Puck Soup - Off-off-off-off Broadway

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Sean and Ryan talk about all the changes in New York, the Avs' trade for a good(?) goalie, rebuilds in Chicago and Buffalo, and more. Sponsored by Gametime (download the Gametime app and use code PUCK for $20 off) and Factor (factormeals.com/puck50)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McNeer from The Athletic. And folks, just last week, we were saying, look, not a lot happens this time a year. We're going to use most of the next week's episode to talk about all the snubs and flubs from the Four Nations roster picks and all that. We don't have to do that anymore. We're going to shove that in at the end. We're going to go, oh, you can't believe they left off Cole Cawfield or whatever. And everybody will cheer.

They'll say we did a great job. nailed it. They sure will. But first, we have to talk about basically the entire league changed in the last week. We had multiple trades. We had a market-defining contract extension. We had a coaching change. We had a bit of a general manager whining session, you might say.

We had a player basically go out for the entire regular season, a player that I talked about certainly as part of the Four Nations mix, didn't end up making it due to the injury. But let's start off, I think, with the most interesting team going right now for a whole bunch of different reasons. Easily. The New York Rangers. Yeah.

Friday. Wild card New York Rangers, the playoff bound. They're locked in. New York Rangers. Friday, around what, what would you say, like 930, 10 o'clock in the morning? Yeah. Something's up with the damn Rangers, folks. You're not going to believe this.

This is all the reports that are coming out. Looks like Jacob Trubo might get traded today. And if he isn't traded, he might end up on waivers. Something's happening. Now I'm sitting there. I'm going, hey, don't they have a game tonight? Aren't they playing the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight at 7 o'clock in Madison Square Garden? And indeed they were.

They were. But they had some business to take care of first on December 6th. So they trade in the end, Jacob Truba, who apparently rejected a trade to Columbus. Oh, I hadn't heard that. Yeah, that's what they're saying. Instead, because of that, he gets traded to Anaheim for Erho Vakanin, a conditional fourth round pick in 2025, and of course, all that cap space. Your thoughts on the Jacob Trubitrade.

So purely just the trade itself, pretty standard stuff, I think, for this sort of deal. Now, this sort of deal you don't often see around this time of the calendar, but yeah, like, it's a good player who makes too much money and therefore has very little trade value. going to a rebuilding team that needs some veteran stability and has cap space. I think maybe even mildly surprising that the Rangers got assets back as opposed to having to attach them. Yeah. But obviously not much. I mean, this wasn't a case where they're not moving the player because of the package they got in return. It's, as you say, it's about clearing cap space.

And that's fine. Yes. Under normal circumstances. Explain further what you mean by normal circumstances. I'm talking about normal circumstances where you don't have to threaten a guy to get him to waive a no trade clause, that he clearly doesn't want to waive. Right. But by using this apparently newly discovered waivers loophole for the same.

second time now, Chris Drury is able to force a guy out who doesn't want to leave and theoretically at least has the contractual ability to prevent himself from leaving. Right.

So I guess let's talk about that aspect of it. This really launched a lot of like this is bullshit, you know, takes because as you say, he had a 15 team, I believe. no trade clause, meaning he could reject a trade to roughly half the league.

And the reason that's interesting is that it's not a no move clause. And because it's a no move clause, the Rangers are perfectly within their rights to put anybody on waivers who doesn't have a no move clause that they fucking want to. You know? And it wasn't working out with Trubon. in New York for, I think you could say, a litany of reasons, like you said, way overpaid for what he is now as a player. And obviously he rejected a trade over the summer as is his contractual right because he had the no trade clause. And it just, you know, even in September, he's coming in going like, this is the last ride for this New York Rangers group, blah, blah, blah, you know.

everybody knew that this was going to happen I think the only issue is that it happened earlier than a lot of people were kind of expecting in part because the Rangers

haven't been that good this year especially lately yeah yeah and so Chris Drury is like well I gotta fucking do something everybody's gonna be mad at me

if I don't you know and I gonna tell you I was okay well we'll talk more about what my friend who's a Rangers fan who I was hanging out with this weekend said to me in a minute because it is more germane to the other thing the Rangers did on Friday. But he wasn't shedding a tear about losing Jacob Trubo. I'll tell you that right now.

Yeah. He was just like, okay, great. All that cap space. You know, right now I think the projection is that they can add like a $7 million player at the deadline. And the question will be, can they even wait that long? Correct, yes. Right now, the way things have gone for the last few weeks, by the time the deadline rolls around, they won't be buyers. Right.

But to bring it back to the thing about no trade, no move and all this, one of the ways that Truba could have been not as overpaid in terms of his salary cap is if he had gotten a full no move. It would have knocked like half a million bucks off. and maybe we're not having this discussion if he's a seven and a half million dollar defenseman instead of an $8 million defenseman. But, you know, all these people are saying maybe there needs to be like a modified no move where you can't be put on waivers,

but also you only have the ability to protect yourself against certain trades and this kind of thing. Yeah, maybe. Maybe you could do that, but that's not what the reality is right now. You know what I mean? It isn't the reality.

And you're right that all this stuff is negotiated. Yeah. And the dollar number is going to go up or down based on what other

considerations a player wants. And if a player says I want some trade protection, then the dollar value goes down a little bit. And if he says, I want total and complete no movement protection,

then the value goes down lower. I've seen a lot of people pulling out the Don Draper meme here about that's what the money is for. in the sense that, hey, man, for $8 million a year, yes, you can be moved. And the team is, as you say, they are certainly allowed in a situation where a guy is a no trade, but not a no move.

They're allowed to put them on waivers. That's standard understood. The difference here with what the Rangers are doing is they're not simply saying to a guy, hey, we have this trade. It's to a team that's on your list. If you're willing to accept it, off you go. If you're not willing to accept it, we're going to put you on waivers, and then who knows what will happen.

Right. What they are doing is they are going to the player and saying, we have this trade set up. If you do not accept it, we are going to put you on waivers where we have an agreement in place with the very team that you're supposed to not be able to be traded to, that they will claim you on waivers and then send us compensation in return for that.

I think that's where people are starting to say, well, wait a second, that's a trade. Sure. This isn't, you know, hey, we're going to throw you out there and if the ducks claim you, then you don't have product. This is, we're going to put you on waivers. They're going to claim you because they're near the bottom of the standings and they're going to send us the same compensation.

anyways. Right. Which is what they did with Goodrow as well. So it's legal, but it does feel like either a loophole or at least a bit of a shady way to do business. And the solution that has been kicked around that I think probably makes sense and maybe ends up in part of the next CBA is just to simply say that if a team is on your no trade list, they cannot claim you on waivers. sure. Yeah, I think that would make sense. It would make sense.

I mean, there would be teams like, you know, Columbus maybe, who would be like, well, wait a second. Hold on, fuck off, man. Yeah. You know, now we can't even claim guys on waivers and what have you. Right. I mean, the thing is that's not the intention of waivers, right? The intention of waivers is if there's a guy who, you know, is an NHL player but is maybe on a stack team. Like a guy who's...

It's supposed to be player-friendly, is what it's... Correct, yes. You know, it reaches back to, like, the olden days where you had some teams that were completely stacked and some teams that were barely able to ice a lineup. And if you happen to be the fifth best right winger in the Montreal Canadian system... You would have been the second best guy on the St. Louis Blues. You could be the 10th best winger in the league, but if you're stuck on the habs, you're going to spend your whole career in the minors.

And the idea was, no, they should not. they shouldn't be able to just stash you there. It should be available to other teams in the league. So you've got what, in theory, is a player-friendly device being used in a very player-unfriendly way. And like anything else, it'll come down to, does the PA like it? No, I'm sure they don't.

Are they willing to negotiate on it? And what do you give up or what other things do you leave on the table? But bigger picture, we can certainly add the Rangers to that category of teams like Vegas and Tampa where they're willing to go cold-hearted. And I'm not sure you mind that if you're a Rangers fan. Now, with Truba, you probably don't. If they start pulling it on someone else that you like a little bit more, maybe you feel differently. But you kind of want this from your front offices, don't you? That's what I'm saying.

my friend who's a Rangers fan was like, good. You know, like, he didn't, he didn't care about all the shady dealings and that kind of thing, you know, if you want to call it that. The other thing I wanted to say about Truba is, you know, you hate to see the reigning Mark Messier Award winner talk about how hard it was to lead this year. I expect that from a guy who came in like sixth in the Mark Messier vote. Yeah, that's not top five, Messier. No, not let alone top one, which he is apparently. But like, it is crazy to do that to your captain, though. All joking aside, you know?

I mean, when's the last time a captain got traded in season? And it wasn't just like, look, man, we're not going anywhere. Why don't you go chase a cup? Kind of a thing. You know, I feel like Mark Gerdano was probably. the last captain traded in season, unless I'm forgetting someone obvious. Yeah, he, and that was... He's got him, Ryan O'Reilly, but again, like those were the...

You're stretching back a bit for Ryan O'Reilly. To the least. It was like three years ago, right? Something like that. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Anyway, it is just kind of like... Was O'Reilly the captain in Buffalo? Or did I make that up? I don't know if he was. Yeah. Well, who care? We'll talk about the Sabres in a bit. Yeah, we'll get...

There's a lot to talk about. But yeah, you know, I like this for the Rangers in so far as it is helpful to that. I wonder if it's helpful to them in the long term in terms of like, they don't really... They're not the biggest draft and developed team in the world. They're more of a let's sign a guy. team and I wonder if this hurts it didn't hurt them with Igor Shisterkin which we'll talk about that's it right I mean everybody always anytime you do this they go well now they're not going to be able to sign anyone and I we've almost never seen that play out right I just wonder if guys are a little more cautious about like if they end up being one of those teams where it's like you know 45% of our roster has a full no move that yes that I could add Absolutely see when they sit down to negotiate with somebody and they go, no, I want the full no move. But the thing is, whenever teams are negotiating with somebody, the no move always feels like a good idea then.

It's only a couple years later when you go, wait a second. So, yeah, let's talk about Shisterkin because. Yes. So the thing that my friend said to me, as soon as I see him, he's like, I got. We got to talk about something. I said, what's that? He said, should they trade Igor Shisterkin? This is on Thursday night.

Okay. Maybe even Wednesday night. There was like no whiff of the Truba stuff happening, let alone the Shisterkin extension, which is eight years, 11.5 million dollars per. Almost all the money is in bonuses, which makes it buyout proof. And that includes 41. $1.85 million of the, I think it's 96, if I'm doing the math, right, in the first three years of the contract. And a full no move clause for the entirety of the deal. Yeah.

Someone learned a lesson from earlier in the day. You think Igor had the agent double-checked the wording on that one? It says move, right? Yeah. And as a... So a couple of points that I made about this on Monday in Monday's column was, first of all, didn't it feel like this, we went into the season, like this is the biggest story looming over everything is the U-Sterkin contract that's going to reset the goal in my mind? And then it happened and it was like the second biggest thing his team did that day. Everybody was like, we don't have time for it.

Like, all right, here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, they signed the guy, sure. And the other thing is, it's a, as I'm sure we'll get into, this is a contract that is absolutely dripping with risk. And yet, I don't know that Chris Durie had any choice. And I think if you hooked him up to a lie detector,

he'd probably tell you that if this goes really bad, it's not going to be his problem in years six, seven, and eight anyways. Correct. Now, let's talk about it from the point of view of what my friend was saying of, should they trade Shisterkin. Obviously they didn't. But the reason why is he, like me, was he Googled

Igor Shisterkin age. Uh-huh. You know? And he was like, uh-oh, he turns 29 on December 30th. So he'll be like almost 30 when this new, uh, when this new deal starts? Mm-hmm. When's the last time the Rangers signed a guy who was like a really good goalie to, uh,

a big eight-year extension around the time he was 30 years old. Anybody remember this? How that worked out? I'm sure it was great. I'm sure it worked out fine. Yeah, they didn't end up having to buy that guy out and then see him sign with a team in their division or anything like that, you know? Um, and look, obviously, Egorcia Sirkin's one of the best goalies in the world. Um, I think we talked about it a week or two ago where there was an article about the Rangers that was like,

Has it just been like a kind of pretty good team and Igor Shisterkin standing on his head the whole time? And you're like, yeah, of course it has been. I might be it. Yeah. You know? The astronaut meme, of course. And like, I don't know. Like they couldn't let him go because if they did that, then, you know, like you said, Chris Drew is out on his ass.

He's got a box full of, like he's got a ficus plant in a box, out on, uh, Well, that's it, right? Out on Broadway. The incentives are completely misaligned here. Yes. For Chris Dury personally, because if he signs him and it works out, Shasturkin keeps playing at a Vezna level,

maybe not for all eight years, but for enough of them that the contract is, is a good contract. Probably means Chris Drury still has a job. because the Rangers are doing well. If it doesn't work out, if Shasturkin plays poorly or doesn't play up to the level

that he now needs to, Chris Dury is probably out of a job in a couple years. Yep. Flip side of that, if they trade him, you know, tough to trade him during the season, but if they do,

or they even trade him over the summer, last summer, you probably get a windfall to pick some prospects. Yes. But again, I'm Chris Dury. Oh, great. I just got you.

first round pick and two blue chip prospects. Guess what? That's a little gift under the tree to the next GM because I'm getting fired because my team stinks now. So, and that's not a Ranger problem. It's not even a hockey problem. This is just how sports works. Yeah.

I think given all the chatter around Shisterkin wanting to reset the goalie market, this didn't feel like an unreasonable contract ultimately. Right. And, you know, to circle back to the Truman discussion, the reason why it didn't reset the market, really, like in a huge, in the way that we were all kind of imagining that it might, is because he got the full no move clause. This is the tradeoff, you know? They probably save themselves like a million dollars a year by getting that full no move in. And like you say, what does Chris Drury give a shit like six years from now? You know, most GMs don't stay in their jobs this long. A decade, it would be roughly, I think, for him if he makes it to six or seven years.

Yeah. And that's just not. It's very unlikely you've done that in New York without winning a cup or winning a lot or. Yeah, that's right. And so, but the reason my friend was saying they should trade him or should they trade him and kind of wanting me to go yes. and I kind of said, I see the argument for sure, was kind of my answer.

Was that, and we said this, like I'd be more comfortable paying him $13 million a year with a full no move for five than I am paying him 11 and a half for eight. Yes, I would be with you on that. And if I'm remembering, right, wasn't that kind of the thing that where they wanted to go long term with him to keep the number down?

And he was like, well, no, it's a big number. and it's less years, I'd have been like, yeah, fucking sign me up, brother, you know? I think there were different reports. I might be remembering that wrong. Yeah, no, I feel like there was a report on that and then, you know, there were different versions floating around.

But yeah, no, I would have, I would have gone with that. Do you want all of it as bonus money in year one? I don't give a shit. Like, let's go three years. Yeah. That's fine with me, you know? Let's reset the market again in 2028. Yep.

And, and I mean, the thing we should say about resetting the market is it's, it is the, The biggest goal of contract ever, surpassing Kerry Price by a million bucks. Yep. But as percentage of the cap and all that, it's not really a reset over Sergei Brabowski or price. In fact, it's probably a lower percentage than carry price. You never really know if something's reset the market until the market follows along. You know, we've said that before. The Mitch Marner thing, right.

The Mitch Marner, right. Oh, he just reset the market. and then the market went, no, he didn't, and went right back to business as usual. The thing with Scherkin is, like, I don't even know who the next goalie who needs a big contract is going to be. We cleaned up all the other ones while we were waiting. Yeah, it's not immediately clear who, like, the... Soros got signs, swayman, Ottinger. Hellebuck was like two years ago now.

Well, Buck's already done. Vasilevsky's got a few years left. Saroken. I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Sorokin's kicked in. Like all those top tier guys, I guess the only one you would say is like Gustafson,

but I think even he signed for maybe not like a huge extension like that, but like something. I mean, it's really when like Joseph Wall and Anthony Stollers will both pass Sturkin in average value next year. Yeah, you're right. No, you know what? Gustafson, if he keeps it up, does feel like the next one. Like, he's been awesome this year, and he's up after next season. Okay. So, you know, he could get, like, he's not going to get Schisturkin money or anything close to it.

Like, I think he's below that. The rising tide has that's exactly right. That's exactly right. You know, if he ends up at like seven, I think maybe you can say Schuster can reset the market. But also, if he ends up at seven and he's like 9.30 again next year, you're just like, what a fucking steal, you know? So, yeah, I feel like that's maybe the only one that is like immediately springing to mind. Yeah, I'm looking at Bobrovsky is actually up in another.

Yeah, but he's going to be like 40. That's going to be a different deal. Markstrom's up in another year, but he's getting up there. I'm not seeing anyone, Saros got that, you know, and that UC Saros deal looks pretty good right now. Yeah. Yeah, even Allmark signed. So, yeah, it'll be, I don't know. I, it kind of was the last one in and sounds like he's happy with it.

I don't hate the deal for the Rangers. I kind of have the same view as everyone else, which is, oh, this is certainly not team-friendly, but what could they do? And I don't know that there's a scenario where you can trade him unless it just, Because the only reason you're going to trade him is if you feel like the contract demands are just unreasonable. Correct. In which case, by admitting that, you crater the trade market for him. Also, and also you've got to find a team that's like, oh, yeah, we have a spare $11.5 million,

lying around for next summer. No problem. And we've got enough room to take him this year. And we also feel like we're Stanley Cup contenders, Yep. Minus a goalie. And yeah, you can look at some teams like that. We'll talk about Colorado in a bit.

You know, you can look at Edmonton, but there isn't the cap space to make that happen. It's just not a realistic scenario. I'm the last one to bow to this idea of it's just too hard to make a trade. But if there's any trade that's going to be too hard to make in the middle of a season, the highest paid starting goal tender in the league or about to be is probably. that guy. Yes.

One last thing to talk about with the New York Rangers kind of tangentially. Mm-hmm. Is the concept of soft tampering. Give me the sense of, like, how is this playing elsewhere? Because this is very big in Ottawa. This is a big deal. I mean, you know, maybe I'm not the guy to ask because I look at my fucking phone all day and I almost exclusively follow hockey account,

so everybody's talking about it. I will say that, like, okay, so to set this up, they're doing Board of Governors meetings, and it's a perfect excuse for a bunch of Canadian media guys to go hang out at a golf course in California for a few days. Weird how, like, every time I turn on TSN, there's like nine guys standing around in golf shirts. I'm like, going, I mean, this is what I'm always saying.

These guys have it hard. They got a text all day. We don't get Gino Reda down there. We're not going to be able to hold this thing together. That's exactly right, man. So they're all down there, and Pierre LeBron was just hanging around the lobby, maybe having a, you know, blasted a cigarette, who knows, you know? Michael Ann Lauer walks by.

He's like, I got a bone to pick with Larry Brooks. Yeah. Pierre LeBron, you know, turns on the recorder. Off we go. And basically what had happened was the night before. all the Truba stuff came out, Larry Brooks covers the Rangers from the New York Post,

basically wrote, boy, the Rangers would really like to get Brady Kachuk on board. Yeah. Essentially saying that the Rangers are looking to make a big deal and then mentioning Brady Kachuk as the sort of guy. That's right. And so Michael And Lauer, the owner of the Ottawa senators says this should be illegal. They shouldn't be allowed to do this.

It's illegal for you to ask me that. That's exactly right. You're not allowed to say that the Rangers are interested in Brady Cachuck is basically, you know. Memo to the media. Stop saying any senators players are. good. Yeah, that's right. And there was more to it about, like, you know, he's the captain of the team and the

Rangers are like, yeah, obviously we don't give a shit about that kind of thing. Yeah. The sanctity of the captaincy maybe was not the right time to lecture the Rangers on that. Yeah, that was honestly the funniest part to me. He's like, you can't do this about a team's captain. And the Rangers are like, we just, we just shived our captain so hard, kicked him over the side of the boat, man. We had this guy walk the fucking plank at sword point.

You think we give a shit about your captain? Come on. And we should say here that the frustration from the Ottawa side is, Larry Brooks wrote this, it would certainly seem plausible that Larry would write this based on what sources within the Rangers are telling. Of course. Yeah, I mean, you know.

That feels like a pretty, pretty easy lines to read between. Of course he doesn't reveal that in the piece. But somebody would have told him this. And I do want to say this. I have seen a handful of people like, well, Larry Brooks just make stuff up. Stop it. Stop doing that. There's...

Brooks is not making anything up. There is nobody more plugged in with the Rangers organization in the sport. If he wrote it... Or in the media. If he wrote it, it's because he got it from somebody within the Rangers. Now you can have the conversation about why would somebody tell him that? Are they intentionally putting this out there? Is he letting himself be part of that process, et cetera, et cetera?

But this he's making it up nonsense where, like, I get that these days, anytime you read anything in the media you don't like, you get to just say, plug your ears and say it's fake and made up and not real, knock it off. Be smarter than that. Larry Brooks isn't making anything. up. Now, that doesn't mean that the senators are interested in trading Brady Kachuk. It doesn't mean they've discussed it. It doesn't mean they would even answer the phone. But it's not made

up. The senator's reaction was very interesting. They're, because they, even before Andlar, they pretty much went on the offensive on this to shut it right down. Both in terms of going through their own media contacts and their VP of communication whose name escapes me, basically even tweeted something out that strongly implied that there was... This is BS. No truth at all to this. Yeah. And I can tell you from an Ottawa perspective, and this is part of why I was asking you

how it's playing elsewhere. Like, I get that... I think if I was just some fan in California or whatever who, you know, just kind of of hearing the high-level version of this story, I can see where I would feel like the senators are being kind of whiny on this, that there is a little bit of like, you're not allowed to talk about our players

and, you know, oh, we don't want to hurt Brady Kachuk's feelings and making him think that some other team in the league might want him or, you know, that kind of thing. Just all I would say here is keep in mind the history in Ottawa. Sure. The history of star players wanting out of Ottawa, from Danny Heatley to Jason Spetsa to Eric Carlson to Mark Stone, to varying degrees, right, guys who either orchestrated their way out or clearly didn't mind leaving.

Even Daniel Alfordson leaving as a free agent. It's never ended well for just about anyone in Ottawa. And especially, you know, the way they were viewed. league wide in the last years in the Melnik reign. It was a very big deal in Ottawa when they were able to get guys like Tom Shabbat being the first one to sign long term, sign big eight-year deals and say, I'm here, I'm planning my flag. And Brady Kacharuk is one of those guys signed the big contract, said, you know,

this is my team, I'm here, I'm the captain. I get why they would be overly sensitive to his name of anyone. out, anyone's out there being thrown out. Yeah. I don't, there is a part of me that wonders if like Brady Kachuk himself isn't kind of looking at this like, guys, can you dial it down just a bit? Like I'm, my dad got traded a bunch of times. My brother got traded.

Like, I'm not so fragile that I need a full court press anytime my name shows up in a rumor. But I do get why there was probably. a feeling in Ottawa that we need to slap this down immediately, especially with it coming out in New York. Yeah. We need to shut this thing right down. Now, whether having your owner go off about soft tampering and, you know, the Rangers had

a, I like their response where they were basically like, talk to the commissioner. That's exactly right. They're like, you're like, you're going to title on us. Go talk to the commissioner and we'll deal with it then. And with the implication being or don't and in which case shut up about it. Right. The other thing I will say, though, is with having the owner go and do this, this thing, this will play very well in Ottawa. Sure.

This fan base loves an us against the world narrative, as many fan bases do. They also love an us against the big market narrative. They tried to put their whole identity around that with Toronto. They've done it to some extent with places like Montreal and Boston and even the, you know, the race. for a bit, the flyers for a while. They like this. So, you know, mean, nasty, big budget rangers circling around trying to steal our player

and our owner slams his fist down and says, over my dead body, like, that will play very well with the fan base. And maybe that's all it is. Maybe it's just a case, you know, saying, just like when they lost the draft pick and Andlar got up there and was, you know, like, hey, I didn't, you know, I got misled

or this and that. People here love that. So you can't play the card all the time because eventually, and I've even seen like a few fans here already being like, oh man, we're coming across a bit whiny here. That's what I was going to say.

Yeah. Is especially, like, let's say you're the league. Like, this is why I think it was smart for the Rangers to be like, bring it up with the fucking commissioner that dog. I don't know what to tell you. It's this simple. Anne Lauer's whining about this.

Anne Lauer's whining about, I got misled, you know what I mean? Like, if you want to be one of these owners who has like a good relationship with the league, maybe you don't go whining to the media about how unfair everybody's being to you about everything. Like you don't, like this read a little bit like they're protesting too much about,

we've never discussed Brady Kachuk in a trade ever. Write that down. You know what I mean? I'm like, it's never come up, really? Never? All these rumors for years about, oh, they got to shake up the core. It came up earlier this season. And I'm not talking about last week.

I'm talking about like a month ago. They were like, oh, the senators were off to another bad start. Maybe they need to shake up the core. It's never come up that someone was like, Brady Kachuk, what do you think? Come on, man. Nobody believes that, right? Even if it's true, it would be so implausible. that like, who would believe it?

The implication is that they've never even heard his name in, so no team has ever asked about him? I'm going to, I just, hold on, I just closed the article. Here we go. There's never been a conversation about any team about, with any team about Brady, quote from the athletic article. So that, I mean, in theory, a conversation is two ways. So if I call up and go, hey, I was thinking about Brady Kachuk and they go, nope. From their perspective, that's not a conversation. I get it.

Okay. Yeah. So I get the previous quote was, I can tell you 100%. There's never actually been an ounce of discussion about Brady Kachuk being anything other than an Ottawa senator. Okay. I mean, you're right. It's over the top. But I get it.

Right? Because if he gives a more realistic answer, if he leaves the door open, even a crack, we kick it down, right? Right. If he goes like, look, of course, we're in NHL, we've got a bunch of people in the front office whose jobs are to consider every possible scenario. Yeah, we've considered this one. There was nothing. There's never been a situation, though, where it would have made sense. Right.

Headline in the New York Post, senators consider moving Brady Kachuk. Sure. The other thing I want to say about the senators vis-a-vis this article. And again, kind of the state of the team, and I just allude. to it. Like, we're not going to trade Brady Kachuk. If you look, again, this is the thing Ann Lauer said to Pierre LeBron. If you look at our underlying numbers, basically, I think he said analytics, but if you

look at our underlying numbers, they're better than our record indicates and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. How many fucking years do we have to hear this about this auto-assenter? They're actually, you know, like, because he's also talking about, they're a young group and all this kind of stuff. How old's Brady Kachuk now? You know, like, how old is Tom a Shabbat? Like,

Tim Stutz, how about this? Tim Stutzel is 23 years old. He's been, he's been able to be in the league for five fucking years already. And like, Josh Norris, Drake Batherson, these guys are 27 or 26, whatever they are, you know. These guys have all been around for a long time. The senators can't seem to get. these wheels spinning and there's just like no discussion about like maybe something does have to be different you know and say this say this for the rangers they didn't like the situation they got

themselves into and you know the truba contract i don't think drew re-signed but certainly the good droid contract he did if i'm remembering right um he's making a fucking change he's like oh this isn't working this thing that we put together isn't working we got to change you know And the senators are like, man, if we could just get a save for the 40th year in a row, it's unbelievable. Uh-huh. Like, it's so fun, you know, like the thing with Adam Goddaddy's scoring all these goals, Adam Goddada had a player I covered when he was in college. I love watching Adam Goddette play hockey.

And he's like, you know, I knew I had it in me to score 13 goals or whatever. It's a career high for him, I believe. And everyone's like, isn't this an amazing story? and it's like the amazing story of the man who shot 37% for two months. Yeah, I guess that is amazing. You know, I don't know. Like it's just, like you said, they're always trying to put a spin on it. It feels like in Ottawa.

Well, I think it's, yeah, I agree with you. But I get in the context, I certainly get why the idea was, we're not going to let this stand. Whether it was done the way, whether I under the other way, whether I'm like, you know, I, I, I feel like he's a guy that Hart's certainly in the right place, but sometimes when he gets going,

maybe you're kind of sitting there going now. And this is all leaving aside the irony of saying this to Pierre LeBron, the guy who's on insider trading every night on TSN, whose whole job is to do soft tampering for other teams. You know, like, come on. Like, if I'm Chris Drury, I'm like, hey, you know what else would be soft tampering? When you send a memo out to the league saying, here are some guys available for trade,

and it immediately leaks. and banks your entire dressing room. This is what I'm saying, man. Like, the whole, there's a whole economy. I mean, this podcast, you know, go down the list of hockey podcasts where all we do is talk about trade rumors. I'm not, I'm, the only thing is like, no one's telling me, like, you know, here's what the memo Chris Rury sent out said. We're just, we're making stuff up. Right.

But even I get that stuff sometimes. Someone will be like, oh, did you hear about so and so? I'll be like, damn, that's crazy. But I'm not, I'm not going to, like, it's not my job to report it. I don't fucking care, you know? I'm just like, oh, interesting. That's, that's kind of my reaction to when I get that kind of news, you know? And I don't, again, there's like a whole underground economy of this.

And not just in the NHL, in all sports. Like, you think Adrian Wogan, not that he's doing it anymore, but Wodg and Shams and, I don't know who the baseball guys are. the whole Juan Soto thing happened the other day and that seemed to involve a lot of, he's going to the Phillies, he's going to the Red Sox, oh, he's going to the Mets, okay, great. And so, like, that's just every sport. I don't know who the NFL guys are.

I'm sure there are NFL guys who do it. There are quite a few. Yeah, of course. And so, like, we're going to, again, the NHL sent out, or, you know, underlined at the GM meetings, like, you know, if there's any pre-July, I won conversations and blah, blah, blah, you know, someone could get in trouble.

Then what are we fucking do it? You know what I mean? Like, isn't this the whole thing for teams, players, agents, maybe less so players, but teams, agents, agents, GMs, like, go down the fucking list, reporters. And also, like, ultimately what drives this, as anyone in the media business will tell you, is that trade and transaction talk does extraordinary. ordinarily well. Yeah. Which means the fans like this stuff. The fans want it.

It's good for business for all of us, man. So, you don't have to like it, Michael Landlauer, but you will learn to love it because one of these days. God, he's cutting a promo on him. One of these days, someone is going to, someone in the auto addressing room is going to need to go and you're going to need to do a little bit of soft tampering. You know what I mean, man? That's right.

Don't call Ryan up. It's not doing your dirty work for you. Well, I mean, you can call me up. I'll just go, oh, wow, cool. I love knowing that. Thanks. Keep it to myself. I do love the idea that even putting aside what he said and, you know, the specific way that he phrased it, that this idea that I've seen some places like, what gives Michael Andelar the right?

The newest owner in the league or like $2 billion, I think. Yeah, it's like, well, he gave you a billion dollars. So I feel like, yeah, he should be allowed. to talk. He can talk. That's fine. I know, I know, like, we want him to sit at the kitty table and wait while, like, some dude who paid $40,000 for his team.

Gets all the attention. Only Jeremy Jacobs may speak. Yeah. I feel like a billion. I don't know where the line is, but I feel like a billion dollars. That'll probably. Dude, dude outbid Snoop Dog. Let's hear what he has to say.

You imagine if it was Snoop Dog? Damn. This is the first time I've really felt bad that, Snoop Dog didn't get the team. Yeah, I'll tell you this. I'd be sitting here saying, I agree with Snoop Dog. Everything he's saying is correct.

Imagine you're just sitting there and all of a sudden, like, new disc track just dropped. And it's just Snoop Dogg going in. Snoop Dog going in on Larry Brooks. I don't think Snoop Dog is dropping too many discracks these days. I think he's more like a doing commercials guy. And that's fine.

You know, he earned it. He put his fucking time in. But yeah, my point is, you don't really want this to go away because I don't want this to go away you don't want this to go away those other guys don't want this to go away just like the whole thing

the Rangers have it exactly right if it's that much of a problem call Gary I'm loath to to praise the Rangers for you know their well especially if you are stunts or whatever

but dude if this becomes an owner fight like Adams I'm sorry you don't have to like Anilar but nobody's on team James Dolan in an owner fight. Well, I mean, what if we're talking about his band, though? Yeah, okay. Well, that, I mean, sure.

I'd like to see Michael Anlower get up and rip a sweet solo. Let's have a battle of the bands here. All right. We could make that work. Yeah, that's what I mean. Snoop Dog would have been the better option. This is what I'm saying, you know. JD in the straight shot, it's going to be real tough for Ann Lauer to recover if it's a

to head battle. That's all. All right. On that note, why don't we take a break? We'll come back and we'll talk about the other trade that happened in the league just yesterday. This week's episode is brought to you by our good friends at game time. Folks, you know the drill by now. This is where I talk about how much fun it is to go to a hockey game, go to live sports, go to shows and concerts and and that sort of thing, and I fire open the GameTime app and I take a look through. And I find out that, for example,

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You head to factormeals.com slash puck 50 and use the code Puck 50 to get 50 off your first box plus free shipping. That's code Puck50 at FactorMeals.com. slash puck 50 to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping while your subscription is active. All right, we're back. And, uh, well, you know, we talk about the puck soup curse on here sometimes, you know. And someone said, hey, is this Alexander Giorgiyev, McKenzie Blackwood deal? Is this puck soup curse material? And it's, it was only puck soup outline writers curse material.

Yeah. Insofar as I had already sent Sean the outline. Yes. Not everything that happens in between episodes falls in the curse category. That's exactly right. Then it would be really hard to do a show without being cursed. We would feel extremely cursed. I have said before that I think NHLGM should make all their news during the two hours that we're recording every week.

That would be really helpful to me. But most of them don't see the goal. Instant reactions. Yeah. They're really, they're kind of soft tampering with. the show if you think about it. You know, who said it better than you, man? That's exactly right. But yeah, so the trade last night is as follows. Alexander Georgiev, Nikolai Kovalenko, a 2026 second round pick, a 2025 fifth round pick for McKenzie Blackwood, Giovanni Smith,

and a 2027 fifth round pick. Your thoughts on this earth-shattering trade? Well, I am continued to be surprised at the turnaround of McKenzie Blackwood who has gone from a guy in New Jersey that was like the next team Canada goalie to a guy who wasn't even

a devil's goalie to sent out to San Jose to go get shelled for a rebuilding team and then played well enough for long enough that a cup contender was like that's going to be our guy. I guess, I mean, the avalanche continued to disprove the idea that you can't trade goalies during the season. I have, that is a myth, despite what I was saying about Shasturkin earlier, the fact that you just can't trade any sort of goalie in the season has never been the case.

And they are now... I believe, by the way, I believe this is, I think I saw this post last night. This is the first time that two team, two's goalies that a team started the season with were, traded by Christmas. Yes. That was from Chris. Oh, good Lord. I'm not even going to.

Chris Jastrozenzymski. Yeah. Chris J. I retweeted it. Yeah, it's the first time in ancient history, a team has traded both open night goalies before Christmas. The last time a team traded both opening night goalies by the end of the season was

the Buffalo Sabres in 2014-15, which is interesting because that was the team that was openly, blatantly, transparently tanking to try to get Connor McDavid. So they traded their goal. They're in the Hagen sweepstakes now. Get them out of there. And the avalanche. And the avalanche are doing the exact opposite, saying, we want to win a cup and these two guys stink.

So, um, decent bit of business for San Jose, you know, get a guy, get a high pick for, uh, not that high. Second round,

it's going to be in the 60s. It is. 50s, maybe. Yeah. But, yeah, well, what's interesting is I saw Mike Greer refer to this as the kind of trade that you don't have any choice but to make it when Colorado called and offered. Yeah. I wouldn't go quite that far except to say that, hey, McKenzie Blackwood, you're fucking up the tank, brother. You can't be making 50 saves.

What are you doing? So they go out and they get the guy who's like giving up four goals a game. we're right back in where we want to be. We can't let Chicago fall behind us in the standings. We're not going to. So I saw somebody say, you know, I'm a little sad to see Nikolikeovolenko go, but of course you had to make this trade if you're the avalanche. Nikolai Kovalenko, I think, is like 28 years old and on pace for 20 points.

You can let guys like this go. They're not all prospects, you know? But yeah, I think, you know, the way, Blackwood's played in San Jose, it can't not be an upgrade in theory, I guess. In actual practice, we might find out different. If you're San Jose, what team is going to offer you more? Like, when is McKenzie Blackwood's market value going to be higher? Never.

And what team is going to offer you more? Like, what team, if you sit there and go, you know what, I think we can get a first for this guy? Who's given you that, if not Colorado? Exactly right. And yeah, I mean, you know, if you're Colorado, Blackwood's up at the end of the year. And if he's like pretty good, you're happy to re-sign him. And if he's not, well, see you later, you know. And because Georgie, I seem to recall had term left.

Now I've got to double check that. But, oh, no, he was up after this year. I was wrong about that. But again, they didn't, they didn't want to keep him. And, you know, the play shows why. He's been horrible this year. Yeah. Like, I think I wrote, like.

You can't say they didn't. They didn't give it time. Totally. They gave it as much time as they could have. And it just, it wasn't happening there. 874. That sucks. Like, even if we're saying, you know, we got to get used to.

Exactly, man. Like, even if we're saying, we've got to get used to look, you know, 9-10 goal-tending isn't what it used to be. Like, 9-10 goal-tending is some of the best in the league. And, you know, five years ago, you wouldn't have said that. And now it's closer to, like, 905 is 902 is, like, the league average or whatever. 8-74, like you said, they would have sent your ass to the HL when there were, like, 21 teams in the league. You know, so it had to happen for the avalanche. I think I wrote like a week or two ago, like just, man, what if the abs had like a goalie who could stop the puck?

Wouldn't they be really good? Yep. You know? And they're, you know, they're in a playoff position, barely. Yeah, not by points percentage, but by points. Oh, right. Yeah, look at that. Calgary still.

But it's Calgary. Nobody believes. Yeah. I mean, but it is, I mean, kind of, it's the two teams in the last wildcard spots making the noise this week, New York and Colorado. How about this? That's why you can't wait another month if you're the avalanche for the price to go down. The avalanche have given up the second most goals in the NHL. Yikes.

103 and 29 games. Something had to give, man. Yep. It's that simple. And, you know, again, for San Jose, how do you not like it? They're downgrading in goal. We're a fun team to watch. You know, we're, you know, we're being more competitive than we ought to be, et cetera, et cetera.

And there's a chance that your give does well there. And you either think about extending him, hopefully short term as like a, you know, come stick around for another year. Yeah. Can rebuild your career. Maybe even flip them at the deadline, although I don't imagine too many contenders. Yeah, not a big line. But who knows, right?

If he plays great for three months? You never know. But yeah, I like it for Santa. I continue to like what my career is doing with the shirts. Yeah, I mean, look, they, this is actually a pretty good transition point here. They're still in the tanking phase of the tank. You know, they got the, yeah, they got the number one pick.

They'd like to be better than they are probably, but like won't hurt them to add a second like top five pick. That's for sure. You know, then you're, then in theory you're running Celebrini and, uh, and Will Smith and, and whoever the next guy is or maybe you add someone on defense, whatever, whatever they feel like they need to do. It's not like a bad thing to have another really good young player on the roster. It's that simple. And, you know, I think that... Of course, they've got their goalie of the future anyway, so... It's true.

Like McKenzie Blackwood had a long-term path there, you wouldn't think. Yep, you're right. I completely forgot about the Ascarov aspect of it, but you're totally right. And, you know, contrast that with what's going on in Chicago right now, where, you know, nobody thought these guys would be any good. but they did the thing that we have talked about on the show quite a bit of being like, okay, we're done rebuilding. We got Connor Bedard. We have to go put a team around Connor Bedard to support him and help him grow.

And maybe we won't make the playoffs this year, but we want to be competitive and blah, blah, blah. They pulled the shoot too early on that rebuild. It's starting to look like, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it might be. And this is always the tough thing, right? Because it is so easy to stand back and go, you should just be really, really bad and collect picks

and then snap your fingers and be good and be in the playoff hunt. And it almost never works that way. You've got to take the intermediate steps. You've got to start surrounding your superstar with somebody or else they become that guy who, you know, they become Jack Eichel in Buffalo. which we'll get to in a bit, where you're five years into your career and you've never played a playoff game and you're sitting there going, what are we, what are we doing? Well, again, this is, this is the, it's the Detroit thing. It's the Sabers thing. It's the Blue Jackets thing of like, we've been stinky for a long time.

And now that we have a guy that we think we can build the team around, what we're going to do is we're going to go out and sign Taylor Hall and Tyler Bertuzi and Corey Perry Perry Perry Perry. and Nick Folino and Jason Dickinson, like, go down the list, where it's like, yep, he's pretty good. Yeah, he's pretty, he's a little old, but yeah, he's, you know, and it's like, by signing mediocre or slightly better than mediocre players to surround your young guys and teach them how to win or have success or winning habits, whatever you want to say. And Ottawa, I would argue, did the same thing at a certain point. like aren't you just setting yourself up to have one superstar young player and a bunch of mediocre veterans who were maybe a little overpaid because you had to pay that overpay them a little bit to come to your awful team and then what's the ceiling on that team you know and this is all a prelude to

they fired Luke Richardson last week yeah I think on Thursday and I get why they did it. A million percent totally understand why you would fire Luke Richardson. You cannot be in a situation where your future Hall of Fame level player, if that's how we're going to talk about Connor Bedard. Certainly that was the level of hype coming into the league. This is a surefire mega star in the league. We'll be captaining the All-Star team for many years to come, et cetera, et cetera.

Team Canada guy, all this. That was the talk about Connor Bedard. You can't have him at various points in his second year in the league going. I'm really frustrated with how things are going for me. You can't have him playing on the third line next to Jason Dickinson. See, that's the weird thing, right? Because I understand you get Connor Bardard, you go, we've got to surround him with some talent. So then you go and sign guys and they don't play with Connor Bedard.

Yeah. And that was the thing that had you scratching your head with Luke Richardson. and now he's gone and they're still not necessarily putting those guys together. Like we all kind of looked at and went, oh, they got Bertuzi and Taylor Hall with Bardard. That'll work. Did you see that, did you see that clip that got posted the other night of Bedard? Like Chicago has an empty net. Bedard, like, carries the puck into the zone, goes through two guys like they're not even there,

passes the puck to Tyler to Foley, Tyler Bertuzi, or Tyler Toffoli, Tyler Bertuzi, who, you know, if he takes two strides, he has a clear path to the net, and he just dumps it into the fucking corner. Mm-hmm. You know, like the Tyler Bertuzzi signing so far looks like a disaster, right? Um, but the thing I wanted to say, too, about the Luke Richardson thing is, in addition to you don't want your young players to regress, you also don't want Taylor Hall to be like, I don't know why I got healthy scratched.

Yeah, that was a problem. That whole situation was, was a mess. Yeah, and like you, the whole thing with being Luke Richardson in this, in this situation is obviously you're probably not the long-term

coach here, right? Nobody, you know, it's the, um, the David Quinn thing in San Jose a few years ago, where it's like, we hired him. I don't think he's going to be the coach when, when we're ready to be a competitive team again. We're just trying to know it works.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, when you're the coach in that situation, one thing you really don't want to do is like rock the boat in any way. Like, I don't know why, you know, Connor Bedard isn't just out on the power play for the full two minutes. You know, I don't know why he's not starting 85% of his shifts in the offensive zone. Obviously, you want him to learn how to play defense at some point, blah, blah, blah. But like you said, putting him on the third line and being like, yeah, you're going to play like,

14 minutes tonight or whatever. Crazy. Yep. So not the biggest surprise, but the other thing I wanted to say is they bring up Andrew Sorens in it from Rockford as the interim coach and then they'll do the thing of maybe we hire him this summer, maybe we don't, maybe we find somebody else. But the other thing about this is those guys that like we were talking about of, oh yeah, they made some picks for some young.

guys, blah, blah, blah, blah. They just called up Kevin Kortinski. It feels like Frank Nazar is going to maybe be able to stick around instead of this brief, you know, audition. It looks like that he's going to make it a little tough to ignore, right? And I don't know. Again, I feel like if you're trying to build a team that's competitive. with your young guys.

Maybe you have the young guys in the fucking lineup instead of playing in the AHL. I get why you play him in the AHL. But you can't you can't act like, well, the rebuild's done. And of course, like Kevin Kornchinsky is still in the AHL

and Frank Nazar is still in the AHL. You know what I mean? Like, if you're going to try to take a step coming out of a rebuild, have the guys that you want to rebuild with on the roster. Mm-hmm. And just to tie it all together,

The terrible rock bottom Blackhawks based the Rangers last night. And won. And beat them, of course. You know, that's another thing that when all that happened, my friend was like, it's actually a really good time for the Rangers to make these moves because they're playing a bad team in Pittsburgh. And then who did they play the other night that they also lost to? The Flyers, maybe? the Rangers

Was it the The Crackin that they had the So up Yeah so like What my friend said was It's actually really smart To make all these moves now Because the next four games were against Pittsburgh

Seattle Chicago and Buffalo Uh huh easy wins baby Easy wins it makes them look smart It gives them the chance to like kind of gel around the new situation And it's like yeah we're actually going to lose to two of those teams and we got the savers tomorrow night and we're not feeling too good about it all of a sudden. That's so funny, man.

Anyway. Yeah. So, like, I don't know. Where are you at with like what Chicago's doing? Like, do you get it at all? I think I do get it. It's not working. But like I said, there is, they are.

And, geez, we've said it a million. million times on this show over the years. When you go to rebuild, the tear down, the tank is important. It's a crucial step. Lots of teams don't do that step. They don't have the stomach for it, and it costs them. You have to do it, but it's the easiest part of the process. And Kyle Davidson did a great job on that part, but it was the easy part.

And then how do you get it back on track? Well, he did do a great job because he... He did as good of a job as... he probably could give in, like, you know, the taves and cane and all. Like, I actually think it maybe wasn't that easy to do the full tear down in Chicago just because, like, all these people go, and they should have never gotten rid of taves and cane. You know, what I mean by easy is that once you've made the decision to do it. Yes, sure. Selling is, you know, selling guys for picks is, is the easy part.

Once you made the decision, you're right, because sometimes you've got to. convince an owner, you got a Yeah, I was also talking to someone the other night though, after Richardson got fired about like you know, how's the, how'd that tank go and it's the easy part and all this and he was like,

you know, should they have traded the brinket? If that, or for the package they got, if that was all it was going to be, you know? And it's like, yeah, it is fair. I hadn't really thought about like the long term implications of that in a while. But also, like, what is De Brinket going to add like 15 points to this team's total and we're all like,

oh, actually the rebuild's going pretty good in Chicago. No, of course not. So, yeah, I don't know, man. I mean, we should say that Corey Pranman's prospect pipeline rankings had the Blackhawks number one in the end of August this offseason. Now, that was enormously driven by Connor Bedard. Of course. But they're in good shape, but at some point you need to add some pieces around it for a couple reasons. One, well, you want to have some veterans.

You know, the cliche of having guys who teach the young guys what it's like to be a pro, I think, does hold true to an extent. Yeah, totally it does. You've got to have guys like that. You've got to have some success in that you don't want to be losing 50 games a year with your, you know, future franchise player because the losing beats. a guy down. You want those guys to be playing important games. And you also need some veterans to take up some roster spots that otherwise you might have to plug a young player into that's not ready yet or rush somebody along. So I get where it was, I get where they came from. And I like the Pertuzzi signing at the time. You're right. It's been miserable so far. They may have just

Yeah, I don't think anybody, even if you were down on it, you wouldn't be like, and of course he's going to be like a black fucking hole in the middle of their lineup. Yeah. So, I mean, I get it. I do get what they were doing. It just isn't working right now. And this is, you know, it is bleak in Chicago right now because, and the other piece of this is the whole thing is built around, yeah, but we're going to get Conner Braydard, who's a generational Crosby-McDavid-level talent. And a year and a half into his career, he hasn't been that. certainly this he's not that guy this year. Yep. Now, does that mean he's a bust? Does that mean? No, no, it doesn't have to mean that.

But as it feels like everybody pointed out heading into the season when talking about the Blackhawks, Crosby made the leap and won an MVP in year two. McDavid made the leap and won an MVP in year two. And Bedard, forget about MVP, hasn't made a leap at all. He's taken a step back. That's right. That's a concern. Yeah. And that's why the coach got fired. It's that simple.

Yeah. That's, I mean, that is the number one job for any new coach coming in interim or otherwise. Make sure Connor Bedard turns into that 100 plus point superstar that, because if he doesn't, then none of this works. There's no path to where they want to get. Totally. If Badard ends up being simply an A player instead of an A player. plus. Yep. A million percent, but, you know, I'm interested.

Look, the way things are going at this point, this is a team that's tied with the, it says here, Nashville Predators for Deadlast in the League. And in fact, they're actually ahead of the Predators by the tiebreaker because they have nine wins and Nashville has seven through 28 games. So it's really. I don't think it'll hurt him to add a James Hagan's or Michael Mesa or whoever you want to say. Which, by the way, I didn't have this on the outline. Did you see the article EPs Cam Robinson wrote last night about Gavin McKenna?

No, I did not. Okay, so Gavin McKenna widely considered to be the guy who's going to be the number one pick in the 2026 draft. and he's, I think, just turned 17 maybe. Let me double check that. Or maybe he just turned 16. Hold on. His birthday's right around now, if I'm remembering right. December 20th, he will turn 17.

So that's what it was. But he plays for the Medicine Hat Tigers right now. And I'm not going to quote extensively from the Cam Robinson article. You can go read for yourself over at Elite Prospects. Um, but basically the thinking is that he is going to, um, he's going to go to the NCAA next season. Which, you know, that's not what the, uh, the, the CHL is intending with this, uh, player transfer thing, you know? Um, and I've also, we've also heard rumors, not me personally, but like, we've also seen it reported that maybe teams are in, uh, college teams are in the mix for Michael Mesa. for next season, blah, blah, blah.

But McKenna is interesting because he is, he would be doing the James Hagan's and McClint and Celebrini thing of playing college hockey at, at least starting the year at 17. And his agent is quoted in the article is saying Gavin McKenna is done with his high school obligations. He is ready to enroll in college

right this second at age 16. So this seems like a guy who, is motivated to do that, you know, not just, and, but, and, you know, the implications for what that could mean for the CHL and, and the, you know, there's no transfer agreement, but the ability of players to jump from the CHL, even before their, like, overage season or whatever, um, it's really interesting. Uh, the other, the other thing that, uh, Cam said was that despite the fact that, uh, non-American players in any sport in the NCAA aren't technically able to earn a lot of

NIL money the traditional way. There are, there are, you know, loopholes and all this kind of thing that smart teams would be able to find. And I don't know where this number came from. You know, I don't know any of this kind of stuff. But the number quoted in the article for what Gavin McKenna could make it if he plays NCAA hockey next year. is $1 million.

Hmm. Is that not fascinating? That's, uh, yeah. Because... I've heard... I've heard... Bobby Hall being the first guy to get a million as a pro.

No kidding, man. I've heard numbers for what, like, high-end college hockey players get on their NIL deals. Not, nothing like, you know, down to the center. or anything like that, but, you know, 100 grand, 125 grand, you know, that kind of thing.

For like high-end guys. Guys that are, you know, in the NHL right now, I've heard that when they were in college, substantially, not substantially, less than six figures, guys you have heard of who are in the NHL and were recent college hockey players, less than six figures. So the idea that Gavin McKenna could make a million dollars, that says to me that this is this is getting crazy fast. You know, I guess we'll see. Michael Misa, Gavin McKenna, you know, come on down.

Check it out. Come play for Arizona State or Minnesota or Michigan, Michigan State, B, U, B.C. These big money, you know, these big name schools, maybe they're going to be big money schools too for players. Interesting. Anyway. All that being said, we do have to talk about the Buffalo Sabres. That was every Sabres fan just turning off their device. I get it, man.

What's this going to be year 14, no playoff for them? Barring a miracle? I haven't finished the game against the Red Wings last night, but when I turned it off, the Sabres are up 5'3 late. I saw I was going to, I was talking to, I was literally talking to some, I went to a college game last night as I am wont to do. And I was like, oh, you know, the Sabres, like, they're making me look silly because I wrote an article about what a fucking disaster they are, and they're up 5-2 on Detroit right now. And he was like, you might want to check that score again, brother.

The stat that people, a few people sent this to me last night, and I didn't believe it. But last night was apparently the fifth time this season that the Sabers had. have chased the other team's starting goalie. Yes. I saw the set too. Awesome. And they have won one of those five games. Yeah, they're one in four in games where they got the starter pulled for the other team.

That's amazing. What an awful situation. By the way, the team they beat was the Rangers just to keep bringing it back to shoveling dirt on those guys. Yeah, it's a mess. And we have to talk about Kevin Adams and his. media availability that he did Thursday, Friday, that is not playing. By the way, the Chicago beat the Rangers and Detroit beat the Sabres.

Yeah, no, sorry, I meant the, the, their one win in the five game. Oh, right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so Kevin, what did you think of the Kevin Adams soundbite? because he's getting a lot of flack for this. We're not a destination. Other places have low taxes and palm trees,

which led to Sabres fans showing up at the game with inflatable palm trees, which is very... That's never a good sign. When your own fan base is doing prop comedy, that's not good. That's right, man. I guess my big take is he's right,

that of course the Sabres aren't a destination franchise. They haven't made the playoffs since 2000 fucking 11, man. You know what I mean? Like, no shit, you're not a destination team. You're awful and have been forever. But he went on to say, and this is why I, you know, just purely in the sense of the Palm Tree comment that people are mad about. By the way, absolute A plus plus to you for the headline on your Sabres column.

Thank you, my friend. this. That was fantastic. He said, you know, you could say the same thing about the Buffalo Bills, but then they got Josh Allen and now they're a Super Bowl contender and everybody wants to play for them. So he was sort of, he wasn't just saying, oh, I can't, it's impossible for us to win. We can't, you know, we're Buffalo. Nobody wants to be here. It's hopeless. He was kind of saying, look, we face these challenges that some other teams don't face, but winning fixes everything, which is true.

Which is why I'm committing to this core even more. You know, like, that's the thing. Like, I agree the palm tree thing was taken out of context, and I, you know, I will reiterate my stance that you should not be legally allowed to talk about the tax situation of various teams in the NHL. Mm-hmm. Like, I just don't want to fucking hear it, man. Yeah.

You know, again, I said this in my article. Boston Bruins have no palm trees and high taxes. And they have no problem getting free agents to play for them. Yep. You know, it's a situation where, again, the number one problem is that the team fucking sucks. And, you know, there's just no other way to say it at this point. How many different ways can we say the reason no one wants to play here is that the team is bad? And also that there are so many examples of guys where the second they got out of Buffalo career year win the Stanley Cup.

You know, like just within like two or three years, you know, Reinhardt, Eichel, O'Reilly. I'm sure there are others I'm missing. Yep, those are the montour, but those are the main three that you see brought up. And I had people tweeting that at me yesterday. Like, who is this team going to trade that's then going to immediately win a Stanley Cup? Right. That's exactly right, man. And like, you know, you can't get into the business of like, well, Tage Thompson's the only good player we've had in like three years or whatever.

So we should trade him for futures and all this kind of thing. But at the same time, it is kind of the auto. what problem I was talking about earlier, it's like, oh, well, like, all these, all these young guys we, we traded for, they're our core. And you go, are they, are they, like, winning and being successful and, like, are they all individually good? Well, no, of course not. But they are our core. So, like, what are we supposed to do, you know? Like, they're committing to all these guys, um, on a consistent basis. And it's not just like this current group. But again, like, go back to the Eichel years. Look how many of those guys. guys they locked in and then were like, oh shit, that was a fucking huge mistake. We shouldn't have done that, you know? Yep. And you got to, I think when you're, when you're signing, when you're determining who your core is, you got to do more than just figure out who's young.

You got to figure out who's good to. And the savers for, you know, I think we can say that like the first few years of that, of the, their playoff drought was a situation where it's like that was the end of an era and then they moved into the the rebuild era fair to say and so like I don't think like they were in the wrong to to to tank initially but they did the thing of like okay we got jack icelt now we're going to go trade for all these guys and blah blah blah you know to me I just I just don't know what the answer is here because the real problem to me

is you can do all the prelude you want and about X, Y, and Z, all the guys that are underperforming and have underperformed and will underperform and all this. Does it not just feel like it starts at the top here, man, with the ownership? Yep. Because Kevin Adams, and then I'll let you go, sorry.

But Kevin Adams, he's like, Look, I can't sign anybody if they don't want to play here. And it's like, hey, didn't you enter this season with $7 million in cap space? Well, that's it. And they had that for years now and they're not spending it. And look, I mean, no team UFA is their way to contention. You can add finishing pieces in UFA. You can occasionally get a Nortemi Panarin, you know, who,

who moves you ahead big time. But it's not, you know, if he's sitting there going, oh, we're going to, we're going to fix this in free agency. Then it's a doom plan, palm trees or no. It's, and as a lot of people have pointed out, yeah, guys have no trade clauses. You don't get a no trade clause until you're 27 in this league, typically, because you have to be eligible for free agency. Yep. So get to work on identifying younger guys and making those trades.

And they, you know, they did it with Bowen Byron. Yeah, I was going to say, like, they also tried it with Jordan Greenway and it just, like, didn't work. But, like, keep trying it, man. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, and, and, you know, the. Peyton Crabs is another one. The Lindy Ruffhire really just felt like trying to.

You guys like this shit, huh? Yeah. You remember this guy? Yeah. So I don't know. I, I, I, it's a mess in Buffalo, man. It's, it is really bad.

Like, yeah, the thing is, like, Kevin Adams, I don't think is doing a good job, but who would? You know, we say this all the time about coaches. Luke Richardson, what the fucks he's supposed to do to help that team win, you know? They're not going to win. It's just look at the roster.

They're not going to win. Lindy Rough, same thing. I don't care if this is Lindy Rough, the absolute height of his powers. I don't care if this is Scotty. Bowman at the height of his powers. You're not going to get much more out of this team than like, yeah, we're right around the playoff bubble.

Just look at the roster, you know? And it's kind of the same thing with Kevin Adams, where it's like he, like his big signing this summer was Jason Zucker, man. Like I. Yeah. Which I get it. If you go out on the UFA market and you're like, we're looking for veterans, who's going to want to come to Buffalo?

Right. And, you know, hey, come to Buffalo. We have no palm trees. The taxes are high. And also the, oh, by the way, the team's probably going to be not very good. Our ceiling is wild card. Yeah. That's our everything goes perfect ceiling.

Oh, no thanks. I'll go to one of the other teams that has at least one of those three things. But the other thing, though, is, okay, you got a really kind of pretty young, roster. Like, Rasmus Dahlene's 24 years old. He's not like, 24, unfortunately, you know, isn't young in this league anymore. Like, I don't think you can call that a young guy if he's been in the league like five or six years, you know. But Dahlene's 24. Peyton Krebs is 24. Matias Samuelson's 24. J.J. Peturka's 23. Bowen Byram's 23. Dylan Cousins is 23. Jack Quinn's 23

Devin Levi's 23 Owen Powers 22 How many of these guys that I just named Do you feel like are Taking the step to the level That we kind of expect of them It's not like a huge number of those guys You know

And again this is this is the trap That every team falls into Where you you amass all those young pieces And then you go man If all these guys hit their ceiling we're going to be really, really good. And it... None of these guys are even close to their sealings.

Well, like, it's sad but true. Like, maybe you'd say Dahlene because he got a little bit of, like, Norris attention last year or whatever for a minute. And then everyone was like, oh, actually, he's on the Buffalo Sabres. Never mind. Forget it.

Yeah, he was 8th and Norris voting two years ago and 15th this year. But do you draft a defenseman number one overall going one of these days? He's going to be the eighth. Best defenseman in the league. You know what I mean? Like, he probably is like the guy of that group.

But again, like, guys, you know, they're mad about the fans are pissed off about how Dylan Cousins is playing. Jack Quinn's been awful this year. And those are guys who are 23 years old. They've been in the league. Devon Levi's three, four, five years. Not yet shown any sort of NHL quality. play. He's 23. He's a goalie.

So there's a little more runway on it. But here's, yeah. I mean, he's been great when the AHA last two years. When they got him, you went, that's the beat. We talked about San Jose Gitt and Asherov, right? Like this, this was their guy that we've got that

spot filled. Honestly, one of the best college hockey goalies I've ever seen, Devin Levi. Unfucking believable in college. 952 and then 933. And you've got Uco Pekulukin, you go, we've got our two young guys, so we don't need a goalie. You go and grab James Reimer off the scrap heap, but it's...

Who cares? Yeah, that's fine. Whatever. But now they're not getting great goaltending, right? That's part of the problem. It's not... They're not a good team getting sunk by goaltending. They're a bad team not getting bailed out by goaltending.

I don't know. I don't think I, Kevin Adams, I don't think is, is around all that long. Unfortunately, I don't think he's the guy that's going to fix this. Well, again, like, what the lineup of guys looking for that job is, but someone will want it. Hey, there's only 32 of them. You ever hear that? The question is going to be, does the new guy come in and say, you know, what, what happens when Pagul is interviewing some potential GM? And that GM comes in and says, we need to tear this down and start over again.

versus the guy who comes in and goes, no, no, you guys have got a great core here. Wow, you guys have all been very smart and good at your jobs. I can definitely push it over the finish line. Yep, no, it's true. And like the thing is, you know, the Lindy Ruff hire really shows to me

that this is just like not really a serious operation in a lot of ways. Like I understand Lindy Ruff is a legend in off a low and, you know, he's got... And he was the coach of the year like two years ago. Yeah, I get all that. I get all that.

Now, if he could... I feel like what he did was tell his goal is to, like, stop 92% of the shots they faced or whatever that year. You can correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems to have lost that magic touch, not just this year, last year, too. But, and this is what I... You have to say, though, is like, look at how the devils are doing without this guy. they're pretty good. You know, obviously they made some changes to their roster, blah, blah, blah,

go down the list. But of all the hires that the Sabres could have made this summer, I don't think there was any less inspiring than let's get the guy the devil's just fired. Yeah. You know, especially because, like, the devils are in a lot of ways the ideal, yeah, we kind of ripped it down to the studs and then we decided we were going to kind of power out of it. in terms of, you know, obviously they were bad last year. But all their younger, not all their younger guys, but a lot of their younger guys are

fucking hitting. You know, like those guys have developed well. And, you know, it's just hard for me to say that, like, the Sabres looked at how things went in New Jersey last year and was like, that's our guy. We have a very similar profile to them And we want the guy that seared them into the ditch I don't think any reasonable person thinks That decision was made

Independent of the history and the popularity Well, this is what I'm saying About it being a serious operation, right? Is like, who ultimately made the Lindy Rough call? I'd love to know the answer to that one Because it's Because this has always been the thing with Kevin Adams Right is from the moment he was hired

everyone went, oh, well, this is just the Pagool is hiring, the only guy that will say yes to them. That's right. And it's, I'm sure that was unfair to a degree. And there was times earlier on where I was like, yeah, this Kevin Adams guy is doing okay in Buffalo. And it, yeah, he was doing okay for a while. It hasn't come together. And you're right. By the way.

It ultimately ends with the boss or boss. Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to say, and I forgot to say this earlier, part, another reason, I bet they have a problem attracting top talent or whatever, middling talent, let's say. All due respect to Jason Zucker, good player. Is, hey, how'd that Jack Eichael thing start?

What was the problem there? Oh, they wanted to tell him how to recover from injuries and stuff like that. They wanted to boss him around and deny him the ability to get the kind of treatment he thought was going to be most helpful to him in all this. Like, in addition to all the other stuff, they were also like, oh, you have a problem? Why don't you tell it to someone who gives a shit, man?

Like, you're going to, you know what I mean? Like, you can't be bad and also in a contentious relationship with your best player. Yeah, and we said it again, like the one last time to tie back to the Rangers discussion we had. We said, you know, how does this Trubothing play with future free agents? Yep. I mean, the Jack Eichael thing probably didn't help. All right, I want low taxes, I want palm trees, I want a team that makes the playoffs at least every 14 years,

and I do not want to be ordered to have a medical procedure I don't want to have. How many of those checkboxes? Can you fill, Kevin? That's right. And he just kind of does the like the emoji face with like where it's, It's not even like the grimacing, like, e-mogy face. It's like the one where it's just like the mouth is a flat line that's like almost all the way across the face. Or he's like, okay.

And he starts shaking a basket of chicken wings. You ever hear about these, man? Look, I, it's one of those things where as a guy who advocates for teams to like rip it down to the studs a lot, I need teams like the Sabres to have success. so people don't say, shut the fuck up, man. It's easy to tear it down. It's hard to build it up, all this. I need the savers having success.

For my view of how the NHL should work to be accurate and correct or whatever. I don't want to be saying they got to do rebuild number four here. This isn't working. It's been a decade, blah, blah, blah. I need this to go well in Buffalo. I don't have a lot of confidence that it will.

I'm with you. Okay. We mentioned it earlier. All the snubs and flubs. I don't know if people can hear, but a literal garbage truck is pulling up to my house just as we finish the Buffalo Sayers conversation. I'm getting a little distracted by the pure... They're coming for your takes. Perfect symbolism.

Yeah, exactly. We got the snubs and flubs from the Four Nations rosters. What stood out to you is like the big The big thing that you were Surprised by Yeah, so I mean, I gave all my takes on Team Canada On the other show last Wednesday Because the team Canada lineup basically leaked

All over the place on Wednesday Even Tuesday And I remember I texted you, I was like, this is not This is weird And I've kind of been talked around to it a little bit more It wasn't that any individual pick up for Team Canada felt bad to me, although Colton Perico and, well, Sam Montbo went and had a shutout that night,

so I felt better. But it just added up to some bad memories of like the ghost roster days where they would just fill out a roster, not based on the best players, but based on the best guys for individual roles. and that didn't really work well at an international best-on-best level. I don't know. I don't know if there's anyone for Team Canada that I would say absolutely robbed.

Like I'm just absolutely shocked that they didn't put Mark Schifley or John Tavares or whoever else. Even though when we did our picks, I mean, boy, I didn't even see, I didn't write them down, but I must have had five or six names that didn't make the team. on my team Canada. Yeah. And for the U.S., similar, although I would say both Tage Thompson and Cole

Coffield surprised me more than any individual omission on Team Canada. I agree. Yeah, I mean, you know, again, like, they were just like, we've got to get those guys

from the Rangers don't want. You know, like, we're trying to get Trocheck and Crider out of there or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And Team USA is like, we'll take them. It doesn't really work like that, the NHL had to say, but

yeah, that is the surprising thing is just like, yeah, apart from, again, like I would just say it's all the younger guys. It's not even like, you know, say what you want about, like, we make all the Nick Suzuki jokes on here. I think he

had an argument to be on Team Canada. I don't think I had them on my roster if I'm remembering right. But like, if you want, to say he should be on it. I wasn't going to fight you on that, you know. Yeah. But yeah, Tage Thompson, Cole Cawfield, I think people were a little surprised. Clayton Keller wasn't on there.

Clayton Keller is another one. It's the same thing. I was less surprised about Keller than Calfield or Thompson. Yeah. It's sort of the same thing as with Team Canada in that these teams that go into best on best, it feels like they design their rosters for when they're going to be up two to one. With 10 minutes left. And it's like, yeah, but somebody's got to score the goals to get you up two to one.

And how often do we see a team designed to be up two to one or three to two? And instead they're down one, nothing. And you're looking up and down the bench going, we don't have anyone who can score. You know, our one guy's heard, our other guys slumping. We don't have that great third option. And boy, it'd be nice to throw Tage and cold coffee out there on a line, partly because it would just be funny to watch him skating down the ice together. Big guy, little guy.

You know, one of the great tag team formulas of all time. Yeah, do it, man. We can have, like, make, make Tage wears jacket, you know, big guy, little jacket. That works every time. It does. There's a whole movie about it. Yeah. But, yeah, for the most part, I agree with you.

Like, there's nothing. The only other thing I would say is the Canadian goaltending is just, like, they, as we've discussed at length, didn't have the best options available to them, you know, but I also would say they didn't do the best job of picking from the available options. So who would you have put on there in place? Like is Monombo the guy you wouldn't have had? Because I think we both sort of dismissed him as an option when we were doing. Yeah, I'm a little surprised by the Logan Thompson snub.

If there was anybody, oh God, the fact that we were saying the words of Logan Thompson, Thompson's sub. That's how a million percent of the situation is. But he would be the one guy that you would look at and say he played his way onto the team. Like that was really my feeling with Team Canada is it didn't feel like there really was a path to play your way onto this team. Like the guys who've been having surprisingly good years. That's a great way to put it, yeah. Didn't make the team.

Now, maybe you could play your way off. Maybe a guy like Stamco's played his way off the team. But I don't. I would have thought so. Yeah. Colton Pereco still, man, that surprises me. But that's a coach's thing. He's a big boy back there.

That's a coach's pick. Give me the big veteran guy. You ever seen the size of this guy? Evan Bouchard. Evan Bouchard's the guy that maybe if there's a big snub for Canada. Yeah, you're totally right about it. Because people are like, well, you've already got Kail McCarr. It's like, yeah.

Yeah, again, like that rocks. How about we have poor man's Kail McCar back there too? That sounds fun as well. Yeah. No, again, it is the thing of just like they went with veterans over younger guys. Yep. They're like, let's take the 32-year-old instead of the 23-year-old. Okay.

Take the guy who's not going to make a mistake versus the guy who could do something well. Watch a blues game and let me know if Colton Perego doesn't make any mistakes out there, you know? That's a great point, yeah. So, yeah, I don't, again, I don't think there's much more to discuss there. But let's talk about one last thing here, which is a guy that I had on my team Canada, Tyler Sagan. think this was a puck soup curse thing where like pretty soon after the show came out this one the stars announced uh Tyler Sagan out uh basically for the rest of the regular season maybe he comes back a little early although wink I bet he doesn't I have a feeling um but this this gives the stars

an incredible amount of cap space and what do they do with it I think the answer if we're if we're being serious, is they just go get another, like, top six center, right? What else do they need? Yeah. I mean, right now they don't need much, so you probably... Well, it's interesting because you say that, but, like, then you look at the standings and you're like, oh, maybe they do need something, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like, on paper, you're totally right.

But they're just, they're a little worse than you feel like they ought to be, you know? Mm-hmm. not that they're they're not bad by any their fifth in the west but again on paper you would have said well that's like the second or maybe even first best team in the west going into the year and yeah i mean you know now now they now they have a whole shitload of cap room and we'll see what the uh what it works out to mm-hmm um sucks for him he was having a great year Yeah, which is why I had them on my team Canada roster. Real good story, too, because obviously there's all sorts of health challenges the last few years.

And you always kind of thought, huh, if he could get healthy again. Isn't this also a hip problem? Yeah. Oh, man. It sucks. I don't know how else to put it. Four to six months, a guy with hip problems already having more hip surgery. I did see some speculation that like the stars kind of knew this was coming down the pike and were waiting for the right time to, you know, because maybe it's a situation where Sagan can play through it.

Okay. But maybe not long term, you know. Maybe they were like, okay, he'll play a couple of months, see how he feels. If it gets to be a little much, we'll just, you know, shut it down for a while and try again later in the year. And I think that's kind of, you know, it's better than, it's better than the alternative, I think, you know, but. I would agree. Having him start like this and then have to, you know, go to go on the sidelines for six months is brutal. You feel bad for the guy.

Sure do. And again, especially because if it's a hip thing, like, you're just like, well, what, how's he going to be walking in 10 years? You know? Mm-hmm. that's unfortunately that's the way you kind of

have to think of it with him so yeah or anybody who you know has multiple like a recurring

issue with any part of their body let alone their hip yeah you don't you don't you don't mess around with the hip but

unfortunate definitely sucks so yeah you think they just go out and get like a kind of Tyler Sagan

replacement and then hope Sagan's good for the playoffs if I'm if I'm right because he's going on the LTIR, this isn't a situation where the cap space increases as the year goes on. It's not like by waiting to the deadline.

So, I mean, you do it whenever you can do it. But I think he's not yet technically on LTIR. That's possible. Maybe he is. I don't remember. But regardless, he makes 9.85, right? So, like, that's a huge amount of potential cap space that they have available to them. And they're not, they're not really a cap team right now anyway, I don't think.

So, yeah, they're actually, they have fewer cap commitments than the Philadelphia Flyers, for example. So they're kind of around the middle of the league. They got a little more wiggle room than you might think. So, yeah, I think that. that, you know, I don't know, like, who's even really a reasonable guy they could target right now, just because it feels like a lot of teams might want. That's more the issue, right? Like, who's actually going to shake free?

There's, this is the time of year where there are very few, typically very few players that are available. And the kind that you would want to give up, like. Well, yeah, that's it. Yeah. So. Yeah. Can I make a proposal? Sure.

They should go get Brady Kachuk. I hear that guy's available. Could be. Bidding more. Couldn't hurt to make the phone call, right? I mean. Yeah. Nobody will get mad about that.

No. I think that's it for the show this week. I think it is. We did it, folks. Why don't you hit him with the plugs and we'll get the hell out of here. Can find me at the athletic, including The Athletic Hockey Show with Shungeon Tilly and Frankie Crowado. That'll be tomorrow.

I've also got a post coming up tomorrow where I'm going to look at five storylines about the season that we were all definitely completely wrong about and try to figure out if we were actually wrong or whether we're just completely right in a delayed fashion. Right. And more to come at the end I don't even know what I'm writing for the end of the week. Got any ideas, let me know. I would love some ideas right now. It's December.

Hit me up. Yep. So with the first half of the college hockey season wrapping up this coming weekend, basically, a bunch of teams are already in the holiday break. It feels like it's longer than usual this year. A bunch of teams are just like taking a whole month off, basically. So I wrote about James Higgins, the presumptive number one pick, at least at the beginning of the year.

and how he's doing at Boston College. He famously only had one goal through his first like 13 or 14 games. But now he's got four in his last four. He's hitting his stride. He's feeling good. I talk to him. I talk to his coach.

I think, you know, I wrote a nice long examination of, you know, what's gone wrong, what's gone right, et cetera. That is up now, I believe. And then later this week, we'll have, power rankings. Next week we'll have a look at like Hobie guys and that sort of thing. Mike Richter Award

candidates, all that. In addition to my usual NHL coverage that doesn't change very much week to week. So check all that out and then head over to Patreon.com slash puck soup where you can find the latest bonus episodes of this very podcast,

including me and Sean watching what Wikipedia calls the oldest hockey movie made king of the game it was called came out in 1936 and me and Sean kind of recorded I guess you'd call it like a commentary track for a movie that's just on YouTube for free so you can check it out and it's an hour long movie which is

the perfect act frankly under an hour long I think it was 55 minutes so you can check that out you can check out all the other bonus stuff that we have going on over there and there, as I always say, there's a lot more than you might think. So, again, patreon.com slash pox soup, EPRinkside, EliteProspects.com. That's where you can find all my shit. Thanks for listening to the show, and we will talk to you next week. Goodbye, everyone.

Bye-bye.