Puck Soup - Playoff Pasta

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

The boys go around the Stanley Cup Playoffs, including best series, eliminated teams and Tuukka Rask's shocking departure; do some big-name free-agent shopping; talk playoff officiating; lament the latest Jack Edwards, Mike Milbury and Pierre McGuire controversies; say goodbye to Dale Hawerchuk; play another excited game of $25,000 Pierre-amid; and have a spirited discussion about the best and worst kinds of pasta. Mangia!

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. Oh, too. Hey, everybody. I'm Greg Wysinski of the Worldwide Leader in Sports ESPN, home of National Hockey League for the Cup

exclusively on ESPN Plus tune in to hear naughty words. I'm Ryan Laward. I don't have a 20 second intro. Sean McIndoo, The Athletic. You know, my intro is, everybody's got a different kind of intro.

You know, I'm walking to the ring slowly as my music builds, kind of Razor Ramon-esque, you know. And Ryan and I are already in the ring when we come back from commercial. That's right. You two are a bunch of Barry Horowitz's, is what you're trying to say. We don't even get in.

We're patting ourselves on the back, though. Yep. See, I really, that talent. Yeah, that Barry Harowitz was patting himself in the back, and he infamously won a match once. That was a really big deal. Broke his, like, losing streak. When you said you were already in the ring, I thought you were going to say that

you guys are more ultimate warrior. Like you've sprinted down the aisle. Yeah, well, I've sauntered. I know. I was just listening to the When the Ultimate Warrior went to WCW episode of Bischoff's podcast this morning, actually. And boy, it's entertaining. He apparently, when he sat down with WCW to join them,

had like a two-hour meeting with Bischoff in which he arrived with, what's the thing when you make a movie? and, oh, storyboards. Like, he had storyboards with him about, like, what he wanted to do in WCW. Oh, man. Including leveraging Turner to create a warrior cartoon show for Cartoon Network. Didn't come through a form, I guess, but. Yeah, if you're going to go, go with a smile.

Speaking of smiling, there are playoffs going on. It's impossible to do the podcast at a good time during all this, unless, like, we timed it exactly for the daybreak between the rounds. But honestly, who has time for that? So we're going to talk about some series that by the time you listen to the podcast, it probably won't even matter anymore what we say about them. But in a couple cases, it will because they're done. Like Boston and Carolina, our sweet bunch of jerks sent home packing by the Mighty Bruins.

Now, I took a lot of shit from Carolina fans when I was opining on this series, because I thought that their goaltending really shit the bed in games four and five with two, like, egregious mental errors that you can't make against the Boston Bruins. But, I mean, I don't think that's why they lost the series. They lost the series because Sveshnekov got hurt, but, like, I still think that their goaltending was not good. Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, look, the difference is that the Bruins had a Vesna candidate go home. And their backup goalie was significantly better than either one of Carolina's goalies.

I think that's correct. And if you want to say that's the difference in the series, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Yeah. And this was kind of what we worried about a little bit when it came to the hurricanes, is he always looked at that roster and went, is that, do they have the goaltending to go on the kind of run that everyone seems to assume that they're going to go on. And the answer was no at the end. Although, I'm surprised every time I look at the numbers

because, you know, Marizek and Rimer were both quite good numbers-wise in the postseason, if we count the three games against the Rangers. They were pretty good in the series. I mean, Peter Marizek was 924 for the series. that's usually good enough to win. It's not good enough to tip a series necessarily in the playoffs, but it's usually good enough to win. So you kind of get into a while they didn't get the timely saves,

and I never really know what to do with that. I never know if that's really a skill that goalies have, or if it's just a way of saying that the bad bounce came at the worst possible time. But at the end of the day, Ryan's right. I mean, we looked at this series. We would have said Boston had a goaltending edge. We didn't expect Tugheras to go home, but they still had a goaltending edge. And between that and losing arguably your best offensive player, if not your second best, that's going to be hard for any team to overcome.

Yeah, and, you know, we should say, I guess, that, you know, the Bruins didn't have David Pasternak for a good chunk of the series. And it kind of didn't matter. But I, you know, even though Svetnikov is in the center, I would more, you know, equate them losing him to the ruins losing, not Pasternak, but Bergeron. Where it's like, oh, he really makes a lot of stuff happen. Whereas, like, that's not to denigrate Pasternak or anything. He's one of the best players of his position in the league. But, you know, like, Pasternak, without Bergeron and Marashand isn't quite the last. the same as Aho and Terravine without

Svetichikov, basically. And the reason I picked them in the series, like, fucking, I think, like, 14 out of like 16 people on ESPN did, which really made me feel horrible about the pick when it became apparent. They were the chalk. But I really thought that Svecdikov, having leveled up from, you know,

last season and becoming kind of a star player, is really, you know, was a real sort of X-factor kind of thing, you know? And so, like, not having him in that series, I think, was a crush... Not having him in the series is a crushing blow. Not having him, you know, losing him during the series was even more of a crushing blow, right? Like, that's the real pisser of it. But, well, I mean, you know, it's tough to say that just because they only went five games, right?

Like, if they, uh, if they started without him, that's, that's a different situation entirely. Right. Like, okay, okay, they might get swept then, but they still got their brains beat in at the end of the day. So it doesn't, doesn't really matter. Right. I felt, Rymer's, a horrible misplay of DeBrusk's skull was an issue for me. And I think that, like, obviously set the thing, the wheels in motion for that third period collapse. and then like the goal Marazic gives up to Bergeron and the elimination game was just like inexcusable as well, just fell asleep on the power play.

So it's those little things that mistakes that end up. And I categorize it as two different kinds of goalies, right? You have your outright liabilities, guys that cost you playoff series. And then you have like real solid goalies statistically who otherwise play pretty well, but then, you know, have that fatal flaw moment. And, you know, I've always sort of grouped these these guys under. the of getting a Bokoff umbrella of, you know, when the sharks couldn't break through all those years when he was on the team, it would always be like one game where he would fuck it up and then that would be like the series. And I feel like in Marazic and Rhymer's case,

like they just had that one moment that you don't, you can't get from a goalie in a series against the Boston Bruins. You're basically describing the Freddie Anderson experience. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And it's kind of one of the those things where, like I said, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, even if it's not a thing, if you believe it's a thing, it becomes a thing, you know, and if the players are sitting there going, okay, there's the bad goal, there's the back breaker when they see it, then it, it can be hard to get over. And at the same time, it's kind of like, you know, we want these guys, we, we always talk about resilience and mental toughness at this time of year. And if your goal of giving up one bad goal breaks

you, then maybe it's, it's not meant to be in the first place. But it is, it is a tough one. And, and especially, you know, we know Rimer's history with the Bruins and to see it kind of happen to him again, uh, on, on, on a bit of a smaller scale, but to see it high with it, it was, it was tough. I'm sure it does get in your head. Uh, and it's, it's going to be very interesting to see what the hurricanes do at that position in the off season, because there's a lot of goalies who are going to be available. But they've got both those guys under contract, and what do you do? Well, you trade your first-round pick to the Leafs for Freddie Anderson, don't you?

Yeah. I hear Carolina does have a first-round pick that's pretty good, so maybe we can work something out. I'm sorry to see them go. They're a fun team, but look, man, Bruins the Bruins. It's, it's, it's, uh, when they get it cranked up, they really feel that fucking switch, huh? This is the best team in the league for the whole season. And then they came back and had like three not so good games and that ultimately didn't matter all that much. And we all kind of went, oh, the bruns are bad now.

Nope. Oh, they're still really good. Yeah. It's, it's scary when they get it, when they flip the switch. And, uh, and they flipped it. They flipped the fucking Carolina hurricanes out of the playoffs. But, you know, a bummer of a series that that fetch got hurt and we couldn't really see Carolina, I think, at full sale. But that's the playoffs.

Like you said, it's not like the Bruins didn't have their own issues. Let's talk about Tukarask. This is obviously something that happened since the last podcast. Ryan, life cycle of a Boston sports controversy. You know, shocking news. unfair pushback and then truth comes out, which you say is the... Well, you forgot the important part where after the truth comes out, people are still mad at him anyway. Right.

Because, well, he was golfing the other day, Greg. I don't know if you heard about that. He was golfing. So clearly his daughter couldn't be that sick. Just something to think about. Okay, guys. Yeah, it sucks. And also, you know, obviously, it could not happen.

It could not have been a worst person for Boston sports media triggering than Tuka Ask, who, you know, is already a figure of controversy and consternation for some fucking reason, even though he's a perfectly great goaltender. He's a loser, Greg. He's not a competitor. Yeah, apparently. Thanks, Sully. So he announces he's leaving the bubble.

This comes, like, 24 hours or so after he laments the fact. fact that the games don't feel like they're real games, that they feel like exhibition games, that they're dull, which, I mean, at the time was an incredible thing for one of these guys to say because no one had said it. And he was right, by the way. Those opening round games didn't fucking matter to any of the teams. No. I mean, that's, there's a certain proof of concept in the way that those teams have certainly played in the next round. But so those comments were like sort of shocking and then everybody did their you know think pieces on what it all means and then we find out what it means is that the guys that hearts not in the tournament and uh he leaves for family reasons he goes back and you know later on i guess he spoke to a a host at wdee i this week and said that it was a situation with like his daughter being sick or some such and um and that's tough i mean be in the bubble and have a sick kid and have you

your family being like, we need you here. And maybe your heart's not even in it to begin with, even though you, I mean, my, and this might just be projection, I don't know. But like, my take on it was that, like, probably didn't want to go, went for the benefit of his teammates, tried to be a good soldier. And again, that's the point that I'm shocked. Okay, shocked but not shocked. A lot of guys in Boston didn't seem to get.

And then decided he couldn't do it. And then left. And rather than be, again, shock but not shock part two, rather than be a liability for his teammates, because his head's not there, just said, peace out. I'll see you guys next season. So there's this, there's an approach that says that's a brave thing to do. And then there's the, like, Joe Haggerty approach is the opposite. So, I don't know. Yeah.

And look, I mean, every, the overwhelming response that I saw to this was people. saying he's got every right to do this, he should be supported, and of course that's the right approach and even the Bruins. You know, Don Sweeney basically should have, for the most part, laid this to rest. He said the team's behind him. That's, you know, that's the end of it. And it's one of these things. I know some fans have said, well, you know, why didn't he, there was a period where you could have opted out, why didn't he opt out then? Well, if he had opted out then and said because, you know, I'm, I'm not going because I'm not sure my heart would be in it. People would have said, well, then give it a try.

Then go and then, you know, give it a shot. And so he did that. And it's, you know, I don't think it's unreasonable for Bruins fans who are invested in this team to ask some questions here or to, you know, be disappointed that a key player is left. but he's within his rights to do it. And I think, you know, all of us, it's 2020, man. Like, if you still need the lecture about how there's bigger things in sports, then I don't really know what to tell you. Yeah, I guess my thing with it is, like, you know, he, I think he even said at the time,

like, I had a family emergency was how it started out, right? And, you know, again, I often equate it to like, you know, if it's your job down at fucking Dunder Mifflin or whatever, right? Or whatever, like, if it's your fucking job and your kid gets sick and you're like, well, I can't come to work because my kid's sick and, you know, it's an emergency and all that. Is everybody at your office going to be like, fuck you, piece of shit, come to work? Like, no, of course not. Okay, but pause on that first. Hold on, pause on that for a second.

Sure. If Dunder Mifflin had to work inside a bubble for two and a half months, who would be the first employee to opt out? Freaking, from the office jammy looks at the camera. He's like, well, uh-oh, I don't know if I can do this. Because Dwight's going, if Michael's going. Oh, wait, Michael's the first one

is going to try to opt out, right? Like, that's obvious, right? Like, he's going to try to find some reason to not be in the bubble for two and a half months. I could work remotely. Kind of thing. I like it. I think that fits.

Creed just doesn't show up at all. No one's even sure where he is. But I think Michael's the first one to opt out of the bubble. Anyways. Yeah, I thought we all had an unspoken agreement that if any of these guys didn't want to do this bullshit where they're being forced to, you know, play hockey in a pandemic,

having already had their full salaries fulfilled, that would be okay with that. And most of us were, and some of us weren't. But again, like, if it's Petriez Bergeron, nobody says a fucking word. You're probably right. But because, to your point,

because it was too garask. Yeah, but, I mean, there would probably be some, like, fucking Boston cream-films. old numskull in Boston, you know, on the fucking radio being like, does this affect, does this affect Bay Geron's era legacy? I don't think so. I think, I think it had to be, I'm trying to think who else wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt. On the Bruins? Yeah. Andre Casha, probably because he missed all that other time anyway. Jake DeBrusk. I don't know. I can see that

going either way. Oh, Tori, Tori Krug. Tori Krug is a good call. That's a good Because Tori Krug would have opted out and also been a UFA. Right. And people would be like, oh, you're just trying to preserve the merchandise. Yep. That's a really good call. I can't think of any other UFAs, though. Marshawn might not have, but I think it maybe it depends on it.

If he left during the bubble, people would be pissed, but if he had opted out beforehand, maybe not. If Chara opted out, the response would have been Arras Sully, they should pawp the bubble. Bring them all home. Bring the boys home. If Chara can't go, nobody should go. If Chara can't go, no one can go. Popp the bubble, Sully.

The whole Bruins team can't go because of Chara. Yeah. I think that's right. A very, very good win for Boston. A very convincing win. And all of us should feel horrible for having jumped on the Carolina bandwagon in the, ways that we did, or maybe didn't, I don't know.

I forget what you guys picked. I pick Carolina, but. Oh, yeah, Sean, you didn't even make picks. What was your picking? I don't remember. I do not remember. I probably, honestly, I probably thought Boston was going to win, but pick Carolina, because I always look at my list and I don't have enough upset, so

then I go and change a few that I don't really believe in, so. Yeah. And I mean, you're, yeah, you would have said, like, oh, this is, this is the series that could be an upset and the the hurricanes lost in five games. It wasn't even fucking close. I'm just trying to figure out, like, as a cuckled Maple Leafs fan, courtesy of the Bruins,

like, do you go hoping the Bruins get upset, or do you go, I genuflect to my master's on this? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the fact that they didn't lose to him this year, I think kind of negates either side of that. It's more the years that you lose, and then you're like, all right, do I want them to go?

Go deep, or am I going to be bitter and angry? And I usually choose bitterness and anger, so it's my policy. Let's pause for a second for some Leaf's lunch. If you need to tune out for a second, we understand. Sean, your thoughts on Bruce Boudreau potentially becoming an assistant coach? Oh, yeah, that would be cool. That would be cool. That rumor.

You know, I like Bruce Boudreau a lot. Finally, the Leafs get a coach who can't win in the... Yeah, exactly. Game 7 specialist. Him and Freddie Anderson together again in game sevens, it's gold. No, he's a great coach. I know we've had this kind of argument about him in the past. If he's genuinely willing to come in as an assistant, I mean, obviously he's a guy you would assume would be a strong candidate for head coaching jobs, but maybe that's not the case this offseason.

He's a Toronto guy drafted by the Leafs. going way back. If this is, you know, he wants to come and being assisted in Toronto, yeah, by all means, Sheldon Keith is, I think, a good coach, but he's young, having a veteran guy around, that makes sense. You know, is it going to create a scenario where if things go bad, everyone's looking at, you know what, I think Keith's still got enough of a honeymoon period, and Boudreau probably wouldn't be sticking around that long that I don't think it would

become a real over-the-top issue. Right. A Kyle Dubus, Lou Lamrella kind of a situation. Yeah. Or example. I was going to say, yeah. What is the over-under before the first Dave Feshik or Jota Siegel story of some of the leaves players are rumbling?

They'd rather have Boudreau be the head coach. What's that? 30 minutes into his tenure as an assistant. Oh, shit. I just think it'd, I just think it'd be fun to have Boudreau on the bench so that I wouldn't, I could break my streak of like 70 consecutive leaf games where they show the bench and I go, is that Dave Haxstall? Why is Dave?

Oh, yeah, right. Dave Haxx. I got to remember that. And then the next night, exactly. Is that Dave Haxville again? I'd never got my head around it. You know, we've talked oftentimes on this show about like, and I think we've, we've been like, you know, had mailbags.

We might have even done a bonus episode at some point about like hockey urban legends that you just believe wholeheartedly. You know, like they fix the lottery for the penguins and that kind of show. shit. I will wholeheartedly believe with every fiber of my being that Ron Hexel hired Dave Haxdahl because of his last name. I just, I don't care. I know that like he coached his kid or whatever in college. I'm sure there's other reasons why he got hired with the Flares. I don't fucking care. I just wanted, I wanted to be a thing where he's like, hmm, it's so close to Hextall. Seems like I found my coach. It's probably that the nepotism runs strong in the NHL, the instinct.

All right, so we're 20 minutes at the show, so let's get to our second series. Fuck. Think about the time we could have saved if you hadn't just been shilling so hard for ESPN off the top. I know, I know. It's all my fault. Ten minutes of

run up to it. It's like a fucking cure song. It's just all lead in, and then eventually you hear the lyrics. Lightning, the Blue Jackets, the Tampa Lightning, our long national nightmare is over. They eliminate the jackets in five games. A thrilling overtime victory in Game 5. I mean, this series gave us a five overtime classic.

What more do you want? And then it gave us the diminishing returns of the Columbus Blue Jackets as clearly John Tororella was pretty candid about them running out of gas as the series went on. But Tampa survives. And, you know, this is the character test, right? This is like the thing that the Lightning had to do. Okay. Oh, you don't think so?

This was a tough-ass series, man. They beat them in five games, and I think expected goals were like 60-40 for Tampa. They blew the fucking doors off a team that, you know, again. I appreciate what you're saying. but you're talking about a five overtime game and two other victories But all three other victories were by one goal This is a team

This is a team that exists To get to fucking overtime Right Like they are built to do one thing And that's got a loser point Turns out you don't get those in the fucking playoffs And so They got points all right

Yeah Okay Got their asses In overtime because he Yeah But So, like, you know, if... We all talked about, oh, the fucking last year, they destroyed them, they swept him, all that stuff.

Well, they didn't have headman last year and Kucharov got suspended and all that kind of stuff. And, like, we don't need to relitigate that, whatever, who gives a shit. But, like, the idea that a full-powered Tampa Bay Lightning wasn't going to beat Columbus, with relative ease, I think we were all kind of. putting a lot, way too much stock in four games that were 14 months ago, you know? Yeah, no.

That, yeah, I mean, but they were very, very tight games. What was your take on? And it's kind of, again, it's like, like I was saying with the goalies, sometimes something might not be real, but if you believe it's real and it gets in your head and maybe it becomes real.

And I think if, you know, I don't want to say that first game, the marathon was going to decide the, the series, but Columbus wins that game. I think Tampa is sitting there looking around going like, are you kidding me? Is this actually going to happen again? And instead now they get through. And I think also, let's not discount the importance of getting through this series in five games.

After you play that five overtime, like fatigue has got to be an issue. It's the same for both teams in the series, but you did not want to be playing seven games and then going in. They basically already did. They already played seven years. Exactly. Exactly. So you got having a few extra days off, I think is going to be pretty big. Absolutely.

Did that five overtime? Yeah, that definitely happened since our last show because we did it at last show early. I don't think we ever talked about this. Do you guys have any time for altering overtime rules once you get to like the third or fourth overtime? Well, I mean, are you going to play until they drop guys? We can bring up unwritten rules. rules and one thing they should fucking definitely change is maybe the refs don't throw their whistles in the garbage before overtime starts in the playoffs.

That is absolutely. Especially since they had like seven whistles in their mouths at all time during fucking regulation during this tournament, I'll talk about later. No, that's completely true. But like, do you have any time for once you get past the third overtime, you drop it to four on four or some shit like that to try to find a resolution? Yeah, that's, I mean, I mean, that's as far as I would even consider going.

But even then, like, you know what? These games are relatively rare. And under normal circumstances, yeah, if there's travel or something the next day, it can get tricky. But it is. It does affect both teams. I don't think this is, this is one of those things where we'd be fixing a problem. It isn't a problem. Yeah.

It's a real, it was a real what if the Zamboni driver has to play a goal kind of problem, right? Like that fucking Haley's comment problem. That and also, in much the same way as the Zamboni driver thing, right? It's like, oh, this thing that actually people, like, in the broader sports world, like, gave a shit about the NHL for for two seconds. Yeah, we got to get rid of that. We got to fix that immediately. Right, right. That's exactly right.

Yeah. No, that's true. I give it a little bit of mind. I mean, you know, the idea that, like, you get to that fourth overtime and maybe you can create, you can come up with some mechanism to try to find a solution. But then again, my take on it is that it would be up. to the players. You know, if they think, if they want that, if they don't want to have to play five overtimes, that would make me think that maybe we can come up with a solution. But it could be a situation where the players would say, I think four on four would make it harder to score

or some shit like, who's to say at that point in the game? Isn't, isn't the pushback we got when we said, hey, shouldn't we try to deemphasize the shootout by having three on three be longer? Like, remember that whole argument? And then they were like, oh, guys, be so fucking tired. Well, okay, so you can't say that that's the fix for a long overtime game. No. Because you're not going to put your fucking fourth line out there in a three on three. So then what's the solution otherwise then, you know?

Yeah. A couple more things in this series. One, I am surprised that Pierre-Luc Dubois didn't just take out a gun and shoot Braden point in the back of the head when he was trying to score that goal because he wouldn't have gotten penalized for it. No shit. He was on a fucking rampage in Game 5. It was insane. I mean, he's not even like a big enough star to get the benefit of the doubt yet, but fuck, man.

Like, it is incredible how much that guy got away with that series. And then, I mean, overall gets away with. I mean, you go back to, you track back to the Capitol series from a couple years ago. It was like he was fucking running rampant on people. So I'm going to tell you, the, the capital series. a couple of years, like the opening round, the playing round is as distant to me as the burning of Rome at this point. Like, I was thinking, like, I don't even remember, I don't remember who the Blue Jackets

played in the opening round. I have no fucking idea. I do. Yeah, but, like, you see my point, though. Like, oh, I guess, I guess that Pittsburgh Montreal series was, like, a week and a half ago. It doesn't feel like it. That's what I, but I was saying to somebody, I'm like, we're like three weeks into this. And at the time, we're like two games into round one.

It's just one of these things where you're like, holy smokes, this is going to be a long, long haul. But, you know how well. Two things on torts real quick. And his end of series press conference, which lasts two questions. Oh, geez. On the one hand, he didn't attack the media.

He just kind of said, I can't do this right now. I'm not into what it all means of it. and and then he said stay safe guys and left the press conference after the second question. So in a way, he gave a decent, he gave a quote that everybody used. He's like, I don't want to do this. And he walked away and it's fucking what torts does.

But the flip side of what torts does is this. A dude named Neil McHale. Have you heard of Neil McHale, you guys? Yeah, he used to host the soup and then he was on community. Now that was Joel. That was Joel McHale. Neil McHale is a writer,

for inside hockey. Gene of the Boston Celtics. Neil McKeon. That's Danny Aange. That's not even... You fucked up this Kevin McHale joke. Kevin McAil is a was GM of the Timberwolves, though. This is why you should not go for like NBA personnel and had gone with the ringer Sam bought in to play.

Or wait, or was it Gary's Old Town Tavern the one who hired Kevin McAil to play the Cheers team in their basketball game? Do you remember that episode of Cheers? Yes, I believe you're right. about that. It might have been Melville's, but... It was the ringer that the opponents of the Cheers team bought in, I think, to play Sam's team. Okay, anyways. So, Neil McHale was the one who asked the question of John Tortorella, the very innocuous question of, you know, what do you take away from this experience and the bubble and the whole thing? And Neil McHale actually had to take to Twitter yesterday to say, my question prompted John Totorella to end his conference abruptly. I thought it was a fair question to ask,

but I also want to apologize the fine individuals that cover the jackets for local outlets because I know they needed that availability. And this is the downside of the Torts Act. The downside of the Torts Act is you have people in press conferences who are scared to ask a question

or challenge the guy because the fucking bunny might run away because the allowed noise happened. Like, fuck that. Like, what is that? Like, this is a guy The downside of it is it's an act, and he's a grown man, and he looks ridiculous. And I understand that some of the questions are bad. I understand that sometimes you don't want to talk.

You can still be a decent human being and talk to other people the way people deserve to be spoken to. And this whole act is so tired. And it's not cute. It's not torts being torts. It's a guy being an asshole because he knows he can get away with it. And I just, I have no time for it at all. Yeah, he's a dickhead. Like, there's nothing.

He's a good coach. He's a good coach. And I'm sure he's a, maybe he's a great guy everywhere else. And like I say, this is, this is an act that he puts on. But I'm so over it. And I'm tired of seeing it happen and see otherwise smart people being like, ah, there's torts being torts. Isn't this guy great? No, he's not great.

Yeah. He's being a jerk. And it's not. It's the Belichick shit where it's like, oh, he's actually like a, stoic genius and it's like, no, I think he's just being a dick. Like, yeah, and

Sean, your point's taken, which is that like the tradition of playing the torts press conference and then cutting back to the chuckleheads in the TV studio being like, oh, it's just torts it again. Like, don't encourage it. You know, just like call for what it is, which is a petulant, you know,

piss baby act. Islanders Capitals, this is the series that, like, we'll talk about and then like, it's going to completely change on a dime, you know, by the time hear this podcast. I was happy to see, you know, a little bit of life, a little bit of resurgence, a little bit of the old Capitals in that last game. I don't know if it translates into anything bigger than that, but, uh, I have a guess. For one brief shining, well, statistically they're not going to win the series, but I, I wouldn't be shocked

if they made it like three, two. Sure. Um, but, uh, but it was good, just good to see the caps not, you know, it wasn't the zumbified version of the Washington Capitals that we saw in the first three games of this series against the Islanders. Why do they look so fucking bad? It doesn't make sense. It was good to see some pushback, especially under the circumstances. Like, when you go, you know, normally when you go down 3-0, you know the series is almost definitely over. But under normal circumstances, all right, you keep on fighting.

When you're in the bubble and you're down 3-0 and you're going like, man, we lose tonight, we get to go home. We get to see our families. We get to get out of it. Like, there's got to be a part of you that finds it a little more challenging to, to ramp it up. And, you know, we saw that in the opening round, in the qualifying. Like, I think teams facing elimination were like two in seven or two and eight or something like that, which is not to suggest that people are just pulling the shoot on this stuff, but just, you know, it's got to be hard to get that full motivation going.

And so, you know, credit to the capitals, they, you know, they at least got the one game in. and Washington Capitol fans know as much as anyone. The series isn't over till it's over. It's almost always going the other way for them. But they get a winning game five suddenly, like, this is starting to get a little frisky again. Frisky is a good word, especially when, you know,

Ovecans involved, a very frisky guy. I also like the Capitals trying to shift the paradigm. And this is something that I think, like, this is right up Sean's alley, of shaving their heads and fashioning goatees in some sort of, like, ritualistic behind the scene ceremony to try to change the Carmen in the series. That is that is peak fucking Stanley Cup playoffs kind of shit right there, isn't it?

I love that the Capitals now all look like relief pitchers from the 2002 Oakland A's. They all, like, because I didn't, I was like paying attention and I didn't, I didn't really notice that they had, like, that they all had goatees. And there was a point where they showed like, Ovechkin on the bench or something. something. And he had that big, like, Rod Beck goatee. And I was like, God, he looks like shit. What's going on? And then I was like, oh, it's, he has just like an awful goate. That's gross. Covalchuk has a goate. And I don't want to, I don't want to be accusatory. But like, it reminded me of when diesel returned for the Royal Rumble that year and like,

shoe shined his, his, his facial hair and his, in his hair to make it look like diesel again. I think, I think I think Colvich's enhancing the goate. I think he's using the little product in the goatee personally. He should do something because he's been dog shit, actually, for the capitals in these playoffs so far. Yeah, that's true. And it sucks because, like, if you remember during the quarantine, all it was was videos and photographs of Ilya Kovalchuk, like, doing a training montage with his family

and people on the beach and shit like that. And then he ends up in the playoffs. It's like, it's like five weeks of vignettes and then the boxer gets knocked out in the first round. Yeah, I think it's safe to say this is a pro-CoVy podcast anti-COVID. Oh, sure. But Yes. Pro-CoVy anti-COVID. And yeah, it's, it sucks to see him. Hey, you know what? Maybe, maybe that L.A. King's Kovalchuk wasn't, wasn't just because the Kings suck. Maybe it's because he's like 36 or something. Pro-CoV. I literally completely forgot that they had him until just now.

Anti-COVID. You can be forgetting. Pro-coho. Yep, absolutely. Probably anti-James Comey. I mean, let's be honest. Really dropped the ball on the way he treated the Hillary emails. Bower emails, yes.

There you go. I think that covers it. Philly and Montreal, again, another series that, like, who the fuck even? knows now because last night was like all of a sudden became a series again and it's like it became a series in that

awesome way of now now all of a sudden there's like abject chaos in the sense that like you've got Brendan Gallagher with a fucked up jaw and he looks like a vampire now with the fucking blood in his mouth and the habs or boarding

guys and acting like dickheads on the ice what did you think of that the Suzuki thing do you see that last night where Suzuki tapped Carter Hart on the helmet after the goal got scored. That's fun. It was fun, but it's definitely a penalty, no? Why is it a penalty? On the sportsman, like?

Oh, complete. It should be. Look, we don't want that to become a thing. But we saw it last year, right? Who was it in the, wasn't it one of the Islanders did it against Carolina? And Dougie Hamilton, like, tapped them on the head? in the handshake line afterwards. So that's fun.

That's how you've got to deal with it. Someone's got to tap them on the head. Yeah. I, listen, I don't know. I think it should have been a penalty. I understand it. It's a fun league, but it's no different than like, you know, Marshawn kind of shit, in my opinion.

Well, they, to make up for it, they rung up Cockney Emmy on that insane. Yeah, cocked, so that, I really thought, I made the example last night. I thought that was going to be their Steve Bernheim moment, because the flyers come out and just start scoring Bauerbley goals. you know, left and right after that play happens. That's a weird one for me. Because I don't think it's five. Nope.

I agree. It's definitely a penalty, but it's not five. But Sean, you bought this up last night, though, about the ability for the refs to check their work and still come up with this as being the answer. Yeah. So, I mean, this is kind of what I thought or what I worried was going to have. a lot when we brought in penalty reviews. Because if you remember, the way it works is if the

official calls a major, they can review it and then potentially change it to a minor. It can't go the other way. You can't call two minutes and then review to go up to five. So my worry was that when it was a borderline call, they were going to call five. And then they could go and look at the replay. But the problem is you go look at the replay. If it's still borderline, you've got to stick with the original call. I thought we were going to see more majors. And we didn't really during the season. There are maybe a few examples, but not a ton. But this kind of felt like that. I do wonder if there wasn't replay review if this isn't the sort of thing where they go with just a minor penalty.

And if maybe they weren't sitting there going, well, we can take another look at it if we go five. I didn't hate that it was five. I think there's a case for it. It wasn't an outrageous call to my eyes. But I was surprised given some of the other stuff that was being let go that they went five on that. And then once you do go five, because it's a. because there's an injury, it has to be five in the game. They don't have the option to keep them in the game at that point.

But that was a real kind of show your colors play because everybody who is clearly in the tank for Montreal to kind of win this series or come back in this series was just like, it fucking happens every night. If you were going to call that, you'd have to call it 25 times a game kind of shit. All right. This series has been unwatchable at times. we should probably mention, because this also happens to this last podcast, fucking Claude Julian left the bubble because he had chest pains. That was a scary situation, wasn't it? Yep, and then Kirk Muller goes out and hurts the Flyers' feelings in the next game

by using too many good players to try to score gold. Which is amazing because the Canadians don't have any good players. Like, you don't look at those guys, you don't look at that team, and that top power play unit and go, oh, boy, these guys are going to come over the fucking Borence. to just destroy us. They didn't even score on the power play. It wasn't exactly from Hall of Famers over there, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that was some, that was some, like, you know, generic brand Ridge Dunlop shit that Vinyo was trying with that, like, they tried to run up the score on us kind of bullshit. And it didn't work. That's the best part of it, where he's like, I can't believe they put out that top powerplay unit and we stopped them easily. That's bullshit. How dare they give us the Tomas Tartara treatment that,

at that point in the game. If and when Montreal is eliminated. You know what? I don't think they'll ever be eliminated. They're winning the Stanley Cup this year. I mean, it's quite possible, right, in this fucked up season. But, like, they're in a kind of a weird place. Price and Weber had been their two best players,

which is something I probably didn't anticipate when the pro season started. But that whole sort of middle-aged core of Tatar and Gallagher and, and Domi's an RFA and, you know, somebody I'm missing in that mix, too. Oh, Drewann, too. You got them, and then you got the kids behind them. They're a weird team. Like, they regressed in the regular season this year.

Yeah, they're not good. They're not good. They're not a well-built team. And like... So what do you do? Well, again, like, the problem is that you can't really do anything because I don't think they have a lot of money coming off the books. this song I'll pull up cap friendly but you I think you could trade some of those middle class guys like I mean I think Gallagher's got a ton of value like he might have the most value of anybody on the fucking team as far as what other teams want yeah I mean yeah I'm looking at it they they're they're big they're two big UFAs that are coming off the books are Dale Weiss and Christian Fowlin like they're not they're not and they have a needle on those guys and Domi's an RFA so like hewdon and Mete and

Xavier Ouellette and like those guys again those guys aren't difference makers but the problem with the whole team and this is this is I've been saying it for a while now is like they're really well coached and you know they just um they don't have enough talent to do anything except when Carrie Price is good which is only sometimes right right um weber's been good in that series too What was that play against? Who do he... Oh, it was it, Kevin Hayes. Where he just, like, fucking...

Yeah. Like, DDTed Kevin Hayes in the corner late in the game. Fuck Weber Strong when he's playing well. All right. Look, it only took us, like, two hours to get through the East. Over in the West, the Golden Knights eliminate Chicago, who just didn't have a fucking prayer in the series outside of Cory Crawford. As you guys know, I hate the handshake line with every fiber of my...

being, but I'll allow for it being a wonderful moment when Robin Lainer went through and hugged everybody. Oh, yeah, his best friends, the Chicago Blackhawks, who he played with for four months. 33 games. But it was a nice moment. It was kind of like, it was a nice moment because you can't divorce the fact that they traded, they chose Crawford. Like they said, you were not our guy.

Yes, that's very funny in retrospect. Yeah. Right. You know, even if Lainer just absolutely stands on his head for Chicago, like if they made the quote unquote right choice and Lainer stands on his head, they still get fucking blown out of the building in five games. So who cares? If you're Edmonton, how you, if you're Edmonton, if you are Pittsburgh, these qualification around teams that all of a sudden then see their teams that eliminated them get exposed in the next round. How are they feeling about life? Is it just that it's all a mulligan?

It's all, yeah. It's all, like, what are you going to say? Oh, yeah, we were really bad for, like, look, there are problems with both of those teams you just mentioned. You know, Pittsburgh, obviously, the goal tending is a huge question mark. And so is the fact that Jack Johnson's still on the team. Well, I guess that's not really a question mark. That's more of just a real problem. But Edmonton has a million question marks, too.

And, you know, I think the thing to say is that just about every team in the qualification rounds was in some way very obviously flawed, you know? And so, like, if the flaws that led you to lose to Chicago, a team that clearly stinks, like, you know, I don't think that, like, them getting smoked changes the equation for you. You know what I mean? Edmonton's problems were obvious to everybody the whole time. And then, like, you know, Chicago's best players got hot for three games. That's it. Bye. You know, like, I don't think you need to really do much more soul-searching than that.

Do we just want to skip to the end and go to Vegas and Colorado in the final? Like, fucking, that is the money series of money series right now. All due respect to Vancouver and St. Louis and Dallas. Family Cup final. I don't pretty much. Jesus Christ. Right? Yeah.

Those are the two, those are very obviously the two best teams playing right now. I would take, I just give me every shift between a Mark Stone line and a Nathan McKinnon line. Let's fucking go.

I just fucking devour that series. Yeah, Vegas is great. And it was good to see them advance and they're doing Pete DeBore things and it's all good. Mark Stone, I think is starting to kind of build that Kahn Smyth case. That means for Nazim Kodry, who is also doing that.

Exactly. No, no, I wasn't saying he's the favorite. I'm just saying that if, you know, as you start to, as you start to see which teams are kind of, like, obviously if, if the, if the lightning, you know, keep doing their thing, you know, could be point, could be headman. Boston, I mean, who would be your guy right now? Bergeron, probably. Marshand? Marshan or Bergeron or Halak might get some love. Goes, oh, he doesn't have a safety net.

Stone and then Cadry would be the other guy. So let's skip to that Avalanche series. I didn't get a chance to ask Ritokka to question due to a Zoom snafu yesterday. But I'd really love to know. a little bit more about coming out and challenging your players and saying this is an embarrassment and this is going to be a real test of character. And then losing by the exact same score and being even more disinterested in an elimination game against Colorado.

I know Colorado is fucking great. I know Arizona was hurt. But 14 to 2 in the final games of a series, fucking shit. Come on. I really saw both of those games as, just being like, yeah, we all knew Arizona wasn't any fucking good, right guy? Like, that was, that was Colorado just saying, like, we're not only, like, insulted that we had to play the first round. Like, the fact that they gave up the one goal, that was them going, like, we don't even have to try particularly hard and we're going to annihilate these guys.

Yeah. And then you get, you get 50 shots, but you lose. because the goalie stands on your head and you're like, really? Yeah. Oh, no. That was, you made us bleed our own blood. That was, we're going to really make you pay for this shit. That was the Jordan last dance meme of Nathan McKinnon looking down at the iPad. That's when I took it personally, yes. Right, that took it personally.

Colorado's awesome. Coyotes are just a, what the fuck? Like, this is what we've always talked about with the whole John Chaka thing, even before this bizarre situation. Like, he did all this work to piece together. this team and sign guys to like longer term contracts, but to what end? It's not, it's not even close to being a contending team. They're the Canadians where it's like we've like people have apparently just decided

Bergevin and Chaka did a good job because they went out and got the players they targeted, but the players they targeted aren't that good and aren't going to make a big difference for you. And so, you know, now like you're not only getting embarrassed in the, the first round, you're also, like, not even close to being able to put together a team that's going to not get embarrassed in the first round. Yeah. All right, so two things.

First off, were the Penguins right to Jettison Kessel, or was this maybe an injury? Because he was really bad this season. Yeah, I mean, I think he did, like, I think Phil Kessel, at his age now, probably needs a little more help than like the coyotes could provide. Like, okay, you want to say? Like Dvorak or Christian Fisher or shit like that, you mean? Both of those guys, I think, signed until 2051 at $4.5 million a year. Oh, what a bargain.

Well, they both suck. So, but no, like, I really think, you know, Kessel did the thing early in his career where it's like, okay, yeah, Tyler Bozak's not really all that good. but Kessel's still going to score 30 a year because he just give him the puck and he goes. You know, I think that, what's he, 31, 32 now, he doesn't have that juice anymore. And if you don't have a guy who can help him and put him in a position to succeed, well, you know, you're looking at a 32-year-old guy with one trick in his bag. And, you know, that trick, much like Alex Ovechkin, is putting the puck in the net,

but he's not Alex Ovechkin in terms of talent. So, you know, when that part of his game goes away, even a little bit, you go, uh-oh, this isn't good. Right. Right. Oh, the other question is Taylor Hall. You know, the more you start thinking about... Sure, he really wants to lock in on this.

Oh, yeah. Who doesn't want to stick around for a team that lost... Sign me up for eight years of... Gave up two touchdowns in the last fucking two games in the series. The thing about Hall and Petrangelo, Krug to a lesser extent, maybe, I mean, the economic landscape has changed so much, a flat cap,

but also just teams tightening belts and stuff because of COVID. I mean, the coyotes would have to move out salary to sign him. But if he's looking for something long term, I mean, I think they've probably signaled that this is a place that's going to give you a long term. term contract. I imagine that's what those meetings were about, is that they want to be in the Taylor Hall business. Absolutely. But would he stick around? I still think the best thing for him

is take, go go fucking chase your cup. Like go to the Amelago. Do the Paul Korea. Be Mary and Hosa. Yeah. Colorado, where ever. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Colorado, Boston, Boston was always a place that I heard behind the scenes. They love them from from, from, and also I think their hall lives loves So, but at the same time, though, you know, from a, from a business and like personal sanity perspective, I understand the need to want to try to maximize your chance to get a long-term deal somewhere, too. Yeah, man, this is his chance. This was always going to be his, what is he, 28? Like, he was going to try to cash out on this one, and now it doesn't seem like he's going to be able to.

And the point at which he's going to be able to, he'll be 30, 31. So Have we willed Have we willed Hall to Calgary and Calgary Traits Goddraudah Jersey into existence yet? I think the flames might will that into existence.

What more do they love than an overpaid ex-Edmonton Oiler winger, you know? They have a propensity for signing those guys and yeah, I don't know. And Godro and Gadro and fucking Jeff. Jack Hughes, let's go, right?

Come on. How fun would that be? Why not? Maybe not the best news for Johnny Goodrow, but... I think I said it a couple of weeks ago, but like, how stupid do you think Petrangelo feels for not locking in that deal last summer now? He's going to lose a lot of cashola. I think he probably felt stupid the minute they traded for Justin Falk and immediately gave him a contract. Yeah.

That's true. So, shit. Probably a lot of people should have felt stupid about that one. But what I think all these guys should do, like all the big UFAs, just say, you know what? We'll go to Colorado. They have all the cap space in the world. We'll sign short money with those guys for like a year, maybe two. We'll win a cup probably very easily.

And then we'll see what happens once the cap starts going up again. Look, I don't want to start going up again. off-season content. But real quick, Hall to Calgary would be the Hall of Calgary long term would be ideal for him. Hall to Colorado short term would be the thing I want to see. Oh, absolutely.

Peter Angelo to the Leafs. No, Patrangelo, too. Hear me out. Colorado. Oh, fuck. Come on. What do you... This is what I'm saying. Like, if we're all going to say, hey, go I guess maybe he doesn't have to care about chasing a cup since he just won one.

But, like, fucking, why wouldn't, like, if you're going, well, I'm going to have to take short money somewhere, who's a team with a shitload of money who I'm going to also be, or a shitload of cap room to actually sign me, and then also be in a position to win a cup? There's exactly one team in the league that fits that description, and they are going to have a shitload of flexibility. I think that's a really good idea, but, like, I mean, I mean, was like Matt Calvary, his former roommate, you know, does he, is Andre Barakoski, like, did they share an in-laws? Like, what is the thing that would bring him to Colorado in it from a hockey perspective? Um, so that's a good one. I still think

he'd be perfect on the leaves. There's no way they could make the money work. But that's the guy. I don't see how they could. The only way that works is if he decides not only, you know, will I take the cheap deal to go to Toronto? Because maybe I want to play in Toronto, but there's this idea that says, if you have to take a short-term deal, go do it in a huge market and have the sort of season where you win the Norris trophy because you get that, you know, all eyes are on you. And then go make a ton of money somewhere else. I like that.

The risk is, you know, that can happen and that can work. But what happens if you have the Tyson Barry season? And you have the rough year. Tyen Barry is going to be out of the league next season. He's done. That's it. Do you mean Tyson Barry of the Kundun Red Star? My man's going to be playing for H.C. By and Cody Cici are going to be a pairing.

Speaking of Peter Angelo, Vancouver St. Louis, I picked the Canucks in the series, and after games three and four, I was not feeling very good about that. Well, Greg, I mean, you put in a goal like Jake Allen. You're going to get results, baby. All right, go ahead. Spike the fucking football in Bennington. I mean, he was horrible in the play. playoffs and now he's basically lost his cup. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy that a guy who had like 150 games of being like a mediocre HL goalie? Didn't end up being the best goalie in the league,

even though he had 80 hot games? I'm trying to think, has any goalie ever had like 80 hot games and then fucking vanished from the face of the earth? No, it's probably never happened. Jordan Bennington's for real. This is a bump in the road. Every time I saw his stats, I flashed to you, like Jim Carrie and dumb and dumber when he's on the motorbike, like cackling and they're playing

the wicked wish game in the background. It's crazy how that worked out exactly. Wow, crazy. It's been a real fun series. It has. I desperately want things. Which we didn't. I think when we did the previews, we were like, oh, this is the one series.

But, yeah, it's been great. This is fun. I want them to advance because I love. like the idea of their being, you know, new blood, but also just because they're like exciting. Like, what a fucking fun team. They are a fun team. And Christ, if you can get playoff hero, Tyler Mott going?

Like, good Lord, dude. Oh, God. What, what of, one of my favorite goals maybe of the season is a stickless Alex Peterangelo trying to fucking defend. Getting fucking Mott. And they're just getting walked. Hell of yes. Um, like, listen, that's not to say that I don't, I wouldn't like.

to see St. Louis advance because they're also a fun team in the sense that, like, Ryan O'Reilly is, you know, one of my favorite players to watch in the playoffs. But, yeah, I mean, Vancouver just got the juice right now. And it's fun. The thing that's going to suck about Vancouver is that when they eventually lose in the next round, if they get past St. Louis, and then, like, take an L in the first round, like, next season, then they're going to have to, like, try to play a different style of hockey probably, right? Like, that'll be the fucking come-to-Jesus thing that will happen to every good young team that plays exciting hockey.

I mean, again, like, in much the same way of the teams that got eliminated in the playing rounds, everybody knows what Vancouver's problems are. And you don't fix that by playing a different style. You fix that by moving out a lot of the dead weight on your cap, right? Like, if you don't have whatever, $6 million for Louis Erickson, and obviously the Tyler Myers contract isn't going anywhere, but like there's a lot of fucking guys who are making a lot of money and aren't moving the needle for them, but who are coming off the books relatively soon.

So, you know, I guess the hope at that point is that you just like don't fall into the thing of, oh, maybe we should trade Brock Besser so we can re-sign Tyler to Bolli, you know. Jesus Christ, right? And like that, I mean, that's a this summer problem. So that's not even, that's not even like a two years from now thing. And, you know, do I trust Jim Benning to make those right decisions? No. I can't imagine that I would.

So I don't know. I think Jim Benning's gotten a real bad rap, but I think we're starting to see the fruits of his labor. Yeah, picking fourth and like third and 17. No, but he made this fight. He made some good decisions on what not to do, like when everybody in the world was like Trade Tanev and fucking, you know, the little, the little like Depp players that he's at and have worked. And the J.T. Miller trade was like demonstrably great and it was a ballsy move.

Right. And how's that how many years left Louis Arickson have? What about Tyler Myers? They're not all winners. They're not all winners. Okay. And the Brandon Sutter trade, is that still working out well? and Antoine Roussel, three million dollars three years left.

Jay Beagle, three million dollars three years left. They both have no trades, by the way. Roussel's fine. Beagle, you could make the point. But I think Jim Benning gets a bet. Where are you on Jim Benning, Sean? You know what? I like him as a talent evaluator.

It's the other stuff that a GM has to do, to some extent the trades, the contracts where he hasn't been great. I wouldn't want him as the GM of my favorite team, but I wouldn't mind him as like the assistant GM whispering in that guy's ear about who were maybe undervalued or players that you could go get. A real Dave known as type. I mean, he's come a long way. He's not outwardly tampering anymore during radio interviews, so that's pretty good. I mean, he's gotten some progress.

Growth, baby. So Vancouver St. Louis is super fun. Oh, one thing I forgot in our brief side. bar before, I'd put Holpby in Carolina. I think Mark Scher will stay in... I thought we were trying to make the Keynes better. Oh, how dare you? You get the

playoff experience, baby. You get the Braden Holpey experience in 2020 and that's the real problem. Wouldn't Braden Hoppe be there? I think Holpe might be the one guy who takes like Dunden's offer of. I'm not actually going to give you a contract, but just show up,

bring your guitar, play some goal. Let's see what happens. Why turn this into a a commitment thing. He seems like the Carolina type. Just, you know, kick it down to the dock to play some guitar. An overpaid goalie who's not going to do anything for you in the

playoffs. Yeah, he does seem like that. You're right. Go to coastal Raleigh and just chill. He does seem like an Outer Banks guy. There's no... He does not very much. Oh, my God. Come on. There's no worries about that. There's at least two

OBX stickers on that fucking guitar case. You're kidding me? That man's been the duck doughnuts a few times. I went to the Outer Banks a few times and lived on the East Coast. It's a very nice place to go. And I really enjoyed it. Very, very, very much a laid-back vibe.

Highly recommend it. Dallas and the Flames is a series that a lot of us was just going to thought be paralyzingly boring and has actually been a really fun little series in some of these games. Well, it worked out that way. It definitely started according to schedule. And then around the time of that 5-4 game, everybody was like, oh, maybe we don't have to be intentionally boring. That's interesting.

And it's sort of weird that like, and I'm sure this is sort of a Canadian team problem. But while the world was focused on the Svetnikov injury and the Carolina Boston series, like Matthew Kachuk got crunched very early in this series and did not play the next couple of games. And that is a hugely impactful thing for the Calgary Flames. Yeah, he might be their best forward. Yeah, overall, so not great. Yeah, I mean, when, you know, Sean Monaghan disperses into the air as if a vapor in a playoff series, yeah, I would say that Kachuk is probably their best player. My good series in Dallas seems like they're kind of figuring their shit out. All right, so that's a bunch of playoff shit that will be probably old and immaterial within hours of you listening to this.

Speaking of old immaterial, let's talk about announcers for a second. There were a few moments in the past week since we've done our last show that warranted at least acknowledgement for how bad they are. As the podcast's most notable Jack Edwards Defender, I will say what he said about Audrey Spachnikov getting injured was pretty fucked up and wrong, if only because, for those that didn't hear it, Jack Edwards made the the case that Svetikov, quote unquote, poked the bear, and that's why Chara injuring him was warranted because he, quote, bit off more than he could chew because he, quote, rode Chara like a hobby horse behind the net before the incident. And on the one level, all of that is horrible 200 hockey men thinking. And on another level, it's completely fucking wrong because it was Sebastian Arro, who,

who was tangled up with Chara behind the net, thereby, you know, exonerating Svetakov from the necessity of being injured, I suppose, for his actions. So what the fuck, Jack Edwards? Well, I mean, the other thing to obviously say about this is if it happened the other way and someone's tangled up with Jacob Slavin in front of the Carolina net, like, let's say it's Brad Marchand, who's notably smaller than Jacob Slavin, and the same exact play happens, Jack Edwards is fucking out for blood. Jacob Slavin, murders Bar Shan in front of the net, should be given the electric chair for it.

Yeah. That sounds about right. You know, so on some level, it's just, again, like it's the classic shit of Jack Edwards is good at what he does, quote, unquote, because he is, he lives the gimmick. He is always Jack Edwards exactly how you think of him. Anytime you talk to him off the ice, oh boy, he just loves the fucking brewing so much, you know? And like,

that's what you want from a team announcer, I think, a lot of the time. And so I, I see it a lot. Like, I'm not defending the take is fucking disgusting. But it's what you're,

you get what you pay for, you know? And so Jack Edwards doesn't, he lives the gimmick. He's Diamond Dallas Page. You know, he's never not, he's never not that guy.

And so the fact that anybody would ever expect anything different is, is what I don't understand. Everybody please join JJE Yoga. It's the yoga that will change your life. Yeah, he wouldn't do that unless he heard that like Zadano Chara liked yoga, though. Right. He would never. Andy Brickley seems like a yoga guy. Jack Edwards will get an eternal pass for me for that one moment when he was doing the Bruins

Habs game, not the famous Revolutionary War soliloquy that he had, but the one where Hammerlick, I think it was Hammerlick took a dive, and Jack responded in real time by saying, like, Hammerlick goes down as if he's been shot. Get up! It's so fucking humiliating. It's amazing. Come on. Sean, I remember where you not being a big Jack Edwards guy, if memory serves. No, I'm not a big fan of the schick, and it always strikes me as very weird when, like, well-established traditional franchises in sports have to still have the Homer announcer that always, like, I get it if it's like a new, like, you know, you're trying to establish

a fan base or whatever, but it strikes me as strange that Boston sports fans would need this kind of thing, but, you know, I guess that some people would say it's a thing. Let me put it this way. As a person who lives in Boston, it's not a Boston sports fan, all their broadcasts are like this. There's not a situation where it's like, oh, like they have one guy who's, and the other thing I should say is, I think when Jack Edwards is just calling a game, like, right down the middle, like, if it's a random, like, you know, Wednesday night game against Winnipeg or something where he doesn't, he's not fired up about the opponent or anything like that. I think he calls a great fucking game, you know? But, yeah, when he becomes Jack Edwards about everything, like, not great.

But, yeah, like, every single Boston, maybe I can't say this about the Red Sox because I haven't watched a full Red Sox game in a million years. But, like, the Celtics have always one guy, Mike Gorman does a great fucking job. And then, like, it's either Tommy Hinesson or Brian Scalibarini who can't believe anybody ever called any fouls against the Celtics. Right. You know, like, you can go online and you can find old Tommy Hineson calls where he is, like, absolutely apoplectic that, like, Paul Pierce got a call in the third quarter. Yeah. And local broadcasters that are homers are fine. I mean, it's just part of the gig.

And, you know, that's why I always, you know, to go back to a Ryan Lambert classic of when you did the Stigerwald, Sidney Crosby's vampire conversation, you know, part of the grape that he had was you calling his brother a Homer. I think that was the only gripe he had, quite frankly. But, yeah. But that, I'm like, who gives a fuck? Of course they're homers. Like, they're paid to be homers. They're not, no one's, you know, paying to, to hear them be an ombudsman for the fucking local team. That's just not how it works.

Yeah, you're never going to call. hear a local broadcast call something a stupid penalty. You know, like, that's just how it goes, because after the game, somebody will have texted that player or the coach or somebody, like, hey, they said so-and-so took a stupid penalty, and then, like, the announcer gets yelled at by the coach or the player. Even though, you know, you might call it right down the,

like, do a great job calling it in favor of the team, every other second of every other game, but if you say one thing that is like negative, you get yelled at. And that's just the reality of it. So speaking of Boston, we should mention Mike Milbury's comments on Tickerask. Another just real chill guy. He said nobody's simply opted to leave the bubble just because they didn't want to be here and they needed to be with their family. I would have not have done it the rest of the league.

players have not done it. I imagine that he seems like a somewhat reasonable guy when he's wrong on the level of being wrong when somebody leaves the bubble for like the health of their family because this is obviously like information that came out after his hot take

but the take itself is fucking dumb. I mean you don't need to say it. It's yeah, it's it's dumb and you know the that was dumb. The jacks Edward saying was dumb. Pierre McGuire talking about analytics is dumb. It's been a bad week for broadcaster takes, especially on the NBC side. I got to say this, though, like, I'm getting kind of tired of, and I say this like every six months on something, when we do this, on some variation.

I'm getting kind of tired of like my entire Twitter timeline being taken up by identical dunks every time one of these guys says something dumb like this. Like, just as a rule of thumb, if you're on Twitter or whatever and like five people have already quote tweeted some stupid comment to dunk on it, like, you probably don't have to dunk on it too. You could maybe find something you like to talk about instead or to, like, I, yeah, Pierre McIre says dumb things. Mike Milbury says dumb things.

You know, Mike Milbury doesn't really think the C.N. Towers the Space Needle. He's just like, like, we don't all have to, like, if you're the 80th person to, like, jump in, like, I promise you, we're good. We've seen it. Maybe find something, like I say, that you actually liked or appreciated and put that out in the world instead of circulating this stuff. Because I guarantee somebody's boss somewhere is like, wow, look at all the engagement they're getting on these comments. This is really, they're really getting people talking. Like, good Lord.

I understand why people decide to play these characters and when you see the reaction because it's just so over the top where it's like, we get it. Like Pierre doesn't get analytics, we understand, but holy smokes, can we maybe take one afternoon off from taking the bait on this stuff? I, listen, I think that there's a difference between,

as somebody who's easily baited into this, I think there's a difference between being like performatively angry when Mike Milbury says something dunderheaded and pointing out that when Pierre McGuire, like, sometimes Pierre McGuire will say something about analytics that is dumb. And then there are other times when Pierre McGuire says something about analytics that is provably dumb. Like yesterday, when he is taking a shot at the cadre trade and saying this is why you don't build a, your team through analytics and A, the cadre trade was the antithesis of an analytics trade. I mean, it was made for like old time hockey reasons. Like, you can't stay out of the suspension box in the fucking Bruin series kind of reasons. And then the other thing is that he's saying the you don't build your team through analytics,

as the Colorado avalanche are celebrating on the ice. Yeah. Who have one of these stoutists. One of the smarter teams. And somebody pointed out on Twitter today that, that like Pierre liked the cadre trade at the time for the Leafs. He was, are you guys going to love Tyson Barry?

Right. Jesus Christ. So I get it. Like I'm not saying don't hold people accountable for their bad opinions. I'm just saying like if 20 people have already done it, like being the 21st probably isn't going to tip the scale. And meanwhile, there's probably somebody out there that none of us have ever heard of

that has written or said or come up with something really good that is, would maybe like to be part of that day's hockey Twitter conversation instead of having all the oxygen in the room sucked out by some, you know, old-timer 200 hockey men guy who has the exact opinion we all knew they were going to have anyways. I don't know. So you're saying don't retweet Damien Cox? Is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, do people still do that? Sure. I have no idea. Oh, no, actually, to, uh, To your point about that. Yeah, somebody showed me, because I, when Arizona was going into the elimination game, they were like, here's our new lines. Lawson Krause is on the first line. And I was like, oh, oh, that's bad.

And somebody showed me a Damien Cox tweet from like 2015 where he was like, is it McDavid, Eichel or Lawson Krause first overall? Oh, God. That's a good one, baby. That's a old, that's a classic. All right, let's cleanse our souls with some remembering a legend. Dale Howard Chuck died at 57 of cancer this week. It was very sad. You can measure a man by how he is remembered at a time like this.

And my God, the outpouring for this guy from former teammates, former coaches, former opponents, especially former players that he coached and Barry. was just really heartfelt. And, you know, I've talked about this before that as a guy who grew up in Jersey in the 1980s, the Campbell Conference was not something that we were privy to. Sports Channel America had the NHL rights. You would rarely see Western Conference hockey unless they were playing an Eastern Conference team. You certainly didn't see a lot of the Jets. So my approach to Howard Check was doing.

Are you talking about sports channel or are you talking about NBC Sports Network? Oh, no, no, no, it's a sports channel. They don't show the West Coast games either. They certainly don't. They refuse to. I still say the worst thing to happen to the Western Conference was Detroit moving because they would have gotten on NBC a lot more. It's true.

Anyway, sorry. So anyways, so Howard Check was a guy that I was aware of, but he sort of like existed on the mythic level for me. He was like a legend. He was like a name that I would see in box scores and on, you know, stat sheets and, you know, league leaders and stuff. And so when I finally did get a chance to watch him on a regular basis when he came to the Sabres, like, just it was awesome.

Like, because it was just like, in my mind, somebody who existed in hockey digest articles and hockey cards and shit like that just because I didn't get a lot of chance to watch him. but just a fantastic fucking player, you know, through his first, you know, four, five, six years with Winnipeg as far as like, I mean, he came at the wrong time, obviously, because he was going to be in Gretzky's shadow. But man, what a player. Yeah, he was, I mean, he was so good to, and he was like the guy where, yeah, like, he wasn't Gretzky, he wasn't Mario. But I think there's probably, because of that, there's a lot of fans that, there's a lot of fans that, group him in with, you know, other guys that added, like the Bernie Ferdorkos and that sort of and, and he was, he was a different level. I mean, and even the, the numbers don't necessarily do it justice. Like, he didn't have any crazy, uh, seasons in terms of point totals or that sort of

thing. But he was just so consistently good. And, and was always the guy where it's like, like, like, he was like, that generation's like Jack Eichel. Like, he was the guy who was so good, but you're like, man, if you ever put the talent around him. And there were some good players on those Jets teams, but obviously they were stuck in a division with the dynasty. But you always just wondered, like, man, you surround him with a little more talent and you'd love to see him go ahead to head with some of these guys. Like, he was legitimately, like, I think he may have been, if he wasn't like the second leading scorer of the 80s, he was real close and he only came in a couple years in.

So, man, just such a phenomenal talent. And the, like you said, the outpouring of the response from around the hockey, the world. And the thing that that gets to me is I'm sitting here wondering, and I don't know what Dale Haurichick's family is planning or, you know, what they're looking to do. But, like, how many people are stuck in this bubble right now that would love to be part of a Dale Hourchuk funeral or memorial or, you know, recognize them in some way and aren't going to be able to do it? I don't know if you guys saw it, but we got a shot of Rick Bonas when he walked into the arena and they had the, you know, RIP Dale Howardchuck on the scoreboard. And I don't know if he was actually learning the news for the first time, but just like the emotion hitting him as he was just standing there looking up at it. And like how many people are having that reaction and they're stuck in this bubble and they can't leave. It's like, man.

If memory serves, he had had a conversation like really recently with Howard Chuck. I don't know if it was like Gretzky who talked to him that more. morning or whatever it was. I mean, it's, it's so awful just because, you know, the story with Dela, and obviously, you know, cancer's brutal in all the ways that it, that, uh, that it can, it can impact you. But, you know, he, we thought maybe he was out of the woods. He was only a few months ago.

He was ringing the bell. And it felt like such a good news story. And then, uh, you found out that the cancer would come back. And, and it was, it was very quick after that and just, just awful. but you know you talk about a legacy this guy not just as a player i mean as he's he's all world as a player but stayed in hockey you know guys that he helped develop guys that he helped with with their careers is just the list is long and uh even if you didn't see him play you're still you're seeing the impact that he's had on the league and the game every every time you you turn on a game these

days also not for nothing one of the best hockey names oh yeah Yeah, that's true. In the category of, like, great Canadian hockey names, not like in the category of, like, goofy-ass hockey names, like, Darren Rumble. Like, in the category of, like, a Gordy Howl kind of hockey name, like Dale Howardchuck is a fucking hockey name. Yep, he was a great one. While we're doing Immemorial,

I wanted to give a shout out to Robert Coppenhaver, who is a longtime listener of both this podcast and MVI. W, who wrote me a note that said he met his friend Dan 10 years ago when he moved from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, and they became instant friends as two of the only hockey fans in Atlanta. They were big fans of Puck Soup since the beginning of the show. They would play named Pat Fuloon when they saw each other. And he said Dan is one of the most generous, friendly, and kind people that you'll ever know. but he unexpectedly died at 36 this week, which is extraordinarily young and horrible to hear.

So I wanted to give a shout out to Rob, and Rob didn't give me Dan's last name, but if you know who he's talking about and you were tight with him, then our condolences, because it's just a very sad thing to hear. And, you know, obviously honored to hear that our dumb show plays a role in anybody's life,

but sad to hear that Dan passed when he did. So now that we've bought the room down, how about a game show, Sean? Oh, yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, let's do it. So this is not a new one. This is a sequel. We're bringing it back. We're going to play a few rounds of the $25,000 Pierre Amid, which is the game that, I don't know, we did. We did either. last week or last year or a few months, I don't know, time has ceased to have any concept for me. But we've done it at some point in the past. And we're going to do it again. And if you don't remember it or if you need a refresher, we're basically ripping off the $25,000 pyramid,

a classic game show in which the big showdown at the end involved two players working together, one of whom would see clues and have to describe. them to the other who couldn't see them and basically try to get them to name the category. And the way that it'll work for us is I'm going to be, one of you will be guessing and one of you will be giving the hints and the one who's giving the hints. You'll see the categories from me through your Google chat or whatever we got going here. And the other one doesn't see them.

And you're going to describe basically you're naming things in the category. category to try to get that person to clue into what the category is. You can't use words from the category. You can't describe the category in some sort of meta way. You're basically given things that fit that group and trying to get them to say it. And I think last time you guys didn't win. And I think part of that is I gave you a minute, which is what the game show did. But I feel like that's probably not enough. So I'm going to bump the time up a little bit here. And how do we win again?

You win by getting us six. I think you're going to say six, yeah. Yeah, there's six. They get progressively harder. And yeah, as you go and you win by getting all six correct and you can pass. But otherwise, as soon as the person says that category, we move on to the next one. And if you're listening at home, you play along. You see if you can get to figure out what the category is before the person who,

who's doing the guessing. Makes sense? It does. And this also reminds me, you know, I regret to inform you that Ruby and I got to the end of all of the available supermarket sweep episodes this week. Oh, no. There are no more. We've watched them all. And I marvel at the progression of that show because at some point they added a rip-off of the $25,000 pyramid into that show where people had to describe things to get,

Like, they describe a word, and then the word then becomes the first, a letter in a puzzle that they have to solve. And, uh, complicated, it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it's, for a supermarket sweep, a show that is just like, hey, how, does this syrup cost too much? It was a very overly complicated game. Nice. Um, strange. Very odd.

All right. So let's, uh, who, who is going to be doing the guessing and who's going to be doing the guessing and who's going to be doing the... I'll go first. I'll read first. What is... I was going to say, well, what does that mean?

Are you doing the guessing or the answering? I'm stepping up to the play, Greg. You have to just sit there and think. So wait, so are you giving the clues? Yes, what is it? You are every... Every time we play a game, Greg's like, can you explain it to me 15 different ways? Okay, you have already said what the thing is, but what if you explained it to me slightly

differently? Would that? That would help. Let me get this straight. So there are nine boxes. I have X's and you have O's, and then we take turns putting them in the boxes. So what if we want to put them in the same box? Yeah, Craig, no.

Now, hold on. You're saying to me that if I go, there's a ladder, and if I'm at the bottom of the ladder I go up, but if I'm at the top of the slide, I slide down, that's how the game works. Or the snake? Sorry, I realize we have a Canadian on the show. Sean, why don't you text me to the thing? We can just start and then get out of this. If you got your chat in front of you? Yep.

All right, I just sent you a test. Did you see it? I did, yeah. Got to make sure there's no delays. All right, in that case. Nice and fast. I'm going to get that first one loaded. I'm going to get ready to start, and the timer will start when I hit Enter.

Are we ready to go? I'm ready. All right. And I'm going to just make sure I got the next one load. it. Here we go. Oh, boy. Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, Zanon Chara.

Members of the Boston Bruins. Matt Grislich. Members of the These Boston Bruins defensemen? Yes. The lightning, the Crackin, the wild. Oh, these are teams that don't have an

S at the end. The singular plural. That's right. Gerard Gallant. Bruce Boudreau Fired coaches this year Yep Yep Taylor Hall

Alex Petrangelo Pre ages of summer Yep Yep Charlie McAvoy Ray Bork Um Oof

Uh Uh Uh uh Evgeny Malkin Oh Players that will play on the avalanche one day Um

trying to think of other guys Charlie McAvoy, Ray Bork, Giffney Malkin? It's not what's on the front of their jersey, it's what's on the back of the jersey. Yes, that's all right. Let me throw a few. Paul Coffey.

Yeah. Malkin was a good one. Players that wore 77? 7? Malkin? No, I don't know. What is it? Sergei Bobrovsky. I don't know.

You're right around it. It was players whose numbers are in the 70s. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. So there you go. That was close. You guys got, I thought you were going to, I was thinking you were going to get it there for a second. And then the numbers tripped you up. So you got, you got four. Yeah, I think the Charlie McAvoy, like what number is Charlie McAvoy? 75? Is he not 73?

Uh-oh. Well, didn't the last time, didn't you, like, hit Greg with, like, Maxine Finneganov? And he was like... Yeah, he's 73. He's 73. I was right. It threw me, like, because I, Bork is 77 and coffee is 77. So, like, I think I would have just been like, oh, you know what would have done it?

And there's no way you're going to say this. But if you had said, like, who is it, is it Oscar Sunquist that 70 or Barbishov that's 70? I forget who it is. Oh, wow. If you would say the guy who I don't know which one I'm thinking of, I would have definitely gotten it. You know what might have got it for, well, I was going to say David Clarkson because he was a devil. Did he, but did he wear 71 with the devils or probably not? There's probably 17, right?

Oates, Oates, were 77 or something like that. Oates is a good call, yeah. But anyway. Brett Lindross. All right, that was a good, that was a good one. All right, you guys, that's a good, that's a good warm up. So I think people got the concept. Greg, you got your thing in front of you?

I do, yeah. Okay. Did you get the test? Yeah, it says test. Good. All right. Oh, hold on. Prince Albert's tag team partner. Oh, no. Actually, we were looking for Stephanie McMahon Paramours. That was it. All right. Here we go. You ready, Greg? Ready, Ryan?

Sure. Here we go. John Tavares, Wendell, Wendell, Dougie Hillmore. Leaves, centers. Probably Darrell Sittler. Leafs players from Toronto. Not Austin Matthews, but people

thought maybe he should be. Leaves captains. Leaves captain. There it is. Okay, the penguins, the Oilers, the predators, the... Expansion teams. No, the Panthers, the

The Maple Leafs, the, uh, NFL teams. No, okay. So ready. Here we go. Listen. The, the penguins, the Rangers, the Panthers, the Panthers, the Maple Leafs. And then over on the other side, you had the predators, the oilers, the jets, and, and, uh, Where are the penguins right now? Oh, teams that are eliminated. Yeah, where were they... Let's say that's good enough.

Jesus Christ. Um... Oh, Jesus. David Clarkson, um... Uh, uh... Jesus would be the other one. Melan Luchich. Louie Erich.

Regrettable contracts. Regrettable contracts. but what kind though what were they 2015 overpays no before before they signed they were UFAs

there it is yeah I think we're good on that one that was yeah let's just never speak of that again I can't believe you guys do find Maple Leaf's captains to be easy how do you not know that

hold on was I was I out of line on the qualification round clues I thought I did a good job on that right You did. It was one of those where in my head it was going to be easy. And as soon as I heard you start listing them, I'm like, wait a second, this just sounds like a list of teams. But I did appreciate when you reset by just changing your tone of voice. Like a more serious, like, you know. And I said over there on the other side. Almost like a mournful tone to indicate that we were. What was the category? That was teams that lost in the qualifying. round. The qualifying round. Okay. Yeah. But we also would have accepted NHL team. You know that that that whole thing was basically just our round Robin. Now we're going to get serious. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. So are we going back to Ryan as the yeah, sure two more. Yes. All right. So right. I'm sending you your little line break there. So let. Yep. Got it. Send him send him some good vibes to. All right. All right.

Ready? Here we go. Yeah. Calgary, Vancouver, San Jose, L.A., Anaheim, Arizona. Teams the Pacific Division. That's right. Yep. Ovechkin, Kovilchuk, Buray.

Russian goal scorers? Yep. Russian players, yep. Sergei Bavrovsky, Roberto Luongo. Florida Panthers goalies. Yes. Yep. Fuck.

Things caught on a hot mic. I'm blanking. It could soon one day be Chris Osgood. Future Hall of Famer, goalies? I can't think of any other guys. Kevin Lowe, Guy Carbino. Not essential players on Stanley Cup dynasties that make the Hall of Fame? Close enough.

Okay. Brock Besser Uh Uh Uh Play's bad flow Louis Erickson Um

Uh Canucks forwards That are on the trading block Um Um Um Uh Uh

Uh fucking Markets Nasland Uh Uh Connx goal scores Pauble Burr

Well that's not gonna help you Canucks Wingers Yes Yes That was it Conucks Wingers All right

I gotta stop you there But that's That was good It was undeserving Hall of Famers was the fourth category. Oh, that's fucking subjective. Kevin Lowe belongs in my

Hall of Fame. I couldn't. I was trying really hard to think of the guy from this year. Was it Kevin Lowe? It wasn't Kevin Lowe this year. It was this year. DeCarbono was last year.

If I was going to like Dick Clark my way over to the circle and be like, here's what you should have said. Clark Gillies. Clark Gilly's, Bernie Ferderkow would be Glenn Anderson. Maybe. I was really trying to pull

Kevin Lowe from this year, but I was like, is it Glenn Anderson? Is he in the Hall of Fame? Like, I just couldn't. Shockingly, yes. Well, right, but I was like stuck on that one clue. You know how that happens. And infamously split three is at a blackjack table next to me after making the Hall of Fame.

Wow. Maniac. All right, we got one more to go. All right, we got it. Here comes. You're ready, Ryan? Lock and load. I'm going to get in the mind of Ryan Lambert.

Oh, look, it's all indie music. All right. Here we go. You ready, Greg? I'm ready as I'll ever be. Here we go. Oh, fuck. Jack Hughes, Quinn Hughes, Dominic Kubalik.

Rourkees this year. Yeah, yeah. Alexander Degg Busts First overall busts Yeah Yep Well same same

Um Ooh this is good one Oh fuck this is so subjective too Trevor Linden Alex Ovechkin Before Two years ago Uh

Guys who never want to talk Yeah That's correct Yeah sure Okay Here we go Penguins, Capitals, Rangers, Devils, Stars, Stars, Boston, Florida,

Cladno. Pladno. The K-HEL teams, Yager teams. Yes. Okay. Anton Kudobin, Yarslav Halak, Back up Bowles. There you go.

Oh, okay. Okay. Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Claude Drew Famously Best player in the world Yes there you go I think that's it

That you got all six It took you a minute 20 But I'm gonna count that as a win Hell yeah I think that's it I think you guys just I owe you $25,000 Yeah Drew Dowdy

Jonathan Taves Oh so good I just that's so funny Because I literally Just wrote this morning Why McKinnon's the best player In the world right now Oh my God

The fucking hockey media loves this shit. Who can I overthink this time? And, like, I'm not saying Nathan McKinnon's bad, but come on. I only wrote the column because he got to a fight. It's obvious that makes him the best of the world. Yes, exactly. So, I'm being informed that the $25,000 is being held up as we review the Alexander Ovechkin until two years ago. Listen, I definitely fudged the, I can't remember if we're playing.

only use one word kind of pyramid, or you can describe shit pyramid. Yeah, I don't think we're, I don't think it was ever you could describe, but I, I don't know. Well, no, no, because it depends on the round. Because in the initial round, in the initial round, you can just be like, you can like, you can like point to your arm and shit, like in the initial round. It's when you're in the chair. When the chair, they were strapped you down. Like you weren't allowed to, they would literally like, uh, uh,

Lucky in. So, yeah, that was a good one. I'm just, I didn't call a foul on that one because I was blown away that the first star that came to mind was Trevor Linden. Not Henrik Lundgren, not, you know, not Roberto Lungo, nothing like that. Trevor, Lyndon. If Ryan had got that on Trevor Linden, I would have followed that as much there. And then it was, it was Trevor Linden and then six seconds of silence. And I was like, uh, Canucks team presidents.

No Marcel Dion, no, not yet. He was a star to me, damn it. All right, do we have time to blow through an overrated, underrated real quick? Sure. Why not? Okay. We've got, like, three different people wanted us to do this, including Danielle and Allison. Pasta shapes.

Ooh. Oh, boy. Do you know enough? Call it off on your computer and take a look at the fucking, at the fucking, you know, whatever, if you need to refresh your memory as to what pasta shapes look like. I'll do the same thing right now. So pasta shapes. Overrated pasta shape as I look at the different kinds of pasta right now.

Okay. Overrated pasta shape would be, for me, I'll go tagliatelli. That is your ribbon pasta that is bigger than linguine and much bigger. than spaghetti. And I don't need it. Overrated, I would say. Tagliatelli. Just give me linguine.

I think I got to say Penae. I think I have to say Penae is overrated. That is the correct answer. I will second that one. Hell yeah. I feel like Pena is the sort of thing where if you've got like a really good sauce, it's probably

it's probably a strong choice but I I'm eating at home and I made the sauce so it's not that good right it came out of a jar Paul Newman made it

and uh yeah oh can I I'm going to revise my answer by the way Penn A's fine I'm going to revise my answer angel hair is my answer for overreed

I really it is just at that point I understand I understand I understand I agree yeah exactly like I understand I understand

it's function. Like, an angel hair pasta, in particular what you're having, seafood, can be pretty good. But I just think that, like, it's just too thin. Like, I don't like it. As compared to, like, just regular old spaghetti. So I would say angel hair pasta. Underrated. Underrated would be Kavitapi. Now, what is Kavitapi? Kavatapi is ones where it's a, it's like, a squiggle. It's like a, how about I to describe it? It looks like an M almost with a little thing at the end, and it's hollow. It's good. It's really fucking good. And it's actually perfect in like a mac and cheese is what we use it for. So if you're not hip, if you're not hip to Cavatapie, go get you some. It's good. Yeah, that is good. I don't know if this all the way

counts. I think tortellini is very underrated. No, that counts. Okay. I didn't know. But, yeah, that's a go-to in the Lambert household. I'm going to go with the old classic elbow noodle. Don't act like you're too good. Don't act like you're above it. Works with everything. It's good.

Just solid glue. It's like the Phil Hartman of pasta, just a glue guy that just works in any situation. Is it a food for children? Yes, it is, but sometimes the kids are all right. Favorite for me is rotini. There is a few things in the world that are as satisfying in a fix. And keep in mind, we're all very busy. It's a very busy world these days.

So you don't have a lot of time sometimes to go and get fucking, you know, extravagant with dinner. So there's a bowl of rotini with red soup. sauce and just covered in powdered cheese is the comfort food of comfort foods for your boy. I love me some rotini. Give me dat rotini.

That's my favorite. Yeah. Hard to line up against rotini, that's for sure. You know what it is for me? And I'm kind of surprised I'm saying this, but lately I've been having it a lot, and it's

unbelievable, is Orzo. Orzo is very good, yeah It's great You know what, you can laugh at me if you want Spaghetti, man It's the goat for a reason It's the king for a reason, right It's fantastic

The most predictable thing that's ever happened On the show is that you would pick spaghetti Probably Just like straight up Sean eating spaghetti Just right down the plate man The fastball right over the That's, you know, again

Don't overthink it on this stuff Don't try to get fancy. You're not trying to impress anyone. You're just trying to list the best things out there. You're trying to, you know, you're trying to like, you know, you've got a date or you're cooking a special meal. You're probably trying to impress somebody with the pasta. Nobody's impressed by your fancy pasta. It's spaghetti.

Solid. I can't believe we're just this deep into this bit, and we haven't talked about the Canadian pronunciation of pasta. Pasta, yeah. Nass. My least favorite pasta is David Pasternak, overrated. Like you said, can't exist outside the Bergeron, Marchand duo. That's a good cult. But in actuality, and I hate to, I don't like when we have to have family fights,

but Elba macaroni is fucking dumb. It is food food for babies. It's fun. It is. But like, if you were going to stack it up with all of the other available pasta for, like, a mac and cheese or something. Fucking elbow macaroni, come on. You can't even, like, put your fork inside of it, like you can with Penne.

Sure you can. All right. What's your least favorite, last? I didn't realize that was one of the qualifications of a good pasta. It said you could put your fork inside of it. Yeah, Penny is great because you can put your fork inside of it and then you can create what I like to call an organic shovel to then take the sauce and then you cover it. with the sauce by putting, like if you take two, what are they, on a fork, what do they do

boys use? Tines. Tines, yes, of course. Tines, yeah. If you take two your tines, you slide it up into that, that, that, uh, that, uh, Pene, which I know it sounds a little bit suggestive, but bear with me. And then you use the two pieces of Pene as sort of a pasta shovel. I love that you think we can't envision this.

Yeah. Okay. So what you do is you put your fork in there and then you turn it around slowly. This allows you to collect as much spaghetti as you possibly. Yeah, no shit, dude. We've all had fucking pasta before. So let me get this straight. He's going to give the clues and then I answered them.

I just like that you went from elbow pasta as like a food for children and then described eating the way a toddler eats. When you're in a hurt and you're like, would you just eat it? Don't have to make a fancy shovel for... Greg's favorite snack is bugles because he can do witch hands. Shut up. By the way, my answer is Fettuccini. Again, why are you going to have a big thick ribbon pasta when there's so many better options out there? It's true.

Get lost. I'm going to pick the bow-tie pasta, which I'm learning is apparently far-farfila. Farfala. Forfala. I don't give it. Now, you know, I'm sure Greg probably likes it because you can make a little wardrobe out of it and hold it off the front of your neck and everything. But those of us who are actually trying to eat, I don't. It's always like it's, it's, you can't cook the whole thing right. You probably can. I'm sure everyone can. I can't. So. My mommy calls them butterflies. I think, before we go, where do we all stand on yoke? Love it. Are we prone yoke? Love it. I don't know what that is.

What are we describing here? That's like the really, really thick, filled. They're like almost like pasta balls. They're pillowy, yes. I would say they're like pillowy. Yeah, and they're like, I mean, they could be filled. They could just be just thick pasta that's like they're using in a sauce. Often often it is stuffed with potato.

Yeah. And so, Sean, I'm going to make a recommendation for you here. I love Nyoki so much. Why you go down to your, I'm assuming in Canada, it's called Trader Gordes and get their potato yokey. You put that shit in a pan, you fry it up a little bit. Oh, baby. You're in great shape.

Yeah. If you go to Trader Gords, get their Noki and then get their pesto sauce. and you fry up the Nyoki and then use their pasta sauce on it. It's really good. The thing about yoki that I don't like is that it is super filling and it's also kind of become the default pasta

at a lot of like decent restaurants. Yeah, it's replaced ravioli and tortellini for sure. Right. And then I'm not mad about it, but that's definitely I'm not necessarily mad about it, but I do think that like, I mean, it is as much as pasta can be super

filling, obviously that serves its purpose. like your carb loading and shit. Like, you could eat, you could eat yokey and feel like you just ate a goddamn, like, doughbrick. Yeah. I don't mean David Dobrick. I just mean Dobrick. All right.

That's the show for this week. Thanks to nobody. That's whatever. Except for all of you, of course, who, um, listen to the show. You can find my work on ESPN.com. I wrote a lot of shit this week, including one that I'm really proud of, which is, uh, what it's like for these games to exist. in a vacuum without fans and what sort of impact it's had on in the games.

Talk to a cognitive scientist about that, which was good. And then my column today, the wish list is your Nathan McKinnon is the best hockey player in the world hot take, which is always good. And then my other podcast, ESPN and Ice with Emily Kaplan. We spoke with Damien Woody, former NFL player turned Islander Superfan, and the always engaging Jonathan Marshesau, who we got going on a number of different topics, and he was fucking great.

Sign up for the Pucksu Patreon. We're about to record a mailbag. Next week we will do our monthly big bonus episode that the listeners pick, and it's probably going to be about what our best and worst takes are. Never come up before. Oh, that's a good one.

And, yeah, I do a newsletter on there. Me and Sean Gentilly will record a stick to sports either next weekend or this coming one. We haven't decided yet. So there's a lot of content on there these days. And from what I understand, Greg has a Taco Bell take ready to go any day now. Any day now. I actually also had a take on the commercials that we're seeing over and over again during the broadcasts, but I actually used that for my column this week instead.

So sorry, not we'll be on the bonus stuff. You know what else you can't get on the bonus? Don't do that. Sorry, but like here is the only thing that I'll say about the commercials we keep seeing over and over again. I genuinely don't know where Bissonette and Whitney got limes for their vodka. Like, I'm totally fine with two bros having a bottle of vodka and they're drinking vodka after their skills competition at the local rink. I just don't think that local rinks are known for having available limes.

So they either had to bring their own limes. Well, they didn't rent their skates, Greg. I mean, they showed up with them. So you think they had limes in their hires? hockey bag, and the stinky limes. Pretty good. Sean, what about you? I got stuff on the athletic,

and including this week, I ranked the most painful opening round losses of the cap era. Yeah, it was good. There are, and yeah, as I said in the piece, I realized that everyone's own personal team those are obviously the most painful, but also some other ones as well.

And yeah, lots of good discussion on that, including many people wanting to know why I didn't rank some series that was not in the first round or was not in the cap era or was from a different sport or from whatever else, which is always fun. There you go. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us. last thing we'll say is that Matt Niskinan is getting a hearing for the cross-check on Gallagher.

Elaine Vino's take. It's not his fault. A nice quote by Elaine Vino. It's not his fault. Gallagher is short. Good shit. That's amazing. They should just rescind any punishment just based on how awesome

that line was from Vigno. It's not his fault to Gallagher's Yeah, he got that from every dumbass's Twitter feed any time. time a short guy gets elbowed in the face. Or anytime Zadanochara. Anybody, yes. That's true. It's also the thing to say. It's not his fault.

He's not seven foot six. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Later. See you. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows. It's and tunes. It's your weekly. bowl of hagi and nonsense

um... Wachu