of a team with a great power play. This applies to Edmonton, too. Obviously in the playoffs, special teams become so important.

Yeah. And you want to have the strong power play. Of course, of course, of course. I'm a Leaves fan. I understand. It's better than the alternative, for sure. But when so much of your offense is driven by the power play, the deeper into the series, we know the deeper into the series,

there's fewer and fewer power plays. And I would not be surprised. Don't have evidence of this. But I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes even more pronounced for teams that score a lot on the powerplay. Because that intrinsic need that NHO referees have

to not decide the games, I wonder if that kicks even more. If they're looking at, you know, going, hey man, if we give the Oilers power play, like we're basically putting half a goal on the scoreboard. every time we do that. Yeah.

We can't call anything borderline. And, you know, the Rangers are not as pronounced, but I worry. Like, if I'm playing a game seven and I'm a team that thrives on the power play, I'm probably getting one power play. I'm playing 54, 56 minutes five-on-five, because that's how these games get called. Still, good spot to be in the range. Again, like, an awful lot of us were picking character. Carolina has a better team in this series, and they're a game, uh, rangers are a game up.

Yeah. Two chances to close it out. But boy, it just, it feels night and day from two days ago. Yeah, I think I said it last week or in an article I wrote at some point recently, but it's just like, as much as I'm a ranger skeptic, I also kind of can't be arguing with them being up three oh in the series. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I don't think they're great. but also I do think they are, they have four chances to win before Carolina beats them. You know what I mean?

And so, you know, I do kind of expect them to close it out tonight. And I guess I also wouldn't be surprised if the opposite is true. But as you say, like the number of penalties being called early in the series here, you know, Carolina got like four power plays in the first game. The Rangers got like five in the second game. Carolina got five in the third game, that kind of thing. And then, yeah, the Rangers only had one in game four and three in game five. And I don't know.

If you're right and the rest are like, oh, we're going to put the whistles away. Everybody's getting two penalties and that's it tonight. like that obviously behooves Carolina in a way that like goes beyond even just like Carolina is not particularly good on their power play. In fact, didn't they give up a shorty the other night? Am I right about this? They may have, yeah.

Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I got to say like as a neutral fan, I'm rooting for Carolina tonight just because I want to see that environment. Oh, sure. Yeah. You always root for game seven.

Yeah. Again, if you're a neutral fan. If you're a ranger fan, you're like, I'd rather jump off a bridge than watching game seven. That sounds horrible. Game seven would be a Saturday night at the gar. I mean, just to see that play out. I mean, the energy in that building where it would be loud, but, man, it would take one play for that place to go pin drop. For sure.

So, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. And I don't know if you know this, but it's the world's most famous arena. I've heard it said. Yeah. Any concern at all about the goaltending if you're the Rangers? Been bad the last couple of games.

No. Other than it's the playoffs and any goal it can go cold for a couple of games. No, you've got Igor Shisterken. You're fine. If Shastirken versus Freddie Anderson is your problem, then I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah, I guess I don't, I guess I don't, have a ton

else to say about this series. I did not, I should say, uh, the, the most recent game in the series,

I was on a flight. So I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get a chance to watch it. Sounds like an excuse to me. Happy to, happy to, happy to make them for myself.

No. You know, you don't, you don't understand all the stuff I was going through. That's, that's what I'm always saying. That's fair.

Very fair. Think about it from my point of view, et cetera. Um, so yeah, I don't know if you know this show. When you fly six, like, across like six time zones or whatever it is where it's like a six hour time difference, really fucks up your internal clock. Yeah, how's that going for you?

Not good. Okay. Like, you know, last night it's like 2.30. I'm like trying to force myself to sleep. And it's like, well, the reason, the thing that's keeping me awake is that it's, my body thinks it's 8.30 p.m. Mm-hmm. You know, it's a huge time difference. I don't feel like I had this many problems when I went to Sweden in like September or whatever.

But maybe I did. Maybe I can't remember. But a lot when I was in Hawaii, a lot of waking up at 3.30 in the morning going like, uh-oh. So you can't win. Oh, well. Anyway. Speaking of not being able to win, should we talk about the leaf stuff? Did you say any of that?

Were you able to catch the round the clock coverage? I didn't catch any of it, but I did have multiple members of the Toronto media, like, hacking into my phone to provide me updates anyway. Good. Good. I'm glad. I do want to start with this. I think someone said it was Josh. I don't know. Is it Clokey? Loke. Apparently, he's the one that asked the question of, like, so, like, why does Shanahan get a pass for all this bullshit? Yeah. He put it a little more artfully than I did.

Slightly, yeah. That was kind of the implication there. And the answer of he's a winner or whatever is like, uh-oh. Mm-hmm. That made me really laugh. I can't even remember. Well, no, the last time we talked, Sheldon Keith hadn't even fired yet.

But we all knew that that was happening. Right. It was on the wall, yeah. As we're recording this, Leifts have not hired anyone for that job. don't necessarily know a timeline. But that's it. That seems to be it as far as the big change. It didn't even fire the assistance,

which seemed a bit strange. That might be one of those, you let the other coach make the decision on that kind of a thing. You do, but I mean, is there also like, well, I guess it depends when you hire the new coach, but, I mean, these guys are going to want to go look for new jobs somewhere. You would think. Yeah.

But so status quo-ish as far as upper management, but upper management striking a much different tone at the press conference about their willingness to make major moves on the roster, which is good, but also, as has been pointed out, an infinite number of times, potentially one year too late. because everyone's got no move clauses and extensions and all that stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't even say potentially, you know. I mean, they certainly, in hindsight, obviously last year was the time to do this.

But here we are. So if I, if you had to give me odds, what do you think are the odds of Mitch Martiners and may believe on opening night? I'm not a betting guy. I don't know how these odds get set. Is it 50-50 or is it? Yeah, I guess I'd say it's like there's a 30% chance. I don't think it's zero at all. Like I think there's just a scenario where they can't make a trade happen.

Right. And again, he's got the no move. So that scenario could be him saying not going anywhere. I think even beyond that, like, I don't know that he'd be like, yeah, I refuse to ever play for any team. the maple leaves. Like, I don't think, I don't think that's what the issue is. I think based on how everybody talks about him and the fact that, let's say, he's not known for him going through the easiest negotiations.

Say, that's fair. And you're going to, and you're going to owe him, or, you know, if you, if you, oh, is not the right word. But if you trade for him, you're going to do so with the idea that, like, he's going to be around for a long time, probably. right? And do you want to commit, I don't know what kind of money,

even if he wants like $10 million a year. Well, he makes $10.9 now. No, I know, but like, can he ask for a raise given how he's perceived around the league? Yes. I mean, yeah, he can. But can, okay, let me rephrase. Can he expect a raise given how he's seen around the league?

I wouldn't say the answer to that question is definitive. yes, I'll put it that way. But I also wouldn't have said that he could get two or three million more than Braden Point and Miko Ratanin and all the other guys who were RFA's when he was. It's true. I'm just wondering if there is

what I guess would, depending on your perspective, be a nightmare scenario where Mitch Marner goes to the Toronto Maple Leafs and says I want eight years, $12.5 million as my extension. I want a $100 million contract. I will not, under any circumstances, be accepting any trades. That is my offer.

It is my final offer. If you don't want to give me that extension, then I will play this year and hit unrestricted free agency. I will not be, I will not consider a trade now, not at the deadline, not at any point. And then you put the screws to Bradshaw living that way of your, I walk for nothing, or you give me this outrageous contract. The reason that's interesting, because normally I'd say, okay, have fun, fucking, like, I would, if I'm the Leafs and he does that to me, I'm like, how would you like to play with, like, Nick Robertson all season?

You know, like, I'm putting him at the bottom of the lineup. There's that part of it that says, okay, well, you're not on the power play, you're not on this and that. But if you're Marner and his camp and, you know, do you say, all right, well, call your brough. Let's see what happens when we start 0-1-3. And you've got 100-point first team all-star playing on the third line. Well, I'll tell you this. It's very easy at that point, I think, to be like, we all know what the fucking problem here is. And it's not Austin Matthews.

It's not John DeVarez. And it's maybe a little bit, the fact that Morgan Riley is our best defenseman. And it's not this new coach. We all know what the problem is. So. Like, you don't think that would be the entire conversation, the entire year? I mean, what would happen is he, the fans would be booing the crap out of him. That's what, yeah.

Viciously. But, again, like, if there, and is there a certain point? Like, does, you know, again, I'm just, this is, this is the Leaf fan of me, right? I'm just thinking worst case scenario. Like, at what point does Marty Walsh come in and go, wait a second, you got a guy who's, you're paying him this, he's produced this much? If you're bearing him on the fourth line, then that's clearly being. done just to hurt his bargaining position, and we've got an issue with that. There's a number of ways this could go bad.

Sure. Keep an eye out for my 40,000 word article next time. I was going to say, how this could go bad for the leaves. This is something you've clearly thought about a lot more than I have. You know what the needs big problems? Isn't that interesting? It is a lack of Mark Messier-A caliber leadership. They don't have a Jacob Trubo on this team.

This is why he's one of the best in the biz gang. This is the transition he is. is unbelievable. Mark Messier looked around. He said, what teams did I used to play for? I can think of two. Yeah, J.T. Miller didn't fucking occur to him for some reason. And he said, the guy who tries to elbow people all the time, and it often succeeds,

not on his most recent attempt, I'll note. But did you see that clip show? Oh, yeah. That's been the highlight of the playoffs. Good shit. But yeah, Messia... Just completely horizontal face first into the boards. Oh, no, that's not what I'm talking about.

Oh, wow. There was one, I can't remember who it was on, but there was one he missed the other night where, like, it was on Carolina's, I think, first goal the other night, where he just straight up missed. And if, like, it's just an animated gif. But, like, if he had connected and he was any player besides Jacob Truff. Ruba, like eight games. Just like the most obvious, like Shane Done level chicken wing elbow that you've ever seen in your life. And he just flat out missed.

Mm-hmm. And leadership, baby. That's what I mean, man. Like, but yeah, just the fact that, like, and I get it. They won the president's trophy. He's the captain. He, but like, he, he started explaining it the other night on ESPN. And, and he's like, he's just so good and blah, blah, blah.

And Butchagross had to go in. And all the off-eye stuff, too. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Very, very funny. He's now, so if you go down the list of Mark Messia winners, how many of those guys have at some point quit on their team? Truba did it to Winnipeg.

Sure, yeah. Sunday did it in Toronto. Alfredson did it in Ottawa. Got to. Shanahan, I think, won one of the monthly ones that first year was a monthly. Oh, yeah. and he bailed on Hartford. I feel like there's a pretty good history here of, you know, but again,

Mark Messier, you know, held out on the Rangers and, you know, left them as a free agent. Like, he clearly would not view that as part of being a leader. Like, you still look out for number one. That's the business, maybe, you know. You got to be working all the time. That's what it boils down to. Yeah.

Oh, one real quick thing I wanted to ask you, and this kind of doubles back on the Leafs and Marner. Did you see Adam Oates going on the offensive for Marner? I did not, no. Okay, so find the clip. He makes some comment, and he stirs the pot, and he says, like, you know, because there was the William Nealander seemed to be yelling at Marner on the bench,

and he's like, hey, Nealander, you don't ever play against the other team's best players, so maybe settle down. I just, I don't. have a lot to say about it other than I would like you at some point to find the clip and explain to me when Adam Oates transitioned completely into Eric Bischoff from like 2005. Okay. It's the same guy.

Being played by the same actor now. Like he's talking and I'm waiting for like them to smash cut to Vince Rousseau saying the opposite. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. He's probably saying now when I did, when, when, when, when, When I did this stuff and I was successful and you're like, oh, you mean for that like 12 months that you were successful? Is that that that's when you're talking about and everything else you touched in the business ever, uh, turned to turn to shit. That's interesting. That's the guy.

Yeah. That was my, my. I'm looking at them. I, I'm looking at that. I'm not listening to this clip, but I'm, I'm watching it and you are. Yeah. Yeah. He's got the voice too.

You know, you got a head of hair like Eric Bischoff. Why would you ever? Get a haircut. You know what? It's a great question. It's an unbole... The look in like 97 when he's rocking the leather jacket and doing like karate stuff or whatever. Yes.

Is unbelievable. He looks so good with that hair. That hair was the most overheel in the whole company. Oh my God. It's unbelievable. 21-year-old me or whatever was like... Like, oh, hachi-machi. Yeah, absolutely, man.

Right up until he started doing karate. And then you're like, all right. Well, and the other thing, too, is he's next to two guys with phenomenal heads of hair. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash? The less said about Hulk Hogan, obviously, you know. Obviously. Yeah. But NWO, especially early on, very typified by their good hair.

And then like, you know, the one exception that proves the rule, the hulkster, you know. But I mean, how much does the stubble beard make up for that? The stubble beard was fucking sick. Just putting shoe black in the stubble? Awesome. A guy we all knew was blonde. Suddenly goes full Homer Simpson. It was fantastic.

This has been successfully sidetracked enough, I think. Let's find by me. Utah team names. Utah team names. is the last thing. From our good friends at Qualtricks. The number one company that I know what that is. Yeah.

What was your, we'll go through them all in a minute, but what was your overall opinion of the... I think most of them are bad. I think... Yes. Also, like, settle down with the singular names. Like... I hate that shit, man. I get that there are some where it would make more sense.

To be singular. Like Utah powder, terrible name. Terrible name. But if you're going to go... Every NHL player, though, they're like, wait a second. Even the swarm. You know, the swarm, singular, yes. But, I mean, like, like, man...

I don't like that one at all. Caribou? Like, that's it. You're one caribou? That's what we're doing. No, the plural of caribou is caribou. No, no, it's not. It's caribus.

Yes, it is. Look, I don't want to defend these fucking names, but like, you know, the facts are the facts. If I may quote Matt Hardy, the truth is the truth. The Yeti? The Yeti, two names this bothers me. First of all, the plural of Yeti is Yetis. It doesn't feel like it should be, but it is. Look it up.

And I feel like we went through that, and then they were like, no, we're going singular anyway. Fuck you. Yeah. But the other one is, the yet. Yeti is indigenous to the Himalayas. Last I checked, that's not where Utah is. No. Be serious out there, fella.

What are we doing, you know? Yeah, I'm just scrolling down. I don't like any of these. No, there are a few good ones. Black Diamonds is okay. I don't mind that one. Okay, so let's go from the, maybe, or do they present them in a different order every time? Is that the gimmick?

Because mine leads with Yeti then goes to Venom. Yeah, this is a, you know, you've got to mix up the order. This is. Got it. Survey marketing 101, man. Come on. Okay. Well, then, then, yeah, let's just go with the order you were saying.

What would you say? So the first one, black diamonds. Don't mind that. I only, didn't we just do Golden Knights? Yeah. You know, like, just putting the color on it. Like, I get it. Color and thing.

And it's not, you know, it's not like they're, they want to be the diamonds, but they're going to just throw a color in there the way the knights did. Like, you know, it's a ski thing, right? Like, the logo, the potential for the, for the logo is, you know, I don't hate that. I don't hate it comparative to most of the rest of this terrible. Well, the other thing about it is, are we, are we really trying to draw attention to the other winter sports you could be doing or watching? You know what I mean? Like, why not call them the Utah basketballs then?

You know what I mean? Like, at some point, you got to be like, oh, no, hockey's its own thing. I got my tickets to this thrown in when I bought tickets to see the jazz. Yeah, the Utah, how about this? The Utah Jazz Watchers. There's your perfect. Utah. The Utah, I'd rather be skiing.

Yep, that's right. Utah swarm? I don't like it. You know, I think I mentioned I like the idea of, leaning into the beehive state thing. I do really like that. Okay, well, let's skip that Utah hive. Can you they just be the fucking bees or something, man?

You know, like, what is this? You could call the building the hive. That's it, right? That feels like an arena nickname. Yeah. So it's a big no thanks for me on those too. Utah mammoth? Stingers, the hornets, whatever, you know.

The mammoth? The mammoth. Mammoth, singular. Yeah, I don't like that they're singular. That's what I keep coming back to I'm going to look up what the plural of mammoth is because I don't know.

All right. I'll go down some of the other. It's mammoths. Mammoths. Okay. So I'd be perfectly happy with mammoths. Utah Frost and Utah Blizzard.

Get what am I at fucking Dairy Queen? Get out of here. Utah Freeze and Utah Blast. These suck, man. Utah ice. Utah. Squall, Utah glaciers. I'm just kind of doing all the...

I like glaciers. I like glaciers, in part because it's singular, but also because, like, it's a thing you can point at. You know what I mean? Like, I guess you can point at Frost. And I guess you can point at a blizzard. But I don't know. It's just, it's less ephemeral, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. So.

Some of the non-snow-related one, outlaws. Love it. You love outlaws. I do like outlaws. I like the idea that on cop appreciation night They're all arresting the players That kind of thing, you know Right, yeah

But I just think like You know, the iconography of like an old West outlaw How are you going to do a logo That has somebody with the bandana over their mouth But you can still see that they're missing a tooth Because they're a hockey player Maybe you give them a black eye Okay

That gives you the same idea Caribou, like I said It should be Caribou is plural Cany Canyons? Caraboo is great. Canons is awesome. I think canyons is really good.

Utah canyons? Yeah, I don't know why. Like, again, maybe it's just like, I don't think it's a big fucking hole in the ground. Refresh my memory. What state is the most famous? Yeah. The United States in? Well, you know, twist the knife a little bit.

Again, they're working heel. I can't get mad about that. Utah Mountaineers. Pretty good. Talk about the ups and downs. to canyons and the mountaineers. I think that's pretty good, not great. You know who I want the mascot to be?

The little guy from Price is right, of course. That guy's got to be the, all right. The hive we talked about. No, that sucks. Squall, Yeti, Fury. Awful. What are we doing here? Some of these feel like they're intentionally bad just to direct you to. You know, like, I don't see, I'm going to, I'm going to say this, and people are going to say I'm, like, bagging on women's sports or whatever.

But, like, I just think most WNBA teams have bad names or bad logos in the case of the new. Have they said what the women's, the WNBA team in Toronto is going to be? I don't think so. I think they just figured out that that is happening. Well, they announced that they're getting one in where the Golden State Warriors play. And they're the Valkyries, which is, you know, I get it. It's a woman who is a warrior. Okay, that works for me, you know.

But their logo is awful. Their logo is so bad. And like, you know, it's like the New York Liberty. It's like, that's what we're calling the team, really, you know? And like the Fury is such a WNBA name for me. And you know what? I'll say this too. Remember those bad PWHL names that got floated and everybody was like, what are you doing?

And they were like, nothing, nothing. We're not doing anything. What are you? do it. Those were all in the same vein as Fury. Like if they had said like the Ottawa Fury or whatever, was it Ottawa Alert? Was that the name it was supposed to be? Yes, that does sound familiar.

Montreal, I can't remember all of them now, but they were not great. Each one worse than the last. Like a truly like astonishing thing. But like this feels like a reject from that group. The Fury get long. What about the Venom? Yeah, we all saw the Tom Hardy movie. No, we didn't.

Lucky you. How was Scorpions not on this? Like, on the list of 20? They want to fuck with us. I mean, I guess they're saying like Venom would count. Yeah. Wait, I can't remember. Are Scorpions poisonous or venomous?

Oh, see, I don't. There's a difference, and I don't remember what the difference is right now, but I know that there is one. And I think snakes are venomous and Or like reptiles can be venomous and like Other things can be poisonous Poison is a toxin that gets into the body by inhaling Swallowing or absorption through the skin Venomous is when a toxin is injected into you

Got it okay so I got teeth or I think Like so like a poisonous frog is only poisonous if you eat it Like a berry, got it. Okay. If you bite it, it's poisonous. If it bites you, it's venomous. Cool. Anyway, I think they're trying to cover that base and like, you know,

rattlesnakes or whatever with venom. But there's so many good snake names that they could have done. And then the last one. Didn't we talk about this? The last one on the list, the worst of them all, Utah HC. Get out of here. They should be the Utah HVAC because that's how they keep the rink cold. Okay?

Hey, quality. It's not as bad as HC. I'll tell you that much. Again, like this is HVAC. It's like the blizzard or the freeze or the frost. It's about coldness. This is a great name. I'll be sending an invoice to Ryan.

Yeah, do that. It's a consulting fee. Just pay it. Don't even think about it. As usual, they should just ask us. We'll point them in the right direction. Even if they're like, okay, it can't be scorpions. We don't want to get sued by the Rocky like a hurricane guys.

So it can't be scorpions. We'd come up with a list of like 10 that were better than any of the 10 best here. For sure. I wouldn't have come up with Canyons, though, and I legitimately like that. I am, from a very quick bit of research, it does not appear that there are currently any players in the NHL whose initials are HC. yet yet but there would be an explosion of them yeah i mean everybody everybody wants to play for utah hc why wouldn't you it's bad names it's an unbelievably you know like because here's what i don't like about like uh mLS team names now this is a whole different thing and again

the the tampa bay mutiny remember that shit the kansas city whiz although i Big shout out to whichever SportsCenter host said this joke in, like, 1996 and burned it into my brain forever. During the inaugural MLS season, they cut to highlights on SportsCenter. And it was Kansas City versus Dallas. And the guy says, The Eternal Struggle, the Whiz versus the Burn. I just, I was like, this guy's a fucking genius. I don't know if it was Scott Van Peltz, too, Scott, whoever it was, my hat's off to you. You fucking, that's a joke from 30 years ago that I remember fucking clear his day.

That's what we're all trying to do here is just, give you that. Hey, speaking of Sports Center, can we just, can I say a quick RIP to Darren Detition? Yeah. He passed yesterday, I guess, and we just found out about it today very, very sad. Young guy. Big part, I mean, those, like, you're just saying, man, those Sports Center hosts become, like, a part of your sports fan life. Absolutely. Doing it for a long time up here.

So, yeah, thoughts to his friends and family and colleagues. And he was a very, very well-respected guy in the media world up here. Yeah, obviously, I don't get like, you know, TSN or whatever. So I saw him very rarely, but every time I did, I was like, oh, I like this guy. This guy is fun, you know? So I guess I don't. have a ton else to say about him. But he, you know, from the like, you know, 20 minutes I would see him a year or whatever, I was always like, enjoyable, enjoyable presence on, on my TV for those 20

minutes. And, and from a lot of people telling just a all-round good guy to me. Yep. RIP. Tough. Like, not even 60? Awful. Yeah, not really. And I, you know, they haven't said the, you know, what the circumstances were. But he had been. He had been fighting cancer a couple years ago. It made a comeback to the airwaves. Brutal. It's just, yeah, pretty awful situation.

But all you can do is kind of remember the best of them. And he gave us a lot to remember. He's a good dude. Yeah. Why don't you hit us with some plugs and we'll get out of here? You can come find me at the athletic. My pieces this weekend. have included on Tuesday.

I figured out playoff goal tending. I got it. I nailed it down. I drilled it down to one sentence what makes a successful playoff goalie. So if you haven't seen that,

check it out. It's I've cracked the coat. Today I have a piece that people are enjoying quite a bit, which I make the case for the Panthers

and Bruins being the most hate watchable series of the playoffs. I had some fun with it and based on the comment section, it is, it's bringing a lot of fan bases together. Let's see. It's all you can ask for, right? Including, including Boston and Florida fans even.

We're all joining together. Yeah, look, I mean, if you can't, if you can't get up for like the big feud, why are you watching sports, you know? Did you see last night the guy from the, I think it's that the Celtics just knocked out the calves, if I'm not mistaken? Max Struce, I think it was, showing up to the game in a Panthers jersey at TD Garden. I saw something about that, yeah. Yeah, and people were like, just so you guys know, he's not from Florida or anything.

He's just wearing it to be an asshole. Yeah. And I was like, big time respect Max. I seem to have a memory of him playing for the Miami Heat maybe. Okay. So maybe that's, yeah, he played three years in Miami. So that's probably where it comes from. But nevertheless, big time respect.

Anytime somebody can, you know, twist the knife on the local fans in any way, I'm always, I'm always like, you know what, hats off to you. That's fun. But it helps to not get absolutely fucking obliterated in that game. I was going to say it does not sound like it necessarily worked out great for them. No, I, you know, look, I, I respect the parting shot. He knew what he was walking into that night, you know. But yeah, anyway, I just thought that was so funny that, like, the tweets about it were like, you know, Chicago Native wearing Panthers jersey.

And I was like, he played for the heat, right? And he did. But, yeah, that's really fucking funny. Big shout out. And then for me, I don't know. I'm writing stuff this week. I haven't really decided on anything for tomorrow. But I'll have an article on EP Rinkside tomorrow.

Head over there. Our draft guide is coming along nicely. I got like a sneak preview of it. They're all saying, look, the people who put the work in on that thing, they're all saying they think it's one of the best we've ever done. So head over there, get a head start, get all your pre-draft coverage and all. all that. Use the code I love EP when you sign up for an annual subscription and they will

tack three months onto the end of it for free. Wow. So 15 months for the price of 12. And then head over to patreon.com slash puck soup. And you can hear all kinds of bonus episodes, including the way things are shaping up right now. My secret mystery idea for a bonus episode. Which I told Sean what it is.

Sean, can you confirm that it's a good idea? It is a good idea. Thank you. Is it better? than Ryan rates the horniness of all the playoff series? I don't know. I might have to close the voting before this episode comes out so people don't make me do that. But yeah, we got a lot of bonus stuff coming up there in the second half of the month, as we always do.

So, yeah, check all that out. Patreon.com slash Puck Soup. Thanks for listening to the main show. And we'll catch you next week, I guess. regular time and all that kind of stuff, I'm done traveling for the foreseeable future. So yeah, that's it. Thanks so much, everybody.

Have a good one. Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye-bye.