Puck Soup - Paul Lukas And An Announcement

Episode Date: December 14, 2018

The awesome Paul Lukas of UniWatch joins the show to discuss the state of NHL uniforms, including what the perfect hockey sweater looks like, and whether or not there are going to be ads on NHL jerseys one day. Plus, some news about this dumb podcast.  

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet. I'm Greg Wichinsky of ESPN. And it's just me this week. We'll get to that later on on the show. We took off last week.

Here on Puck Soup. Oh, you're in Puck Soup. We took off last week on Puck Soup because of various and sundry reasons. We missed Seattle getting a team, which, you know, wasn't a surprise. It does suck that it seems like everybody outside of Seattle wants the Cracken. And inside Seattle, they don't want the Cracken. They want it named after a fish or Metropolitan's or whatever, which is great. because, like, if they name it Metropolitan's, or they want to name it Metropolitan's,

that means they're going to have to have a real come-to-Jesus conversation with Gary Betman about that. Well, we have a division named Metropolitan. You can't name the team, Metropolitans. What are you going to do? Name it the Central? Name it the Atlantic? What's next? So that'll be fun.

We didn't get a chance to really talk about the playoff format debate, which I kind of helped Stoke, because I reported that the Board of Governors guys are all talking about trying to expect. the playoffs and that's obviously sort of an evergreen topic because it's probably not going to happen until they take the national hockey league out of Gary Bettman's cold dead heads. I don't mean like actual dead. I just mean like the end of his commissionership. We didn't even get a chance to talk really about Weezer being hired to play during the NHL Winter Classic, uh, satisfying the NHL's target audience of, you know, 35 to 45 year old.

white males. I mean, at least until people like me realize that Weasers probably not playing anything off of Pinkerton. Instead, it's just going to be that goddamn Toto cover. That's okay. It means that I have a chance to interview Rivers Cuomo. This is only a good thing, I think, for the NHL. I do remember at the L.A.

Stadium Series game, wasn't a winner class. It was a stadium series game. You remember attempting to interview Paul Stanley about the, I believe it was the Olympics. I think it was ahead of the Olympics that year. And I was trying to ask him a USA versus Canada question and ask him about Canadian hockey inferiority. And he blew me off. I think it was one of those things where KISS didn't want to alienate anybody. And so he didn't want to answer the question.

But I got to talk to him, which was kind of cool. We are back in time, though, for this new classic moment from our good friend, PM McGuire, in which he interviewed Jonathan Taves after Wednesday night's game between the Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins. And it was, you know, as awkward as one might imagine. They still love you, Jonathan. Taves is like, yeah, I kind of hope they do. Thanks for the validation there. guy. So anyways, we were here for the Pierre-M-Guire awkwardness. But-up-up.

So today on the show, we have an awesome guest. Paul Lucas is the founder of Uni-Watch, which you can read at uni-dash-watch.com. So that's at un-I-watch.com. You could also find his writing on ESPN, where he does a bunch of uniform stuff there, too. As you you'll see, don't go calling it Jersey watch or sweater watch or whatever. It is a uniform that this man writes about. He's an interesting cat. A long, long history online. Undoubtedly, you've read his stuff at some point in covering the quirky world of sports uniforms, especially when it comes to hockey stuff, especially when it comes to baseball stuff, a very enlightening a conversation about his gig and also where the NHL is when it comes to uniforms and where it might

be going, including a robust conversation about something I know a lot of you care about, which is advertising on uniforms. I still think that the Jersey tuck rule was invented so they could put a sort of a bumper sticker ad on players' asses. That's just me, though. Before we get to Paul Lucas, I want to mention that today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by no less than Lisa Mattresses. Now, this is the deal with Lisa Mattresses.

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Come back after the interview for some Buck Soup news. Paul Lucas of UniWatch, we are here in Brooklyn, which is very hip. I imagine when you walk around Brooklyn, you see many old jerseys that are no longer in circulation. Four of the hipsters have claimed them as themselves. Like Vancouver Grizzly stuff would seem to be something that you'd find in Brooklyn. Sometimes. occasionally. In my neighborhood, I'm not in a very hip neighborhood here. I don't necessarily see anyone in any jerseys. Not a whole lot of defunct teams in the Afghani community in New York.

But, you know, for a long time, I did live within spit and distance of the arena. And so, yeah, I'd see people in various jerseys, especially on game day, you know, for any sport. You know, it doesn't matter if there was a game going on at the arena. There's a lot of sports bars around there. And so, you know, if it was NFL Sunday or whatever, you'd see. a lot of people in jerseys. Now, you and I share a commonality in that we are both old on the internet. I remember when I was writing for Fan House on AOL back in like 2007, somewhere along those lines linking out to UniWatch stuff. How long had UniBwatch been around? Well, it depends on what you mean by UniWatch. Uniwatch as a column began in 1999. And not on the internet. It was a printed

column that ran every four weeks in the Village Voice. Oh shit. Yeah. I had no idea that was the origin. So you were like a village voice columnist writing about sports stuff. Yeah, in the weird village voice sports section, which, you know, was buried in the back of the paper with the sex ads. Were there other people of any renown that wrote sports for the village voice? Because I wasn't living here at the time. Emma Spann, who's now like the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. She started in the voice sports section and a few other people. And at the time, well, I'm sure you know Mike Beaver. So he had a column there called Mixing It Up, which was about hockey fights, which now in the age of blogs and everything, a blog about hockey fights

is a dime a dozen. Back then, in the 90s or the late 90s, that was sort of an adventurous kind of out there kind of sports journalism to be doing or sports media. And so I come up with this idea to write about uniforms. I spent a lot of the 90s writing about various kinds of non-sports design, like package design, brand design, industrial design, blah, blah, blah, and realize that I could take that filter in that approach and apply it to sports. But it was a tough sell because nobody had ever really done that before. So I shopped it around. I did approach ESPN, actually.

And, you know, I eventually ended up at ESPN. But when I first approached them in early 1999, they said no. Sports Illustrated said no. A lot of places said no. And so I set my sights a little lower. And I thought, well, the Village Voice has this sports section where they've got a guy writing about hockey fights. So like, if they can do that, like, you know, whatever editor can wrap his head around that can probably get what I'm proposing here. And they did.

And that's how Uniwatch started. What if I'm asking about that is because it doesn't surprise me that you had you shopped it around without people biting because in that time, the entire notion of fan culture being something that's viable, uh, journalistically or even from a business perspective, I think it hadn't really caught on yet. You know, uh, the idea that, you know, when you would watch a commercial, it would be ex-athletes. It wouldn't be people in face pain at the bar. Right. And I feel like there was a sort of a change made and a probably, a, you know, through the growth of the internet and that kind of thing. But at the time, it was not a thing where people were like,

it was like, oh, of course, write about the stuff people buy. Right. Although I wasn't right. You know, I still don't write about the stuff people buy. I write about what the players wear. I tend not to write about merchandise. Well, I mean, but essentially, like, what the players wear is an advertising for someone to buy it in many cases.

Yeah, but that part actually doesn't matter to me. Well, no, it doesn't matter to you. But that's why it would matter to an editor. As an editor, they're going to look at it as a business story. Well, that's not actually how the voice looked at it. And it's not how I've ever pursued it. I'm really, I honestly, I don't care what the fans wear. I care what the players wear.

That's always been more interesting to me. Like, why is this guy's sleeve longer than that guy's sleep? What does that baseball player have written underneath the brim of his cap? I can see he's got something there. And if I, you know, what is it, I can't see what it is. That is always what's interesting to me, that the uniform is, because that's what we root for as fan. I mean, that's why the fans buy him. And, you know, the famous Jerry Seinfeld line about rooting for laundry is true.

That we root for that uniform, no matter who's. wearing it and it can be a player who we hated yesterday and then he's traded to our team and suddenly we love him why because he's wearing our uniform yeah uh and so that that's how unywatch got started i eventually ended up at ESPN in 2004 much the much uh love page two at page two right when hunter thompson was still under thomason dj gallo bought the sports pickle there yep yeah there's a lot of people of a certain age in this audience right now that are are applauding the the the podcast for bringing up page page two was the best i mean page two was awesome there's a lot of people that don't remember page to at all. But page two really was sort of like, if you took the, the smartness of Grantland,

but then put it through sort of an absurd filter of listicles and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, if someone asked me who my influences were coming up, it probably would have been page two. I mean, just that vibe and that sort of approach to sports, the pop culture mixed with sports stuff would have definitely been it. So that was your stuff on there was, was, it was a good fit. It was a great. Yeah, it was a really good fit. And I was lucky because UniWatch had already been in two venues by then. It started in the voice, and then the voice got rid of their sports section, so I was sort of orphaned. And I decided I wasn't done yet with UniWatch. And so I shopped it around again and ended up at Slate in their sports section, which at the time was sort of like the North Dakota

of sports sections. But the important thing, and this is what you mentioned when we are like old internet, Slate taught me how UniWatch worked on the internet, because up until that time, the voice was basically copying and pasting my text that ran in the printed paper and putting it on their website. But I wasn't building in links or, you know, I wasn't writing it for the internet. I was writing it for print and they were just duping it on the internet. But Slate, was a web-only publication, and it still is, of course. And I had never, I mean, I had a career as a freelance writer, but I'd never written for a web-only publication before. And so suddenly, I realized, oh, you can play around with hyperlinks. And I realized that Uniwatch was particularly

well-suited to that, because I was often talking about small details. And I could show, you know, in print, like how many photos can you run with the article. But on the web, you can link to as many photos as you need, and there are no space constraints and so on. And so what does every editor always tell a writer? Don't just tell me, show me. And with the web, you could do that. And with UniWatch, I could suddenly show in a way I wasn't able to do before. And so I was there for like, not quite a year. And then I was itchy to do something bigger than Slate. And I knew some of my readers were ESPN people, you know, people who were writing to me. And I said, you know, can't get me an interview with somebody can you know I want to like I belong over that I belong on page

two come on let's make UniWatch belongs on page two and and they could have said you know I mean it's actually very similar to what happened to you right they could have said well puck daddy is a is already you know yeah that's we want fresh squeezed product right yeah yeah yeah squeeze brand or something like that but fortunately for me and I guess similar for you they were willing to import something yeah and so UniWatch went to to ESPN and then it wasn't a Daily blog, which I think is a lot of people think that the daily blog got picked up by ESPN, but the Daily UniWatch blog was actually a spinoff of my column. Right.

That came around in 2006 for people who basically can't wait like a whole week or 10 days or whatever it is in between. One of the things about your writing that I always remembered was it would be, I mean, when you say you dove into into internet writing, you dove in, you'd have these incredibly long and detailed paragraphs and every five words would be a link to something. Yeah, I overlinked. But you didn't overlinked. But the thing that you did that was great was is that sometimes the links would not, a lot, oftentimes, the links would lead you to interesting places.

They would lead you to places where it's a small writer, a small blog, or a fan who has noticed this thing and wanted to your attention and you link back out to them. And, you know, we did that on Puck Daddy a lot with the Puck headlines as we would link out to people that maybe you haven't read and try to bring attention to it. And I think, like, your column was definitely a trailblazer in that sense of kind of spreading the wealth a little bit. I mean, because there was a time in sports journalism when you were giving a tip, you hoover that tip up and the regurgitated as if it is your own. But you were always very good about giving credit to the people that were giving you these observations. Well, it was interesting. What I found was that the more information I put out there, the more I got back from the readership, people wanted to, like the people who, like the people who, I always said, not everybody gets Uniwatch, but not everyone wants into it, but the people who are

into it are really into it. And so they want to share. And a lot of times, they don't really know anybody else. You know, no one else in their social circle or, you know, their wife makes fun of them or whatever it is. Like, not everybody is into uniforms. And so if you are into it and you found a community, even a virtual community that gets it, you want to share the wealth and say like, hey, like, look what I, you know, here's, you know, they, and they, I became unwittingly sort of a hub for all this stuff. And, and yeah, I don't want to take credit for something that isn't mine. And so I've always given credit for something that comes in. And, you know, when I started at the voice, the editor who took the pitch that I gave him, he said, you know, every four weeks,

hmm, like, are you sure there's, I mean, I like the idea, but are you sure there's enough to do? Like, can you do this every four weeks? Yeah. I said, I think so. And then at Slate, we did it every two weeks. And they said, we can't wait. You know, the internet moves faster. We can't do it every four. You know, can you do it every two weeks? Because we love that, but are you sure there's enough? Yeah. And I'd say, I think so.

And, you know, eventually I did the daily blog and I was asking myself, like, can I actually do this every day? Is there enough content, enough material? And like, let's find out. And it turns out the more I put out there, the more comes back. And while you and I are sitting here, my readers are emailing me. They're tweeting stuff at me, all the things they've seen and found and discovered. Yeah.

And we're just, you know, rants they have. And so, yeah. It's a big universe out there, as I like to say. Yeah, better than watch Galaxy, I believe, in theory. So let's talk about your process, because as you said, you are, I mean, there are times when you play detective. You see something that's interesting and a little bit off. I'm going to make a guess here that baseball might be the most plentiful as far as weird variations on gear. Baseball is really the best documented sport.

It has done the best job of documented. its own history. And so that includes uniform history. And it helps that the chief curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame, a guy named Tom Sheber, happens to be a big uniform guy. And so he's very into uniform documentation. And so, yeah, baseball in general is the easiest sport to research. Basketball is the worst. Hockey's sort of in between. Somebody sends you a tip. You're like, that's odd. Do you start playing detective? Do you reach out to teams and stuff? Or how does it? Sure. I mean, it depends on, you know, whether is this a historical thing? thing? Is this something that's happening right now? You know, is it somebody who was just watching a

game and they saw something weird going on? Or did they find an old photo of something from, you know, the 1940s? So yeah, I'll reach out to teams. I'll reach out to other, depending on the sport, I have sort of go-to guys who are often like serious researchers or historians or whatever, you know, like really, really serious guys who like spend hours pouring over microfilm and that kind of thing. Which I have done occasionally, but I don't spend my whole life doing it. It's like I'm writing a term paper. Yeah. I mean, for some people, this kind of thing is like serious, serious business.

I mean, for me, it's serious business. Right. You know, different people have different specialties. Like, football helmets. I've got, like, a helmet guy who is a serious helmet historian. He knows everything. And when I say helmets, I'm including face masks, chin straps, interior pads. You know, like all of that.

He knows every detail. And, you know, from player to player, manufacturer and manufacturer. And so, for, like, I've got these go-to guys. also, in the age of social media, I can put something out there and say, like on Twitter or whatever, and say, hey, does anyone know about this? You know, I've got, does anyone know more? On my blog, on my daily blog, I can put something out there and say, I've got a tip on this. And, you know, it's always, I'm sure you've been in the situation where you want to put out a query, but you don't want to give away the whole store. It is the toughest, people don't understand that in writing, that's a toughest thing.

And you want to want to tip your hand too much. Right. And in fact, like, now it's gotten to a point where I'm very careful about where I put it out. I know that a lot of journalists follow me on Twitter, right? So, for example, I've just, I've been reporting on this hockey in Alabama story, which isn't necessarily, you know, who killed Kennedy, but it is something that I thought was an interesting angle. And I didn't want to put it on Twitter and ask,

because I was going to ask these Nashville fans about their sort of habits. They live in Alabama, where you go, what do you do, what do you watch? How is your fandom in Alabama? You know, because the last thing I want is the athletic to write the Alabama story before I get a chance to. So I went to Reddit. And I went to the National Predators Reddit and put the question there because I'm like, Oh, so you went to the deep state.

I went to the deep state because I knew, right, I went to the dark web basically, because I knew that the people that the other, the quote, quote, competition, who may not even care about this angle anyway, but just in case, aren't going to read it there. But I knew that if I put the query there, they'll email me, I've got my information, and maybe this thing that I'm working on stays on the down low. Right. So you have to do the same thing. You have to kind of put it out there and say, does anyone know? know about this thing? I mean, I have a slight advantage to the extent that not as many people are going to want to write about, you know, not as many people are on my beat as are on your but I do have competition. And so, yeah, we're always trying to scoop each other. But we also

help each other and like, we'll sometimes, you know, if I have a rumor that's unconfirmed or whatever, sometimes I'll, I'll talk to one of my frenemies or competitors. And we, we compare information sometimes like, you know, what have you heard about this or, you know, but again, you don't want to tip your hand. And we all respect each other. You don't like walk all over somebody and steal their scoop or anything like that. Let's pause on that because I was going to ask you about that. It has become a cottage industry. The reporting on jerseys that haven't been released yet and changes to gear that haven't been released yet. I've been fascinated by this. And there are sites. I mean, for the NHL, I mean, you know, there's aesthetics is the is the site that does a lot of

the work there. You know, they're a place that they do that. I'm sort of fascinated by that aspect of the gig. And I imagine you having done this as long as you have, you've seen that grow.

That hunger for information about what the next duck's third jersey is going to look like. Definitely. And part of it is that these things are often, you know, the teams try to keep things shrouded in secrecy and they try to have like a big drum roll up to the unveiling.

And then things inevitably leak. And there is, you know, usually through some kind of retail thing, right? Like some guy at Dick's sporting goods puts a jersey out in the racks a couple of days or sometimes a couple of weeks before he should. And some takes a photo. Do you have a favorite leak? A favorite leak. Is there is there one that came out of nowhere and you broke it and you're just like? You know, there was, I was in baseball one year.

I'm trying to remember what year was probably around 2012. The winter of 2012, I got, somebody leaked the, uh, Major League Baseball batting practice caps, which is, I mean, in the grand scheme of uniform elements, like that's pretty low down. You know, batting pretty, you know, it's not even an official game cap. But, you know, it's part of the uniform package that teams have. And somebody leaked the whole new set, you know, for the upcoming season. And it included the Atlanta Braves having a new design that included their old whooping Indian. Whoa. Indian head logo. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not too down with that. And, and I, and I, you know, I, wrote about it and said, I'm not too down with that. And a lot of other people apparently weren't

either. And I was frankly surprised by how negative the reaction was. I mean, not to my piece, but to the cap. Right. And then the Braves changed the design. And they said, you know, well, that was just like one option among many we were considering. Of course. And that was crap. They, that was, that was what they were planning to do. And the reaction was so negative, they changed their mind. I wasn't looking to get, you know, I was, I'm, I'm glad they didn't use that cap, but I didn't go out there with the aim of making them, you know, change their design. But it shows the impact that a leak can have. Yeah, that's the new, my Twitter account was hacked.

It's, it's teams being like, this thing that got leaked that you absolutely hate, it's just one of many designs that we're considering that happened with the, I think it was either the Islanders of the Lightning had a Jersey leak this season, and that was the response. It was just like, oh, now, this is just, I mean, it could be anything at the end of the day. And, of course, it ended up being a fifth thing that link. And anyway, people are intrigued by leaks, I think, just because there's a sense of intrigue around leaks, right? The whole idea of a leak, you know, makes you think about, you know, like Watergate and Deep Throat or something like that. So I've got my various deep uni kind of people.

And in fact, actually, we can talk about hockey. Somebody just leaked something to me, I think it was last week. And I know you want to talk at some point in this discussion about, you know, the Adidas. Nah, we don't. No, of course. And I think one of the real, in general, I think the. the Adidas uniforms look mostly okay, but I think the biggest problem across the board is the collar designs. I think most of them look awful.

And I don't know if it was, I mean, I'm stammering here, but we had a lot of the same problem in the NFL when Nike took over for them in 2012 with what they call their flywire collars. And it's a branding thing that's where the company says, we just want to make sure you know that we made this. And we can't really change the team's design, but we can give it a, you know, put our distinct spin on this one jersey. element, the collar. And I've got this source in Chicago, and I've been calling him Deep Dish. Because it's Chicago, right? Like Deep Dish pizza. And he told me, he's connected to the United Center, and he said they sold out of Blackhawks, large replica jerseys, red replica jerseys, which he said is their single biggest selling item there. And they didn't restock them because he said that he was told it's because some adjustment is coming to the

collar next season. And now, I don't know if I haven't been able to confirm that, but everything else he's told me has checked out. Yeah. I mean, he's a good source. And I also don't know if that's just a Blackhawks thing or if that's an NHL-wide thing. I'm hoping it's the latter because I think most of the collars are not good. And so it would be nice if that was something where they've heard that feedback, because I

know a lot of fans don't like the collars either. What's your, uh, looking at, uh, down at the earth, uh, perspective of, uh, of, uh, of the hockey jersey has a piece of sports gear. Today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Seekek. You know, getting tickets online can be far too complicated. With hundreds of sites

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Just download the Seekek app today. Another promo code Soup, S-O-U-P, that spells soup. That's promo code soup for $10 off your first Seekkeek purchase. Seek-Keekeek, lives an event. They have the tickets. Now back to Paul. I walked into your house. It's a lovely place. Unfortunately, saw a Rangers jersey.

I'm going to assume that's some sort of parental thing. But, I mean, the hockey jersey itself, your thoughts on that as a gear aficionado? Well, obviously, there's a lot of mystique around the hockey sweater, right? The NHL loves to sort of promote the mythology of the hockey sweater. And that's part of it is that you don't call it a jersey. You call it a sweater. I'm more interested in general about the overall hockey uniform. Their pads and the helmet and the socks and the pants.

In general, I resist when people say, like, are you a jersey guy? And I say, no, I'm a uniform guy. It's the whole package. And that, again, is part of, I think, part of the problem of focusing on what fans wear because fans only buy the jersey. So there's a tendency to really restrict your view of the universe to only to jerseys. But it's the whole package. And the hockey uniform is really interesting because, first, it's the only sport of the major sports with an untucked jersey. So you've got more real estate to work with in terms of your, of your,

design. You've got, so you can have those belly stripes or torso stripes or whatever you call them. You've got the short pants, unless you're the flyers or the, the whalers wearing Cooperalls. But you got short pants, which is kind of bizarre. Like, I am frankly astounded that they have kept that format. I love the look of it. Like, I love the look of a hockey uniform.

But it is unusual and sort of counterintuitive. You think they would have come up with something more streamlined by now, like Cooper Rolls or something of that ill. Right. You've got the long socks. You don't have to have a number on the front, which is different than basketball and football. Yeah. That's why you can have all these great crests and beautiful designs that you can't have in some other sports.

You've got more body coverage than any other sport. Really, the only part of the, the only skin that's uncovered is the face. And, you know, you compare that to the other sports where, you know, arms or legs or whatever, you know, depending on what sport we're talking about. So you've got, as a designer, as a uniform designer, you've got the most real estate to play with. You've got the biggest canvas to work with. And you've got these different elements like the short pants where you can introduce contrast between the jersey and the pants and the socks. And so I think a hockey uniform, you know, if I were a designer instead of a writer, hockey is the sport I'd want to be designing for because it just offers the most possibilities. And I think it's the most interesting looking from a interesting looking sport from a uniform standpoint.

If you were to be a designer, like what do you think the elements are in a successful uniform for a hockey team? Oh, it starts with the crest, obviously. Just like, you know, in football, people ask me sometimes, for all of these sports. Football starts with the helmet, with hockey, it starts with the crest. And in general, you know, I do like the rain. You took that little pot shot a few minutes ago about the Rangers. I put that jersey out there for you. It's the only hockey jersey I have in the house right now, aside from the one I'm wearing.

Oh, that's great. It's like, well, my parents came over my apartment, and I put out the manger around Christmas time, so they think I'm still Catholic. But I do like the Rangers. you know, the diagonal lettering down the chest. I grew up with that. I grew up in a Rangers household. Even though I grew up on Long Island,

I was already a Rangers fan like a year before the Islanders existed. I fell asleep to listening to Marv Albert called Rangers games on the radio in the early 70s. And the Rangers jersey, I don't think I've actually ever talked about this on the show, but like the Rangers jersey to me, even though I have so much love for the Liberty Head third jersey that they wore in the late 90s, I think that's one of the best jerseys the NHL has ever put out. We may never see it again.

I don't know why we haven't seen it since. The white one you're talking about, the white Liberty Head. Or, yeah, or the dark blue one with the Liberty Head. Yeah, I mean, they're all good. But the Rangers primary jersey, the classic one with the horizontal, with the diagonal lettering, I always kind of liked it because it was so Manhattan. It was so like, you know, other teams have a little picture, you know, or a little, a couple of little letters in the middle.

All logo starts up here on the shoulder. It goes all the way down the freaking front of the jersey so you know exactly who we are. Like there's something beautiful about that. I like your interpretation. But in general, although I do like that, you know, to follow the thought, to finish up on the thought,

well, I do like the Rangers jersey, and I always have, I guess in part because I did grow up with it. Yeah. In general, I don't think lettering works on a hockey jersey. It doesn't belong on a hockey jersey. You should have, as you say, a little pick check or whatever, you know. And the teams that have tried to do lettering,

other than the Rangers, I don't think it's worked out too well, right? Like Colorado, right? Had it had Colorado, or the stars, you know, with the, I mean, it's not good. Right. The teams that have tried to have a wordmark

rather than, you know, a big logo, big, beautiful embroidered logo. And as I mentioned before, you can't do that in most of the other sports. And you can in hockey. So why wouldn't you? Right. You know, like put something,

you know, blow it out with five or six colors. Oh, yeah. You have some, some, you know, really beautiful, iconic, pressed. And, you know, that's why when I was a kid, I didn't even really understand what the Canadians logo. I understood the C, but I didn't understand what the H in the middle was more. And I just knew that it felt like hockey. Right. You know, and, and like, why would you change anything like that? Right. If you had like a great logo, don't, don't put lettering or, you know, I guess the

Canadians, it is a letter. But you know what I mean? Don't put words. Don't put a full word on your jersey. Have a gorgeous press. You know, one of the best come to Jesus moments. in sports as a fan is when you realize that the logo is something that you didn't realize it was. Like the first time you see the Brewer's logo for what it is, or the first time you see the Whalers logo with the negative space. I still get emails, I would say, a handful of year about the Whalers logo. I mean, however many decades it's been now. And we were saying, you know, I've been looking at that logo for years now, and I just now saw the H and the negative. I didn't even know it was there.

It's incredible. It really is. You know, it's like a Rorschach plot or something. And then like suddenly you see the thing that wasn't there. Well, there's logo, I'm guessing, is high on your list of old timers. For sure. Yeah, for sure.

And I'm lucky enough to have interviewed the guy who designed it. Oh, wow. You know, it's interesting. That's one of the ones where, you know, it's not, obviously not in circulation anymore. But it's still, everyone still loves it. And it feels current. It's always in the conversation, I feel like. I guess because there's that vocal contingent in Hartford that, you know,

they keep dreaming that their team is going to come back there. But like, I always love the North Stars logo, too. And I just like the sort of, I guess, the optimism of the arrow pointing up. And, you know, and I'm a big green and gold guy. Those are my favorite colors. Those are Uniwatch's colors on my blog. And so I always like the North Stars. Nobody really talks about that one.

And I think part of it is that, you know, they got another team in Minnesota. And so they, you know, they, you don't have that same focal contingent. I think the last time people really talked about it was actually Mike Madano's last year with the Dallas Stars when they, And they had that game up in Minnesota. And I think he just took the opening skate wearing a North Starz jersey. And it was this wonderful moment of tying those two franchises together. Yeah, it was like an alumni game. Yeah.

But it goes back to what you were talking about at the beginning of the conversation about, you know, guys changed uniforms. And, you know, you're rooting for the laundry. Mike Madano showed up in a Detroit Red Wings jersey the next year. And everyone's like, this is not right. There are those moments in sports, too, when it comes to uniforms of, you know, when someone becomes so synonymous with one, when one sees one in another uniform, it just doesn't feel like if there was ever Tony Gwynn in a reds uniform or they just know.

That's a classic thing, like a comment thread or a discussion board thread talking about uniforms of players in the quote unquote wrong uniform. Right. You know, like Dave Winfield at the end of his career in a twins uniform or an Indians uniform or whatever it might be. One of the many reindeer games I play is, you know, if you close your eyes and I say a name, what's the first, what jersey do you see them in? You know, and it becomes...

What uniform, Greg. Sorry, what uniform? Sorry, white uniform. And it becomes amazing because there are certain people that are just like, you know, if they, you know, Chris Pronger is a good example. Like Chris Pronger, a lot of people are like the blues. And then there's someone like, no, we want a cup with the ducks. And then they're like, but I remember him for that year in Edmonton. It's, it's incredible the way that you sort of, somebody is cemented in your mind wearing a certain uniform and then that's it.

That's the ideal version of that person. I remember being in high school and Dave Winfield was going to be a free agent and I'm sorry to bring it back to baseball. No, baseball is fine. I mean, I'm a Mets fan, so I'm kind of a lapsed baseball fan a little bit and I swear to God if Sindergarde goes to the Yankees. And Pete Rose was a free agent, maybe that same winner or something. It was in that period. And I remember thinking, like, what if the Mets signed them? Which, of course, the odds of that happening.

But I was just trying, like, I was trying to imagine Pete Rose in a Mets uniform and I couldn't wrap my head around. it just, it didn't compute. And that was, that was like 1980 or whatever it was. And so in those days, free agency was still new. And player movement wasn't the same as it is now. And I think, so that's something I think maybe today's fans can, it's not such a stretch to imagine a player in different uniforms because players move more. And also, you have Photoshop.

You don't have to imagine what it's going to look like. You can make it happen. I think that's exactly what happened when John Tavares. When Tavaris left the Islanders and went to the Maple Leafs, showed up in the Maple Leaf uniform. You know, normally the reaction is going to be, oh, that's not right. He should be an Islander. And yet we're looking at it.

We're like, you know what? I've seen every publication on the internet put that guy on a Maple Leaf uniform at some point in the last two years because he was going to be a free agent. And they're like, where is he going to end up? It kind of looks normal. Right. I mean, at first it was a thing where like after the trade, like five minutes after the trade, ESPN would have, or whoever, would have the Photoshop version.

Right. Yeah, yeah. And now they don't even wait for the trade. It's, they use these renderings for the, you know, where will he end up articles. and you know the it's you don't have to imagine what it's going to look like you can see what it's going to look like there's a guy at the NFL who actually has done these amazing time lapse videos showing how he photoshopps like a photo of whatever player right after he's been traded he gets the call like so-and-so has been traded to the Cleveland Browns or whatever right and and he

has to go through all this bit to Photoshop a photo and take him out of a Detroit Lions uniform right into a Cleveland Browns uniform or whatever it might be and get it on the website and get it on a website and it takes him like usually a couple hours but he has started doing these time lapse things and so you can see it happen in like the course of maybe two minutes what takes him a couple of hours and it's amazing but and he gets huge traffic yeah uh from his tweets of this and that shows even the interest it not just in what the player looks like in another uniform but how you would make him look like a player in another uniform we mentioned your a aounder's we should probably talk about the one of the most infamous uniforms of all time

the fish sticks uniform um there's that new book out now of course there is yeah I want to talk to that, dude. The colors were aquifresh toothpaste. The logo was Gorton's fish sticks. What did you think about that kit as far as what it was? Not a big fan. I mean, the whole, I called it the seasick uniform, you know, because it had the wavy stripes. It had the wavy nameplate on the fact.

I did. I mean, they had the courage of their convictions. I'll give them that, you know. Like they had, to me, the big problem wasn't the fishermen on the front. That wasn't great either. but the whole waivey business like it was I mean I remember Ziggy Palfi was one that I always

remember like Palfi's name was short and yet it had like this wave to it on the back crest and like why why would do that to the nameplate it made no sense it made no sense and it I mean now it's one of the things that you can look back at and kind of laugh at and it's sort of like I'm glad I live in a world

where that big a mistake can still happen yeah you know right sort of like those futuristic major league baseball uniforms of 1890 yeah These are things that now we can look back at and say, oh, it's so bad, it's good or whatever. And it's sort of interesting that such a huge mistake could happen. To me, the fish sticks one is always often talked about as being one of the worst third jerseys of all time. There's obviously other ones.

The Kings had that one that looked like a thing. The Burger King one. The Burger King won. The Blues had the one that didn't even put out there because Mike Keenan killed it with the horn and the whole thing. That story actually, that's been disputed. That's, I know, there's a certain kind of be an apocryful story about King. I mean, the jersey is real. Right.

But Keenan... Saying I'm not going to... You're not fucking wearing those or whatever he said. Yeah, that's... I've read a fair amount of documentation that cast doubt on that. But Paul, don't you want to believe it? The one, though, that I think is by far the biggest misstep, misfire of all time. Even beyond the fish sticks one is the buffalo slug jersey with the buffalo sabers.

Right. That was definitely a bad. I mean, to me, that, that, I mean, A, you have... First of all, they, they fucked around with that uniform way too much. I mean, the, the, the base uniform of what, you know, McGilney and Lafonte and those guys wore is perfect. And they've gone back to it because they recognize it's perfect. Well, that, I mean, to cut you off. No, go ahead.

But that's what happens in all these cases, man. Like, what could the algorithms are doing now? They're back to basically what they started with. Right. And what do the sabers do? They're back to what they started with. Because everybody understands at heart, those things weren't broke. You didn't need to fix them.

And it's, I mean, it's. kind of sad to say as someone covering this beat. There were not many uniform changes that are upgrades. They really aren't. And a lot of these teams, when they were designing basically where the foremost question was, what looks good on the ice or on the field or on the court or whatever, as opposed to what's going to sell to 18 to 34 year olds, which is the foremost question today, when they were just designing for what looks good for this team, they did a better job at it. And most of those designs stand up, stand the test of time and don't look dated and hold up a lot better. than a lot of what we see nowadays.

And that's why a lot of these teams have gone back to them. So you think that when a team makes a bad uniform decision now, it's because they're pitching it to the marketplace rather than the aesthetics of the team. I think when a team makes almost any decision, a uniform decision now, it's because they're pitching into the retail marketplace. Wow. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, you know, they stumble into something good.

I mean, what I'm saying is that designing for retail is not antithetical with coming up with good design. Sometimes you do. Right. But I think in general, you get a tail wagging the dog effect. How do you feel about the job Adidas has done with the hockey stuff? Overall, I think it's okay. Yeah. Because overall, they didn't change that much.

Really, right? Whenever these league-wide makeovers happen, you know, when the NHL goes from Reebok to Adidas or the NFL goes from Reebok to Nike or the NBA went from Adidas to Nike, and everybody thinks everything's going to change, in part because there's a misconception that people think that the company imposes the design. Like that Nike is going to redesign the NFL or like there's talk that Nike is going to take over Major League Baseball's uniform contract in 2020. And just today on Twitter, somebody said, what do you think Nike's going to do to Major League

Baseball? And Nike can't do anything to Major League Baseball, just like Adidas couldn't do anything to the NHL. These companies are vendors providing a service to a client. The client is the league and its teams. And they have the final say. A client always has the final say. Now, Adidas can make suggestions and say, here's what we'd like to do, and we have some ideas and blah, blah, blah.

But, you know, if a team, like, look at a team like the devils, which has been so determined, really, to just stay with their look. Yeah. And, you know, you can decide for yourself if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. But they're the ones who are calling the shots or the Red Wings or whoever. Yeah. And in general, Adidas, I mean, what do they do? They came up with a new template. Yeah.

Right. And everybody was worried it was going to be, like, three stripes on everything. Right. You know, and if it's not. It's not. No, I mean, practice geared, but who cares? It's practice gear. And in general, it still looks like the NHL, just like the NFL, still looked like the NFL one night.

Yeah. And the main thing, like the main little stamp they put on things, aside from their logo on the back, is, are these collars? Yeah. That just looked. It looked terrible. Yeah, I agree. One of the things I think hockey fans are certainly cognizant of when it comes to uniforms is what's happened in other sports with advertising. Typically, the NHL is a league that certainly takes its lead from the NBA in many ways.

Now that the NBA has ads on jerseys, I think there's a feeling that it's only a matter of time for the NHL to get there. How do you feel about ads on jerseys overall and how do you feel about it maybe coming to the NHL at some point? Overall, I'm completely opposed to it, that whole rooting for laundry thing. that is an unusually passionate and tight form of brand loyalty that we root for this brand regardless of its quality or the content that it has or the quality

of that content. The team can be good one year, bad another year and you still keep rooting for it. That tight bond between fan and team should not be sullied by the presence of another brand. Like it should not be watered down. I'm totally opposed to it. Sidebar, how do you feel about European soccer then? The ad is the jersey.

I've never been a big soccer fan. I didn't grow up with it. One thing that's kept me from taking it more seriously as an adult is that, yeah, the ad is the... Because you're ready for Emirates. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, one thing that's nice is that the World Cup doesn't have any of that, right? That's true. No ads in the World Cup.

And your feelings on hockey dabbling in these dark arts? I'm not so sure it's going to happen, or at least not anytime soon. I've been on conference calls. You probably have two, the same calls where I've heard Gary Bettman say that he doesn't want to do it. And usually, I mean, you can say like, oh, he's just talking out of his ass or, you know, talking out of his ass or, you know, he's not being straight with people. But the way these things usually work and you can look at the NBA is that they try to float a lot of trial balloons about this. And they try to soften the fans up and get used to the idea that it's inevitable. Adam Silver, who is the commissioner of the NBA, was talking about putting ads on jerseys even before he was the commissioner.

It was when he was the number two guy and he was David Stern's right-hand man. And he was saying, oh, this is something we want to investigate and blah, blah, blah. And he, and then he, I started calling him Adam, it's inevitable silver, because he, he was saying it over and over that it's inevitable. We're going to have ads. I mean, what he really wanted was for that to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right. That if enough people accept that it's going to happen. And when you actually do it, they was like, well, it was bound to happen.

What are you going to do? Yeah. And I haven't heard, I mean, maybe you have, but I haven't heard anything like that from the NHL. And I think that usually they would try to soften up the fan base and get them used to the idea. and like I said, float these trial balloons, do it in an all-star game, which the NBA also did. And things like that to sort of ease into it.

And I haven't seen anything like that in the NHL. And when I heard Gary Bettman say that, I mean, you can read the quote, but what I heard in his voice is that he really does believe in that mythology of the NHL sweater. I think he might have even used the word sanctity at one point. Yeah. I don't think he wants to do it.

And to me, it's interesting. The NHL does, is actually, you say they take their lead from the NBA, but they've actually soft-pedaled a lot of things that other leagues are doing. Like the Adidas logo and the Reebok logo before it is not on the front of the jersey. It's on the back, or even on the sleeve, it's on the back of the jersey.

Other sports have things like camouflage and pink for breast cancer and all that. Hockey only does, or the NHL at least, only does that during warm-ups. Right, right? There's never been an NHL team where a camouflage, military appreciation, whatever. During games.

During a game. Which I find, frankly, surprising. Yeah. I prefer it that they don't do it during a game, but I am pleasantly surprised, we can say. Yeah. They restrict this to just pregame. And what's your feeling about? Why don't they do that?

All the other sports do it. I don't know, because I agree with you because you corrected yourself to when you said hockey to say the NHL, and that's the truth. Because obviously in the minor leagues, I mean, they wear different jersey every night. Right. I mean, and then auction them off. I've seen it myself. Right. So it is a very NHL thing.

And to be honest with you, I couldn't tell you. you. I mean, I couldn't tell you why they do it. Maybe it's just because they feel as though this is the best method to advertise their wares, you know, just have the people, have their players wear these three jerseys, sometimes if there's the third jersey. That's a very good question and I'd love to know the answer to it because I honestly don't know. I think they have to move, I think they would move in that direction first, like having, you know, they have on practice jerseys now. Right, right. But for for game jerseys to start adopting some of these, these other, whether you want to call them, innovations or gimmicks or whatever you want to call them,

that other leagues have. I think that step would happen before they move to advertising. And again, I think that the process for instituting advertising would include at least a two or three year get used to the idea. Right. A public discussion or maybe more of a monologue than a dialogue. Like, well, you know, it's inevitable. And I feel like every day that that period doesn't start is another day. where we can move that three-year window.

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I think it's a ways out. And, you know, none of the other leagues have really moved. You know, the NFL has shown no interest in it. Major League Baseball has shown no interest in it. There's still two NBA teams. The Thunder and the Pacers still don't have it. I think when the NBA announced they were going to do this, most observers,

myself included, thought every team was going to jump on it right away. And it's actually been a slow process. Only about half the teams did it a little more than half last season. And many of them, many of the ones who were bystanders, the first year, jumped on board during the offseason or right at the beginning of this season. But there's still those two, you know, it's still not universal yet in the NBA. I mean, we could still, I don't think it's likely, but the Pacers and Thunders can meet in the NBA finals. I'm still holding out hope for an ad-free uniform matchup in the NBA finals. Indiana, it's tough because I'm sure the only people who wanted advertisers were like farm stands.

That's going to go over really well in Indiana. They don't have a team. in the time we have remaining we did a bit on ESPN about the new team in Seattle and we did a uniform design contest which is robust and quite good and it was it was I was really impressed like you can watch readers brought their A game for that contest and and the stuff is on Flickr, you can find it off the website it's really really good your thoughts on what you'd like Seattle to look like if you had your druthers because it seems from from all the reports and the people have talked to that red and black seemed to be kind of the

colors that they're looking at, which kind of sucks because there's so much of it in the league right now? When I heard that, I thought it had to be wrong. Because as you say, like, really, another red and black team? Yeah, yeah. I'm hoping that turns out to be wrong. But, yeah, if that's what we're stuck with, okay. And, like, I wonder how the devils and the hurricanes feel about that.

And the senators in Irving, yeah, a lot of teams. Is there a color aesthetic that you'd like to see them? I mean, I mean, I actually, as I mentioned earlier, I love green and gold. like in general. Like I wish the whole world were green and gold. Green is my favorite color since I was a little boy. Yeah. And of course, green and gold are sonic's colors.

Yeah. You know, so there's a Seattle tradition there. And so that's what I would be hoping for. You know, I don't think it's likely to happen. But that, that would be my first choice. And Sasquatch or Cracken? Well, what's your preference to me? You know, I got to say, the whole Crackin thing I am so into.

It's great, right? You know, when we did the Uniform Contest, I got like eight or nine cracken entries. Yeah. And people had. much fun with that. And you can, I mean, it's, and I want to have, like, Seattle fans and Red Wings fans basically competing to see who can throw larger tentacle. Who is the king of the cephalopod? Yeah. You can throw a bigger cephalopod onto the eye. Like, just think of

those, like, those games are going to be epic. You know, just among the fans. And we got all these, as I said, all these cracken entries. And only one of them had an eyeball, which that really added something. And so I hope they'd go that route, you know, because everyone had these, like, sea monsters and, you know, giant squid and blah, blah, blah, their version of a cracking. But one of them had, like, a big eyeball in the midst of all the tentacles. And it added a lot of character, frankly.

So, yeah, I'm hoping for that. Cool. Where can people find your stuff? Well, if they can go to ESPN or just search on Paul Lucas, that's L-U-K-A-S and ESPN, they'll find my ESPN work, or they can go to uni-watch.com. That's uni-U-N-I-Hifenwatch.com. And on Twitter, I'm at at uniwatch.com.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Paul. Thank you. All right. Our thanks to Paul Lucas of UniWatch, again, you'd find him at uni, uny-dashwatch.com. Real good guy, real interesting conversation. And a dude I've been trying to track down for this very podcast for quite a while. He was going to come and be in studio with us at one point, but kind of fell through because,

I don't know, New York traffic or subways or whatever, but it was good to talk to him. He was a good dude. All right, so enough with the grab-assing. and congratulations to everyone who skipped past the interview to get to the part of the show. I ominously teased at the front, which I'm sure some of you probably did. The news ain't great. The news is that Dave Lozo is not doing puck soup anymore, which very much sucks, but it's his decision, and there's really no change in his mind about it, unfortunately, try as I might.

I want to share as much with you about this as I can. honestly, there's only a limited amount I can share because I don't know too much about it. It's not anything personal between me and Dave. We're cool. We didn't have a big falling out or anything or a big fight or anything. It was genuinely a shock to the system that he didn't want to do the show anymore. But ultimately, it's kind of like a personal decision on his part. So let me set the table because, listen, you guys have invested so much your time and energy and download and all that shit. listening to this fucking show that I feel you are owed some level of explanation for why it's going to be different. On December 1st, the timeline is that me, him and Lambert did the show. I think it was like the Thursday after Thanksgiving or something.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think that was around the time. A couple days later, December 1st, it's a Saturday morning. I'm sitting on the couch. I'm probably doing a crossword puzzle or playing Fortnite or whatever. I got a text message from Lozo to me and Katie, our producer, and he says, quote, I have some not fun news. I have to take a break from the podcast for the rest of the season, which is kind of a long break. I really thought it was something I could do additionally to my full-time job without any issues,

but after four months of it, I now know that it's too much for me to handle. I want you to keep it going with someone else if that's possible. So no one but me is hurt financially. I know how burnt out I was in November, and there's no way I could keep this up through June. I'm really sorry, and hopefully doing it after the end of a month makes it easier to continue it with someone else besides me. And that's it, to be honest. Like, you know, we went back and forth on some of the particulars about, you know, him leaving

the show at the first of the month and how that it means, what it means for, you know, advertising, Patreon, the whole bit. but then after that we asked him if you wanted to elaborate he said no if he wanted to talk about it he declined asked him if he wanted to come and do one last episode to kind of tie a bow around this shit and he said no and henceforth the awkward solo show that's happening right now in front of your ears so i don't think i need to tell you how supremely bummed i am about this um you know this was a partnership between two good friends, built up the show in the last couple of years, and it's something that we were both really proud of,

survived the nerdist debacle, such as it was, to go independent and really make a real go of it. I mean, it ain't easy to do a show without the direct backing of major media companies. I mean, obviously, I worked at Yahoo and then ESPN, and he's working for ESPN now, So it's not as if, you know, we're two guys, you know, working at, you know, the bank and then coming home, we doing the show at night. I mean, it's obvious we had some reach. But at the same time, it's not as if, you know, major media company is putting this out there for us.

We were kind of putting it out by ourselves and really proud of the audience we built and the influence we built and the listenership that we built doing that. So I don't take that for granted. I think it's something we were really proud of. And I think Dave was really proud of it too. and so not to play junior pop psychologist here, but I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence he pulled the court when he did. The last episode and the last bonus episode we did when Lambert was in town,

you could tell his creative energy wasn't really there. I mean, if you listen to the bonus episode where we did the create new nicknames for all 31 teams thing, you know, I've kind of come prepared with my shit and Dave's kind of freelancing it and freestyling it because, I mean, his creative energy. elsewhere is creative energies on this TV show they're doing with Katie Nolan and that's completely

fine. So, you know, kudos to him for maybe identifying that level of burnout and that level of kind of going through the motions and not wanting that to be his legacy on this show. You know, if he's pulling back to better his career as a TV writer, that's great. Like, it's the thing he's always wanted to do. He's written scripts before. Um, he's wanting to. Um, he's wanting to wanted to be in this kind of business before. So if the idea is that this dumb podcast is somehow affecting his ability to do that job well, I mean, that's the last thing I want. And obviously, the last thing he and I both want is for one of us to kind of be into doing

this show and the other one not because then the show blows. So it's not good. So maybe he identified that. And, you know, maybe the reason why he's not really into kind of explaining it. further is just because he's bummed about the whole thing, which is completely understandable in his choice. Because you should take pride and what he did on this show and what we did together

and building this show. But like he said, he wants us to keep it going. And, you know, the last two weeks have been kind of weird in trying to figure out if I wanted to keep it going. I mean, it's a very... High sneakers. It's a very specific vibe.

It's a really wonderful thing that he and I do. It's a rapport that's not easily replaced or even replaceable. I love to hang out with them. I mean, that was, again, the bottom line with this podcast, and I think this reason why a lot of you guys dig it is that it's just two people hanging out and talking hockey, you know, or, you know, DC movies or friends or all the other fucking nonsense that we talk about.

And so that's tough, man. and to be, you know, not only get knocked on my ass by the timing of this thing and the sudden nature of it, because God is honest truth, like, never breathe the word of it in the months leading up to this, not even uttering the word burnout at any point when it came to his job or this show. So getting the text was a real kind of rock your world moment for myself and for Katie. But, you know, like, it's a bummer. like I said, to not have him want to do the show anymore. And, you know, it took me a while to kind of figure out if I want to still do it. But I'll say this about the show. I think that, well, first of all, I love the show. And I love all of you. And I love the vibe and the approach and the ridiculous way that we've done things on the show.

I think it's different than the roughly 40,000. and the hockey podcast I've started with in the last two years. I think it speaks to a sliver of fandom that is different than you're going to find in other places. And I'm so happy that we were able to provide a place where you can congregate and be in a weird place that takes hockey seriously but not seriously and then throws in a bunch of other shit into the blender. So I needed some time to figure out what I wanted to do because I was blindsided by this.

and, you know, ultimately, I still want to do it. Not only because Dave, you know, said keep doing it, but because I love the show too much. And, you know, if you've followed me for years, you know that one of the greatest influences on my life was Mystery Science Theater 3000 and still is, by the way, if you've not seen the new season, what the fuck?

Turn this dumb podcast off and fire up Mac and me because they'd do it. It's the best. I know in my heart that changes happen to shows. And, you know, not only have, I mean, for God's sakes, I mean, changes happened before with me in podcasts where me and Merrick weren't doing the show anymore and then Knucklehead shows up and I do the show with Lozo for a few years and, you know, there are still people that say, you know, I wish it was still you and Merrick doing the show. And then there were people that'll be like, you know,

I wish it was still you and Lozo doing the show for the next person. But the point is that I want there to be an ex person and I want to still do the show because if MST3K taught me anything, it's that I know my heart that, you know, as long as you're true to the spirit of the thing and whatever your thing morphs into, it doesn't always mean that it gets worse. Different doesn't mean inferior. Different means different. And different can be good. Different can be the same.

But different means different. And the bottom line is that if, you know, we're going to continue doing puck soup, the only thing I'm concerned with beyond your entertainment is that we stayed true to the spirit of the show and not turn it into something that it's not. because I don't want it to be like a Puck'supin name only, a Pesino, if you will. So next week there's going to be a new partner in crime. I got a couple options, both of them really, really good. And that's been the other part of this equation is, you know, once I said, okay, I want to do the show,

then all of a sudden there's two brilliant people that, you know, I kind of want to do the show with. And it's just a matter of trying to figure out what the next evolution of the show should be. And what the next evolution of the show would be in so far as, you know, keeping you guys happy and keeping me happy and staying true to the spirit of what we build here. So I don't want to fuck it up. I'm still trying to figure it out. I wish I had an answer for you right now. But that, of course, I mean Gritty said no. By that, I mean, obviously, I can't maintain an Ilya Brig-Galoff impression for six hours a month.

or else I would be co-host. Suffice it to say it's someone that you'll know, someone you'll hopefully like, and as someone I'm comfortable, can maintain the vibe that we've established here on Puck's Su. Patreon, it's going to continue on. You know, the person, I've talked to both these people and, you know, have had extensive conversations

about how they see the show, and there's no question that the subscription side is, is, I think, fun and different, and I think you guys get some value out of it. And it's something that I intend to continue and maybe even expand with a new show, Puck Suit 2.0. And, yeah, I mean, I still got to figure it out your feedback. If you want to send it to me at Wysinski on Twitter or posted to the Patreon or whatever, like, I'd greatly like to hear your feedback on the situation. Don't make your feedback be, don't do the show anymore, because I'm going to do it.

So, like, if your feedback is bury it under 60 meters of dirt because lozo is burnt out and not doing it anymore. Well, that's not constructive criticism. I'm looking for people that want to continue to listen to this dumb show and what they'd like the vibe to be and what they're looking for the future of the show to look to sound like. So if you've got feedback like that, feel free to send it over. But in the end, last thing I want to say on this app is that I hope that you don't hold this decision against anybody because it just is what it is. And if you love the show, I hope that you give the next incarnation of it a chance. And trust me enough to build on what we've already done here and not, you know, fuck it up or not do, you know, present a version of it that is going through the motion. or anything like that, I hope that you understand

that, like, I love this show deeply and I love the audience deeply, and I love what we built deeply, and that, you know, that's the reason I'm doing this is because it's too much fun not to. I love Dave for every single stupid tangent we've ever had on this show, and I love the friendship

that we've gotten out of this show, which will continue beyond the show. You know, sitting and trying to find ways, used to talk about hockey, while also not talking about hockey, are some of the best conversations that I've had in the last couple years. And, you know, in the end, I think there's more to say. And I hope that you'll listen to it. So that's the shitty news that I'm sure many of you in the

back of your heads were already formulating based on the fact that we do the show every week and there ain't one last week and this week was just me talking. It sucks. But again, it is what it is and we forge forward. So that's the show. You can find me at Wyshinsky. You know where I am on the Twitters. You found my writing at ESPN.com. Got some real fun stuff coming up.

Like big, long, reedy shit coming up. I did a bunch of podcasts in the last week, if you want to listen to other stuff, in which I actually talked to other people. The Masked Man podcast on The Ringer, Dave Shoemaker, invited me to come on and talk about wrestling. It was a super fun time. Neil Horowitz's digital and sports media podcast is a podcast that I did about my career and such. She called me an NHL powerhouse, which is very nice of them to say, but by no means is it accurate. And I did a podcast called the Dr. Hockey podcast, which is one of those podcasts that I just needed to do to see if it wasn't a Nathan Fielder prank because it was two plastic surgeons.

who do a hockey podcast on like their own time. And it was a super great conversation. We had lots of fun. But I want to reiterate, it's two plastic surgeons that do a hockey podcast on their spare time. So do check that one out as well. All right, next week, Pucksu 2.0,

you know, the doctor will regenerate into someone else. God willing Jody Whitaker returns my calls and she's the new co-host, but probably not. that's the show. Thanks for listening. And above all else,

thank you for supporting this nonsense. Do you know next week. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies,

TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hoggy and nonsense. Park Sue.