Puck Soup - Our Favorite Villains

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

The boys discuss the NHL playoff races, the Canucks vs. COVID, the trade deadline and where Taylor Hall might end up, the NHL Awards Watch, the top 10 centers in the NHL and then have a spirited overrated/underrated debate about the best wrestling villains as WrestleMania arrives. Sponsored by Raycon.

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Hey everybody. I'm Greg Wysinski of ESPN, your worldwide leader in primary rights holding. And college sports. As well, which there was a lot of in the last week or so.

Yeah, and more coming up Thursday, The Frozen Four, baby. I'm Ryan Lambert. Elite prospects, et cetera. This is why I'm talking about prospects, because it's a thing. Right, right. Sean Manganoe from The Athletic. And you're in Puck Soup. Call it Chucky, as they call it on ESPN this Thursday.

It's exciting. Well, they call it that. They should not. Tell us about the Frozen. What's going on? Well, a bit of a big news thing about that yesterday. UMass, I think probably the team I would have picked to win it, announced that due to COVID protocols, their starting goalie, their leading goal scorer, their third string goalie,

and another guy are not going to play, at least on Thursday, probably on Saturday as well, if they win. and their starting goalie, by the way, leads the nation and save percentage. So bad news for them. Now their backup goalie is their starter, and their equipment manager is their backup goalie. Their equipment manager is their backup goalie? Yeah, he played, he was a backup in high school.

So he's the closest thing they have to a NCAA. AA Division 1 goalie. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good for the minute, man. Can I ask you a question? You can.

Does Jonathan Quick have any eligibility to maybe be able to come back? I don't think he does. Okay. It's also probably a downgrade from the equipment manager at this point. We should also say that they're now starting goalie is a guy named Matt Murray and the Frozen Four is in Pittsburgh. and isn't that a funny thing too. What is that even?

I hope Pierre Dorian isn't aware of that. Geez. And then they're playing Minnesota Duluth, who won, well, they didn't win last year, but they're reigning two-time national champions. They look real fucking good again this season, so that'll be a tough one. That's a really good point. That's actually a really good point. Like if you win the title and then there is no –

Because there was no championship last year, right? Correct. They didn't have a tournament at all or even conference tournaments last year. Does that still make you the reigning champion? They're the reigning champions. Is it really, though? Like, isn't it just like vacant now? Because the thing not happening?

I think you might have an argument, but they had won the previous two national titles. So I think you can just go, you know what? You made it to the Frozen floor again. Third year, maybe even four. You're the reigning champion based on merit? Is that how we're doing it? Yeah, they've been to the Frozen Four. I think this is their fourth one in a row.

They've won two national championships in a row. I'm comfortable calling that, like, if, you know, it was a fluke last year and some random-ass team won it, because, you know, last season, and then even this season is fake? Yeah, you know, everything that happened this year is fake. Yeah, you're the reigning champion. That's right. That's right. The Tampa Bay Lightning were the reigning champion in 2006?

Yes. Yes. Okay. And then the other matchup is St. Cloud versus Minnesota State. Minnesota State famous for choking every time they get to the NCAA tournament. They finally didn't do it this year. And they look really good. I don't know how they stack up against.

I think it'll be a tight game in that one. The St. Cloud Mancato game will be a tight game. but they have Mancato specifically has a goalie who I think went 21 and 3 this year and is a Hobie Baker finalist and the argument against them is that they played in

what is traditionally one of the weaker conferences and absolutely beat the shit out of everybody in it but are they as good as the second best team in a conference with Minnesota to Duluth and North Dakota and all those kinds of teams. I don't know. I think it'll be interesting. I think now that UMass is in tough shape, I think Duluth is probably the favorite.

With this UMass COVID stuff, is there the opportunity to find another team based in Minnesota to put in Frozenport? Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing is already two teams before the Notre Dame and Michigan had to pull out of the tournament before it even started because of COVID. So it was only a 14-team tournament this year. Two teams got buys to the second round. It's been a fucking mess. And people are like, hey, shouldn't you maybe have played this whole thing in a bubble like in one week in the NCAA?

No, no, no, sir. No, we couldn't. That makes sense. Sean, how do Canadians view NCAA hockey have always been curious? Yeah, it's not a big thing up here. I think like the world juniors and to a lesser extent, even the Memorial Cup kind of takes our, you know, amateur hockey focus or not in the big leagues yet,

hockey attention away. So it's not like the March Madness tournament is a big deal up here because it's, you know, that there isn't a Canadian equivalent. But the Frozen Four, it gets coverage. It gets talked about. It's on TSN, yeah. Yeah, it's not a big thing. Do you guys see it as, let me put this out there. Do you guys see it as your Canadian Junior universe is like the Premier League and NCAA hockey is like MLS?

us? Is it like that? No, I don't think so. There probably was a time when it was viewed that way, but I think fans understand now that there's NCAA's good hockey, and there are certainly reasons why players would prefer that, and you see Canadian players going there, and you see American players coming off for the juniors.

So it's, there's maybe some leftover feeling of that, but I think it's more just the case that the junior league is in, your town probably or you probably don't have to go very far whereas NCAA it's it's all down in the states and it's uh it's just uh it's literally closer to home uh to pay attention to the junior lambert as a rock-ribbed american cut you and you bleed red white and blue how do you feel about Canadians that come down to play in the NCAA well there there's a lot of good ones what do i care if that where they're from are they taking johns from hardworking They're taking jobs from good American kids.

Yeah, exactly. Next year, there's going to be like 61 NCAA teams. It's not like we're like, oh, there's eight NCAA teams and all the Canadians have taken. They're playing opportunities for everybody. And that's to be one, you know. And hopefully, you know, they play for one of the 11 outside of Minnesota. That'd be exciting. The playoff races are going on in the National Hockey League.

Frozen 4, by the way, a great event. everybody enjoys it. I went to only one of them. I went to the DC one, where the D.C. one where Bidmiggy State went on their big winning streak and stuff. That was a really fun time. I've always wanted to go to the event again, but never really had the chance to. That was one of the craziest ones ever. B.U. won it on that crazy overtime? And, you know, they obviously needed two goals to come back. They beat Miami. But was it Bimigi and Vermont were the other two teams? Bimigi was, I think so. And it was really exciting because I had literally never heard of Bidmiggy State before that tournament, like in any walk of life.

So I got very excited about it. No, exactly. All right. So as we do the show this week, the NHL playoff races are really getting wacky, thanks to the utter collapse of the St. Louis Blues. the blues have as we do the show an 8.8% chance of making the playoffs. That is less than the 35.2% chance the sharks have of making the playoffs, which was at 50% before they lost the ducks. And now the Arizona coyotes have a 50% chance of making the playoffs in the West Division.

I assume this is money puck you're looking at? I'm looking at money puck, yeah. Just for reference, Dom has the blues and the sharks pretty much neck and neck, but he's got the coyotes at 65%. And the blues are sharks basically dividing up the last 30-odd with a small chance of the king. So it's however you dice it, it's not looking good for St. Louis Blues. Dom at the Athletic, of course, data, as we all know. It's not looking good for the blues.

I've been told by Blues fans that offense has been a problem, so you could imagine some way, shape, or form a trade to get more goal scoring on that team. But Lambert, I think there be no point. And you and I have been, you know, town criers here for the last year about what a disaster their goaltending was going to be. I think you're taking a little more credit than you. I've always said that Jordan Bennington was probably, no. Actually, the thing about Bennington was I didn't like the contract. I don't like that kind of term for that type of goalie.

But the real, the real mistake was not giving him a veteran safety net. I know that there are reasons why they traded Jake Allen, mostly surrounding, you know, the cab. The kind of contract they just gave Jordan Bennington. Is that way? Yeah. Expansion draft, all that shit. But like, I mean, you went to, you went into this season with Jordan Bennington and Vili Huso was his backup, and that was just a dumb mistake.

And it's cost them in several games already, which, you know, could be the margin between them making the playoffs and missing the playoffs. But, Lambert, you see, I'm going to guess based on your what's the point, that you don't see this as a situation where they should really get aggressive in trying to figure out what's gone wrong and make a push for the playoffs. Well, they know what's gone wrong. they don't have a good roster and they've had a lot of injuries. Like when you combine those two things and obviously the goal tending matters as well,

but like when you look at it like, okay, go trade for the three best goal scorers available. Get Kyle Palmary, get Taylor Hall. I don't even know who the third guy would be, but get him too. And then what percent chance do you think you have of making the playoffs? 45? Yeah, at best, right? Yeah. You know what I mean?

I think with this team and a lot of teams, the kind of horses are out of the barn on this one. Where are you going to do, you know? What do you think, Sean, about the blues? I mean, it's the writing's kind of on the wall. They've got a very tough road ahead. That said, this is a team that won a cup two years ago. They are still in the race. I don't, you know, I don't look at it and say there's no way that they could beat the abs or the, or the knights.

They'd be underdogs, clearly. But I think if you're Doug Armstrong, like I don't know, I think on the outside we're a little too quick to throw in the towel on some teams. I could absolutely see him saying, you know what? If only because this team went from last place to a Stanley Cup two years ago, they've earned the right to take their best swing at this with the group that we've got together now. I'm going to go, you know, hopefully not go crazy as far as trade away future picks, prospects, what have you, to get immediate help. But I'm going to try to bring in some reinforcements and I'm going to try to let them make a stand on this. Am I really that convinced that the coyotes aren't going to go off the track in the next six week?

Not necessarily. So let's take a run. Here's the other thing that I just remembered. This is, I'm just going to read to you, St. Louis's remaining schedule. Vegas, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Colorado, Colorado, Colorado, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota. Anaheim, Anaheim, Vegas, L.A. Yeah. So those two Anaheim games, man, that's four points right there.

But how funny is it now that they're chasing a team where they had to play seven straight games against that team? They already used up all their fucking coyotes games. We didn't really. at the time, that may have been a playoffs. That was it. Like, that was the whole thing. You say they play Anaheim, that's four free points. They got one point out of their last two game series with the done.

So they're due. Yeah, they're doomed, I think is. Oh! Yeah, they're fine. I very much believe this is a season. They should just do the thing that they did that one time where they traded Paul Stasney. Well, they did it twice because they did it was shot. They did it with Chad and Kirk, too. That is the other weird thing about Armstrong is that he's, quote, unquote, sold at the deadline twice with pretty good teams that were in the playoff hunt, arguably, maybe even more so than the team he's got now. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what he does.

Go ship out Mike Hoffman somewhere, like just, you know, change the configuration of your roster a little bit, and then there's no, the reality of your surroundings. You just don't have it for whatever reason. And it could be, a myriad of reasons. I mean, you know, even a simple thing is just, like, not having Petrangelo and Beaumester on your D, even though your D on paper looks pretty deep, like, the way that those two guys play and taking them out of that system could fundamentally change the system. I don't know. I do know this, though. Like, I know it's not a probability, especially when, like, every time they seem to be

taking a step forward, that they fall backwards ten steps. But I would much rather the shark sneak into the playoffs and the coyotes. Like, I don't need seven games between the coyotes and the avalanche. You're all of a sudden, Darcy. Seven, Greg. Well, what happened? But, you know, like, the sharks would be super fun. Like, that'd be a real fun series.

They're a bunch of, they're a bunch of assholes and they cause a bunch of chaos. That's true. The last thing I need in my life is, like, for Darcy Kemper to have four good games and take out the fucking avalanche in the first round. I mean, I'm looking at, like, just the goal differences, and this is the NHL.com goal differences, so not real goal differences. but minus 11 for Arizona, minus 20 for St. Louis, minus 21 for San Jose, minus 7 and falling for the Kings, and minus 39 for the ducks. Like there are four, there are eight teams in the division, five of them have negative goal differences because Colorado is a plus 50. Yeah. All right. Well, Colorado, Vegas, and Minnesota, all very solid.

And then we wait for that fourth spot. the west is kind of set except for that last spot. The north is very much set. I mean, like, it's Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton.

We should probably talk about Vancouver and the COVID that's run through the team. The Brazilian variant of COVID. Maybe. Did you see that thing last night that was like,

I don't know, some doctor was like, I don't know that it's the Brazilian one. I have no idea. I have no knowledge of that or some shit like that. And people are, were like, come on.

Well, they all got sick, but also had a craving for caparinias. So it may in fact be the Brazilian variant. It sucks, man. You know, the North Division got away Scott free from the COVID stuff for most of the season. And then Vancouver gets absolutely slammed. I find it to be absolutely ridiculous that the NHL is even going to attempt to try to get them to play 56 games. Everyone knew coming into this season what the deal was. that there was a very good chance that some of these teams wouldn't be able to complete their seasons.

So you just pick up one of the contingency plans. Either everybody has the same. Yeah. But what does it benefit the league to say that right now? Do you think that they will, though? Because I don't. I really think they're going to try to get them to play 56 games. They're going to try.

Yeah, they're going to get them. But they're not going to be able to. So that's going to be it. But it doesn't, there's no reason for the NHL to say that now. I agree. They just say, you know, our plan is to play 56 games, and then when it becomes obvious that you can't do that, you announce that then. I don't.

Because if, you know, if they say right now they're not going to play 56, then immediately everyone says, then how many are they going to play? And if you give the wrong number for that, then it's, it's, I would be shocked if Vancouver plays 56 games, completely shocked. Especially when you look at their scale. Like, they've got a big chunk of games against the senators at the end of the year. You don't need those games. That doesn't...

I understand that you may want to, for the playoff, for the four playoff teams, try to make sure everybody gets their games in against the Canucks just so that it's not, doesn't feel unbalanced. But there's no reason to do those games. I'd be shocked if they played all of them. But I don't blame the league for pretending like they're going to now. How much is it going to be great when the NHL starts rescheduling these Canucks games and it just happens to be the ones against the playoff teams that they find room in the schedule to reschedule.

Yeah. They probably should, right? I mean, they should, totally, yeah. But they're going to have to go with some bullshit excuse. We all laughed earlier in a year about how the Canadians were, like, rolling over the Canucks every time they played them. But they did. And meanwhile, like, Edmonton's barely played Vancouver at all. I could see the Oilers being like, well, wait a second.

Like, we want the free points as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But there's a certain amount, like, the reports out of Vancouver about how these guys are doing and how much they've been impacted by the COVID that's running with the team is like it's scary it's kind of scary it's scary shit yeah and it is it's scary and it's I don't know if I maybe not as much now as a couple days ago but like I over the weekend like have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know what was going on but the people who did know what was going on it felt like

they weren't saying everything and you you start getting really nervous and I was starting to get that vibe from some of the more plugged in people. And so far, we're a couple days into the week, and it doesn't sound like things are getting significantly worse anymore. But it's still... Once they started talking about family members getting it and shit, then all of a sudden it becomes like a lot more dire. Well, and staff and everybody, and they will, right?

I mean, there's no, you know, to state the very obvious, but we need to remember. it's not like, you know, COVID isn't an ACL where you go home and you rehab it and it sucks that your team doesn't have you, but, you know, this, this can, you know, not only can it spread to family members, but there's probably guys who now, you know, the wife and kids are out of the house and they can't see them and they can't see, you know, family and this and that. Like, this whole, like, there's going to be some great slash horrible stories to be written when this is all over this whole season about like what this year did to some of the players because we've all, you know, for obvious reasons, we're all focused on just the sports

side of it. That's our job. That's what we have to do. Who's going to win? Who's going to finish first? Who was going to make a trade? But, you know, I feel like at some point there's, we're going to hear stories where people are going to be like, yeah, no, no, that was the worst six months in my life.

I hated it every single day. and it was awful, and I didn't care about how the season was going at all. I could barely get myself out of bed to go to the rink in the morning because it sucked. And we're all going to kind of be like, yeah. You occasionally are starting to see the mask slip on that a little bit. I mean, you know, obviously there's been some stories written, like Emily wrote one about the mental health aspect of the season. But you're also seeing, like, you know, I talked to a couple GMs last week for the trade deadline stuff. And they're all kind of like the same way.

They're just like, we're trying to get through this. We're just trying to get done with it. Like, we're not, if someone's going to hoist the cup and they're going to be very, very happy, and that's great. But, like, we just want to not be here and do this anymore and play in front of, you know, almost empty buildings and have to constantly worry about these protocols. Like, they just fucking hate it. They just fucking hate this season. They just wanted to be done. Like, that's, that's the vibe that you get when you start talking to these guys off the record.

Is that just like, everybody's just like head down, push forward, get through it. And hopefully next year gets back to some, some. once of normalcy. Anyways. So the north is pretty set. It'd be awesome if we can get a little Habs leaves action in the playoffs, right? It's like we're headed that way. I love it.

Which would be the first time in over 40 years, which is pretty amazing, considering they've been in the same division. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, they were in different conferences for half of that, but they were in the same, they've been in the same division for over 20 years. So it's, that's going to be something. Is there one team in that rivalry that, like, would never make the playoffs, Sean?

Yeah, they did. During the last 20 years, actually, even when the Leafs were good, it was, that was when Montreal fell off. Like the last 20 years, it's as if every year the hockey gods are like, all right, pick one. One of you. It would be good right now. And then, yeah, obviously the 20 years before that, the Leafs were garbage. And the one year that they should have met in the Stanley Cup final, something happened. I don't remember what.

Oh, boy. Here we go again. in the East Division, again. Like, the Rangers are trying to make it interesting as best they can, but you look at Dom's projections for the standings, and you've got the Islanders, capitals, ruins, and penguins pretty much all locked in. And the penguins now, I mean, it didn't go very well last land as we do the show, you know, making their push for the top spot, the whole thing.

So that's kind of locked in right now, too. Like the Flyers have a 4% chance right now making the playoffs. Yeah, they're real bad. It's, yeah, this is the division, I think, that is the most interesting because of how, on any given night, any of the, like, five or six best teams in it, like, leaving New Jersey and Buffalo out of it, obviously. Hey. Come on. Any given night, you're like, oh, they look like, like, Philadelphia looked really good against Boston last night. And they lost, but they look pretty good.

and then, you know, Carter Hart turns into Carter Hart sometimes. Uh-oh, you know. But then, like, the Rangers can look really good. They'll hang an eight spot on anybody. The Islanders can look really good or terrible. Boston, same deal. You know, they won, but again, they didn't look very good. They gave up, like, 40 plus shots or something.

The Capitals, who knows if they're any good, you know, it's a fascinating division for, like, all the wrong reasons as far as the team. are concerned, but two things about that division. First off, what, what, what odds do you put on Lungquist coming back? Not, not good. Not good, okay.

Secondly, you mean like next year or? No, I mean like by the, but for the playoffs. Like he's like with the team for the playoffs. Yeah, I can't see that. I'll put it at 35%. Wow. And then what happens?

like, do you go in, you suddenly have a big name backup goalie who hasn't played all year? You're 45-year-old goalie. Well, I think, I mean, I... The starter has one bad game and everyone goes, oh, let's turn to the Hall of Famer. I'm saying maybe you taxi squatted up and have him around, then, you know, he comes in and gives the big emotional speech at some point, and he's perfectly manicured and well-coffed and everybody's, like, dazzled by it. If somehow the capitals win the cup. Do we start acting like Henrik Lundquist has a cup? Because I don't think he can in good faith.

I don't think he gets his name on the cup. Yeah, well, teams get the chance, like, they can put any one guy on it they want or whoever, right? Yeah, but he has to have played. Like, they're not going to. It would have been, it'd be pretty amazing if they were just like, we won this for Henrik. I actually, I mean, if the scenario you describe where he, like, comes in to be around the team sort of thing. squad something. Which, again, I don't, I mean, should somebody who had recent heart surgery be in this?

Around the capitals? No. I don't know. But, you know, I could see something like that. But no, I mean, they're not going to, teams can ask to put guys on the cup who don't meet the regular qualifications, but the league says no sometimes. And I, I don't know. I know everyone loves the guy. But if he hasn't, if he's literally not played ever a game for the franchise.

I never put on the uniform other than the opening press conference. I can't see them. I can't tell if it would be funnier if they were like, oh, yeah, Harrick-Lunk was Stanley Cup champion, or they were like, come on, you don't get to act like you had anything to do with this. I think they should play it up. They should have them on the taxi squad. They should wear HL patches throughout the playoffs.

Just like, just give him this cup, be the ultimate honor. But is it the ultimate honor? Is this not the honorary Oscar of hockey if Henrik Lundquist gets a cup ring for being a part of... This is one of those participation trophies, all these millennials are all we're talking about. Right. The other thing I wanted to ask you about the East Division is something that a lot of readers, or listeners brought to my attention yesterday, which was the Brian Lawton theoretical trade on NHL Network. Did you see this?

No. No. Okay. This is a puck soup adjacent story. The Buffalo Sabres trade Jack Eichol and Raspestaline within the current division to the New Jersey Devils

for Jack Hughes and Nico Hesher. Who says no? Who says no? I think the answer is New Jersey says no to giving up this two. Yeah, they're younger. There's more cost control. I mean, and here's the thing, too.

Like, this is the sort of the grander thing. And I know that on paper, people are like, this is so fucking dumb. Ikel and Dahlina are much better. Like, you're taking, you can't, this is not something in a bubble. You can't take two guys from a team that never wins and they're fucking miserable there and put them on another team that never wins and now they're fucking miserable there. You can't do that. I mean, you can.

There's no law against it. yet. We're working on it. It's in the Biden infrastructure bill. Oh, is it? Infrastructure Week finally? Yeah, come on, man. That's fantastic news.

Central Division. The last one we didn't need to talk about, and, you know, probably the last one people think about, let's be honest. Carolina hurricanes, Tampa Lightning, the Florida Panthers, all at 100% to make the playoffs, according to Dom. Then you get your Nashville Predators at 40,000. 26% and Dallas Stars at 27 and the fading fast Chicago Blackhawks at 25%. Any chance the Stars or Blackhawks overcome this Nashville Juggernaut to make the playoffs?

Let's put it this way. How bad do all these teams have to be that the Dallas Stars, which is a team 13, 14, and 10 has a better chance to make the playoffs than them? And we have to act like, oh, you know what? Actually, Chicago is pretty good. fuck off. A Dallas team that's had their season interrupted three times twice for COVID and once because their state broke. Yeah. Well, and like I get that, but like you look at them and you go, well, they suck too, though.

You know what I mean? Like they, I've said it a couple of times now, but they seem to have like an ideological thing of like, we're never going to be more than one game plus or minus 500. Like we're always going to be just right one game above or below 500 and then we will lose or win the next. game, whatever gets us back to 500. They've done it all year. Every time you look at the standings, they're 10, 10, and 6, or some shit like that. Right.

But, yeah, Nashville's only doing it because Soros came back from injury and he's going off. And that's it, right? This is mostly a pretty good goaltender, but having a super heater, and that can end at any time. So, yeah. Yeah, that's Kevin Lankin, right? Yeah. So, yeah, that's kind of our one good race. Or, like, we could literally be sitting here a week from now, even,

depending on how things go with the West, going, like, yeah, that's the only race left. Yep, those teams. Or hear me out, John Hines is going to win the Jack Adams for turning this ship around. Yeah. No? No. No? Nobody?

No. Well, if Jeremy Colleton was going to win it when Lankan was going off, why not John Hines, you know? That division is. Again, much, much like in the West, it's a bunch of teams climbing over each other like the zombies on the wall in World War Z to get mud stumped by the lightning. Yeah, and the other thing we should say, they're crawling over each other to get away from that fourth place position. They're like, no, no, no, we suck, we suck. We're the worst ones. You go ahead.

And Nashville's like, I guess we'll do it for now. And then, you know, two weeks from now, Nashville is going to be like, Columbus, what do you say, guys? Who cares? God, no, please. No, I believe me. Yeah, of course, but. You know what's going to happen? It's going to fucking happen.

If you are David Poyle, what do you do? I've been on Nashville radio a bunch in the last two weeks, and I, apparently everybody in Nashville is really excited about this playoff push, and I'm just like, you cannot not sell. You have to sell. You have to sell. I've written about this twice in the last few days. I have no idea what they should do or what they will do. I think they're one of the most fascinating teams over the next few days. Because this was the number one seller for the last few weeks, right?

Matthias Eckholm. Months. We've been hearing about Eckholm. Michael Granlin, Eric Walla. Yeah. And yeah, like probably. that's the right call. Like, you know, I think we can all imagine two months from now sitting there going,

yeah, they didn't sell at the deadline and they either missed the playoffs or they made it and they got swept in three games by the lightning because it was that bad. The league was like, no, we're not doing. We're just saying we can't play a fourth. It's so ugly. Exactly. And then you go, oh, they should. But at the same time, like, you know, first of all, again, I think we, we, we,

underestimate the level of parity in this league when we say certain teams like they can't, even if they made the playoffs. Who knows, man? They were seeing, they look really good when their one goalie gets hot. That could happen again in May. Like, you know, who's to say? And also, this is David Poyle. 40 years without a cup.

Do you think he's looking to do a five-year rebuild right now with this team of $8 million forwards that he's assembled? Or do you think he's sitting there like, no, man, let's push a few more chips in and see where this goes? I will not allow you to besmirch the name of the most winningest general manager in NHL history. And two, I don't know what he's thinking vis-a-vis a rebuild because he's probably thinking he could be out of a job after the season. Depending on what the ownership there is. Well, you could, I mean, it is 70s. He could be out of a job anytime.

Like, it's not, yeah, that's it. I don't know. Which guy at his Buffalo hire, David Poiler, Jim Rutherford? Rutherford, probably because of Kevin Adams, right? I mean, you would think, but they could have done that already. Yeah. Who knows? Buffalo is the other.

I mean, we'll get to it, I guess, later in the show, but that's the other team that I think is the most interesting one to watch. Maybe they should maybe Poyle and Kevin Adams make a deal now. Oh. Taylor Hall to the Predators for a little too much draft capital going back the other way, and then. And the end of the year, David Poyle jumps over, the old Ron Francis mole Eddie Johnson trick. Like, we could do this.

Do you think Taylor Hall ends up signing long term in Buffalo? Why would he do that to him? He better not. I will go there and physically pull the pen out of his hand. Like, my God. So he's being kept out of the lineup in Kyle Palmerie, as we do the show, is being kept out of the lineup for the devil. So you assume both are gone.

What would be your Taylor Hall move? I got one that I like. I think there's a lot of places that he could go. I think certainly just in terms of where would he fit in the lineup, there's a bunch of teams. In fact, there's the list of teams that he would help is longer than the list of teams where you go, I don't really see a fit there. The cap situation and just the money situation is obviously a big impediment.

and there are going to be teams out there. Could he help Colorado? Yes, absolutely. Is Colorado going to give up assets to bring in a guy like that? Yeah, maybe, but you can understand if they were like, no, we're good. We'll direct that somewhere else. But, yeah, no, I want to hear your. Oh, I think this is a great, I think this is great because it could either be a disaster or super fun,

which is to the blues trade Mike Hoffman and a, first, let's call it, to the Sabres for Taylor Hall and the Sabres pick up half a salary. Again, I want to see Taylor Hall in the playoffs, man. I don't need this shit where he goes to another team where they're fucking terrible. The Blues stink. Adding Taylor Hall doesn't fix anything.

That makes life a little bit more exciting for them. And Ryan, you're saying you want to see Taylor Hall in the playoffs. I mean, how many times has that happened? that's why I want to see him in the playoffs. Because it never happens. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he's the Tiki Idol? Like maybe he's the curse? Like if he goes to the Oilers,

all of a sudden, fucking Vancouver's in the playoffs? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, my answer is I want to see Taylor Hall on either Tampa or Colorado. I want, I just want these guys to load up and also for Taylor Hall to have a really good shot at winning a car.

Well, I mean, the Leifs are another option That's, that's floating around. What's that? I want him to win a cup, though, so. Oh. See, I think the Leafs are like a perfect spot because he would just blend in. Yeah, wouldn't he? Or is Toronto still crazy where, like, if they lost in the playoffs, they'd blame Taylor Hall for it.

Well, I mean, I think at this point, Taylor Hall is still, he's going to blend in anywhere. Like, Taylor Hall is not a guy who shows up and, you know, you're taking his picture as he gets off the plane at airport. There's only one place he wouldn't blend in. There's only one place. If he goes to Boston, he can't blend in there. Maybe, yeah. They would see him as like second line savior.

Well, I mean, honestly, do you want to hear you? This is probably like as citical a take as I could have. Yeah, if he goes to Toronto and they flame out in the first round, he probably does take a big chunk of the blame, probably too much from that fan base and that media, which might not be a bad idea to go and get him if you're the Leafs, because you're not. They're going, if the least lose in the playoffs, they're going to turn on somebody. And it's better to be Taylor Hall than Austin Matthews or Mitch Marner or whoever else. Freddie Anderson was going to be the guy, but he's probably not even going to be the goalie. So if I'm Kyle Dubas, I'm like, you know what? If it works, it works.

And if it doesn't work, I don't know. So you just push Taylor Hall into the lion pit, in other words. That's it. There you go. It's perfect. I like your Colorado idea, though, Lambert. I wanted him to sign there this summer. I think that's a play.

They clearly want one more guy in their top six. I think you could put him with Nazim Khadri, and he could pair with him quickly and seamlessly. Speaking of pairing quickly and seamlessly, today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Raycon Wireless Earbuds. You know this is one of our favorite products. You can tell when we put over the products that we use because they're great, and these are products.

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I like to put one in my left ear and listen to a podcast while I'm cooking to have the right ear open to converse with my wife. Isn't that the way to do it, folks? Just like have a little distraction, but then also be able to still hear the person you love when they're talking to you. Highly recommend that setup as well. All right. Other trade deadline stuff, we mentioned Nashville being a fascinating team. Obviously, Buffalo is a fascinating team. Winnipeg, to me, is a real fascinating team.

Like, they are so loaded at forward. They got a great goalie, but the blue line has not been, you know, a favorite of mine for two years running. I wish that they, that predators would trade at Colm because I feel like the Jeff would be a perfect landing place. That was the perfect spot. And if that gets yanked away, then. I'm not really sure who the plan B is for Winnipeg. The thing with Winnipeg is, and this is maybe a little bit of wishful thinking, but usually to state the obvious, if you're out there trying to trade for one stud defenseman,

you're doing it thinking that you're going to add one stud defenseman. But the thing with Winnipeg is Josh Morrissey was really good. Oh, man. Yeah. And he's been really not good since. And so there is that kind of feeling. of if we could get the right guy. Like, maybe he's one of these guys where he needs the right guy to play with to get his

game up to that level. And if we bring the right guy in and they click, we're actually getting two stud defensemen for the price of one. And that's how you talk yourself into Ekholm and now suddenly if Ekholm's off the table, I don't know who Plan B is out there that makes me think, yeah, this is a big difference maker. You know, there are a few guys, but he's definitely, you know, the, the, the, then. Well, you've got this, it's interesting. The trade deadline kind of, kind of works out where

there's one position that's really weak, which is center, which is why you see, like, Granlin get all the attention he's gotten from Nashville. And then there's one position that's kind of deep and there's a few options, which is defensive defenseman. You got your Echholm, who also puts up points. You got your Alex Gologoski, assuming he's going to be available. You got your David Savard with the blue jackets. You got a few guys that fit that mold that if you're looking for that type of player, there's a few of them out there. So if that's what they're looking for, there are going to be other options. It's just a matter of knowing that you're going to have to compete against other teams that are in the market for the same guy.

You know what's an interesting one, by the way, and I got a look on cap-friendly real fast, just to remind myself. By the way, can I just say that it was on the radio yesterday, and I mentioned Cap Geek? I felt like an internet old. When's the last time Capgeek existed? It was like five years ago? Oh, I think longer than that now, yeah. Longer than that? Oh, my God.

I just, I'm like, it was the hockey equivalent of being like, I checked my MySpace page. It just felt like such a fucking fossil. Anyway, I think, you know who should be available? And I, you got to wonder at this point because of all the reporting from last year and stuff. Seth Jones only has one year left after this one, and he's a UFA. If you're Columbus, you're not, he's not playing that well, and you don't want to get into a situation where everybody's expecting you,

well, you've got to re-sign, franchise defense, whatever. Yeah. I think they look at Seth Jones as an anomaly in an anomalous year. But that said, they've got the same problem with Werenski, where he's a UFA. Well, he, okay, but the point being is that in both, okay, well, so is Dubois. Yeah, no, look, where he goes. Well, I don't think we're in both cases, you have a situation where you're getting to that point with these players where they may not want to be in Columbus anymore for various and sundry reasons. I really still feel like when it comes to wanting to be in Columbus, you kind of have to wait and see what life is like under the new coach that we all assume is going to be.

there. The nicest human being imaginable. It's always, right? Like, that's always the way it goes. You go from the players coach to the mean coach, and then you go from the mean coach to the player's coach. So, yeah, when Bruce Boudreau is there on opening night, then he's eating chicken wings with everybody.

No, nicer. Jason Spetsa. Like, that's how nice they're going to have to go. That's how nice they're going to have to go. Go completely the opposite direction Just giving guys candy at the end of every shift Yeah That's right there

Have snickers You try They're gonna hire like Jimmy Fallon Just somebody who is just overly Gushy and The little kid who did the Her Brooks impression He gets the job Well that kid's 15 years old now

But he's gonna be He's gonna be close to like His parents are telling him to get a job and he's like, yeah, I'll go be the coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Probably doing that impression on TikTok right now. I bet. And you say he's nice, but like when he said squaw him. Well, if he's 15, he's not nice.

There's not nice. Oh, yeah, there's no way. I revised my statement. Jesus, we've referenced Cap Geek and the Herb Brooks Kid in the last three minutes on this show. Let's keep going back. All right. So Jets are fascinating. Predators are fascinating. Sabers fascinating. The Leifes are fascinating because I feel like they're going to keep doing things just because they know that they've got something special this year. I mean, the Leafs, in theory, should be the all-in team. But, you know, like Pierre had an interview with Kyle Dubas. And it was kind of like, you know, now that they're, like, they're playing well, they're starting to get some clearance on top of that division. Do you go, you know, maybe the pressure is.

off. I think that's a bluff. I think that's sending a message to other teams that, hey, you know, the Leafs don't have to make a deal. So, you know, ratchet the price down a little bit. But I don't, I mean, this isn't, this Leaf season is not about like, let's win the division. No. It's, it's about you have to win, you know, losing in the first round would be a disaster. Even losing in the second round makes the season a big disappointment. I feel like you've got to at least get out of the division. So it really doesn't matter what the standings look like right now. You need to bring in as much as you can. And obviously, there's always a point where the price gets ridiculous. But if you're ever going to overpay, this is the year to do it when you're, you know,

we've said it a million times. The path out of the division, Edmonton's tough, Winnipeg's tough, but there's no Boston, there's no Tampa. No? Like there will be, presumably next year, this is your year, man. Like, I don't, I don't buy this idea that maybe the pressure's off in Toronto. I think you, you know, not that the pressure is ever off in Toronto, but yeah, this is, this is your year to Voltron as many star players together as you can and take your swing. The other thing, you know, to the point about if the prices get too ridiculous, do we feel like there's just going to be a ton of sellers because of how stratified the races are this

year, you know what I mean? And does that then drive prices down? Especially, you know, the, the big question is, you know, whether teams are going to want to take back money and blah, blah, blah, I think a lot of them won't for obvious reasons. But like, I'm, you know, looking at, looking at the standings here, you're like, yeah, there should be four plus sellers in every division. Yeah. And the real question, 14 teams already locked into the play. So they're, you know, this idea that usually at the deadline, it's the bubble teams that have to make moves and there's not a lot of bubble teams. Some of those contenders who, in theory, could be buyers, are either capped out or don't

have the budget to spend to bring everyone in. So there's that. And the other piece of it is draft picks this year are kind of being discounted because, you know, what's, especially if they're like, really, what's the difference that you trade a second round pick versus a fifth when it's nobody's seen anybody it's going to feel like a pretty random draft so you know the prices

even if the prices are the same the prices come down like we we could see the market start to crater over the next few days which could lead to a very very quiet like I'm not ruling out the idea that we could go the next five days and see

stunningly little movement well yeah I read about this a couple weeks ago like the Beyond the draft pick thing, there's like three things that are unprecedented happening at the same time. The flat cap, which is going to be a flat cap for the next several seasons, so teams don't have a lot of wiggle room. The Cracken, which is going to severely influence the amount of players with term, they get moved. And then the third thing is, like we talked about before, with the team like the Blues. You're going to have general managers and coaches that simply don't want to overreact to this season.

Like, you mentioned Seth Jones. I mean, like, do you really want to overreact to a guy that's traditionally been one of the better defensemen in the league having a shit season in an anomalous year? But he's not been this bad, though. Oh, no, for sure not. But, like, is that just, you know, like, now that's reality catching up with? I don't think so. And I don't think it's reality catching up with Carter Hart. I don't think it's reality catching up with Travis Kine or any of these guys that are having not good seasons in a fucked up year.

I'll give you one more. Go ahead. And it's related. But this, the pandemic itself, like not the way the pandemic affects the league, but the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic, first of all, I think a lot of players who normally might have no trade clauses that would be happy to waive them might say, no, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leave. Like my kid's school just got shut down. I'm not doing this. And there may be GMs who look at this and go, you know, yeah, I could trade.

this guy for a fourth round pick, do I really want to do that? Like, at some point, is that, you know, not that there's any morality in pro sports, but like at some point is it's there's a human element. Is it worth me to like throw this guy's life into turmoil and maybe more so, especially for the Canadian teams, because we're, we're behind up here as far as how things are going. But there may be cases where like players are going and GMs going, like, don't trade me right now. Like I don't need to pack up and move across the country or maybe to a, different country in the middle of all this.

And you're sitting there going like, if I'm getting a, like, yeah, you're still going to trade Taylor Hall. You're still going to be certain guys that are going to go. But am I going to get a fifth round pick for this guy? Is that really worth it to look him in the eye and go like, yeah, sorry, man. I know, you know, I know your parents aren't doing great right now, but you're going to the West Coast. Off you go head to the airport.

You've got to be there tomorrow. What you just said is the single greatest indictment of the Buffalo Sabres I've ever heard because Eric Stahl fucking said, I'll go to Canada. and quarantine to get away from this franchise. Yeah. Well, you know. Yeah. It's interesting, especially like, like you said, because the flat cap for, and Seattle, like, it creates

so many moving parts that are, you know, like even this summer might not get sorted out until after the expansion draft. And so, yeah, like the idea of, oh, all these guys are going to get, I don't think, you know, I think you're right that it's going to be relatively quiet. Yeah. And I don't know. That's baked into the expectations now. Like everyone is kind of already understands that this isn't going to be a regular deadline.

I'm saying I could see it being significantly less than even that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. I'm with you. There's a part of me that really hopes it isn't going to be just a, to use a phrase that people are using, a dudline. But remains to be seen. It's the NHL.

You know, always there on the side of it's going to be a dud. A couple things. We ran our latest awards watch on ESPN. Other places obviously do their awards watches around this time, too. Top three for the heart, based on the people that I surveyed. McDavid is leading by a country Mile. Matthews. And Kane still sort of in it just because he's like,

the reason that the Blackhawks are relevant outside of some better goalhitting than expected. But, I mean, if they're not going to be a playoff team, obviously he's not going to win it, which would probably open the door for a number of guys, McKinnon being one, Crosby being another, who's all of a sudden, I think, in the top ten for scoring. They'll never give it to Vasilleschi because he's a goalie. And I think Barkoff is going to have a real interesting case if the Panthers keep doing what they're doing. But he'll get that Ryan O'Reilly, Anjikopatar thing. of getting the Selky as the de facto MVP for a two-way center.

I bet that happens. Yeah. I don't understand why nobody's talking about Connor Hellabuck for this award again. The Jets stink. It's like him and Nick Eilers and the rest of the team's horrible. And because those two guys are so good, it doesn't matter. No. Like, I truly don't, like, you know, I think Vasilevsky's interesting because he's having a great season.

but like don't you get the feeling that you could put any fucking goalie in the league back there and they'd be pretty good? You know, like maybe they wouldn't be where they are in the standings, but they'd be great. And if you took Connor Hallibuck off the Winnipeg Jets, they'd be the Calgary Flames. My only concern there is that he, so he finished sixth for the heart last year in a year where he was too low. It way too, too, oh, absolutely, that's what I'm saying. Like he grabbed that team by the scruff of its neck. and made it relevant and still only got the sixth in the voting. And so that's my concern about him being a candidate this year.

Because remember, the awards watch is like who's going to win versus who should win. And I completely agree that he should be in the mix of the heart. Norris had been, I think Adam Fox has broken through the cacophony to maybe be a finalist. Good work. Although there's been an interesting sort of backlash saying that actually he was better last year. He was better last year. He was better last year. But I think now that you're starting to read articles that are doing the like, is this the new Brian Leach?

It's hard to not imagine that he's going to have a certain amount of support outside of his division. The other one's interesting, though, because what you have is a slew of not-name brands that could all be in contention for that other spot. Yeah. Darnel Nurse, Jacob Chikrin, both Sam. Sam Gerard and Devin Taves. Let me stop you right there with Jack Wren. There's a guy on the Edmonton Oilers who's going to be up for it. They're not going to give it to a guy on the fucking coyotes over him.

Come on. I completely agree. And then you've got some brand names. You've got your Chey Theodore, Crystal Tang. People were on Drew Dowdy's tip. He's good. Drew Dowdy. Yeah.

Oh, my God. These people don't fucking watch the sport, man. And then you got Cal McCarr, whose issue is sample size because he did miss 12 games. I think that in a season, now we should talk about briefly the change in voting. So the PHWA, which votes on the heart, the Norris, the Selke, and the Calder changed their voting system this year, where they're going to do 20 voters from each of the four divisions and then 20 at large voters, of which Emily and I are, are. large voters. And so the idea being that it's assumed that everyone's kind of just focused in on their intra-division stuff.

So to not throw it all out of whack because the North Division would have had a hell of a lot more voters than the other divisions, they're going to, you know, separate it into these sort of categories. So we'll see how that works. But I think what you need is candidates that kind of break through the divisional walls. And to me, that means a break. grand name, and that to me means that along with Headman and Fox, it would not shock me to see

John Carlson get the other nomination. Oh, boy. I know. Oof. Well, how familiar is a Central or East Division voter with John Carlson versus Darnell Nurse? No, I get it, but like, again,

like your job is to watch the fucking sport. I agree. They pay you to do it. So maybe try to get it right instead of just being like, well, I've heard of this guy. First of all, you shouldn't have heard of all of these fucking guys. It's your fucking job. This is very true.

Jesus Christ. The Calder I've long felt is going to be a forward, a goalie, and a defenseman. And so I'll stick with that and say it's Caprisoff in a walk, probably still Lankin in, and then Ty Smith as your top three. Sure. Who cares? Doesn't matter. Fucking Caprizov. Vesna voted on by the general manager's Vasselowski Flurry Grubauer, sound right?

Ruebauer? No? What about this fucking guy? He plays for Winnipeg Jets. Oh, Connor Hullabug? He's like the reigning Vesna winner. He's like the best goalie in the league on a dog-shit team. Who do you knock out of there, Gruberauer?

Or Flurry. Flurry's not going to have the games played by the end of the year. And the other thing, too, about Flurry, I actually mentioned this in the piece today. Like, Flurry also famously not getting the support of the general managers at any point in his career. He's never been a Ves and a finalist. So you might be right on that. I mean, he's earned that over the course of his career, I think, is not being a Vesna finalist very often. Yeah.

Like, he's having an unbelievable year, but, you know, again, much like Veslevski, you go, well, I mean, they'd be good no matter who's back there. So, let's see here. Barkoff, Bergeron, Mark Stone for the Selke. What do you think? Sure. Okay. Sounds fun. All right.

Jack Adams. Quentville's going to win it in a walk. I would say the other two finalists could be Sheldon, Keefe, and Barry Trots. What say you? I think Trots is a great pick. you know, the islanders, again, not a lot of talent. They're right near the top of the league. They keep doing it.

But Keefe is interesting just because it's like, everybody thought they were going to be good this year. And they're not like blowing the competition out of the water. They're the best team in Canada, but they're not like destroying everybody. And it seems like every other week they lose two games and someone goes, is the team that just beat the Toronto Maple Leafs? best team in Canada, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. And so I think, I think, you know, based on the history of the award, like, there's going to be a team that, whoa, where'd they come from?

And I think it's Dean Eveson, right? Like, Dean Eveson, Minnesota, Wiles, everybody goes to Minnesota Wild fucking rocks. Like, they're fun to watch. They're really good. Maybe not so much on the road, I guess. But, you know, when they, when they have last change, they're really good. And, yeah, I don't know. I think it ought to be Dean Eveson just based on people thought, certain very smart people,

thought they would be good this year. But, like, I don't think even like a genius, like a super genius? Some are saying. I don't think anybody thought they'd be this good. So, yeah, I think that's a good pick. And he also checks the boxes that people like, which is easy. he's new on the job. First full year, like for whatever reason, that really seems to resonate with the people who vote on this award.

So I would be surprised, putting aside who should or shouldn't, because I, you know, my, I think we should just, it should be the best coaches. It should be the same names year after year for this award, but it isn't. I think he is a guy who, I'd be surprised if he wasn't a finalist. Yeah. Yeah. All right, finally on the ESPN tip, I also, we also published the final two top 10 rankings in the poll of the players and the team officials that we did. If you haven't seen it, I will give it to you now. Connor one, McKinnon 2, Matthews 3.

Kyle Connor, number one. That's a surprise. Connor Kellogg. Wow, he did it. It was actually Connor Carrick. Crazy. No, Sidney Crosby, four, dry-sitle 5. Crosby had a dry-siddle.

Eichel, 6, Bergeron 7, Barkoff 8, Braidin. Point 9, and Matt Barzell 10, which means Ryan O'Reilly, a guy that I thought was Garin fucking T'd to be in the top 10, did not make it. And my Matt Barzell did. Yeah. I'm not surprised, especially Barzell, like, he's had some crazy games and highlight realizes. Oriley's one of those guys who sounds, like when you say his name and you look at what he's done, you go, yeah, it's a top 10 center for sure.

And then you do that for a few more guys and you're like, I've got 13 guys on my. That's absolutely right. The number of, I think once you get out of like the top three even, the number of centers in the league where you're where you can very credibly go, that's a top 10 guy is like 15 guys long. So at some point, yeah, somebody, somebody's going to get knocked out. And with O'Reilly in particular, it's like, well, he's not as good as Patrice Bergeron as a 200-foot center. And he doesn't score, like, a crazy amount of points. He's not as good as Bergeron or Barkoff. But it just seemed like what, like, in the conversations I had with people for the survey and getting some stuff like off the record, everybody was just like over the fucking moon on O'Reilly.

And I was stunned. He didn't have the support. Yeah, again, like, I just think so much of this is still. I mean, look at the fucking voting totals, right? Like, so much of this is still tied up and just like, well, he puts up a lot of points, scored a lot of goals, so he must be great. Yeah. You know, and, and, you know, if we're properly valuing players for their defensive contribution,

I think O'Reilly maybe should be in the top 10, but like he'd be a borderline case even if, even if we were looking at it from, from that point of view. And so, I don't know. I like, I kind of go back, like, who was a bigger when Buffalo traded? him. Like, I was just like, what the fuck are they doing? You know? And so you, so you just kind of look at it and you go like, well, yeah, he's had a history of being one of, let's say, the 15 best centers in the league for a million years. And he just, apart from when he, did he win? His first year in St. Louis. His first year in St. Louis, he was great. Did he win the,

the, uh, the Kahn Smythe? He did, yeah. Yeah, he should and he should have. And he probably should have been a top three MVP guy that year. But, like, apart from that, it's always like, yeah, that's like a really solid, like, B plus center. And so, yeah, a B plus center is maybe not going to make your top 10, and I think that's legal. And let's, like, if he's the 11th best center in the league, that means there are 20 teams in the league that he would immediately become their number one center, which in this league, quite, possibly like the most important player on the roster. Like that's a really good player. It's not some insult here.

Like it's not like. No, it's not. And we gave the guys a list of 30 from which to choose. And so he's better than the other like 19 guys on that list. Yeah. Yeah. I was a good place to be. I was a little surprised Patterson didn't end up on it.

He had support. Yeah. I'm wondering. I mean, you know, the voting happened. Yeah, the voting happened during the season, and particularly the early part of the season where he was off to a pretty bad start. So there might be some, I can't call it recency bias because it's not recent, but like, at the time, recent. Temporal bias, I guess, I don't know. The other thing about, the other list we put out was about goalies.

And that list is just all over the fucking place. I mean, it's just whatever. I thought a lot of it made sense, and then they would occasionally be like, well, Carrie Price is. obviously the best. Yeah, yeah. And I asked, I asked one of the players straight up, like, why do you keep putting price over in all? Yeah, and his answer was like, well, because he's Kerry Price. And it's like, that's not an answer.

I know. It's stupid. But the other thing that was interesting about that list was, I talked to a coach that said he was really struggling with putting together a list of 10 goalies. Now, and part of it, I think, is probably like how many teams will tune their guys and what have you. But he said the other part of it is that if you go back 10 years. and look at the top goalies in the league, like maybe there just aren't as many good ones in 2012. Maybe there's more good ones.

Maybe, like, I honestly think, if you go back 10 years, that's one thing. But, you know, when people go, like, oh, 20 years ago there, you had Broder and you had Hasick and these. And a bunch of guys who were 840 goalies. Yeah, and now it's like, like, goaltending NHL is getting very close to what I would refer to as having, like the kicker problem in the NFL where it's like, you know, oh, kickers aren't good.

No, actually, the kickers are really good. There's just so many of them and there's so much randomness to their performance that you don't really need to think about them all that much. There's like two or three really good ones that you're happy to have on your team. There's obviously going to be a few every year that are going to be terrible and torpedo their team. And everyone else is just kind of interchangeable. Yep, absolutely.

And you just got a, you know, NFL GMs have figured out. they don't go and give seven-year contracts to their kickers because they had a couple of good years. I feel like goalies are getting close to that. Because if you try to explain to an NFL fan, like, that, you know, a new NFL fan would be like, who's the leading score in the league? Well, every year it's the kickers or score more points than anybody. Who is in the highest leverage situation?

Well, other than quarterbacks, kickers have at least a game every year where, like, their team wins or loses based on what they do. And you'd go, wow, they must be the most important, most highly paid players. in the league. And it's like, no, nobody even thinks about them. Yeah, actually, they're completely interchangeable outside of like five guys. But it's because there's so many good ones and so much, and it's so hard to project their performance in any given year that you just grab a guy and hope your guy's good. And if not, you go get a different guy. And that's, I think that's closer to what we're at than some sort of, there aren't that many good goalies. Yeah. Unfortunately,

for a lot of NHL teams, their GMs have not gotten the message on like, you don't sign these guys for that long. So my my theory on goalies you have three three types of goalies in the league you have your your Vasilleschi halibuck tier of guys that are your absolute studs you ride or die with them they're the difference makers they could be the MVP of your teams and then you have teams that are really really good and just need somebody who's competent yep and that's your kind of like Philip grubauer type I think just like don't fuck up and then you have one and I think the Leafs are kind of here right now where you have a couple guys and you're like, sort of like them both, don't love either one of them,

but if one of them catches fire, oh boy, we're going to be in good shape. That seems to be the other model. And you just hope that you pick right. Yeah, right. Because that's,

because that model you just described is that's, in any given year, there's a very, very good chance of whoever wins the Stanley Cup is going to be using that model. Yeah. But it's also a really,

it's, there's also a really good chance that's, some team it's going to be a total disaster. Because if you pick, you can have three goalies and you're like, one of these three guys is probably going to have a career year. But you've got to pick the right one. You got to ride them at the right time. And if all three don't have that season, then you look like an idiot as a GM.

That's right. What did you really think these three guys were going to do it? But, yeah. You could argue that's the model the caps had the year they won because they started out with Rubauer, right? Yep. And then made the change. And look, like, it's, it's, you could point to the lightning last year and say there's an example of a team that had to sit. But they almost lost to Dallas who was writing their 34-year-old backup, right?

Right. Who did that thing with it with when Houdobin took over and he went fucking bonkers? You're right. Yeah. It happens every year. There's a bunch of guys and you go, yeah. But then it's easier said than done as a GM to sit there and go, I'm just going to bring in two or three competent guys. guys and hope because when hope doesn't work, you end up looking for a job.

A couple other things this week. Our bonus episode dropped yesterday as you did the podcast. It's a real fun one. It's the coin-op arcade draft where we each take seven categories and try to create the coolest arcade we can based on the classic games. other stuff. I got a text from a buddy of mine who's a listener of the show, and he made a really good point that beyond the pinball, we really shortchanged the other tabletop games or the other games you can play. Air hockey. We mentioned bubble hockey briefly, but like he said pop a shot was one that we slept on and games like that. I think that's a fair point. I was so laser focused on like shit with a joystick that I didn't think about the other stuff in the arcade. game. Yeah.

But yeah, no, there's, you could, you could definitely make a case for, uh, for some of those as well. Like, I could, I think I, I ended up picking the drum game, spoiler, who gives you shit, you should listen to it anyway. Uh, but I really kind of regret not picking ski ball or something like that, um, to, to be part of the collection. Yeah, we just should have had a separate category for that kind of a ski ball or, uh, or, or hockey, you know, we fucked up. What do you want from us?

We didn't fuck up. Listen, it, it, it, it, it, could have gotten into any number of categories. I mean, ski ball is a classic game. Like, it could have been there. You, you, sir, still deserve, I think, MVP honors for remembering that pinball is a thing that happens in arcades. We're hearing that more and more than I did the best job. But it's a super great episode and hopefully get a chance to check it out. Let's close it out with a little bit of something that half the audience absolutely loves and half the audience will now turn off the podcast and that'd be wrestling talk. It is WrestleMania Week.

WrestleMania 37 guys Wow Incredible Very exciting Yeah Edge is wrestling Because it is 2012

Yeah Can't all be winners I guess And Yeah I'm doing my lapsed fans Guide for ESPN One of the best

One of the best things to read Because I Thank you Because I only watch the I only watch the pay-review So I have no idea what the storylines are in any given. I find this one a bit difficult to write about.

It's just not a very compelling card outside of a few matches that have had a good build. But, Sean, your thoughts on WrestleMania becoming a two-night event, which is now they're doing this now for a couple of years. Yeah, I wonder if they'll go back to it when we're closer to the normal times. I mean, it's better to do that than to do a seven-hour show. Yeah, that's the thing to say. Those were just awful. Like the last few years, you had, it's been brutal.

Like, in some cases, pretty compelling main events that just went over like a wet fart because the audience is exhausted. You can't do a seven-hour show and then expect your crowd to be on their feet for the main event. Yeah, this is why, this is why wrestle kingdoms two nights, you know. The New Japan figured it out. You have the big card. People will show up for two, three and a half, four hour cards and be fucking jacked the whole time. As opposed to, oh, my God, it's another fucking tag team championship matches the third one tonight.

Ever since they made the decision that everybody had to get on the show. Yeah. And, you know, that you just, you couldn't, which is always makes it weird when there's like one or two every year where you're like, why aren't they? Like you're using like 98% of the roster. But like, you know, 20 years ago, WrestleMania was just like seven matches. There's like a world title match,

tag team. There's a couple. And most of the roster wasn't on the show because it just, that's not how it worked out. And then at some point they decided that everybody has to be on. And now suddenly it's, you know, there's way too many matches,

let alone when you then do like the super long entrances and the five-minute video package before everything. And, like, let's have a celebrity come out and say, like, nobody wants the concert, man. Like, just move it along, please, we're begging. And now they're doing, like, to get everybody on the roster on the show, like, they're doing convoluted things. Like, AJ Styles is by far one of the best wrestlers working today.

They have them at a tag team match against the new day. And basically the setup is, hey, I decided I want to win a tag title. Like, that's a whole fucking thing. The thing with, I mean, as, you know, I think the attitude error really kick started the whole, like, well, let's just have our biggest guys win the tag team, like, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin and I think mankind were tag team partners. And then you had the Rock and Sock Connection. Then you had the brothers of destruction. And it was just like, yeah, like, everybody doesn't have to be a tag team champion. You can just have like dedicated tag teams. It's like, that's actually allowed. And then they moved, they moved like into that. They leaned into that for a, number of years and then they were like, you know what, we all liked it better when it was just like the biggest names in the company, right?

Mm-hmm. So. All right. So in honor of WrestleMania, we are going to do an overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite. Someone suggested wrestling heels. I'm so glad because I had a very funny, well, I think it's very funny. You know, your mileage may vary.

I think I've said before My favorite kind of a wrestling heel Is the cowardly heel Oh yes And wouldn't and you know Wouldn't it be funny if the cowardly heel in WWE Like the big name cowardly heel Was Braun Stromen

Because you know Wow Playing against type Yeah and like you know you could go Oh you know He was diagnosed with some sort of a nerve problem where Like he experienced experiences more pain than he ever has in his career, you know?

And so then you, like, you put him in a, in a submission hold and he's just going, ow, ah, you know, that kind of stuff. I thought that would be really funny. I like that. It's to just have, like, a huge fucking guy who's, like, very afraid of getting hit. I love it. That would be so funny to me. But they'll never do it.

I think that works. So Eric Lindross, basically. Wow. Yes, that's exactly right. That would be so fucking funny, is if they just had, like, the big show or whoever, just be like, please don't hit me. I have a medical condition. That would fucking rock. I've still showing up for the wrestling event, but I'm going to ask.

So then you have to do a thing where, like, you know, the general manager or the commissioner of Raw or whatever is like, no, you have to wrestle. And he's like, but I really don't want to. My doctor says I shouldn't. That's good. I think that would be so fucking cool. All right. I got my list now. Okay, here we go.

Overrated wrestling heel. I'll go first. Bradshaw. So they took Bradshaw from the APA. First, he was a cowboy. And then they put him in the Accolite Protection Agency. And so to be in the Accolite Protection Agency, first he was a member of a cult. And then he seemed like a bounty.

A hired gun. Right, to rough up people. And then he became kind of like brand ex Ted DiBiase. Yeah, because he's actually rich. Like, they were just like, oh, like, you're really rich. We can just like make you. Yeah, so he lived the gimmick. He goes on Fox business and talks about stocks and shit.

I just never liked them. I never found him to be compelling. I never really found him to be the best worker. But people did like him as a foil for other wrestlers. Yeah. But I didn't like him. And also apparently, like a legitimately terrible human being. Yeah, a huge.

Yeah. Absolute, awful, like, all sorts of stories of his behavior to other people just being, like, unforgivably bad. And I'm even saying in the context of pro wrestling, which is a garbage place filled with garbage people, this guy stands out as the worst of the human garbage. So this sounds like least favorite material, but I'll go overrated for Bradshaw because I do have a better least favorite.

Well, the other thing to say is, you can say a lot of bad stuff about Bradshaw as a person and as a worker and that kind of thing. The clothesline from hell is a fucking cool finisher. He looks like he kills somebody, and that rocks to me. That always, yeah.

I always did like that, you know, especially these days where like everyone's finisher is like, all right, I'm going to, I need the guy to, to stay completely still while I put each one of his limbs in a different position. And then I do a flip. Like in his was just like, I'm going to hit you really hard in the face. Yeah, I'm going to knock you on your ass.

And knock you unconscious. And then you won't be. I will just just lie on top of you for three seconds so that you get pinned because you are concussed. Yeah, there's something to be said for that one. Overrated heel, Ryan. Overrated heel. You know what? We just mentioned them.

Ted DiBiase Oh, good out of here. Get out of town. What a joke. He's amazing. He's like the best heel. I don't know. When he kicked the basketball away from the little.

That was great. You know what? He used to stuff money in people's throats. I take it back. I kind of forgot the like comedy aspect of Ted DiBiBiqa. Give me IRS. Debiassi, yeah, absolutely. Give me IRS then.

Yeah, that's fantastic A fantastic choice Although, again, with the comedy thing, he comes out and he's like, I have a message for all the tax cheats in Providence, Rhode Island. And it's like, but yeah, I don't know.

I like it. IRS. Mm-hmm. Mike Rotonda works better as a different guy, but yeah. Yeah. My, uh, is he the one, is he Bray Wyatt's dad? Yes.

Is that how that family? Yeah. Okay, it is, eh? That's always weird to me. He birthed the fiend. The fiend himself. He must have done, I mean, who else, but an IRS agent could produce a demon spunk? Bring such evil into the world.

Oh, all the tax cheats in Providence around. It's the funniest fucking thing in the world. He was always mad that people were cheating on their taxes. And you know that's because, like, Vince got audited one year. Right? Like, that's the only reason IRS was the thing. I mean, his name was Erwin R. Scheister. He came out in glasses. Vince written all over it.

He won a tie. He knew his wrestling that day, but he still put on a tie because he was an accountant first. Have I ever told you? You know what? I don't know that I'm allowed to tell this story. Never mind. All right. That's fine.

Okay. My overrated heel is everybody in the NWO with the possible exception of Hulk Hogan, because they weren't heels. Like Hall and Nash and those guys, they weren't, none of them were playing heels. They were heels initially, though. They were heels in this, initially, but once they became the NWO, they were coming out, they were doing catchphrases, playing to the crowd, being cool. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

And nobody, which is why none of the, none of the, none of the the good guys could get over against them because like they're cool they're they were they were great they were great characters but they weren't two cool heels yeah they weren't uh they weren't heels in any say and they weren't trying to they were trying to get themselves over and you know I mean you talked about like heels you know the cowardly here whatever like these were this is the exact opposite these were like yeah we're we're too cool to even bother with any of this and so you've got all these these good guys trying to get over and they can't, and that eventually leads to problems.

By the way, that kind of reminded me, and I'm going to amend my overrated again, when the Undertaker is a heel, that sucks. Yes. Okay. What about like the initial, like the very first Undertaker when he comes up? I was like four years old. I don't, yeah, I don't have a big opinion. You were right at the right intellectual level then.

Yeah, that's right. what they were going for. To actually think he was like a ghost or whatever. Yeah. But yeah. You know, he squashed Superfly Jimmy Snooka, WrestleMania 7, his first match of the streak or whatever. And I guess I don't really think about him.

But like, any time they tried to make him like, I'm actually evil. And it's like, dude, you know, like, I remember two years ago when you were riding a motorcycle, fuck off. I was reminded the other day that Jim Ross tried to get over the nickname Booger Red for when the Undertaker was the biker taker. And I never understood that, but it was the thing that happened. Underrated heel, Jake the Snake Roberts. Jake the Snake Roberts. Yeah, he was great.

Became super facie. Like, people really liked him during his feuds with, like, who is it? Like, Adrian Adonis or somebody like. Yeah, he was always feuding with. like beautiful men. Like the model Rick Routtel is one of his big... The Rick Rood feud was

one of the all-man. Oh, Rick Rood, yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Boy, he just hated when guys were hot, huh? Yeah, he hated hot guys. You're taken away from the attention the snake gets. So, like, from a psychological standpoint,

he was an awesome heel. He just didn't do it enough when he got to the WWF. So he's, for me... He was just a little too good at it. And even back then, like, It's not like today where as soon as someone comes out, and they're like, I'm a heel and they do anything right.

And the audience is like, we like you now. And then they're like, okay, so he's a good guy. And the audience is like, oh, boo, then. And it's, oh, Jesus. He was also saddled, like you said, he was also saddled with, like, two things people absolutely loved, which was the DDT and the snake. So it's kind of hard to be a heel.

He looked fucking cool, like the haircut and the big mustache. Like, he fucking, Jake the Snake Roberts is fucking. He was my favorite. Like, as a kid. Yeah. And like the. classic, he was the classic wrestler who didn't need a title

ever because he just, he was already, and apparently, the thing at one point they were going to have him do a program with Hogan, which you think would have been perfect, but Hogan didn't want to do it because he knew that Jake was going to get cheered over

him and he wouldn't work with anyone who that would happen with. Underrated, I have about a thousand. I'll get, I'll, I'll give two honorable mentions here. Mr. Perfect. I like that he did everything perfectly.

And, of course, I have to say it, Roman Raines as a heel fucking rocks. Yeah. He's so good at it. But still probably not a lot of people know yet. Can I just say, like, I'm correct, right? They're doing WrestleMania in front of a crowd this year. Yes.

They are, yeah. And it's the masks and pods. They had a crowd in... Is this the first time? First crowd since then. Okay. So we've, for years, they've been trying to get Roman Raines over as a good guy. The crowd craps on everything he does.

They finally turn him heel. He's, from what I've heard, been doing great. He's incredible at it. And I bet you he comes out and the crowd cheers him now. Yeah. They refuse to go along with anything that, like, the guy's working so hard to get over as a bad guy. they just, well, it's funny.

So they added Daniel Bryan to a match between Roman Rains and Edge. And they also basically turned edge heel. So you have two heels in a match against like one of the most popular wrestlers of all time, Daniel Brian. And he's once again doing the Daniel Brian gimmick of like, no, they don't want me to win shit. Yeah, the under, the underdog against the odds. So they're doing everything they can to try to get heel heat on the other two guys by putting them in the ring. It's going to work. It's going to work.

Which is great. I mean, I think if you've got a guy like Edge who took 10 years to come back from, you know, life-threatening neck surgery, you really want to bail on his good guy push before you've even put him in front of one single fan. That's fine. That's great. That's the real commitment. But Edge was always at his best when he was a heel. He was.

So, yeah. Anyway, my actual answer for the most underrated heel of all time. has left my brain, so please come back to me. Oh, boy. Okay. All right. Well, you, you, you, don't you have 998 more? Well, do you, I mean, do you want me to just go down a little bit?

No, I know. Sean, who's your underrated heel? This guy, I mean, maybe isn't even underrated, but I feel like just the whole position is underrated. Bobby the Brain Heenan. Oh, hell yeah. Just abs. I mean, probably the best ever heel manager.

I would say properly rated as the greatest of all time. But I would say the great. great, yeah, the greatest manager of all time, but I think maybe even still underrated because, like, well, there's generations that only know him from, like, being on the WCW broadcast team. Yeah. Like, and also, but just like how good he wasn't getting anyone, or you just put anybody with him in. He would get out there and get that guy over as a guy you hated because, and then you would wait. Because he was a weasel.

Yeah, you would wait to see his weasily manager. Like, that's a thing that doesn't really happen anymore. but the idea of like the good guy who's got to fight the bad guy but that what you really want is for him to get rid of the bad guy so that the skinny little weasily manager will finally have to get his comeuppance and get you know thrown around and and like with heenan it happened every two months and it was still great every time because he was so good the best example of that was he got he turned andre heel like that's an impossible thing to do just by just by walking out with him. Like that was like, I mean, like, like, Heyman's kind of like that now. But again, we're in the era now. We're like, Heyman's so good at it that people are like, oh, he is good at it. So I'm going to cheer even though he's trying to get me to boo. And it's, whereas back then you just like, oh, like when they would do, like they would go through towns and have, you know, good guy against bad guy.

And then like the blow off would be, okay, now it's good guy against bad guy and Bobby Heenan has to wrestle. And you're like, oh, this is going to. It would great. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I think that's a plot line or storyline that they did when we were young that I wish they would do more of, which is the heel manager has an unending supply of people. He's throwing at the champion. Yeah, the Heenan family.

I love that. Dude, you know, it's like how Rita Repulsa would keep sending monsters to go take on the Power Rangers. Yeah. I love that. And I don't do it. Like, I love the idea of just like, I'm going to find someone else and throw them at you. and he's like, I'm going to beat this guy too. Fuck you.

Like, it's a great, the best. And it paid off so great, like, when Hogan finally turned heel and Hedon was there to be like, I have been telling you for a decade that this guy was garbage. Okay. Right. Anyway, I remembered, I think maybe, like, certainly, in terms of box office, the greatest hill of all time is the rock, right? Like, when he was a heel, it's so easy to forget now that he's the biggest movie star in the world.

But when he was a heel, people hated his guts, and he was fucking incredible at it. Yeah. And he was so good at it that, like, every now and then he would just have to go back to being a good guy. But then he could bring it back. Like, when he was becoming, like, the movie star and he had that heel run, where he would come out and, like, start to do the catchphrase and the audience would be like, no, no, no, no, you don't get to do that. You don't get that, right. He gave a heel promo. Well, it was when he was just like kind of on the fence.

Like, and then he came out and the audience was booing him and he gave this promo where he was like, think very carefully if you want to go down this road. Like if you want to do this, we'll do this, but you, you know, and then at the end of it, he started to do the pro, like the catchphrase and the audience started to sing along. And he was like, no, you don't get to do that anymore. You made your decision. You're not doing, like, we're not doing the catchphrases. We're not doing anything. and like the crowd was furious, but he was, yeah, he was phenomenal. Yeah, humble.

I loved it. Favorite heel, easy one. Vince McMahon, it's got to be. Mr. McMahon is the greatest heel in the history of professional wrestling. It's a fucking boss, you know? And he played the role perfectly. And the perfect balance of being like a terrible guy that, like, you wanted to see him get his kick, but then every now and then he actually would, or he actually would, like, you know,

he wasn't one of these guys where it was like you never got to see anything happened to him. Yeah. Because he knew. It was just enough that. And then he would sell the hell out, like when Austin would come out and spray him with beer. Like, he didn't act like, ah, you know, I'm, I'm too cool. I'm not in. He would sell it.

He got hitting the head with a bedpan on national TV. Coincidentally, also my favorite announcer. I think Vince is a tremendously undermate. rated announcer. Well, the problem with Vince is the announcer is he doesn't know any of the moves and he just know what a maneuver. And also another legitimately horrible

horrible. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Favorite heel. You know, recent revelations about his politics aside freaking the Paragon of Virtue himself, Chris Jericho is that I talk about it all the time. That program with

Dean Melancho in like 95 or so is the greatest program in the history of wrestling as far as I'm concerned. It's fucking so funny. It's incredibly, like, it's incredibly, like, again, a guy you want to see get beat and he would, you know, he was a cowardly heel, so he would run away all the time. But the thing I think about all the time with him is he would lose a match, like, by count out or disqualification, so he would keep the title. and then he would be like throw a big temper tantrum, and he'd rip the ring announcer's tuxedo jacket. And then the next week he'd come out,

I really want to apologize. You know, that's not me. And to make up for it, I have here a brand new tuxedo jacket. I got your exact measurements. And the guy tries it on. He's like, wow, this is nice. Thanks, Chris. And then he loses the match and he rips the jacket. Like, this happened for a month straight.

And they would do two shows a week Like on fucking real Like oh my God And you know I was in the building for the The cruiserweight battle royal Where he was trying to find anybody Besides Dean Malenko

Yeah I was in Worcester Massachusetts And I was there Because that was so like Dean Malenko A guy who famously Was amazingly talented But no personality Never really get over with the crowd

Mm-hmm And the pop that he got that night. Yeah, because, so, yeah, so Jericho, you know, Jericho is introducing all these cruiser which were very specifically not Dean Melenko. And then it turns out one of them was Dean Melancho under a luchador mask. And, yeah, when he took that mask off, people went fucking bonkers. And they should have.

It was, you know, that, oh, man. It's good stuff. Was that also the same one where, when he was introducing everyone, he was, like, running down? Yeah, he would be like, oh, Kidman, you know, Kidman. got some calamine lotion for you, you have like a one in eight chance of winning this thing. So good. Favorite heel, Sean? I'll go back a little bit further, but Roddy Piper.

Amen? Absolute, I mean, the number one heeled her in like the Hogan era. And it was, yeah, he was just so good. the promos, the Piper's Pit, everything, you know, to the point where again, like you... He got too good. And he could get other people over, right? They had him do the talk show basically so that some guy who wasn't over would come out

and stand next to Roddy Piper and you hated that guy by the end of it because... You know, I had the great gimmick with Orton where he was like, had the cast, and so he would just whack the guy in the head with his cast that he had for three straight years. just yeah great stuff again another guy never needed the title because he just too good and the other thing about Piper that was interesting was and you don't see this anymore at all he almost never wrestled yeah he would do the house show but you never saw like if you saw him actually in the ring it was a big deal yeah it wasn't you know he wasn't out there just every week you know showing off his moves and that like it was it was a big deal to get him out there

yeah uh least favorite he heel for me. Very brief run as a heel, but I still think it was such a insanely bad decision on every front. Do you remember when they turned dusty roads to the NWO? No, but I do know that they turned everybody in WCW at some point. Like, again, like the symbol of WCW joins the NWO for no apparent reason other than he just wanted to be like with the cool kids. And made no sense storyline-wise, made no sense, made the NWL less cool for having Dusty Rhodes in it. So I would say that is my least favorite heel by a country mile was when they turned Dusty Roads heel.

Yeah. I feel like, hmm. Hmm. I feel like there's, again, there's a lot of them where it's like, oh, this guy was a face and we had to turn him heel. and that actually didn't work at all. You know, here's who it is. It's fucking Michael Cole. Remember when they tried to make Michael Cole

that hool-and-a-do-fee. That sucked. Yeah, I like that. It's a good choice. And, like, I don't even think Corey Graves is that good at it or whatever, but, like, you're going to have a guy who's a heel announcer who's, like, really, really, really good. And if he's even, like, a little bit not good at it, it shows and it makes the whole broadcast stink.

And so, yeah, I got to go with Michael Cole, who I think has become a perfectly good announcer. Like, you know, if you had told me that 20 years ago or whatever, I'd have been like, there's absolutely no way. But he's good now, good enough. And, yeah, it's because they know not to make him a heel anymore. I'll say, well, first of all, I just want to clarify, one thing because I know people are going to ask me this

why I didn't pick the Heart Foundation, the 1997 Art Foundation for any of this, because they weren't heels. They were the baby faces. Yeah, absolutely. So that's for another list. Now, that's a little mimic. My least favorite is literally any authority figure heel after the McMahon Bishop, like,

mid to late 90s era. I like that. You have a good choice. It's been 20 years. years of the same stupid character, especially like any McMahon's kids or like anyone, anyone who's not, anyone who's a McMahon that's not Vince, but anybody like this, oh, we're the authority, we're the, oh my God. And it's like, it's, it's the laziest way to try to get a hit. They just come out and they're like, you have to defend the title. Just take the title off the guy. If you don't want him to have the belt and you have the power to do that, just take it off him. Why are you making him like fight eight guys? and oh, I can't wait till he gets his hands and then they never do. It's just, it was great with McMahon. Like, McMahon's the best ever. Bishop was kind of came before him and was pretty good at it.

Other than that, it's awful. I will say, though, I don't like seeing him on my TV, but I will never not respect Shane McMahon because he is willing to die for professional wrestling, and that's cool. You know what I like? No, but it's not because he, He, like, he gets his credit like, oh, you know, he's the boss's son. He could go out and take it easy, but he's out there taking these big bumps.

Yeah, and then he doesn't wrestle again for six months. No, I know. And he's setting the bar for these guys who have to go out every night. Well, the problem is that they, when they make him wrestle, he does wrestle for six months straight. And you're like, fuck, I'm so sick of Shane McMahon. And then he almost kills himself. And you're like, yeah, I guess that was worth it. You know what I mean?

like maybe the first couple of times but uh yeah it's dude when i don't need to see his puffy red face you know gasping for air 15 seconds was it curt angle was it curt angle who threw him into the yeah that's the that's like one of the greatest spots in the history of professional wrestling when the fucking thing didn't break he was trying to throw him through what i think was supposed to be breakaway glass yes but it wasn't breaking and so he just kept throwing him harder and harder and yeah. At one point he throws him and he bounces off of it and lands on his head. Lands on his head.

That's specifically the spot I'm thinking of. Like, I don't know how you can't respect Shane McMahon after that. You know what I mean? Like, as much as I hate seeing. I don't think he had much of a choice. Like, it's like an Olympic wrestler is deciding he's going to like, but yeah, that's like a weird underrated wrestling moment. Like the time Kurt Angle almost killed. Shane man. Almost killed his boss's son

on live television. That rock. That was a choice. Wrestling's so fucking cool. Well, there you go. That's why we spent half the show on it. That is fucks in for this week. Everybody enjoying WrestleMania this weekend. Hell yeah, let's go. Hope you enjoyed a

remembering some heels segment. I'm Greg Wischinski. Do you usually talk about wrestling too much? I don't like it. It's like once a year. It's like that's all you know that space. It's not sure. Absolutely. Hold on. Do we talk about wrestling or politics more?

Because every time I see a one-star review on the fucking iTunes, because we talk about politics too much is what they say. I brought up Biden earlier. Sorry we said racism was bad for three seconds. Upset you so badly. Oh, I know. Star us on every review site. That's triggered.

I'm Greg Wushinsky. I read myself on ESPN. I will tease this. A little Q&A with a certain New York Rangers offenseman coming up on Friday. Tony DeAngelo, folks. That's right, baby. The Polites are back. That's right.

Sitting down. You know, he says after every answer, I go, hey, watch your tone. It's a big kick on it, I'm sure. He's loving that. He loved it. There's nothing that Tony DeAngelo loves more than me. The top ten lists were great. Do check them out.

My column runs on Thursdays. Also, Emily and I, obviously, you'll be doing a ton of writing and video stuff. for trade deadline next week provided things happen. And there you go. Oh, also, of course, as I should, listen to MeasemPod with me and Lambert and Ruby this week. We are in week two of Top Chef. You're going to love it. All the people that listen to the show and love it and don't watch Top Chef,

your weirdos, what we do love you. That to me is truly insane. Oh, I have no context for this. It's great. What? Okay. If you say so. Yeah, sign up for Ralee Prospect.

Sign up for the Puck Soup Patreon. Do all the stuff that you got to sign up for. And it's good. All of it's good. It's my solemn vow to you. Oh, oh, nice. Yep, that's right. Yeah.

Find me at the athletic. I've got my ranking. today of the all 32 teams and who's under the most pressure to do something in the next few days. Ooh. Leading up to the deadline and other stuff coming later in the week and check out my other podcast, The Athletic Hockey Show with Ian Mendez on Thursdays. There it is. All right.

Thanks everybody for listening to Puck So we'll join you next week. Take care. Oh, we'll talk about all the trade deadline stuff. Wow. All right. See you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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