Puck Soup - Mistakes Were Made

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

Greg, Ryan and Sean eat shit about the Blue Jackets sweeping the Lightning and the Islanders sweeping the Penguins during a round up of all Stanley Cup Playoff series. Plus, the Kadri suspension, Ovechkin fight, Ryan "Muffin Man" Reaves, new coaches for the Flyers and Kings, Jeremy Roenick's new hair and a "playoff disasters" quiz. Sponsored by The Athletic and Seat Geek!

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, It's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Pogsou. Hey, everybody. I'm Greg Wischinski of ESPN. I'm Ryan Lambert from Yahoo.

I'm Sean McAnew from The Athletic. And you're in. soup, but it's not about urine today, boys. It's about eating copious amounts of shit. Here, I'll go first. John Tortorella outcoached John Cooper in a four-game sweep of the lightning. Young, um, feces on my tongue. So tasty. What the fuck? What the fuck is going on? What is the fucking going on in the playoffs? It's been insane, dude. Like every, almost every night I'm looking at a result like, what the Fuck?

Like just last night, I flip over from the Leafs Bruins game. Oh, I'll catch the first like four minutes or, you know, the last, I miss the first four minutes of the Dallas game. I'll catch up on that. Oh, wait, it's three nothing. Or, or, for example, Pecerey is out playing Ben Bish. Oh, it's four nothing. Fuck.

Yeah, dude. Like, we can talk about that later because I wrote a, a, uh, a, uh, a story about it for Yadu. No. We should start. We should start with Tampa. Yeah. Of course.

Of course. Sean, your reaction. I was in Columbus. I was swept up in Jackets fever. Cannons firing. Felino smiling. Tortorillas cracking jokes. And the lightning

lose and four. What was your reaction to the biggest sweep in the NHL history but not the biggest upset? in NHL history. Yeah. I mean, I obviously didn't see this coming. And I wish I could, because I wrote a thing a month ago where I, they got a lot of people

angry at me, where I said that the Tampa Bay Lightning probably weren't going to win the Stanley Cup. And that wasn't based on critiquing the team in any way. It was just that was the reality of how the playoffs work. There's no such thing as a team that's likely to win. Not to interrupt, but did any of those people come and apologize to you after for being so rude and mean? Weirdly, no.

Although there was... Isn't that weird how you... Like, if you're wrong about a team, you have to apologize and explain why you were wrong. But if they're wrong about a team, that never happens. Isn't that such a crazy thing that takes place? The weirdest thing this week, I think,

was that I don't know if you guys saw this crazy Twitter bug where all of the many, many people who knew that the Blue Jackets were going to beat the lightning apparently couldn't tweet about it up until like a couple of days ago. Yeah. They were just all. I guess they were all shadow band or something, and they just did it, because they knew that this matchup was tilted in the Blue Jackets' favor. They just couldn't tell anyone.

Well, the problem was, is that they were on 4G instead of LTE on their phones. And the four, it's really hard to get that tweet out on 4G. That's the real issue. That must be in. It got stuck in everybody's drafts, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I would love to be able to point back and go, like, see? You know, I was right.

But I kind of, I wasn't right, because my premise was that at some point, you know, I would love. point the lightning were going to run into a red-hot goalie or, you know, have one of those series where they played great, but the bounces all went the other way, or they, you know, lost a couple of key overtime games. And that didn't really happen. Like, the lightning played well enough to deserve a better faith than they got. They didn't deserve to get swept if you buy the concept that deserve is even relevant to the playoffs.

They played better than the scores would indicate. but Columbus was a better team in that series. I don't have a problem saying that. This is the part that I didn't expect. A team losing, yeah, good teams losing the playoffs all the time. This is the NHL. We're basically flipping coins here. It's just 16 teams go in and we're just randomly drawn balls out of a bin at this point.

But I didn't expect them to go in and play a short series where the other team was pretty clearly better for most of that series. what did you think right i i agree um i'm trying to pull it up now real quick but i thought that the real problem was that tampa was taking a lot of stupid penalties and their penalty kill was garbage yeah um i don't know i didn't see what it finished columbus was five for ten they fucking they were 50 percent 50 percent on the power play and they were and they were four and they were eight four of eight entering game uh game four so Yeah, you can't give up more than a power play goal a game and expect to win a series when, you know, the other goalie at the other end of the ice is, you know, he's obviously had his playoff struggles and we were joking about it before the series started. Yeah, he's fucking good.

He played really well. And he played that kind of style where when they needed him, he didn't need the, he wasn't steal in the series. but when they needed him, man, he stood up. Like, the third period flurries in three and four, he was there. So the thing, I think we slept on a couple things on Columbus. Like, they weren't a fucking eight seed. They were the 13th best team in the league this year. They were better than three Western Conference playoff teams.

But because the lightning were so good, fucking 30 of their 62 wins are by three or more goals. Like, they marauded people. Yeah. And so, but I think the two things that maybe, we slept on one thing on Columbus and then one thing is not getting enough attention for the lightning. I do buy the idea that John Cooper put out there that when a team is on cruise control from the beginning of March all the way through the playoffs, because I've seen it before with the capitals enough times, you can't necessarily always flip the switch, especially when you're playing a team that had to win seven of eight games to get in. and in those seven wins allowed two or fewer goals. Like, they were so locked in were the blue jackets defensively that this was a bad, a bad recipe.

The other thing I'll say is, and I know that the magnitude of this upset has sort of sucked the air out of the room on a lot of topics, that Victor Hedman was hurt. They played four games without the actual Victor Hedbin. And that is, I mean, that's pulling the thread on the sweater. Like, I don't think that's gotten enough play. It's all very much like, oh, what did they do to fuck this up? and oh, they lost arguably their second best player for the entire series because he was shit in the first two games. Yeah, and their number three defensemen didn't play, and their best player missed one game for suspension, which is his fault, obviously.

But, yeah, I mean, you're right, because Victor Hedman was not Victor Hedman in those first two games. He was awful. He was really bad. He looked horrible. David Savard. Yeah. And the other thing I would say about that, too, is I don't know if it was a health thing or or what, but like, the thing that I've been thinking about a lot is, if they don't lose game one,

that probably feels like a different series where the, you know, where they were up three nothing in the first period and all that. And it looked like, not only were they up three nothing, but they spent the entire first period of game one in the attacking zone. And, and, and, but like, like what you said about Cooper, getting out coached, like he had, I would say probably his two worst forwards and one of his two worst defensemen on the ice for the, for the goal that pushed it into overtime. Yeah. Because it was on the PK.

Exactly. And there's so many examples. Like, you mentioned game two. That was a game where he didn't even address the idea that they could be in any danger. He just assumed that they could walk out there, play the same style, and get a different result, which wasn't going to happen. He didn't know the psychology of his team because they were clearly. They were fucked up after game one.

Well, sure. So I wrote about it, though, and it's like he, you know, and this was entering game four, obviously, but it was the thing of, does he go with the lineup that 162 games, you know, more or less, that lineup, that 162 games, and like you said, often very easily, or does he go, well, I got to put the lines in the blender and see what happens for game four? I kind of there was that's like a no-win situation for him yeah if they didn't change and it doesn't work they know yeah they win that game we're all saying that you know the steady hand of John Cooper didn't panic uh you know he knows it's a he knows it's a marathon

not a sprint he didn't overreact and yeah you're I'm I'm kind of with you on that I don't think he read the room well I think I like talking to Tyler Johnson about it I'm like he was talking about their confidence being shot like where was it shot he's like game one I think he didn't read the room well the other things his inability to get Vasleski pulled in game three is baffling to me. Yeah, that was weird. They were pressing like crazy and he, and they should have pulled him at least, at least two minutes early than they did in that game.

And then in game four, my fucking, how do you not challenge for goalie interference in the first Blue Jackets goal? Even just to break up the momentum, even just to do it tactically, it was insane. And they had a legitimate case. And when the puck dropped, I'm like, where what? So I love John Cooper. I am a huge Michael Keaton fan. He is, of course, hockey's Michael Keaton in look and personality.

I'm very, very much in his corner. I don't want him to get fired. But my God, was he bad in the series? And he got outcoached by a guy who just yells. Can I just mention two takes that I'm hearing that I don't like? And I'm doing this like this is, I don't know what the answer is, so I'm just kind of sitting there and listening to other people try to offer up answers and then saying no, that can't be it. But there's just like two takes that bug me that are flying around. The first one is that the Blue Jackets, and I've heard this from a bunch of people on Twitter and places where they go, well, you know, the thing we all forgot about the Blue Jackets is that they went all in at the trade deadline.

First of all, no, we didn't forget that. That was the biggest story of the trade. That got weeks of course. coverage. Like, nobody forgot that. But the other thing is, like, yeah, they went all in at the trade deadline. But the biggest part of that all in was them keeping two of their own best players. Like, as far as what they added, they added Matthew Shane, who's a very good player. They had it Ryan DeZingle. Yeah, we had a great series. They added Ryan DeZingle, who 90% of people outside Ottawa had never heard of heading into this season and is a good, useful player. But, like, you don't add those guys. And then, like, Adam McQuade, I think was the third guy they added. You don't add those guys and suddenly go from being a 95 point team to, you know, 110 point team or whatever.

So I feel like the trade deadline was baked in properly to the projections that still had Tampa winning this series easily. And the other one that bugs me, and this is kind of related to what you talked about, Cooper talking about. But I like the way he phrased it. I think there may be something to be said that, you know, when you're just kind of cruising along, it is hard to flip the switch. but the take that I really don't like is that the problem here is that the lightning never faced adversity. I hate when people phrase it that way because he phrased it that way and it sucked. And even, and you know what?

Sometimes the players and coaches say this stuff too because they have to say something. They're grasping for it. But that just bothers me so much because like Stephen Stamco's has never faced adversity. Like a guy who broke his leg and missed the Olympics he dreamed about playing his whole life. Like a guy who, you know, lost a big chunk of. a season in knee surgery, a guy who had a blood clot, which is kind of the scariest thing you can hear as a pro athlete. And we're supposed to believe now that he's, oh, he, he'd never handled adversity before. Like, there's 25 guys in that dressing room. I promise you, some of them

have faced bigger adversity in their lives than being four points out of a wild card in March. Like, that's not the level, like, and the idea, like, it's, it gets into this thing that's like my, my bigger pet peeve, which is, it's not even a pet peeve. It's an outright, like, it bugs the heck out of me. It's a real peeve. It's this idea that everything in the playoffs is a morality play. And that the team that just tries the hardest, if you just try, really, just try your best, you'll always win.

And if you didn't win, it's because you didn't try hard enough. You didn't want it or the other team wanted it more and compete levels and heart and all of this stuff. And it kind of gets to that, this idea that, oh, you know, the one team had to face adversity and the other team never did and they were just handed everything. get out of here with that. Hold on. Hold on. Are you saying that you don't buy the two new metrics introduced to us by Theo Fleury, testy and ventricle, the balls and heart analytics? And I love that from, like, I got all the respect in the world for Theo Fleury. But I mean, this is a guy who won, you know, he won one cup in like his first or second year in the league and they didn't win one for like another 20 years. So I, like, I mean, all right, I guess.

Yeah. There's a few other guys in that Flames team that were pretty good, if memory serves too. Yeah, exactly. All, I don't know. Like, character and intangibles and everything, this stuff all matters. I'm not saying that, you know, you just, that this stuff doesn't matter. But we just, it's like, you know, when you tell like a kindergarten kid that if they just, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Well, you just keep trying and you'll get there. Like, no, you're not, you're not going to be the center fielder for the Yankees. I don't care how hard you try. It's not probably not going to happen for you. And, you know, the idea that we just, we see a team lose in the players. playoffs, even in four straight, and we go, oh, if they just had more adversity and tried harder, they would have been fine. And it's like, maybe, I know the answers are hard to find, but maybe we dig a little bit instead of just settling on this nice, satisfying, but very obviously stupid

idea. I'll push back on that a little bit. I think there is, I think playoff panic is real. and the Lightning in their last two trips to the conference final lost game 6th and lost game 7 and in this series I mean they just didn't know what the hell to do after they lost the first two games so I don't I don't I don't I agree with you the adversity thing has a bit much I mean pressure is is real but I mean the the lightning have this this core has been to a couple of conference finals they've been to a Stanley Cup final like we think now never won the Stanley Cup. But how many playoff series do you have to win before we go?

Maybe they do know how to win in the playoffs, and the answer is somewhere else. Right. Like people don't want, and this is what I wrote about for the Bruins, so we can fucking talk about it now. But people want to ascribe all these things to what are essentially, like you said, coin flips. You know, in the Bruins series, oh, the

Bruins can't keep up with Mitch Marner. Well, then Mitch Marner didn't do very much in game two. Well, they figured out Mitch Marner. They got back to their, they got back to their, you know, Big Bad Bruins style and all that shit. And, well, Austin Matthews didn't score. But then he changed his stick for game three and he instantly scored. And isn't that why? And it's like, no.

Like, Austin Matthews had 14 individual scoring chances in games one and two. If you give a guy with his talent level, 15, he's going to fucking score on one of them. And it might only be the last one, but he's going to do it. And, you know, did they not, like, when they had previously figured out how to cover Austin Matthews, was it the changing of the stick that made it not, like, capable for them to do it anymore? And it's the same thing with Tampa. Like, they lost four coin flips, and they didn't play well. I'm not saying they didn't play well, but, like, somebody asked me in the mailbag this week,

oh, do you know, do you think officiating had anything to do with, with them losing. And it's like, it didn't, like, that's not the reason they lost, obviously. But the fact that games don't get called as... Six power plays in four games is insane. Like, that's... Yeah, no, like, a team that skilled should draw more penalties in six and four. Yeah.

Like, and that just, you can say they didn't play well or whatever, but like, you're going to tell me that that Columbus team only committed six stick infractions in the entire... Like, that's insane. Well, here is the thing, though. Like, if I could just jump in on that for a second, because I agree that the officiating and the fact they weren't calling penalties hurts Tampa because Tampa is a skill team and you think their power play would do more damage. But this idea that I've heard not from you guys, but from others, where that, you know, this, while the refs put the whistles away so Columbus could just, you know, this, Columbus could just push the lightning around. Tampa was the second most penalized team in the league this year. Right.

Columbus was the second least penalized team in the league. Tampa was top 10 in hits. Columbus was bottom 10. Like if it was, if the refs were just going to let them play, in theory at least, that helps Tampa because it's more their game to, to play the physical,

the penalty-filled games and not Columbus. So, you know, this idea that, oh, poor Tampa, you know, if the refs had just looked after them, it would have been great to have more power plays, I'm sure, when you have all that skill.

But it's not like they were just getting, you know, hooked and slashed and, and drag down on every play, and the refs were letting it go. And then, you know, don't let your opponent go 50% on the power play, which brings back the fact the Victor had no problem. One last thing at adversity, I will say this only because Cooper bought it up. The year they played for the cup, they were a 108-point team,

but they were fifth in the NHL. Okay. His contention was that they played for the cup that year in a year, and this is his words, where people didn't expect us to win. And I think that if you compare this, that run to not being able to get over the hump in years in which they were expected to win, it comes back to the idea of there being a little bit of panic in their system. That's all I'm going to say about that. Maybe there is, all I say is, and obviously John Cooper knows this stuff

a hell of a lot more than I do. I just, we have to also remember that none of these guys are allowed to get up there and say a lot of this stuff is basically coin flips and it's going to randomly fluctuate year to year. And, you know, they can't say that because the whole, you know, the curtain falls on the on the whole thing if if if any of us say that. Uh, so we have to invent something. And, you know, if, if the question is how come you were better this year and didn't go as far as that year, you can't just go, you can't just shrug your shoulders and go while the coin came down on the other side. You have to come up with something. And if that's the best he can come up with on the spot, then, um, all right. Yeah. Uh, all right, before we get to the other sweep,

where do we go from here? Uh, let's start off with the blue jackets. Let's give them their props. They played a hell of a series. They are, if you squint hard enough, it kind of looked like one of those teams. You know, if Robsky's figured his shit out, they have the franchise defenseman in Seth Jones, who was great.

They have two, maybe three, depending on how you feel about Cam Ackinson, elite scores. I love Cam Ackinson. Damn. They've got a few emerging. Josh Anderson was incredible in that series. He was. And they've got him.

and they've got Dubois as sort of your emerging talents. And then there's like nine felinos. So what do we make of this Blue Jackets team? Are we seeing the start of one of these 95 devil-esque, 2006 hurricane-esque runs where someone comes out of nowhere, hits at the right time, and actually has more talent than we gave them credit for? Well, so I thought coming into the year, they had a lot of talent. I really liked this roster.

I thought they'd finish higher in the Metro than they did. but, you know, they really struggled on special teams, especially the power play for a good chunk of the year. And that's going to thin out your results. But Brobsky was bad for the first month or whatever the number was of games. And I don't know. For me, like, they were always a – like, if they had had any other matchup in the metro or – you know, I probably would have picked them over the island. The Penguins, maybe the Capitals, probably the Capitals, probably Carolina. But you were just like, well, fuck, man, they're playing Tampa.

So now I want to start the discussion of it's not fair that the Columbus Blue Jackets, because the stupid bracket system should have to play the third or fourth best team in the league. Like if we're going to say that shit about the Leafs or the Bruins or the Bulls or the, it's weird. You don't hear any Leafs or Bruins fans. complaining right now that they're going to play that the winner of that series gets to play the eight seed while two higher seeds have to play in the metro. It's weird how that works out. I'll tell you right now that whoever comes out of that Toronto Boston series, an awful

lot of people are going to be picking the blue jackets in that next series. I would say the majority, partly because they're going to be rested and Toronto Boston looks like it's going to go long. That's, yeah, I mean, I don't know if they're going to be, they're not going to be, that underdog that everybody picks against for three straight rounds and then they wind up in the final only because I think we're going to see the big overcorrection and a lot of people are going to be picking them because and sometimes you know what sometimes those long layoffs hurt you like it's great to be healthy but also sometimes you lose you know some of that some of that momentum so locked in this is too long this is too long of a layoff yeah it's it's it's going to be long you almost wish you

win in five instead of four yeah because you just get that extra three days or whatever yeah are you saying they haven't faced enough adversity yet? in the playoffs. That's exactly what I'm saying. Greg, this is a little term we like to call ring rust. You ever hear about this? I've heard of ring rust. Yes, absolutely.

Sean Michaels would never have it when he would take his layoffs, but other guys would definitely have that ring rust. Okay, and the lightning. What do we make of the lightning? They're going to get better defensively because they're probably going to jettison four old, like three or four old guys on their blue line. They're all unrestricted. They're going to open up some cap space.

So that's one part of the team that will definitely be changed for next year. I may stay the course guy. I think the Washington Capitals have certainly lit that path for teams that are in the lightning situation. But curious if there's anything that you guys think about their path going forward after this week. They should get Eric Carlson this summer. That's what I was thinking, man. Short-term contract, Eric Carlson, Headman, Swedish pirate buddies, that'd be a lot of fun. Hell yeah, let's go.

injured Swedish defensemen. That worked out pretty well for them in the first round. Let's double up on that. Yeah, I know I'm with you guys. I think the, you know, I think the interesting thing is the capitals kind of provide the example on both sides of the coin, because he had the 2010 version where they, they ran into Yaroslav Halak, and then everybody decided that they had to be a defensive team, and Ovechkin had to be a 30 goal scorer, and Dale Hunter was going to be the coach and all of this stuff. And then you had the 16 and 13th. 17 teams that went out to Pittsburgh and kind of talked like they were going to burn it all down, but then, you know, didn't really.

And largely stuck, you know, maybe not intentionally, maybe because they just had no choice, but largely stuck with the same core and then they win the Stanley Cup. So I think there's going to be all sorts of calls to kind of panic here for Tampa. I don't think you do that. I still think that six months of the season told us more about the Tampa Bay Lightning than six days in the playoffs did. So I would stay the course as much as I could. And, you know, they've already announced that obviously John Cooper's safe if there was

any question about that. You know, get better if you can get better. But I don't think you have to go in and say that there's something rotten in the core here and we've got to gut this thing and start over. It's funny, if they had fired him, like how quickly would the Sabres have hired him? Oh, my God. You could have gotten out of that contract, lickety split if you wanted to. But who knows?

Maybe Coup would have been like, I don't want to go to Buffalo, and then he's just making money on the high hog for five years on NHL Network or some shit. Yeah, I don't think there's no – There is that gamble. Yeah, there's no tiki bars in Buffalo, so I think. All right, let's get over to that other sweep. I'm sure all of the Islanders fans that hate the show and constantly give a shit are all listening right now with bated breath to get our opinion on the Mighty Islander's

of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ryan, I ate shit. I don't think that you're about to. Well, I mean, you kind of have to, right? Because as a matter of fact, again, like in the mailbag that I had to write yesterday, one of the questions from a person, let's say, dealing in bad faith was like on a scale of like, I'm not owned to turned into a corn cob. Like, where do you think you are with the islanders?

And it's like right now I kind of feel like I'm not owned. Oh, so you are more on the not-owned side. You are not, in fact, a corn cob. I haven't been corncogged. Like, if they win the Stanley Cup, that I think would be fair to say. But right now, the issue is much like the regular season. This is an okay offensive team that's getting a goalie absolutely standing on his head. He was 9.30 in the regular season.

He's like 9.50 something. in the first round. And it's like, you got to, you do, uh, have to hand it to him under these circumstances. Like, he's played incredible hockey. Is he going to do it next year? Probably not, right? Like, even if you say, he took a big step forward with the new defensive system, his new, you know, he beat his, his demons or however you want to phrase it, you know,

for sure he can take another step forward in his career, but he went from a 915 career goalie to 930. And he's doing it. And, you know, Jordan Eberle played really great in that series also after a bad regular season by his standards. But I don't know, man. Am I willing to say that, you know, in my opinion, in what the Islanders do well is what gives them 108 PDO or whatever. I don't think I am.

The thing that they did well that I still can't believe, it's incredible how good they were at it. Every single time the Penguin scored a goal and you're like, here we go. Two minutes later, the Islander scored a goal. I can't recall another series in which I've seen someone just snuff out the flame as quickly as the Islanders did in the series. Yep. No, that was, I mean, I think there were at least a couple of cases.

where the Penguins would score a goal and I was literally writing a tweet and then the Islanders would score so quickly, I'd be like, well, I got to delete that because the game has already changed again. The one thing I'll say with the Islanders is, you know, with Robin Leonard, like, because of his personal situation, like, you're right. Like any other time you see it like a 910, 915 goalie suddenly look like Dominic Hasick, we've been down this road enough times to know it's, it's not going to last. It's probably not going to last a full season. But there's been such a transformation for him that maybe. Like maybe there always was a 930 goalie there. And it was the-

Nobody's a 930 goalie. No, but Dominic Hasich wasn't a 930 goalie. Well, can he be 920? Sure. Okay, so 920, whatever it is, right? But yeah, I mean, he's not a 950 or whatever he was. in that series. And I think that series, and Islander fans are going to hate me saying this, but I think there's a case to be made that that series revealed more about the Penguins

than it did about the Islanders. And that it was more, not say the Penguins lost it more than the islanders won it, but I think we found out more about holes in the Penguins than we did necessarily reaffirming positives about the Islanders. But you know what? Like this is a, at some point, you know, it doesn't really matter when, you know, if Robin Lender's going to be good next year or whether Barry Trots could do this next. Like, it's, it's happening now. And there's no, it's been happening long enough. There's no reason. This wasn't like a one or two week thing. Yeah, I mean, they're going to be one of the last eight teams, one of the last eight ping pong balls in the bin. Like, they could absolutely win another round, two rounds or three

rounds. It could, it could completely happen. I, and I'll just, I'll make one other prediction when comes to the Islanders, and I want this on the record now because I'm a few weeks ahead. Here it is. I promise you, everybody who says and thinks that they want to see an Islanders Leafs series, you don't want that. You will be two games into that and you will be like, oh God, this is the worst. Between Islander fans and then Leaf fans responding to that and then the Canadian media and then the American media responding to the Canadian media, that series will be in

sufferable. You will hate your life as a hockey fan by the end of game two. I promise you. You don't want that series the way you think you do. The giant John Tavaris Burning Man, the erect in Cyanisat, before game three. You know, he wins a face-off in game one, and suddenly it's like, oh, you know, he's been redeemed. And it's, oh, it's going to be terrible. So can I just read to you speaking of learning about the penguins more than the islanders? Can I just read to you this Chris LaTang tweet? Oh. Someone at Penguin's trash bag day said to him, like, have you considered, you know,

dialing back your offensive play to avoid making mistakes? And he goes, oh, you don't want me to make mistakes? I'll try that. I'll try that next year. I'll try to make no mistakes at all. Maybe next year you're going to say, hey, we're having Chris on our lineup, and he doesn't do anything offensively. So now you're going to rip me apart because I don't produce anything.

Wow. Things are going well. of the show. Like, he's got it. Yeah. That's, that's 100% the plan, Chris. That's, good job. And Jack Johnson's like, what if I did, what if I did only horrible things next year? And with Jack Johnson's like, what if I only did horrible things next year, like, even more horrible than I do this year? Then what will you say? We'll be like, well, pretty much the same things we said about this year. Yeah. Yeah. Matt Murray, like, okay, so what next year, if I do make saves, what are you going to say that? Well, no, that would be good, Matt. Like, maybe you could, maybe you could do that. Oh, it's so. If I don't get scored on from the corner, what's going to happen? Well, right.

But that's such a good point by Latang, where it's like, you want Chris Latang, you want guys who have the ability to do what Chris Latang can do when he doesn't make mistakes. Yeah. To gamble like that because he's one of, I don't know, 10 guys in the world who can do what he can do. And, you know, like, when it doesn't work out, it appears like a much more glaring mistake than anything. Jack Johnson does because Jack Johnson, for him, like a successful ship, is not falling on his ass and getting scored on. And that's the difference.

Like, people want to view this sport. Like, it's so fucking simple and like, well, why doesn't everybody just not make mistakes and just be responsible 100% of the time? And it's like, well, it does not work like that. That's why. Well, yin's know they would have won that series of flour, right? Yins knew that. Yeah, I mean, he's got his own issues going to be.

I'm going to assume that's a Pittsburgh thing, yeah. All right. So, congratulations to the Islanders. Congratulations to Barry Trots. Trots beats the Capitals. Trots beats Tvers. Islanders beat the National Predators in the final. And Barry Trots wins back-to-back cups.

And then we start exploring what deal with Mephistopolis himself, Barry Trots cut to have all of these things happen in a two-year span. The Islander's revenge tour is still on Skate. schedule. It's very much set up. It's going to happen. Toronto and Boston, the only thing I want to say about this series besides that it is nice that the, you know, uppercase, lowercase letters, Austin Matthews doesn't perform in

playoffs. The thing can be tweeted out finally because he's been good. All I want to do is mention the cadre suspension because it was fucking horseshit. And I'm in the corner of the Department of Player's Safety. No, it was fucking horseshit to give him an elastic suspension, Ryan. That was my problem with it. it. Oh, so you're saying like if they go, if they go, well, it's a five

game suspension and that last two games into the... Just give them five. Like the idea. Before last night, there was a possibility that Nazim Kodry for doing the same fucking thing that he did a year earlier against the same team in the same series when the Department of Player of Safety exists to

change behavior, could have gotten three games. That's my problem. You were saying it's horseshit in terms of he got off too easy. Okay. He could have got off. Yeah. He could have got off too easy. Five is fine.

Like, I'm okay with the suspension being he doesn't get to play for the rest of the series. I just don't understand why it has to be, but next series, clean slate, great dude. It's really weird that they did that. It's weird, but it's not unprecedented. They've done it before. Usually with longer suspensions, but it has something they've done. I did find it a little strange. The way I read it is, you know, and the way.

I think it makes sense to me is I feel like what they were actually saying is you deserve three games, but also the Bruins deserve to not have to deal with you again. And so it's sort of like three games, but plus a bonus of whatever other games are against the Bruins. And if you view it that way, I know people say, well, three games isn't enough then because it's the second time and all the things you just said. And I think, yeah, that's probably the case. You know, the thing I don't like about it is that you're going to get into, this is now going to be a thing, right? Like, every time there's anyone who might get suspended, it'll be like, well, maybe we should just use the Cadry precedent and make it one to three games or make it this to that. Yeah, I would prefer if they

just picked a number, but I feel like here, the number they were picking was three, and it's, it was three, and then they use this as a way to attack a few moron as opposed to it was five, and they use this as a way to lessen it. And the number, and the number, should have been 10 because, you know, when, they should have thrown the book at him for sure. Well, no, no, no, I'm sorry. The number is five. Five is ten.

Five, five, playoff games is ten. That's what I'm saying. But my point is that when people levy these accusations against the Department of Player's Safety about favoritism and, and ruling based on who the player is, yada, yada, what his value to the team is and all that shit. I mean, Radka Gudis got 10 for doing something in, in the course of a play. with his stick to a player's head. Nazim Kodry wasn't even involved in the fucking play

and skated over to exert his will and smack some guy in the head with his stick. Like, make it five and make it concrete and don't do this elasticity, elasticity bullshit. I just, I can't understand that ruling. But anyways, how are you enjoying the series, Sean? You know, it's honestly, this is one of those series where you go in and you just, your starting point is this is going to go seven.

So it's just like, how do we, what's the wine in row? walk down to get there. We know all the Marvel heroes are coming back after the snap, but we just have to figure out how they're going to do it. So how do we get to that third period Leafs lead that we all know is coming in Game 7 and then, you know, we kick in the drama. It's either redemption or the nightmare repeats. Yeah, I mean, I think the Leafs, you know, the game two was a gong show.

You know, the Cadry suspension aside, the complaints about the officiating were bang on in that one. That was one of the worst referee games I've seen. But that happens sometimes. Sometimes the rats are bad. Sometimes the ice is bad. Sometimes the bounces are bad. You've got to keep playing. You can't just.

And, you know, last night with the Leafs losing at home, you know, that is, if they lose this series, that's going to be the game that people look at and say that was the missed opportunity. because they were the better team for a lot of that game. But they just, they kind of missed the opportunity. And, you know, the chance to go back. Even if they had gone back to Boston 3 to 1, I mean, this thing is still going 7 one way or another. But they will look at that as a missed opportunity. And it also, I mean, to take it back to Cadre,

it just reinforces how dumb what he did was. When you watch the lease last night be down 5 to 2 and everyone's like, this one's over and then bang, bang, they score two goals right away, it's five, four. And you're like, holy crap. Like, they were two goals down when Cadry decided to run a guy and take a major in the third period of a game. I mean, who knows? They could have come back in that one.

So the thing with this series is it's not playing out the same way as last year's, because last year's series, the Bruins were by far the better team in, I would say, three of, three of the first five games. Games one and two that they won. And free Tiver. Yeah, well, pre-Davarice, pre-Davis, pre-Muzin, please, everything. But, I mean, the Leafs got blown out in games one and two last year, and in game five, which they won to extend the series in Boston, they got smoked.

Like, that was one of those games where it was like that you have no business winning this game, but you do because, you know, that's how the playoffs work. That hasn't happened yet, you know, and I feel like we haven't seen either teams best, certainly for a full game yet. So it's, you know, it scares me a little bit that that first line, that the Leafs got broken up is now back together and looking strong again. But we'll see.

You know, this is, I know people hate it and it's unsatisfying. This series is a coin flip. These are two pretty equally matched teams. They're probably going to play seven. There's probably going to be some more stupid controversies along the way. And the Columbus Blue Jackets are just sitting there with the popcorn, probably loving every second of it. Yeah, they're rooting for more suspensions.

Everybody gets suspended. And also Mitch Marner blocked a shot, so he's now Wendell Clark. That happened too. Can you believe it, Greg? Well, maybe, I mean, he might be more, maybe more of a Bobby Bond, I'm thinking. I'm not sure, but it's, yeah. It's incredible. It's incredible the mania that surrounds that team when things are, the focus is on them,

then it's in the playoffs. Even if they lose in the first round, this is going to end with Toronto having a full parade through the city of Mitch Marner, just Mitch Marner, in a car. by himself, being cheered by fans, and then the parade is going to end with the car running over William Nealander and, like, rolling his body into Lake Ontario. Because you, like, the narratives for those two players are just, wow. Hipprios in particular is just going the fuck off on, like, he blames, he blamed Nealander for a bad martyr back check.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kelly Rudy, like, I can't remember exactly what he said. I don't know if you guys saw it. Oh, no, I saw it. It was, oh, he's talented, you know, one of the most talented players in the league, but I don't want him on my team. He sucks.

He said he's really talented, but he's awful. Yeah, he called him awful. That's right. He just, like, he went in on him. I mean, and by the way, and, you know, this is more of a Canadian thing, but shout out to the companies, the two companies in Canada that decided William Nealander needed to be the face of their postseason advertising. Yeah, right.

We see nothing but William Nealander in every commercial break, and you're just like, maybe that wasn't really what you, what you read the room a little bit there, guys. This is why I don't watch Canadian television. I like to watch NBC have Mike Milbury on color commentary, so when Nealander has that horrendous turnover right next to Freddie Anderson, Milbury blames Freddie Anderson for it, defends Nealander's reputation.

He actually did that in the game. He blamed the goalie for Nealander's turnover. The best Milbury thing is the whole. full first period last night for game four, he's obsessing over. Why isn't Pasternak out there? He's only gotten like three minutes. And it's like, well, he doesn't kill penalties. And he got moved to the third line because they wanted to, you know, break up the

scoring. And he's still on the power play, but they only got one of those. And that's it. And then, you know, the second period he comes out. He scores those two quick goals. And Milbury is like, amazing. What an incredible turn of events. Like, he was in the doghouse in the first period.

No, Mike, fucking watch a hockey game, dude. And speaking of NBC, look, I'm a man in his early 40s. I throw a little color in my hair now and again. The minute somebody said when I was graying on the sides, it looked like I was wearing a toupee. That's pretty much the time I started throwing a little color in my hair because I don't want to look like I'm wearing a toupee. That's fine.

But you have to do it in modulation. And when Jeremy Roanick showed up for the playoffs. It is like the most... Why are people talking about this? He looks like Rocky Horror. Like, it is insane. It's crazy. His hair.

So he's got, I mean, you know, he's got the Botox and that's fine. You're on TV. Everybody has Botox on TV. That's fine. His hair, it looks... He looks like nuclear man from Superman 4. Like, it is insane. His hair looks like Patrick Wilson and Aquaman.

where it's like, that guy shouldn't be blonde. Like, that's crazy, dude. It is, it is an incredible blonde. It's like, it's like someone went to get their hair dyed blonde and then there's like, a highlighter blew up on his. That's literally what it looks like. It's crazy. All right. I just, I just want, I feel like this is a safe space on this podcast to talk about such matter.

I know it's not something where, like, you know, the media guy at the New York Post is going to take a break from writing Michael K. versus Mike Francesa stories to write about Ronex hair. But I feel like Puck Soup serves a purpose, which is that when somebody looks like he dunked his head in a bucket of toxic waste and they want on national television to break down Bruins and Leaves, we should probably point that out. And I can say this because I'm bald, so that's fine. All right. Last thing in the East, capitals, hurricanes. The Hurricanes winning game three was the most predictable thing of the playoffs so far. I mean, I just, they were going to go there.

They were going to win. They hadn't played a playoff game since before Up was in theaters. That's fine. The Ovechkin fight thing, I don't know how much time we need to spend on it, because honestly, like, we all kind of know where we stand on fighting. I think a lot has been said. It's sort of a he said he said thing now. and I feel really bad for Svetikov, but I mean, he was an active participant in the fight. Whether he was asked to go or not, he went.

And he got murder-sourced. Here's my one thing on that. I wrote this today, and it's got a couple people mad at me. But you're right. Let's not do the whole fighting debate all over again because that's, you know, been going on for 40 years and we're not going to change anyone's mind. my one thing on this is you can say that you like fighting or that you feel like it has a place in the game. But don't tell me that you like fighting, but you hate to see a guy get knocked out like that. Don't tell me that, you know, I, I'm good with fighting, but oh, you hate to see that.

That is what happens when two big strong guys punch each other in the face eventually. You know, that is, you have to either say, I, I, I, I, like or I accept fighting and I also accept that occasionally someone's going to get knocked out and we're going to have that scene. Or you say I never want to see that scene ever, which means you don't want to see fighting in the NHL. But pickling between one of those. You can't like NASCAR and hate when cars crash.

Right. Right. But that's my point. It doesn't mean you have to like it. You can still feel sick and feel terrible for the guy. But don't let yourself off the hook and say, I want to see fighting, but I don't ever want to see anybody get hurt. Because fighting is two guys trying to hurt each other.

You also don't get the accelerated timeline of 30 years from now. A guy who fought his entire career is like shambling through his house at 50 years old has no idea where he is and then ultimately like commit suicide. You know what I mean? It's the same with the NFL. Well, look, these guys, they know what they're getting themselves into. And it's like, I guess they do. But also, you know, like, I don't know. You have to take some amount of responsibility as a person who wants that to happen.

Two things. First of all, they don't always just shamble around their house and commit suicide. Sometimes they go on Twitter and rant and rave about how it's super horrible and everybody should feel shame for liking it, even though it's the only reason you were ever in the National Hockey League to begin with. The other thing is I'm Lane A, but I'm Lane A because that's also my rationalization for liking hockey, which is that it is an inherently injurious sport, and I know people are going to, to get wrecked. And a lot of times it ain't going to be in a fight. It's going to be in a guy taking a headshot and then his life is done. Like Paul, Paul Korea is not because of fighting.

So that's my, that's my rationalization for, for hockey. And then it also applies to fighting. But, but, you know, it's funny. We'll get it. We'll do a fighting episode at some point because I think that, and correct me from wrong, but I think Ryan, you're probably the most anti-fighting. Yeah, it sucks. Get rid of it. I think down goes round sort of in the middle, and then I'm probably a little bit to the right of where you are in the sense that I'm kind of a, you know. Yeah. On the wrong side of history. Yeah.

I don't even know that I'm, I think I'm more, like, I was probably far to the extreme, even of Greg. And I'm now in the process of traveling over to Ryan's side and sort of not quite sure where in that voyage I am quite yet. But, yeah. It's a journey of transformation. You're a Reagan Republican. I'm basically a Trump Tea Partyer. It makes total sense. Yeah. So we'll talk about that at some point. But this fight was, the only thing I don't like about the situation with the hurricanes and what they're doing right now is I feel like it's a lot of, I feel like their pushback on it is almost trying to portray it that Ovechkin victimized a kid when Ovechkin hadn't fought since 2010. Like, I mean, it's a lot of this. Look what he did to our kid. He did not grab him. He did not jump him. Yeah. This was two guys agreeing to go. And this is, if you agree to fight sometimes,

especially if it's against a guy 40 pounds bigger than you, sometimes you will lose the fight. And, you know, would it have been nice if Alexander Ovechkin had walked away? Maybe. But then we're all killing him for walking away and, you know, not standing up for himself and all this other crap. So, yeah, I don't, this is not, this is not something that you can say Alexander Ovechkin did anything wrong apart from whether he was engaging in something that's wrong at a much bigger level and shouldn't even be part of the game. But that's, that's not his call to make.

I just find it to be a very strange recruiting tactic for Putin team to just physically destroy young Russians until they join Putin team. It's a little bit weird. the best recruiting one all right well there you go you know Greg um speaking of puteen um i that's like a hard that's like a zero that is i don't know how ad transitions work and i haven't figured it out yet so i'm just going to take the last thing you said and use it as a segue to tell everyone that the athletic yeah this is like the segue that the segue inventor took on the side of a cliff. Remember that?

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if he's not mentioned as an expert. We just realized. So people are wondering about the athletic thing for us. And basically it's like this. Sean's on the show. So why not have some sort of partnership with his employer? It's, you know, they're going to have a little presence in the show as far as promotion. We'll probably have a few athletic guests, guests on the show during the playoffs.

And then they put Pucks Dup on their platform so new people can find our show, which is really nice. and it made too much sense. And also, like, give it a look for the playoffs, people, if you've not been an athletic supporter. Is that what you guys call them? I don't even know. I don't think so. No.

If you've not been a... Hard know on that one. You absolutely will now. If you've not been an athletic supporter, a sweaty, festering athletic supporter in the past, give it a look for the playoffs. It's really, really great writing and a variety of topics. Like, for example, like you mentioned Strang, to, To park the Stanley Cup playoffs and do the women's hockey future story in the middle of all this stuff is a pretty good example of the kind of resources they're working with.

It's pretty great. I mean, I can tell you in all honesty. I have been working for this site since the start of the season. I was a subscriber for a long time before that, pretty much from day one. It is ridiculous value. It is really very good. And they are now helping out your favorite podcast. So that's good, too.

But we should be clear, if you are not a subscriber, Puck Soup still continues on all the other platforms and, you know, whatever else you get. The athletic launched a podcast network, almost all of which was exclusive and behind their paywall. But we are not that. Thank you for mentioning that. I know some people are confused.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're listening to us right now, you're on the same platform that you always do. that's because we are staying there so you don't have to worry. Right. But subscribe. An excellent point.

Thank you for clarifying that for the people that were really worried that we were going to be behind the paywall. Because that would be a travesty. Speaking of travesties, the U.S. Women's National Hockey Team won worlds. First of all, that's going to be like a D for the transition and a negative 50 on the take. the great U.S. women's team won worlds. They always win worlds. And people are saying, oh, they screwed Finland.

And, oh, isn't it so interesting that a lot of those people are from a little nation called Canada, where they lost to Finland. No, I've got nothing but respect for the U.S. women. I think it shows a ton of character. Very, very few hockey teams can overcome the adversity of giving up a clean, good goal in overtime and still come back to somehow win. Clean goals for a goalie who's standing in her crease gets knocked over by getting hit in the head. Those are the best clean goals to me. And I'm shocked more NHL teams haven't employed that clean tactic. Nowhere near the crease.

She's out of her crease. Incidental contact is allowed. But here's the bigger point. Whatever you think, instant nitpicky instant replay is a disease and it is ruining hockey everywhere. And if you were mad about that game, or maybe, maybe, maybe. you weren't mad. Maybe you were happy that the goal got overturned. This is, it's coming to the NHL too. Like we're, we're going to see game seven overtime,

the Santa Cuff Finals, we're going to see crap like this. It's, it sucks. Replay should be used for only very obvious. We totally screwed up. We got it wrong. We can tell from looking at one view that we messed up. It's Matthew Shane offside. It's Colton O'Rer running over the goalie. It's whatever. That's the only time it should overturn a call because this is completely out of control and it is, I don't know if you guys find this. I'm at the point now. I'm noticing it in this year's playoffs for really the first time. I watch guys come across the blue line and if it's at all close, there's like this little voice in my head that goes, don't get too excited about anything that happens because this could come back. And it sucks. It's awful. And it's the skate in the

crease all over again. And I'm old enough to remember that. And I'm old enough to remember when we got rid of it. And we're all like, wow, that was stupid. Let's never do that again. And we're doing it again with these, with these goaltender interference and the off sides. It's garbage, and I really wish I thought we were going to get rid of it before it completely ruined a really big moment in the NHL, but we won't because that's not how this league works. Speaking of Skate and the Creece, that's exactly where Maddie Rooney's skate was when she got tackled by a Finland player for goalie interference. The problem with the play was that they also called a trip on Maddie, which made no fucking sense and confused the entire thing. but I think a letter of the law, the IHF goal interference rules,

it's goal interference. She was in her crease when she got hit. Okay. Just so we're sure that the Americans agree on this one. I don't think she was, but yeah. How's this for a transition? Hold on, everybody. I have a great transition coming right up.

The instantaneous replay and overdoing it and that kind of thing was a big problem in the Frozen Four where Kale McCar recently played. Hail Kale. Oh, man, that kid kicks so much ass. Dude, let's just, let's just say it right now. Of all the playoff fan stuff that's happened, and there's been some fun stuff so far, nothing beats a fucking Colorado Avalanche fan

bringing a head of kale to Game 4 against the flames and using it as a pom-pom. That is so great that I might, they should win the series based on creativity alone. Instead, they're going to do it because of how good they're top line is. Calgary's in trouble, and I feel like the growing, where's Johnny Good Joe?

Why doesn't he play in the playoffs? Bangs are being hit louder and louder as the series goes on. Colorado, you're right, man. Like sometimes one good line and a solid goalie is all you need in a series, and it looks like that's the recipe for success so far. Yeah, Gruber is totally going off. And there, the old... He's not Mike Smith, but...

That's true. The only difference is, I think, that Colorado's depth, which was always going to be their problem, has not really given up any goals, but they haven't been good either. And so if you want to say it's Gruberauer, yeah, obviously it's Gruber. He's been great. The McKinnon line has also been great. and, you know, if you have an elite talent in net and an elite talent in the offensive end, you're going to be really good. Yeah, I don't think that's a recipe for a two-month run necessarily. No, for sure not. You can win a series that way. And yeah, Calgary's in trouble.

I mean, it's, and here's the crazy thing. I think if a week ago when we were doing our preview show or whatever, if some time traveler showed up and been like, the flames are down three to one, you would have been like, wow, but okay, hey, I guess Mike Smith is stinking it up. He's Mike Smith in the series, and he hasn't been, he's been quite,

I mean, he's ranged from, okay, you know, not the problem to excellent in this series. And it's more that it's the rest of the flames team. We thought they were going to have to win in spite of Mike Smith, and he's kind of maybe even making them look a little better than they deserve. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, as you know, after game one, he's the new Tim Thomas that we were told.

Colorado's fun to watch. And I have a feeling since the other series is going the way it is, and since Martin Jones is who he is, that we could get a power versus power. Mark Stone line versus Nathan McKinnon line match up in the second round, which is going to be fun as shit. Because the stone line is insane. The Stone line is a steamroller. The Stone line is the juggernaut chasing Kitty pride through the hallways in X3. Yeah, I can't remember the stat off the top of my head. But he, Mark Stone specifically has been on the ice for something like 12 of their 14 goals or whatever the number is, like all but two or three of them.

And, you know, has a point on all but two or three of those. Like, he's just been so good. And he's been so good. And he's allowing me to cling to the hope that I have almost every year but might actually be happening this year, which is that the N.A. NHL playoffs might revive the trade market and the trade deadline. Because you look at the top five scores in the playoffs right now are Mark Stone, trade it for it the deadline. Max Patcher Ready, trade it for last fall.

Paul Stasney was a free agent signing, but another new addition. Matt Duchayne trade deadline, Jordan Eberley traded a couple years ago. Like that's, it's, if this continues, plus you've got the San Jose Sharks, who everyone at the deadline said you've got to go out and get some. goaltending insurance didn't do that. Didn't do it. I don't want to disrupt the room and look like they're going to lose their season because of it. It's getting, I hope, tougher for GMs to talk about playing it safe.

And I'm hoping that there's some owners who are noticing this when next year, when their GM says, oh, it's really hard to make a trade that they go, well, yeah, I'm looking at the last year's playoffs. And it looks like the teams that found a way to do something hard were the teams that won and the teams that sat on their hands maybe paid for it. And we might see another amazing thing this year, which is a winger winning the Selkie trophy. As Mark Stone, who played 77 games or 12 more than Patrice Bergeron, is a finalist along with Ryan O'Reilly, who played 82 games or 17 more than Patrice Bergeron is also a finalist. And also Patrice Bergeron is a finalist. Who did you vote for? My top three was Stone, O'Reilly, Crosby, then Berger on fourth.

Yeah, that checks out. That's my top four, two, different order, but I think that was what I had. I'm not, I'm not, I understand why it happens. I mean, he is a superior defensive force in this league on a level that maybe we'll never see again. I mean, he's great. I get it. And I get that that greatness can overcome a lack of playing game. for some, but for me it doesn't.

I think a guy who plays 64, 65 games shouldn't necessarily get the benefit over someone like Crosby who played many more games, and I thought had an incredible defensive season. So he was my third guy, Burjohn's fourth, and I'm just happy that my colleagues in the PHWA didn't auto put Alexander Barkoff's name on the ballot this year because he had a horrible defensive season by his standards.

I go. I wouldn't go quite that. far, but sure. By his standards, which are super high, but... Yeah, by his standards, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. For me, it's Soner Crosby, and I think either one would be a perfectly good choice, but given the Crosby's not in the top three, well, that's the end of that. I think Stone's going to win. At least he should win. He should. And then we'll finally break the Schneid there. All right.

Reeves versus Cain. The rivalry we didn't know we needed in these standards. The Muffin Man. Ryan Reeves being called the Muffin Man by Evander Kane. Vandercane saying that Ryan Reeves is treating this like WWE, where he should probably be right now based on the quality of his play. It is a hell of a war of words between two players. And I, if Sharks fans, as we do the show on the day of Game 5,

if Sharks fans don't pelt the ice with at least one muffin while Reeves is on the ice tonight, you're going to be so fucking disappointed. but maybe they just are so depressed about the way the series is going that they're not even thinking about having fun. Here's my thing, man. I'm enjoying this because this is like, this is to me the kind of the fun trash talk. Like, you know, there are lines, but I feel like, you know, not that they're having fun with it, but it's fun for the fans.

But like, this kind of started with Joe Thornton talking about how, you know, Evander Cain stepped up and won that fight and then Evander Cain comes in and yeah, you know, it was like fighting the muff. Like, did I see the wrong fight? I saw Ryan Reeves win a fight against Evander Cain. Like, I mean, I full credit to Cain for hanging in there against a guy who does that, you know, kind of for a living. I think he was just saying he thought he was going to be tougher. Like, he wasn't as tough as tough as he thought.

It was, it's like Jack Edwards quantum leaped into their bodies and suddenly it was like, oh, yeah, it was a total, total, flawless victory. And I'm like, I was literally like, did I watch like a fight from 2017 by accident? is there a newer version of this? But all right. Say, if you can, it's not a lie if you believe it. It's tremendous trash talk. I love the fact that the sharks have become the Golden Knights biggest rival and they've

only been around for like two years. I think it speaks well of the sharks as being a really annoying team. But I lament the fact that they're incredibly shitty goal-shitty goaltending is going to deprive us maybe of them advancing in the playoffs. Martin Jones, someone who could not flip the switch, it turns out, pulled in two of these games, absolutely fucking trash goaltending. And as we all predicted, that would be the undermining factor of the sharks this season. Yeah, and that's the thing.

Like, if you're a sharks fan, how are you not fucking furious? Because this is the most obvious, like, thing that was going to sink their chances in the world. Like, there was nothing, like, short of a meteor crashes into the, into the rank, during Sharks. Yeah, during Sharks morning skate. and all the, everybody on Vegas, you know, escapes unscathed. Are you, wait, are you calling Joe Thornton a dinosaur? Is that with this, this cor?

I would never joke about that kind of thing, Craig. And, like, it's crazy that they were just like, well, see what happens. It's like, no, we all know what's going to happen. This is a pretty, like, we've seen this before. Are you guys ready for this? I'm going to blow you away here, because I'm going to drop a movie. reference into my hockey take. This reminds me of the scene. Remember the scene in Mall Holland Drive? Did you guys see that movie?

Yes. I'm guessing you did. You know the scene in the diner where the guy's talking to his friend and he says, I have this nightmare where I feel like I know how I'm going to die and it involves me getting up from this table and going around the corner and looking behind the diner and when I get there, there's going to be a monster and the monster is going to kill me. And so they go, all right, let's go. And they get up very slowly and they walk out and they walk around the corner and they go to the back of the diner and they look around the corner and there is a monster and the monster kills the guy. And it's like, yes, that is exactly what he said was going to happen. And it's somehow like it's like more disturbing because you're sitting there going, well, clearly it's

not going to be the thing they just said is going to happen. And then that's exactly what happens. And it's that. It's like, you know, I have a feeling that this all-star team of a roster is going to have a season ruined by Martin Jones in net, okay, well, let's go around the corner and peek behind the diner and see, oh, yeah, there's Martin Jones, and we're out, we're dead. Now, I should say, by the way, that they're not playing well defensively in front of him, but, okay, let's say them playing better adds 25 points to a save percentage. He's still in the 880s. Yeah.

But, Ryan, your point's well taken, though, is that I think that the thought from Doug Wilson was, okay, my team is really great. I've got Carlson and Burns and Vlasic. I should be able to paper over weak goaltending to advance. And what he didn't realize was that his team isn't playing well. Vlasic's not Vlasic, and he has maybe 30% of Eric Carlson right now. And when you have that going for you, then your goaltending is completely exposed. And I understand that there's going to be people who are going to say, like, okay, well, what were

they supposed to do? Like who, what gold, what all-star goaltender was available? Yeah, I got, I got that plenty right before the playoffs started. Even if it's just going out and getting a vet, because I mean, their backup is Aaron Dell. Like, it's not like, you know, it'd be nice to have somebody. And I don't know, I'm sure they tried. I'm sure there was a Jimmy Howard conversation. I'm sure there were, you know, other things. Ryan Miller saying no, you know, to a trader's saying. So I mean, maybe anytime you criticize a team for not making a move, you know, you run the risk that actually they had, you know, it may be, they could have had something done and it fell apart at the last minute and we won't hear about it. But, oh man, it's just, it was like the big flashing light on the

dashboard all along. And, uh, and, and, and yeah, here we are. Nashville and Dallas is surprisingly the winner for me of the series I care least about. Even though the hockey's been very competitive and even though there's been some surprises here and there, I just can't, I can't like get hyped about that series for some reason. I don't know why. I was telling somebody, I feel like I have the capacity to get really deeply involved in seven playoff series at a time. And there's always one where I'm like, well, what about that one? And it's a good series. And you know what?

We probably will get into it because it could be the last, you know, one of the last ones going. I could see that one being like seven games or you sit down. You're like, all right, I'll check this out. And then you're like, holy crap. This is great. But in my Stanley Cup playoff binge, that's the one I'm kind of skipping. the episode to get to the next one just to see how it turns out. You know what I mean?

I just give me, I want to know who advances and then I'll get interested. But in this series right here, I'm just kind of like, I don't care. I don't, it's a, it's a, I can't get a read on it. I don't know what the narratives are. I can't figure out why I should care about it quite yet. Maybe that changes in a couple games based on how things are going. But it's just kind of there for me. And I didn't think that would be the case with, with a series that Nashville's in.

But that Winnipeg St. St. Louis series is a fucking quaker. And I am, I, I picked the Blues to advance. I'm really worried because the Jets just won a game in game four that the Blues had won for the last two and a half months. Bennington plays extraordinarily well, low scoring affair against the high scoring team. Thing goes to overtime, wait for Ryan O'Reilly or David Perron to score your goal in overtime. And then the fucking Jets won it.

And they won it on the back of Shifley making two really good plays. And I'm like, uh-oh. that's that's the game that the blues need to win in this series and they just didn't win it. Yep. Yeah. That is and it's, it's been a great series and it's, it's weird. Like usually if a team loses the first two at home and then they go on the road and they win two more, you kind of feel like, all right, they figured it out, they're going to come back.

They've got, like, I don't feel that. I feel like this is totally neutral as far as there's no momentum. There's no, you know, it's just, it's, it's. Like I keep using this phrase, but like this one feels like a coin flip, but it feels like the good kind of coin flip, like not the random one, but the actual, like, these are two really good equally matched teams. And I have no idea who's going to win. And I really want to watch and kind of see and find out how it goes.

Do you kind of get the feeling that Winnipeg's putting it together a little bit? Because I kind of feel that way. Yeah, but it, you know, one game can change that. Yeah, exactly. We've seen that. Right. In this series alone, it's like, oh, they got to figure it. Oh, no, they don't. They don't have it figured out at all.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think this is a case where two pretty well-matched teams are getting pretty good goal-tending most of the time, but not every game. And, you know, again, coin flips, dude. You hate to reduce it to that so often. But the good kind, like not the, not that this feels random and whatever. Like, it's, this is fun. Yeah, no, I'm just saying it's more like, yeah, sometimes you'll look. lose, sometimes you win. Like, when you're playing teams that are, like I said, I pick this series in seven games,

and it's like neither team winning would surprise me even a little bit. Like this maybe felt the most like a coin flip of any series in the whole playoff. I've decided that if the Leafs do make it out of the East, which is still a very good possibility, there's only one team out of the West I want them to play in its Winnipeg. The idea of the Leafs try to win, and the only team standing in their way is another Canadian team and the Jets are that team. Oh, my God. What if it's not even, it's, it's not a David and Goliath matchup, but God damn

it'll be portrayed as a David versus Goliath matchup. It's, it's, it's, this, this is like classic baby face versus like the ultimate heel. Like this is going to be, you will see people in this country that you've, you know, don't even care about hockey that are just going to be like, oh, good, they're showing up at at work in Jets, you know, and the fans love it too. Like they will absolutely, Leaf fans are not going to be that whiny Canadian city. It's like, oh, we're Canada's team now.

You all have to cheer for us. No, screw you. We don't want you on the bandwagon. I'm not saying that everybody in Canada is going to be outside of Toronto is going to be rooting for the Jets, but it's going to look like a fucking clan rally. That's going to be so much white in every single place in Canada that's not Toronto. That's, that's, that wet my whistle a little bit last night. I'm like, that'd be super fun to see that happen if the leaves made it out. Because that would certainly wipe away any vest.

any vestige of the Chicago clubs of hockey in this situation. If the upstart scrappy, we lost our team. Jets are going for their first cup. Oh, my God. My counter to that is that it should be Vegas because then you get the bandwagon interest from like, you know, quote-unquote casual sports fans who don't, who would never watch hockey otherwise. But also, to Sean's point earlier about getting more trades going, Vegas wield and dealed, made of the cup final, didn't win. Vegas was like, we're going to do more of that shit.

When they got a ton of really good players, they got Atcheready, they got Stasney, they got Stone, and they were like, now we're going to do it again. And like, if that pays off for them in terms of getting them to a cup final that they ultimately win, like, I think a lot of teams are going to be like, let's trade all our stars. or let's trade for every star we can, I mean. And then to further your point, it would be a team that has existed for exactly two years trying to stop a team that has been searching for a cup since before Woodstock. Then you're going to have all the old school types that, again, make it make it insufferable. It's another one of those. Well, it's always going to be insufferable from those people. Yeah.

But Winnipeg, at least, like, they'd be, you know, be like, ah, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I, you know, I. Oh, you know, we don't have much sun during the year, and we could never afford a John Tavares on our team. We're scrappy blue-collar boys from Manitoba. And all they had to do was take a team from a southern market. Put it in my veins.

A Winnipeg leave series would be so fucking great, even though nobody would ever click on any of my stories. I want to be in the business of selling Atlanta Thrashers jerseys and coyotes jerseys and Toronto. if that happens. Hell yeah. They'll be showing up. Oh, man.

All right. Well, get your, get in line now for that cup final. And in fact, if you want to get tickets to any playoff series, there's only one way to do it. And that's with an A plus, an A plus transition. And with our friends at C geek. It's better than mine. Yeah, the ticket to this street. Well, I mean, listen, listen, you know, not every rookie goalie can.

pitch a shutout in his first game, Sean. And it's understandable. But we saw potential. Good movement. Good on your gates. Good, good vision. The ticket industry hasn't changed in a long time. There are a bunch of big companies who have been around forever.

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Seekeekeek supports our show, so go support them. And if you get your tickets through Seekek, do post your pictures on Twitter. They do seem to like that. Remember, that's promo code Soup, SOUP, for $10 off your first Seekkeek purchase. New coaches have happened since our last show. Todd McClellan going to the L.A. Kings, where the bar will no longer be set at, hey, you've got McDavid. Why don't you win?

And Elaine Vigno, to the Flyers, in a move that I've done. I really, really, really like. Like, they are very much still in win-now mode. I understand that he hates young players and whatever, but put the lay vigno behind your bench for three seasons. Chances are you're going to at least end up in a conference final, I think. I don't think I would go that far. But, yeah, no, he's a coach who I think gets a bad rap because he happened to stick around longer than the players on his team's. were of use.

You know, as you know, Ryan, you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain. That's exactly, and that really is what happened because, you know, if you want to make the argument that he played, like his teams play a very particular kind of game that relies more on counter-attacking and that kind of thing, that's true. And I think that a decent percentage

of the Flyers roster can play that way. I'm not sure they can play that way. way one through 20, but, you know, I think that the top line and a couple of the defense pairs can, you know, rely more on their speed and breaking out and that kind of thing to score goals. I don't trust the bottom of that roster to be able to play that way, though. Yeah, I don't mind the hiring. I think it's given guys who are out there, I mean, if you don't get Quenville, if you don't, I'm not convinced that just staying the course was the right.

move. So, yeah, and Todd McClellan in L.A. makes sense that, you know, we'd heard that all the way along. The question now is, what does Buffalo do? Because they're sitting there with, in theory, money to spend, and I don't think any big-name coach is left to spend it on. So, I don't know. Yeah. Where do they go now? I don't know. I don't know where they go. That's a really good question, unless they're looking for, to see if somebody gets shaken out of the first round or something. But I don't know. It kind of makes me think that Phil Housley got fired a little too quickly, to be honest with you. I thought he was going to be the classic carry him over to next season and fire him in season

if things don't turn around. But I guess the end of the year was just so fucking poor for them that they had to make a change. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there aren't maybe any great options out there, but I also think sticking with Hasley wasn't a great option. So, what are you going to do? What about the sweet, this, was it, Gronberg guy? Who's the Swedish dude?

that everybody's talking about. I forget his name. But he's an option. You know, recently fired guys are an option. Guy Boucher. Oh, hell yeah. Let's go. Willie Desjardin, baby.

Let's go. That's the other thing I like about this is that we've just seen, like, Kwenville gets $6 million. McClellan and Vino, we're told, both got $5 million. And, like, I like how nobody's even pretending that the Ottawa senators who need a coach were in, on any of this. Like, it's like, we're not even like, oh, yeah, they were maybe going to talk to it.

Like, no, they were, they don't, they're, they're, they're going to pick lovers. The last guy out there might be Tippett, to be honest with you, as far as like high profile coaches that can make a difference. Isn't he going to, isn't he going to Seattle? Isn't that the, he's part of their management group. I don't know if he was ever kind of predestant to be their coach necessarily. But he's apparent, like all the usual people that talk to Dave Tippett regularly, Elliot and all these guys have sort of indicated that he has the itch to get back into coaching.

And there might be a better situation. I know that we all expect Seattle to be Vegas. I don't know if it's going to happen necessarily again. There might be another situation he's interested in. Who's to say? But he'd be the only guy out there that I think is interesting. All right. It is time for a Puck Soup quiz.

Quizmaster, Down Goes Brown, is the architect of this one. My first quiz. By no means should you take this as him hanging up his skates because he's done so well on the other side of the quizzes as a contestant. This is just his turn in the rotation. He's the new Jeopardy Man. He's the Puck Soup version of the Jeopardy Man. Let's talk about Jeopardy Man. So, dude on Jeopardy has won, what was it, upwards of over 600,000?

Yeah, he's pushing up around like 650, I want to say, in 10 games. 10 games he's halfway to Ken Jennings total Or a quarter of the way to Ken Jennings total James Holeshauer is the guy's name He's got 10 wins as we do the show He is a guy who is a wagerer on sports In the old sports books And his whole deal is

His philosophy is that people don't bet enough When they get daily doubles And don't bet enough in Final Jeopardy They play a strategic game to win, and he's been very much all in whenever they're given the opportunity to double his money. Yeah, it's not always like making it a true daily double, but he's often going, like if he has 20,000, he'll go 18, whatever, sure. But yeah, he does make it a true daily double quite frequently. And as we record this last night, he went into Final Jeopardy with like 75. grand or something like that.

And he bet 62. Like, nobody was even close. Yeah, it's crazy. And he was just like, oh, fuck it, let's go. And so in doing so, he broke his own single day winnings record by like $22,000. And you were mentioning before the show that he, there's a hockey tide of the story. Yeah, there is. So early on, because he's a sports gambler and you very quickly run out of things to talk to

Alex Trebek about and the little meet the contestant. Testant segment. Alex Trebek said, oh, you know, Stanley Cup playoffs are starting soon. Who should I bet on? And this man said, the Tampa Bay Lightning. And not only is that not a good tip because the Lightning obviously didn't win, but it's a bad tip because the Lightning's odds were shitty.

They were like, you know, I'm not good at gambling, but like you had to bet two to get five or something like that. And that's, is that right? No. I don't know. No, they were the heaviest favorite by far. By far, and your return on investment would be quite minimal if they actually came in on their one and four chance or whatever it was. So that guy maybe not the best professional sports better, but arguably the best jeopardy player of all time.

Yeah, James Holzhauer. Stick to quiz shows, buddy. Stay out of our lane. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, who all picked the lightning. Yeah. Oh, it's going to do. The every single team that's going to win in the first round,

is going to have the opportunity to screenshot the ESPN expert picks and just take out their dicks and just whip us with them. Like, they're all wrong. Like, this is the most craziest first round that we've ever seen. Everybody's going to be wrong. And it's going to be, but at least we're all in the same boat. At least just not some, some, some dom from the athletic out there who's like fucking. Did you guys see the, there was, there was one guy who, there was like some pool out there with 30,000 brackets and there was only one guy who was still. alive to have a perfect bracket and they found the guy and he explained that he he just filled

it out to piss off his Canadian friend who was being a know-it-all so it was just like out of spite he picked the dumbest bracket he could and he was the only one left with a potentially perfect bracket out of 30,000 fans. I had a guy tweet me a screenshot of his pool that he's in and somebody picked the jackets to sweep and like if I saw if I was in a pool and I saw that I am hunting that person down and stealing their fucking sports almanac because they clearly are at Times Traveler. I can't remember who said it, but somebody said it on Twitter the other day. Like, if you have a model that said like, oh, I think Columbus is going to win.

It was, it was Mani. I think Mani said that. Yeah. He's like, if you have a model that said Columbus was going to win this series, your model sucks even though they won. Yeah, right. My favorite was I had some guy tweet me a betting slip that he had bet on the series to go four games. That was it. have a winner. He had bet on the series to go four games at like six

brilliant odds. And I said it reminded me of like every shot I've ever made in pool where it's like, all right, that's not what I was trying to do. But all right. That's great. That's a great comparison. Well, well, that's a good bet too. I mean, like if something crazy happens on the other side, you have it covered, but most likely the late you're going to sweep. Six to one's a pretty friendly fucking odds. It was something like that. Yeah, it was something. So, um, the quiz. Should we quiz? The quiz. Okay. So here's the deal. This is my first time hosting the quiz, and I learned from you guys that, like,

when you make a quiz, you basically do what you know. Like, Greg did movies and wrestling, Ryan did college hockey. So I decided to do a quiz on feeling really, really sad about the playoffs, because that is something that has been important to me my entire life. So I've basically got a 10-question quiz for you guys. We'll just go back and forth. They're all multiple choice about moments in the playoffs that made a fan. Bay's really, really sad.

So who wants to go first? I'll go first because I'm mad at Greg for the WrestleMania quiz. Oh, okay. Well, you probably might be mad at me about this one too. That seems like the most logical things I heard that you can obstruct justice if you're mad, which is something I heard this morning. Yeah.

Yeah. There you go. All right. So question number one. I'm saying if the president is angry, he doesn't come to whatever. By the way, Michael Sheen, Michael Sheen's fucking great. Let's just point that out. We love him, folks.

Good Omen's is coming out soon, the Neil Gaiman show. It's him and David Tennant. I'm going to watch the shit out of it. I'm so excited for it. That's a sidebar. I'll pretend I know who that is. You don't know, Michael Sheen? You definitely do.

I probably do, but, okay. Small Welsh guy. Michael Sheen's appearance in Tron Legacy was one of the most random fucking bits of casting I think I've ever seen Where he basically showed up as... That was not going to help me. He showed up as like... He shows up in the middle of the movie for about five minutes as David Bowie,

I think basically. It was very strange. That's cool. All right, the quiz. The quiz. Okay, so we're going to go chronologically here. I'm going to start in 1986 with probably one of the most crushing sports moments I've ever witnessed. This is the

famous Edmonton Calgary Game 7. The Oilers are two-time defending Stanley Cup champions. They're going to win the next two. But in this particular game on Home Ice, they are tied in the third period of a game 7, and Steve Smith scores into his own net.

And it holds up as the winning goal. The Calgary Flames win the series, ending, or at least disrupting the Oilers dynasty. My question is, which low-scoring Calgary Flame got credit for scoring that goal, even though they were sitting on the bench when the puck went in. Was it A. Perry Bereson, B, Steve Bozac, or C, Jamie McCown?

B. Tyler Bozac. Steve, Tyler Bozac. Incorrect. No, it was Perry Barry. Perry, Sergey Bereson was the one who dumped it in and then left the ice and was sitting on the bench when he scored the biggest goal of his entire life. These are like the worst Chris Berman nicknames of all time, by the way. Yeah, they are all Maple Leaf related nicknames. Okay, moving ahead, 1990. Now, flip side of this.

Now, the flames are on the wrong side of this because they are the defending Stanley Cup champions. They have the second best record in the entire league, but in the first round, they're going to lose to the L.A. Kings in six games. And the winning goal is going to be scored in double overtime by Mike Crucialniewski. Now, Mike Crucialniewski scored a lot of goals in his day, so it's not surprising to see him show up as an overtime hero. But what was surprising was how he scored the goal. Greg, when Mike Crucialnisky scored this goal, was he A, on one knee behind the net,

B, laying on his stomach in the slot, or C, facing away from the net in the corner. I'm going to go facing away from the net in the corner. The answer was B, laying on his stomach in the slot. And I recommend people look this one up on YouTube because it's hilarious. because he's literally laying on his stomach with two guys on top of him. He swats the puck, and it floats through the air like a movie scene over the outstretched arm of Mike Vernon. I feel like if that, I felt like if that had happened, we would have heard about like the tummy goal or something more often from. You know what?

It probably happened at like 2 a.m. Eastern Time, so it was that's a good point. But yeah, check it out on YouTube. It is, it is a good one. Ryan. We're deadlocked. Moving ahead. now, another very famous moment, maybe one of the biggest upsets of the early 90s and kind of appropriate given how things went this week. New York Islanders versus Pittsburgh Penguins.

Mario Lemieux's team at the height of its powers, they've won two straight cups, but they go to game seven on home ice against the islanders. It goes to overtime. And David Volick converts a two-on-one and wins the game in the series. I want to know who, was it that made the pass and got the assist on David Volick's school? Was it A, Ray Ferraro, B, Stumpy Thomas, or C, Pierre Turgeon? Chicken Parm. Ray Ferraro. One nothing for Ryan. It was indeed Ray Ferraro. You watch it off hockey that's going to come up on the on the broadcast. There you go. All right. Greg, this is, uh, let's go, let's go one year later.

One of the things I found when I was putting this together is, if you're talking about really miserable playoff experiences and upsets, the Detroit Red Wing show up a ton, which is kind of weird given how many cups they won. But they had, you know, they lost to the Leafs. They lost to the Devils in the final. They had 2001, 2003, Oilers, 2006. My favorite of their playoff catastrophes was 1994 when they play the San Jose Sharks. Oh, yeah. They're terrible. It's a miracle.

they're even in the playoffs. And that one again goes to game seven in Detroit. And the Sharks win when Jamie Baker basically has the goaltender clear the puck right to him and he puts it into an open net. I want to know who the goal he was that turned the puck over to Jamie Baker for the winning goal. Who was the Detroit goaltender? Was it A team Shevolde, B, Bob Etzanza, or C, Chris Osgood? Oh, man.

At that point, I'm going to go A, Tim Shevolday. it was actually Chris Osgood, believe it or not. Oh, was it really? That's interesting. That was kind of like the debut of the ultimate clutch goaltender. Was Chris Osgood just firing? And this was what convinced them to go out and get Mike Vernon. Yeah.

Well, I think it's also a situation where they never really faced adversity. And that's why they lost in the charts. That's correct. That is it. Yeah. All right. So Ryan is still up one nothing. Ryan, let's move on.

head to 1996 and something good that happened to the Red Wings, which is their game seven overtime win over the St. Louis Blues that I am still told to this day by Blues fans is maybe their most painful moment, even worse than the Owen Nolan slapshot goal. And double overtime game seven, turn over in the neutral zone, red wings pick it up, go down, score on the slap shot. Everybody knows it's Steve Eisenman who takes the shot. I think most people remember that it was Wayne Gretzky who turned it over. So I want to know who was the All-Star defensemen for the Red Wings that made the terrible pass right to Wayne Gretzky that he then fumbled to turn into the Steve Eisenman goal. Who was the Red Wings goalie that, or the Red Wings defensemen who made what should have been a terrible turnover that worked out beautifully? Was it A, Paul Coffey, B, Vladimir Konstantinov or C. Nicholas Lidstrom? Hmm. I think it's coffee. to get you're trying to get into the head of the quiz master here. I can see it happening.

I can see you trying to figure out why he chose those names. I just assume they were three all-star defensemen from that Red Waste team. They were. They actually had four because they had Feduzov as well. That team was super loaded. And it was B, Vladimir Konstantinov. No, that's not the one out of six. Always picking against the Russians, I noticed.

Wow. Yeah, that's right. We should have known. We should have known the Canadian quiz master would have tried ashamed the Russian. God damn. Speaking of defensemen, all right, 1997, maybe my favorite

first round upset that I wasn't part of as a fan. Edmonton, Dallas, maybe the greatest sequence of Bob Cole calls ever. Game 7, overtime in Dallas. Curtis Joseph makes the save of the century to prolong the series.

And on the very next face-off, Todd Marchant goes end-to-end and walks a down Dallas Starr's defenseman. Which Dallas Stars defenseman was it who blew a tire on that play and got walked around by Todd Marchand. Was it A, Grant Ledger, B, Daryon Hatcher, or C, Daryl Sador? I'll go Daryl Sador. It was Grant Ledger, which much to my surprise, because I was utterly convinced it was Daryon Hatcher until I went and looked it up to confirm.

Well, that's weird. I thought it was Daryl Sador, so we're all over the map on this one. Yeah, we were, we were, this is turning into a low. Low-scoring playoff classic. This is Dallas National right here outside of game four. Ryan holds the one-nothingly chance here to, I guess not put it away, but come pretty close. 2003, the Minnesota Wilde beat the Colorado Avalanche in Game 7 first playoff series, I think, in Wilde. Andrew Burnett scores the Game 7 overtime winner.

of people remember this because it was Patrick Waugh's last game. This goal was the final moment of Patrick was goaltending career. But not many people remember the Minnesota goaltender who beat Patrick Waugh and made 43 saves in a Game 7 road overtime win. Was that goalie, A, Dwayne Rollison, B, Manny Fernandez, or C, Josh Harding? What year was this again? 2003. 2003. Oh, that was that was one of the years they platooned Roleson and Fernandez. So I'm flipping a coin here and I'm going to say

that it was Manny Fernandez. Well, on a podcast full of coin flips, your coin came up correctly. It was Manny Fernandez. It's two nothing. That year, by the way, was the year, I think I wrote a column because I was so bitter about Jaguer winning

that if we're going to give the Kahn Smyth to someone who has three great rounds and then an ordinary round, we might as well give it to Marion Gabrick because he had three great rounds but didn't get to have a fourth round. I think it was my hot take that year. That is a sizzling hot take. All right. Well, let me just fucking put my mouth in the curb.

Must win. Here we go. 2004. You can have a miserable playoff moment. It doesn't necessarily have to be a big upset. I think all of them we've done so far are. This one wasn't so much an upset, but it was just a culmination of a lot of years. This is the Toronto-O-O-Wa series in 2004.

Game 7 is in Toronto, but the Ottawa Senators, this is their fourth time playing the Leafs in five years. They've lost every other series. They have to win this. Daniel Alpherson has guaranteed victory. Eugene Melnick has guaranteed victory. They're walking around wearing hats that say Slay the Dragon on it. They are completely all in on winning this game. And they go out there.

And of course, this is the infamous Patrick Lillim meltdown game where he gives up three goals in the first period. Never plays again for the senators. Jacques Martin gets fired. All sorts of it. Basically the end of an era for that version of the Ottawa senators. We all remember Joe Nguyendyke scoring two terrible goals on Patrick Lillin. Those are the second and third goals. I want to know which member of the Leaf's checking line scored the first goal to set the tone in that game.

Was it A, Travis Green, B, Tide Omi. or C. Chad Kilger. I'll go Chad Kilger. You're correct. Oh, oh. I'm on the scent. Here we go. He's on the board.

Rally, rally, rally. It was Chad Kilger set up by Tideomi, I should say. Tideomi did all the work on the play, but Chad Giller got the goal. Ryan. Hey, Ryan, your question is, do you hear these motherfucking footsteps? Hey, man, I secured myself the overtime point already. I'm just trying to run this one. In terms of playoff misery, I think Ryan blowing this lead would bring right up there with most of these series.

You hate to see it. But I have a feeling he's going to finish it off here. 2010, probably the, I would say maybe the most famous upset of the cap era is the Canadians beating the Capitals in seven games. This is the Yaroslav Halak series where he just went crazy, came in halfway through the series, was unbeatable. And they win in seven games. What a lot of Caps fans will remind you is that in the third period of game seven, Alexander Ovechkin scored a goal that was waived off on a questionable goaltending interference.

If only there was replay review back then, it may have changed everything. But I want to know which Capitals forward was in the crease and caused that goaltender interference that took that crucial Ovechkin goal off the board. Was it A, Brooks like, B, Mike Knoebel, or C, Eric Belongier? And this is for the win. Jesus. Well, first of all, the fact that any of those guys are going to spend on the ice with Alex Ovechkin. We're on the ice, yeah.

That's a big problem. But I'm going to say, because I kind of remember him being a regular Ovechkin line, at the time, I'm going to say that it was Eric Belanjay. It was Mike Knoebel. I almost said it. I would say, I would say, I would say, Canoble, by virtue of him being a guy who's always in the crease.

That's true. Yeah. But yeah, I think, yeah, that, uh, all right, here we go. So this is, this is, this is, this is for the tie. Sean, Sean, can you give me what the Bob Cole call of this moment would be as we go into the final round to one? Oh, this. I, I, uh, let me, uh,

Let me think. I'll tell you what, you're going to get the single name call. You're going to get the Wyshinsky, Greg Wichinsky, and Lambert has fallen apart. Oh, no.

But it hasn't happened yet, so I'm not going to, you know, let's not ask for the call before it happens. Let's make it happen. All right. 2014, you can't do playoff misery without picking on the sharks. I think this was their worst one.

This, of course, was the series against the LA Kings where they go up 3-0. And the Kings come all the way back and win the series, and not just win the series, but it's not even really close. Like, I mean, there's... And of course, everybody remembers me

getting several pies thrown at my face. I was going to say, you may remember... You had a bit of a personal connection with this series. So just complete misery. and the ultimate sharks meltdown and, you know, like Drew Dowdy makes fun of them and talks about how he could see in their eyes that they were going to win and all this stuff. There wasn't a lot of positives in that series for the sharks, but my question is, who was their leading score in that series? Was it A, Joe Thornton, B, Patrick Marlowe or C, Joe Pavelski?

It was Joe Thornton. Joe Thornton had three points in that series. It was not Joe Thornton. I thought that was the year that he broke out and had a good series. I do appreciate you answering confidently. So much confidence. My initial thought was Joe Pavalski. Is that correct?

It was actually Patrick Marlowe. Given his reputation, it was actually, I think he had seven points. Seven points and seven games. Hiding and playing in sight, I picked a leave. Everybody was like, the Joe Thornton playoff narrative is over. And I thought that was that series. No, I think for some reason I think he might have been hurt. hurt in that series, but yeah, he did not, that was, that was not a good Jill Thorntz.

Congratulations to Ryan Lambert for that huge victory. We have a winner. Good job. There it is. All right. Our Puck soup question of the week is now that the lightning are off the board and the penguins for that matter, and probably more teams after you hear this podcast. Santa Jose. We're doing them with a bunch of three one in these series.

Who's your cup favorite? Clutch blogger, whoa, I can't believe that Twitter handle was available. It says Boston. they're healthy now, they have an unbelievable home ice advantage in a game seven scenario and have the quote unquote it factor, whatever the hell that is. Eric Dardy writes in,

I guess it defaults back to the caps. I mean, no one's even thought about this question since Christmas. The Witch Police Radio writes in, Jets, same favorite I had at the beginning of the playoffs and same favorite I will have forever. Corey Michael says, whoever Lambert says is least likely. So someone who believes,

that they've been betting against your prognostications. Oh, I'm going to guess that guy is from Massapequa. I'll take a peek here. No discernible geographic location, but a photo of himself, his wife, and his child as his avatar. So a family man, I'm assuming. Jamal Gonzalez artist writes in, Islanders long suffering in the shadow of the inferior rangers

and the trap defense devils. What is this? Trump tweet for so long, give some redemption to Coach Barry Trots, who was discarded after doing the impossible, besting the Penguins in May, oh, and winning the Stanley Cup. So I guess he says the Islanders are now your Stanley Cup favorites. BML writes in Vegas, so all the Hawk Raiders who had to go to Columbus instead get some karmic relief. Hey, listen, man, you're speaking, preaching of the choir. That would have been in Vegas for three and four. We're now for the lightning shit in the bed in the first few games of that series.

And finally, Conrad Taylor, not to be confused, Ryan, with Conrad Thompson. Chat me up. Who you think's going to win the Stanley Cup? Is this a rib? Conrad Taylor says, the winner of the Boston-Torano series, and in bracket says Boston, or second the capitals, or third, Vegas, or fourth the Allenders, or fifth the St. Louis Blues. This is the Bucroft tweet where somebody asked him who he thought was going to win the cup, and he named half the teams in the playoffs.

He came on ESPN on ice after that, and I asked him, was the Twitter character count preventing you from listing the California Golden Seals as well? Got his ass, dude. Anybody on this podcast have a new favorite for the cup? I'm actually kind of team blue jackets right now, to be honest with you. Vegas. It's Vegas. It probably should be Vegas. I'm looking at McCurdy just tweeted out his playoff odds and he's got yeah Vegas number one

Columbus number two which is probably about right I mean I'm not saying Columbus is going to be the second best team in the in the next round but the fact that they're already through that's what it is yeah and yeah I mean you know but your point before I think is important which is that one of the reasons they beat Tampa is because they had won seven out of eight they'd been playing playoff hockey for two and a half weeks, and now they're on their asses for like five, six days. That's right. Whereas Toronto and Boston will be facing adversity in the next week, which is the secret ingredient that guarantees them playoff success. Oh, man. Either way, John Totorella against the Boston team or John Totorella against the Toronto team is

going to be pretty great. That'll be fun. Pretty great. All right. That's Puck's Soup for this week. Not for lacking in topics, by the way. Always a good week when that happens. I'm Greg Wosinski. You can read my stuff at ESPN. I did a full, took out the corpse, rolled it on that metal slab, and opened up the body examination

of why the Tampa Bay Lightning lost that series. If we want to check it out this week. And then my other podcast, ESPN, a nice head. Diana Niros, who is the writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and we talked to Brett Colony of the Capitals, and he had some interesting shit to say about the domestic

fight. Ryan Lambert, sports. com slash author slash Ryan dash Lambert for all my

good takes and sign up for the Puck Soup newsletter on our Patreon and just sign up for the Patreon in general

and that's all my plugs. Yeah, and you can find my stuff at The Athletic, which you're now subscribed to

because he went to theathletic. com slash soup and you got that nice 40% discount.

I. I had a piece this week where I looked at the best teams in NHL history that didn't win a single playoff game. Topical, as always. And I've got my grab bag is out today where I have listed my versions of some of the excuses for lightnings and penguins for getting swept. So check that out. Awesome. Hey, if you guys dig the podcast, leave some reviews on iTunes. It helps people find said podcast.

And yeah, thanks for. listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nonsense. Part 2.