Puck Soup - POOP COVERED TITANIC

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

The boys break down the NHL Awards broadcast and the awards themselves, including some of the dumb voting. They look at the new video review and coach's challenge stuff, and whether the NHL overreacted to the playoff mistakes. Plus, Mitch Marner drama, Corey Perry, Jacob Trouba, Kevin Hayes, that Erik Karlsson contract and much, much more. Sponsored by Seat Geek and The Athletic!  

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wichenski of the Worldwide Leader ESPN coming to you live from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Ryan Lamber from Yahoo. I'm Sean McAnew from The Athletic, coming to you from two feet to Greg's left. It's sort of my left, but also my front.

I can see why you were confused. You're in Puck Soup. Sean and I are in Vancouver for the draft. We were recording this episode, the day of the draft. So if you're tuning in to be like, hey, who did Nashville take a 22 overall or whatever? you're going to have to tune in next week because that information hasn't happened yet. And none of us are Woj. That's right.

By the way, I'll tell a secret. I was speaking with a friend of ours, Tyler Delo, the other day, and I told him, I asked me if he was going to be at the Devil's draft table, and he didn't know yet. And I said, look, if you guys are taking Kako, you got to send me the Woj bomb. You got to make me look good. But I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think that's going to happen. literally got there. And he really enjoys riding his bike through New Jersey to get to work. So I don't think that necessarily he's going to be feeding me any information anytime soon. Off the table as a

source, I believe. So anyways, draft today. It's going to be fun. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of trades that you'll be upset we didn't talk about. But again, we don't have the benefit of a foresight like that. So what are you going to do? We do have the benefit of hindsight, Ryan and So you and I both watch the NHL Awards. Sean didn't. He claims it was because of the time difference between Vancouver and Las Vegas. It gets a little tricky. It was because I'm used to being an East Coast guy where you don't,

nothing ever comes on until 8 o'clock. And I was out having a nice dinner in lovely Vancouver. And I looked up and I was like, oh, the NHL Awards are almost. almost over. What a dream. And then I felt regret for roughly zero seconds. That's right. I went on with my life.

I give it squarely a B plus. Compared to, it was great. I thought he, boy. Compared to, come on, compared to previous NHL awards. Okay, here's, go ahead. I give, I give the, I give the Italian crews that where everybody got diarrhea and they got stuck in the middle of the ocean. Compared to the Titanic, that's a B, baby.

That's a... Could about some by a German U-boat, so good job. When you put it that way, here's what I think was good about it. Besides Keenan being funny and our friend, former Puck suit guest, Thomas Middletich, wasn't that funny except for when he interviewed Sidney Crosby. That was really funny

and said that he is the, juiciest lips in the NHL. To stand up there and say that in front of Sid, I think was great. What they did was they basically took the show away from the players, even though it's their awards, and said, look, none of you people want us to do anything for us. Like, you're all horrible actors. You don't ever want to be in bits. Your job is to just stand there if we need you to stand there and maybe give a speech if you

win. And we'll just have two sketch comedians carry the day. And I think that's probably the proper deployment of talent on the NHL award. Yeah, and like they, I mean, they did the thing that I hate about the NHL award, which is like... Which is have them? Yes. But also the thing of like, now, I don't know if you guys know this, but this is a famous person who likes hockey. It's like, I don't give a shit if they like hockey.

Like if you can... I mean, this is a very bad example, but like if you can book Rihanna, right? Like, the fact that she doesn't know anything about hockey is not. a deterrent to me, right? But they're like, okay, we got a bunch of celebrities, and we're going to introduce them first by saying, he's a big Bruins fan, and also six-time Academy Award winner.

You know, like, it's like, that's not, like, they think that the person being a hockey fan is a fucking selling point, and it isn't, and it shouldn't be, like, just, like, maybe it's, I mean, almost certainly, it's a thing of, they can't get somebody famous unless they're already a hockey fan. And that's what I was going to say.

The reason that they say such and such is a Bruins fan is because one of the presenters is like the fourth lead on Chicago Fire. Yeah. And they have to be like, you don't know who this person is, but he's also a Bruins fan. To be engaged to Lady Gaga. Did you know this? Sure. I guess.

I don't know. Maybe he was. That is a fact about the man. Right. And again, this is where we are in the NHL Awards. Like, who can we get? Well, this guy used to be engaged to someone famous. He's also on, like, the biggest show on.

CBS? You guys watching the NHL Awards and not recognizing any of the celebrities, now you know what life is like for me, 24 hours a day all the time. Just going, all right, that guy looks famous. So, sure. Tignitaro over here. So the, so the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

guards I was entertained by it is whatever it is. I also like there wasn't a musical guest. They've done that in the past and it's stupid. I do miss the magician. Yeah, I was going to say, nobody screwed up a card trick. Yeah, I asked Steve Mayer of the NHL if the magician was going to be back

this year and Steve Mayer said, Greg, Greg, the magician, he's not even working in magic anymore. Is that true? Okay, well, hold on. First one, you guys know you know who the magician is, right? It's Scott Oakes's son. Scott Oakes' son was the magician. the magician.

Listen, dudes, this is probably, Ryan, you've played trivia with me. You know that a great amount of information is kicking around in this Noggin of mine. The fact that that was Scout Oaks' son, not something I'm brain. You need like the Pierre McGuire

of the magician game to give you the background. But here's the thing about him is, and I'm surprised to hear that he's not doing magic because one of the few TV shows that I watch with my family, we watch America's Got Talent, which is, she's

variety show. But the thing about it is every contestant on that show has a sob story. Like nobody just comes up and is like, I like to sing. It's always got to be like some horrible thing. And they did like an all-star. He had been on the show years ago. They did an all-star version this winter. And he came back and I got

so excited because I was like, they're going to use the NHL All-Star game as like his tragic moment that he's coming back from but they didn't. They didn't reference it at all. But it was... I do want to say I think Steve Mayer was joking. I'm pretty sure that Scott Oak's son is probably still working in magic. I think it's like one of those...

Maybe it's the greatest trick? One of those... The greatest trick that devil ever pulled was screwing up in NHL Awards, but I think there's probably also a difference between still doing magic and still working in magic. Like, it might be technically true that he is no longer working.

I'm on his website. Oh, boy. Scottoaksunmagician.com. Yeah, well, darcy oak.com. Let's see. Oh. His current Oh boy

He has no upcoming dates On He last says He says he last performed in January 2019 Hmm He's living the dream He's

I believe And he's got some stuff Coming up in Hawaii in October See I'm seeing this too The last thing on his upcoming events thing It says you're breaking into Anjikobos Batar's house and doing a trick for him.

So I don't know if that's an actual gig or maybe just him calling his shot. But anyways, the show was great. But the awards themselves, I mean, again, like, it was funny. There wasn't a whole lot of media in Vegas for the awards this year, which was weird because I thought being that the drafts was in Vancouver, it was kind of like a logical, I'll go west to this thing and then up to this thing. But I think it's just there wasn't a whole lot of drama surrounding any of the awards. I mean, Kuturoff had like all but let me like three first place votes.

Giordano was predestined. Vaslessky was predestined from the GMs who will get to that in a second. Pedersen, I was surprised O'Reilly won the Selkie, but I'm, I mean, that's only because I didn't consider that the voters would just treat the Selke as his heart, which is basically what it was. And I'm bummed that Stone didn't win? Yeah, Stone should have won, but that's life. That's life. and then I'm trying to think of there's anything Lady Bing was Barcloth.

Barkoff, by the way, how fucking great was that? Did you hear about this thing from Barkoff, Sean? No. So Barcloth gets up there, and the first thing he says is I think there's a lot more Finns here than Florida fans. Yes, I did see that. And I feel like he didn't mean it that way. Of course not.

But it was, yeah. No, it's the beautiful juxtaposition of winning the award for being a gentlemanly player and then dropping Trow and shitting all over your own fans on stage. Oh, Jack Adams. Trots, I was really, really kind of secretly hoping team chaos-wise that Cooper would win just to hear that speech. Some manic Michael Keaton-esque rant about fortitude and the regular season and dashed dreams and what have you. I think Trots did like the fourth best job this year in the league and that's, you know, you're not allowed to say that because like a bunch of Islanders fans will get mad at you or whatever.

But, yeah, Cooper should have won for Ruby. No one gave us a chance when Johnny T left. No one gave us a chance. No one gave us a chance in a conference where basically from spot six through eight anybody could have gotten in. No one gave us a chance. The thing about it, Sean, where do you stand on the NHL awards including the postseason? I know that it was an Eric Duhatchik kind of notion.

Are you a fan of that or not? My pitch was that the Hart Trophy should include the playoffs. And especially if we're going to do this weird thing where you have to make the playoffs to win the heart because the playoffs are what matter. And if your team finishes two points out of the playoffs, then the season didn't. I feel like you miss for that dumb. And yet then this dumb thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, but dumb or not, lots of people buy that and lots of people vote that way to the point where you, You pretty much have to make the playoffs. So, why not count the playoffs? Like, why can we, why does, yeah. I know, I'm just right, I'm right here still. He's sitting right from. I'm sitting at a desk right here. It's just, it's very weird to me that Nikita Kuturov can win the heart trophy because his team makes the playoffs,

whereas Connor McDavid's team missed the playoffs, and so he's not eligible in a lot of people's minds. And yet, Nikita Kuturov not only didn't do well. in the playoffs. Like he was potentially the least valuable player. Right. For getting suspended. It got suspended, didn't do anything in the first two games when they needed them. I would do it not for all the awards, but for the heart and maybe Jack Adams, I would vote at the end of the playoffs. And I know people say, well, then it's just going to be the con smith. I'd like to think that if you have the con smith, that's your playoff MVP. Have the Ted Lindsay, that's your best player during the season, which can be your

Connor McDavid award for the next decade, and then have one that combines the two. I don't know how people would vote on it, but I mean, in fairness to Couture, I mean, like, McDavid didn't have the opportunity to get suspended. Yeah. That's a whole different. And it's his fault, too. Exactly. I mean, the oilers were so good, and it was really, he was the reason they lost.

He should have been, he should have been more valuable. The thing, I mean, the Jack Adams one's the one that stinks, because like, obviously, like, Trots had the story and the broadcasters are voting it, so that. they're dumb and they're going to just, you know, vote for the best story as per usual. But like, it kind of makes everybody look stupid when Craig Verrube, not only resurrects a team from the dead, but then demonstrably was the best coach in the postseason. Like, it's hard to, like, see Trots get the Jack Adams and then Baruby's just there kind of like just holding the schvance the whole time, even though he probably should have won the award.

Stanley Cup that he won a couple of weeks ago. As Nick Baxter says, he's got the only trophy he needs. Nicky Baxwell. He can be interim coach of the year. Maybe that's a new award we need for people who apparently. I don't know. I feel like he's going to get the job. I said to Doug Armstrong, as he was doing media the other day and I'm like, what the

I'm like, when are you going to give this guy a contract? He's like, we're working on it. I'm like, what do you possibly have to work on? Like, what are you doing? I'm still holding out hope for the Mike Keenan reverse situation. I mean, it's plausible at this point. Like, what's taken so long? Of course, we're doing this show, so that means he's probably already signed.

Yeah, he's... I'm supposed to be monitoring Twitter. Yeah, yeah, that was your job, was to monitor Twitter for breaking news to see if we get another Taylor Hall moment on the podcast. The voting, though, Ryan, so I mentioned the Vesna before.

This is the divide right now for me. It's like the general managers vote for the Vesina, and they give no shits about actually properly evaluating a goaltender, or else John Gibson wouldn't have gotten the same number of votes as Jacob Markstrom for the Vezna trophy this year is my estimation. I mean, look, he was the best goalie in.

It's insane, yeah. But then again, Greg, I can't, on the All-Star team, I think only like two people had Gibson first, I think, or maybe three. It was three, it was three people, and I was one of them. You were correct. And believe me, I looked at both of your votes, and I was like, you know what, they did fine. because it would have been a joy to me to be like, what the fuck were you both thinking? But, you know, for the most part, like, not...

When I see some of those ballots... Well, you could do that because I don't remember who I voted for. So you could absolutely just savage me for voting. There's some ballots out there. For the Lady Bing, what were you... Like, there's, like, Dejan Kovacic, like, it seems to just submit a ballot to get a rise of it.

showed their asses because they all went Edison over Heiskenet, which, and again, like, I said it on Twitter. I think Heiskenen was probably a little bit overrated by everybody who said he was, you know, better than Dahlene or whatever. I think that's wrong. But like, but like Sarah Sivian, who's been on the podcast and has been on one of my podcasts,

and she's a really good beatwriter for the athletic, but like, if you're putting Svechnikov over Heiskenen and you're the Carolina beatwriter It's because you're the Carolina beat writer. I mean like there's there's no logical way that you could argue that he had a better season than mirror did. Every single person, but like all the Dallas fans being like here's a list of all the psychos who didn't vote for high. And it's like, okay, slow down a little bit. Like it's.

Yeah. Go back to arguing Sergei Zuboff for the Hall of Fame, you psychopaths. The same thing with the year Ekblad won over, uh, Klingberg. They were like, can you believe it? It's like, well, first of all, nobody cares about the stars, and they probably shouldn't because they're just not that good and like, you know,

whatever. But point is, like, you can definitely let's put it this way. And I said this on Twitter. Like, a list of all the people who left Heiskenen off their ballots entirely is a pretty good list of the dumbest people

in hockey media, like Spector, haggerty, half the Edmonton media, half the Pittsburgh media, and it's like, oh yeah, no, these are just like dumb people. But it was also like, just stupid guys. But it was also like Mike Rousseau, though. Like, there were some really smart, that's the thing that I can't wrap my brain around. It's like, there were some really smart people on that list who left them off.

And I can't figure out why. It's not a perfect Venn diagram. Ooh, but it's close, isn't it? Bizarre. So, yeah, I'm going to see if I can find the list really fast, but it's, it suck as I noted as I noted earlier

this week I was unaware that Jeremy Roneck was getting a vote from the Professional Hockey Writers Association that was what I wanted to ask you about oh here we go

Here's the list Let's see Just going down the list Ken Campbell dumb guys Sam Cartchiti dumb guy Wayne Fish dumb guy

Eric Francis dumb guy Haggerty Haggerty Pierre McGuire. This is like your enemies list here reading. That's right. Pierre McGuire, Mark Specter, like,

Mike Trichos, like, just people where it's like, oh yeah, no, you haven't had a relevant hockey opinion in 15 years. Okay, cool. Like, the, like, the, again, the other thing I was going to say, by the way, about the thing you said about Sarah, who I think it does a good job, you shouldn't get to vote for people you cover.

So Jeremy Roneck had a vote, which I know, surprise me, and I'm sure surprise other people. Basically, for those that don't know, here's, here's how this goes. The Professional Hockey Writers Association votes on several of the awards. And at one point, people were like, hey, you know, there's some really smart people on Canadian television that aren't necessarily writers anymore, but should probably be in the voting process. You're Bob McKenzie's, your Elliot Friedman's, so on and so forth. And we were all like, Like, yeah, that's a really good idea.

Like, it'd be totally great to have these really smart Canadian television personalities be part of the voting process. And then apparently, someone said, hey, what about the Americans? And then somebody said, yeah, it'd be really great for Pierre McGuire and Jerry Maronic to have votes, too. And that's where we have a situation where someone gave Patrick Kane the first place vote for the Lady Bing this year. Yeah, I remember I think that was a new thing last year. because I remember, shoot, who was it? Anson Carter and somebody else from the NHL network screwed up the positions for players on the All-Star team.

And I was just like, because it was one of those things where it's like, well, he doesn't play that position. He shouldn't have a vote there. And then I looked and it was like, Anson Carter got to vote on this? All right. Yeah. Okay.

That was the other thing, too, about the voting this year was the fact that people did the Ovescun thing with Drysidal, where he got votes for all three forward positions. And like I pointed out, like, the PHWA sent out a memo to all the voters. I got one, you got one, and said, hey, and literally it said just big, big fucking bold billboard letters, Leon Drysidal plays this position, and still people didn't pay attention to it and still put them in all of the other positions. It's just fucking annoying as shit because it makes us all look like assholes.

so but not you and me though no we got it right but i i literally live in fear every year that i'm going to be the guy who does that like i check that ballot so many times me too because i'm just like it's some year someone's going to be like who the hell had this guy like it's the wrong wing that's the one that i always think i'm going to screw up not only that but like now that they print the people who fucked up their ballots like i saw uh what's his face um um one of the french Traders, whose ballot got screwed up. I forget which one it was. But like, I saw him in the, I think it was Francois Gras Gras. Yeah. So he, he, he, I saw him in the media room yesterday and he was like, he's like, I didn't sleep last night. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, man. Like, I was, I was dreading the

fact that my ballot got rejected and it was going to be on the website saying that I, I didn't fill it out right. And he was like really devastated about it. Like Joe Yurden, our friend, like, fucked up his ballot and got it kicked out or whatever. Like, that's a real sort of like shoving the puppy's face in its own mess kind of moment for these writers. And that's the thing. That's why I checked the ballot like a billion times. I want to be like,

because, you know, listen, I don't know if you guys know this, but I have a little heat. And I don't need all of Edmonton being like, this father fucker can't even vote right. It's funny you say that because Jim Matheson did, and he only filled out forwards for his All-Star team, which for me, that's understandable because he hasn't seen defense or goaltending in Edmonton quite a while. There it is. And much to my shock, all forward positions were filled by Keith Gretzky, which I thought

was really weird. I don't quite know why that happened. All right. Listen, the awards are great. I'm sure at the big meeting this weekend for the PHWA, there'll be more chatter about how to fix them or do them differently. someone was yelling at me online about the, I know there's a shock,

about how the voting is inefficient and you could fix the positional problems if you just have a Google document that people go and use. Yeah, Google Forum. But the thing is, is that, like, we don't, the mechanics of it are handled by the NHL and Ernst & Young.

Like, we don't choose how we vote. If we did, it'd probably be modernized, and then you'd have at least the third of the PHWA complaining about how modernized it is. And I don't know how to work this fucking newfangled switchy rule. Yeah, and the other thing is, as we learn with the whole Ovechkin debacle, is like, the media, the writers and the league have sometimes a bit of an adversarial relationship,

so to speak, which we should. But I don't think that the league minds terribly when we occasionally screw this up and look bad. I think there probably is a system where it would never happen, but I think the fact that we can occasionally show our ass is a feature and not a bug as far as the league is concerned. They like it. They're like, go over there in the corner and put on the dunce cap. Like when the Ovechkin thing happened, they could, there were ways to fix that. Yeah.

That didn't involve just announcing that he had made both teams. But that wasn't what they chose to do because I think they kind of liked seeing the, right. When that happened, that was like, oh, oh, now we're so concerned about the integrity of the vote that we're not and it just be like, oh, if people fucked up and you just add up the totals. Yeah. Like, we couldn't have done it like, you know,

like Roy Fitzpatrick at the All-Star game and just canceled a whole bunch of ballots mysteriously. Like, now suddenly it's... Indeed. I also think if you screw up your ballot, you don't get to vote next year. I think that's the case. No, but I think that's the rule.

Oh, good. Yeah, I think the rule is that if you screw up your ballot, you don't get a vote in the next year. And then, like, there's also, like, a rule where like arbitrarily you may not get to vote in certain years depending on what the numbers look like. Like they do try to balance it east and west and what have you. And I was always in the back of my mind being like, you know, what year will I piss off

Mark Spector enough where he takes away my vote? And then what will my reaction be? Right. Because, because yeah. But anyway, congratulations to all the winners. It's very exciting. And congratulations, in my opinion, to the NHL for putting on a great award show. show, and I'm going to tell you right now, if

Keenan Thompson gets back, that is going to be a hot ticket next year, and if you have hot tickets, there's only one place to go to get them. I'm going to use your grading scale and say that's a B plus. So better than the Titanic filled with diarrhea. Thank you,

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You know what else? You love to see, Sean. You love to see the NHL overreact to something that happened and change their rulebook, which has never, ever, ever in the history of the NHL come back to bite them on the ass. It always works so well.

I thought that this could have been a lot worse. That's my positive day. It's interesting. Because they didn't, first of all, they didn't, for the most, they didn't make penalties reviewable to a large, scale, which I was worried was something that's going to happen.

I still worried. I still think we're going to get there at some point, and I think it's going to be terrible. And your concern was because Jeremy Jacobs is the owner of the Boston Bruins and also Betman's Lord Emperor Palpatine and would come over and be like, you best review every shipping penalty. That's, well, I mean, that's like, I remember us having the debate and I remember arguing on the, on the athletic with people after the Cody Eakent hit. And people were saying, you know, I said we're, if we start reviewing majors, we're going to

review everything. And they said, no, you're crazy, slippery slope. We're not going to do that. And four weeks later, people are like, we should review tripping penalty. So they didn't do that. That's good. The change as far as the expanded review that coaches can now challenge glove passes, high sticks, basically anything that should have been a stoppage in the offensive zone, which worried me when I first saw it, because anything, that could be a lot of things. That could be anything. That could be face-off violations. And I've been going on about this, but, you know, there was a, in the Bruins'

Blue series, there was a goal the Bruins scored off a face-off where if you go back and look at it, eight of the ten players were committing a face-off violation based on where they were when the puck hit the ice. And that could be a disaster. And when it was announced last night when the media was reporting on what had been said, it was left very vague. And, you know, was with a nicing, a race for the puck for an icing, at least. to a goal. Is that going to be reviewable on all this? Based on what the NHL put out, it's only

going to be those three things. Glove pass, high stick, netting. Yeah. Which I think is not bad. I think it's, I've got no issue reviewing those things. I don't like that it's on anything in the, anything that happens in the offensive zone, even if it's 40 seconds later, like to me, if it doesn't lead directly to a goal, just keep playing. Yeah. And it also means there's no, there's no contingency for possession. It's just whatever happens in the offensive zone. So in theory, the defensive team could reacquire the puck, and then if the attacking team gets back and scores,

it could still be nullified through a handpam. You shoot the puck up, it hits the netting, it comes down, lands on a defenseman stick, the offensive team goes for a line change, he sets up behind the net, goes to throw an outlet pass, it gets picked off, that team scores, oh, puck hit the netting. Then you get into that thing where an offside happens,

like, seven minutes or four goals. scored and it's just annoyed. So I mean my my concern with this stuff is always it the change is always sound like they're going to be fine and the situations we think they're going to be applied to sound fine but what are going to be the unintended consequences what are going to be the things and I don't see a lot of danger of that here. I don't think there's it's not going to be like offside where we find out that there were glove passes on and all these plays that we didn't think there were so I think that's going to be okay. I still I still have a lot of questions about how they're actually going to do this. In true

NHL form, they haven't really given us enough information. One of the changes that they've made is now they're going to make, being wrong on a goalie interference is now a penalty. Yeah, so basically here's the thing. Every coach's challenge, there's no limit on how many you can have now. Your first one, if you get it wrong,

results in a delay of game penalty, which is the current situation with offside, but they're applying it both to that and goal interference and also the coach's challenge for, you know, weird shit happen in the offensive zone that should have stopped the clock. If you get that wrong, it's a delay of game penalty. If you challenge a second time and get it wrong, it's a double minor, and it's a double minor for delay of game, and every time you get it wrong after that. Yeah.

But here's my question. Does get it wrong mean that the call is not overturned, or is there going to be an allowance for the review was inconclusive? No, it's either you win the challenge or you don't. And then if that's how it's going to work. All right. Well, I mean, I think that's the right way to do it. The one that I have concerned with is the major penalties being reviewed for two reasons.

And I don't think it's going to be a catastrophe, but I've got two concerns. First of all, I know everybody likes to throw stats around and say how few major penalties there are. Betman does. There's going to be a lot more now. I was going to ask you about that. Because right now. result is that they're going to default to a major penalty and then just check it? Because right now, if there's a play in a game that could be two or five, they default to two

because they're referees and they don't want to decide the game and if it's the middle ground, they'll pick that. Now they're going to do five so that they can go look at it. And so you're going to see, you know, and I don't think it's going to be crazy. I don't think we're going to see a bunch of these every game, but you're going to see early in the season people will be like, wait a second, there's a lot more major penalties being called. the other thing that's a little odd to me is that they can look at it but they can reduce to a minor but they can't take the penalty off the board right which means if if i go to hit you and the referee

calls five minutes because it was because he thinks that i picked your head and then he goes and looks at the replay and he sees it's actually shoulder shoulder perfectly clean he still has to give me two minutes it's worse than that if if we go to the court if it's a situation where like it's me and like two opponents. And I come rushing in and it looks like I elbow a dude in the head but then on and I get a major for it and then on review it turns out by some weird happenstance it's his own teammate that elbowed him in the head. I still get a minor penalty for it.

Yeah. You have to get a penalty for it. Including on certain majors like you could have a review on butt ending or spearing for which there is no minor penalty for those. And yet you would have to get. a minor for something that doesn't even have a minor. So I understand that they don't, you know, they don't want to open it up too much and have five-minute penalties

coming off the board entirely. But I think inevitably at some point we're going to have a really weird situation where there's going to be a review because we want to get it right. And everyone's going to see that there was no penalty at all on the play. And we're going to have to call two minutes anyways. And people are going to go, why did we do that? Why is that weird wrinkle in the rule? What did you think, Ryan?

Yeah, I think that, so I should say, I guess, that there is a review of penalties in college hockey. Yeah, I've heard this. How's that work, though? Has it been good? No. Famously, the Frozen Four this year had three, four, maybe even five situations where hits got reviewed at length, and most of them were, I think, were found to be like majors in game misconducts and stuff, that, but then also there was like a very clear hit that should have been a major in one of the semifinals, I want to say, that didn't get even called anything. And so it's like, see, this is like the system still sucks. So yeah, I mean, it just, the problem is like, I think it's good that you're trying to get calls as right as possible. And I think it's probably understandable that you don't want to like have refs just saying, actually there was no penalty at all.

and I, you know, now I got to look like an asshole or whatever. Right. But. Go ahead, Ryan. Like, I just don't think, like, reps are going to put themselves in that position, like, willingly. Like, I think if you, if you, there is maybe a positive you could say of, like, like, the thing you said where if a guy accidentally high sticks his own teammate or whatever,

and you get the double minor and it should have been, it shouldn't have been a penalty. like that's not good obviously but you also don't want the ref being like you know what i like a ref's just going to if air on the side of um actually know that was a five minute major as opposed to you know what let's just take it off the board entirely you know what i mean like yeah so so so but with that all that having been said makes the game longer and especially in like high-stakes situations like the Frozen Four, I think that the reps will have more of a tendency to be like, let's go to the videotape.

And it's like, oh, my God, we got to sit around for five minutes. That's one of the things I found, I felt really interesting about this is that, you know, one of the laments from Bettman over and over again was about interrupting the flow of play and making the game longer

and this, that and the other thing. And like, I think it's undeniable that if every major penalty is reviewed, and if basically, I mean, it kind of seems like almost every goal is going to be reviewed. in some way shape or form,

it's inevitably going to make the game longer, but maybe that's negligible just because of the fact that these aren't events that happen all the time in games. I'm with you guys. I think the scope of it is pretty much, like if you took Greg's idea for review and you took Sean's idea for review,

and we are obviously diametrically opposed in how much review we want in hockey, I think this would kind of almost be the middle ground. Like, it is a targeted review of certain things. Now, Betman's lying out his ass when he says it's not an overreaction to the playoffs. I mean, they're basically just taking all of the shit that happened to the playoffs and assigning ways to review it. So this notion of it be, it's an evolution.

No, it's not an evolution. You're just reacting to what happened in the playoffs because you're embarrassed by it. But I think that it is the limited, targeted sort of reviews that we like. I've long said that you should be able to review high-sticking double miners. that's just logic. So I don't, I think it's pretty good. I do think though we're all, I'll agree with Sean and his past comments on this topic, which we've certainly talked about ad nauseum on this podcast, is there are going to be situations

where we see the review of a major penalty, and we're all like, that's totally a major penalty. And the ref's like, actually, I think it's a minor. And that's going to be a whole other level of debate over the fallible nature of officiating in and it's it's going to be like goaltender interference where these are subjective calls yeah goalie interference we said let's look at it let's get you know we there were a couple of obvious ones that people thought was missed we said let's review it we started reviewing these things and we found out none of us agree right on what any of it is it's going to be the same thing and and if you're looking for a way that this maybe goes bad and if you're looking for the

conversation we might be having in november or December about how this is screwed up what worries me is they've said they only want the officials overturning if it's obvious. So first of all, that's setting a high bar. There's going to be a lot of reviews where one side of the fans are screaming. That's clearly a major. The other side is screaming. Clearly it's not. Usually we have that argument once every couple of weeks for a Department of Player's Safety decision.

Now we're going to be having it every night. And if the officials do what I think they're going to do and call more majors, But the bar is it has to be obvious to overturn it. A lot of those calls are going to stand. We're going to have a lot more majors. We're going to see some games decided by five-minute penalties where the other team goes and scores three goals, and people are going to be unhappy because they're going to say it wasn't even a major to start with. Right.

And the thing we haven't talked about is that this also covers match penalties. And match penalties essentially are ones that involve intent. Yep. And now, I mean, you talk about the specious nature of subjective coal interference calls, by God. Now you get to play Sigmund Freud with these guys on video review to figure out what they're trying to do in that. I mean, that's why they never call back Kennelty's in the first place. Right, exactly. But now it's...

How many do you see in a season? One? Like, yeah, I don't think it's going to be blatant. Yeah. I don't think it's ever going to be an issue because refs are already, like, predisposed to be like, well, I don't know if he really wanted to murder that guy at Center Rice, but... Yeah, I just think that it's, if anything, it's... As soon as you put in replay and you say, we're going to get it right,

and we're going to do freeze frames and all this stuff, the expectations from the fans that you're going to get it right and you're going to do it in a way that we all agree on goes way up. And I don't think for anything subjective you're ever going to do that. I say the same thing for goal of interference. I think the same thing for the NFL and past interference. I think that's going to be a disaster. And I'm glad that the NHL didn't open this door more than they did

because that's what I was concerned was going to happen. But I will tell you right now, if you're sitting there going, well, you know, they're going to, this is great because they're going to catch the obvious misses. Be prepared to be very surprised about what your fellow fans think is obvious and not obvious. And there's going to suddenly be a lot of arguing about plays that in the past we maybe thought about for 30 seconds and then went on with our lives. One additional thing I want to say here. I talked to Ben Bishop, who I love talking to because he's somebody who really gives a shit about rules, especially when they apply to goalies.

But overall is a really thoughtful guy when it comes to the direction of the league. And I said, what are your thoughts on video review and the expansion of it? And he was one of the first guys that I've talked to, or even the first time I considered this, he goes, why don't we just do this in the playoffs? Like, why don't we just have the regular season be its own animal? And then when it comes to the playoffs and we pay so much more, attention to every goal and every penalty and every play and these controversies get, you know, blown out of proportion with all the shit that happens. Like, just do it then. Like, who gives

this shit about the regular season? Like, it is what it is. Well, I think that's the problem. The NHL doesn't necessarily. That's my own editorial content. But, like, I thought that was a really good point. Like, if we, if we are concerned about the game being bogged down, if we are concerned about being too myopic and its approach, like, just we don't, the playoffs are their own. The playoffs are their own thing anyway. We have a different overtime format in the playoffs. We know the games are officiated differently in the playoffs. I kind of like the idea,

which obviously is not going to happen, but of just apply this stuff when it matters the most. The problem with that is then what do you do when it's the final weekend and Colorado's playing St. Louis for the last playoff spot and it's a regular season game. Well, tough shit. Because you could also make the playoffs in three-on-three

circus hockey. I got to be honest with you, this is as much as I've kind of become the anti-referral replay guy. My objections to replay, for the most part, are not the time it takes. If we had a really good replay system that really worked well and did what we said it was going to do. Like in tennis. You know, and made the game better and didn't just make us all fight and argue all the

time, but actually did what we thought it was going to do. And it added five minutes to every game. Okay. I'll take an extra five. I don't think hockey games are that long. Yeah. It's all the other stuff. And also the fact that if you're standing around for five minutes, then clearly it's

not an obvious play that we should be reviewing anyways. I mean, this isn't, you know, Matthew Shane doesn't. Right. I've always been on team, put a three minute timer or, you know, name a number. But not because it takes too long, but because it's just like, that's a symptom that we're nitpicking something that, uh, that, that we shouldn't be doing. I, if, if I, I, I, let every game be 10 minutes longer. If we were actually nailing this stuff doing it really well, it's, it, the timing doesn't,

I can go get a sandwich. I can go grab a beer. Like, I, you get it. if you're going to actually get it right, but don't stand around for eight minutes, and then come back and say the guy's skate was in the air, and I'm looking at the same replay you're looking at going, I don't see his skate in the air, and then we're all... I agree with you on the length of reviews,

especially because it's the only time during the game when the arena DJ gets to play both the Jeopardy theme and the waiting is the hardest part by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Anyway, so I think you had it kind of right. I think I talked to some of the GMs. They were all pretty happy with it. So. Oh, well, as long as they're happy.

Yeah, as long as they're happy. Those are the guys who really. At the very least, I think they've addressed the issues. And by God, let's just hope that it's not, we're not in two years talking about this. Like we talk about the Matthew Shane offside being the auspice for offside still being easier. Because that's only happened literally every other time. We've tried this. So there's no, it would be a slippery slope to suggest that that might actually work out exactly the same way it has every.

other time. Now, they had a discussion at the at the GM meetings also, by the way, about taking out the, the offside bit, but the... Okay, that is actually not true, apparently. Yes, did you say that? No, no, no. I mean, taking off the offside from... C.J. fucked up the tweet. Like, they were talking about taking offside out of the

coaches challenge, but he wrote it like they were talking about eliminating offside. I think they were talking about just tweaking how it worked, not even taking it out of the challenge. He clarified while we were recording that they wanted to basically make it like the end zone in the NFL where it's an invisible plane and it extends a million miles into the solar system and all that shit. Which they should. That's, that would be smart.

But he got us all excited. Yeah, yesterday he's like they were going to eliminate offside and DeBitre Filipo, which I believe had an orgasm. Every smart hockey person was like, yes, please. Right. And then everybody who's ever shut off offside on NHL on EA was like going crazy for it. But, no, I mean, they would never do that, which sucks. Like, I was in, when he tweeted that, I was, I was writing over to the,

to the Bacherd thing with, uh, with Justin Bourne. And we were both like, holy crap, the fact that they even talked about it is amazing. Like, this is actual progress that, that, you know, it didn't get. And it was, no, it was too beautiful for this world. No progress at all. Well, you know, guys, uh, speaking of changing the way the game is played. Mm-hmm. Come on.

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I heard if you use promo code Myrtle, you actually have to pay 40% above cover price. That's right, yeah. So don't do that. Just use two. Hey, so you went to the big athletic event last night as we do this podcast, the honoring Jason Boschford, all of the proceeds from the event going to his family. What was that like? Because I didn't get him a chance to have.

You know what? It was fantastic. It was amazing. The crowd was, there were seven or 800 people there. Wow. And as well as, and it was a great show. There was music. There were a couple of stand-up comedians.

There were panels. Lots of people from The Athletic, obviously, but also a lot of the TSN guys showed up. McKenzie and Duffy and Ray Ferrar were all there. And it was just, it was a really good, really good show, really great night. You know, it's hard, hard to say it was a great time because obviously under the circumstances,

it was very difficult for a lot of us. But as far as a tribute goes and just really a lot of people had a lot of really kind things to say about Jason Bontsford and a lot of really great stories. And the crowd was great. If you were out there, thanks for coming. And it raised a good chunk of money. And it was just really well done. It was really well put together. And everyone who was involved in it did a great job.

Yeah. And we should have mentioned earlier that Elias Pedersen getting Bostford a shot out during his. acceptance speech at the awards was a really nice touch too. So it was very good. Also, we forgot to mention Ryan. This is not for Sean because he didn't see the awards. We forgot to mention Frank Saravilli's acting during the NHL Awards in which he was the retund face of the PHWA explaining which awards that we vote for.

Your thoughts on former Puck Soup guest Frank Sarvelli's performance on the NHL Awards? You know, it's all in the writing, Greg. in the writing on that one not so strong but this is another problem I have with the NHL Awards is that like there is a good chunk of every night

of every award show dedicated to explaining to you who votes on the awards what the awards are called what they mean and it's like yeah like it's cool that it's named after

whoever the heart trope if he's named after, I don't know. But like you go. Okay, sure. But the fact that you then have to go, well, it's the league MVP. Like, call it the Hart MVP Award or some shit like that. Because I just, I know what the Vesna is. And I can't imagine there are too many people tuning in going,

now what is the Vesina Award? But there has to be a three second thing. The casual fans who tune in for the awards, but not anything else. But they have to have a 30-second thing going, it's awarded to the goalie who has the most wins in a season. Oh, I mean, it's the best goalie award. Like, no, we know. No. It's true.

I agree. I just wish that they would just drop all of the pretense and just name it the Bridgestone Heart Trophy and the Bridgestone, Vezina, and the Bridgestone, Norris. And, of course, the Mark Messia Leadership Award. Yes. Presented by Bridgestone. to present it to a player who was traded midway through the season and will not be retained by the team that traded for. And it wasn't even a captain, which I thought was the whole fucking point of the dumb award,

but that's neither who nor there. Speaking of trades, Ryan Lambert, I know that you are a huge fan of the work that Chuck Fletcher's been doing lately for the Flyers. Yeah, I got a lot of guys who are like, you know, Ryan, you don't understand what Chuck Fletcher's getting up to down here in Philly. Like, so, I should say. Let me start off by saying this. I think Kevin Hayes is a better player than a lot of people.

You are much more of a Kevin Hayes fan than I am at the very least. I think he's a good number two center. I think he is a unbelievable number three center. I do not like him at $7.145 million or whatever the cap hit works out to. That's just too rich. and, you know, I've had Philly fans saying, well, you got to overpay for UFAs. And it's like, yeah, but like you don't have to. There's no rule that says you have to.

And the thing is that like, if you're a Kevin Hayes away from being competitive, even in your division, then give them the 7.145 for seven years, but they're not, right? Like, that's the real problem here, is that they are not a Kevin Hayes away. They're two Kevin Hayes away and also maybe one Matt Niskenen in his prime away. The problem is they traded a better defenseman who's cheaper and retained salary on that defenseman to acquire 32-year-old potentially washed Matt Niskinan. Two Kevin Hases means that they are 13 feet of players away, by the way, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, he's a big boy. He's a big boy.

He's also the 18th highest cap hit currently in the NHL amongst centers, probably. That'll be 19 after Duchenne signs. Yeah. I'm not a big Hayes fan to begin with. I do agree with you that I think third line center on a good team is sort of his best spot. They're not quite there yet as a team. And I think they're going to play him at number two, which I don't dig necessarily. But yeah, that money is stupid.

I mean, that's stupid money even with the caveat that he was the UFA. Yes, I agree. They overpaid him by like a million and a half, I think. I think if you get Kevin Hayes at 5-5, even six, you're like, well, that's pretty good, but 7-1's crazy. Yeah, and this will transition us to the next topic, but trading a two and a three for Justin Braun is also overcompensation. Braun's, I mean, if the decision for Doug Wilson was Brendan,

Brendan Dillon or Justin Braun, I think he made the right call on that score. I mean, like, I said it in the thing I wrote, like, you can think what you want about war stats, but he was the fourth worst defenseman in the league by war this past season. And so, like, even if you think it's not a particularly great stat, the fact that there were 200 guys better than him at it is probably not the best indication. Yeah, and I mean, maybe it's an indication that there's a market. for him where he had to give up a second and a third for him, but that just seemed like fucking overcompensation for the sake of overcompensation for a team that had to move salary, which is the other part of the equation.

My real concern with this for the Flyers is that between retaining salary for Goudis, buying out McDonald to make the space to acquire one of the Niskenen or, well, no, like, I'm saying on the roster, the roster spot, to get one of Niskenon, or, well, I guess you would say Braun because Niskenen came across into D for D trade. So you retain Goudis' 1.1, I want to save Goudis's

salary. You buy out Andrew McDonald, and I forget what that costs you, like off the top of my head. But now you have Niskinan and Braun, both of whom are overpaid for what they are right now. And you get $7.145 million for Kevin Hayes, and you spent about $19 million

of an $81.5 million cap. on three guys one of whom's good one of whom had a bad season and could bounce back and one of whom has been trending down for three years and maybe you got a little bit better that's my problem with it

like I don't I don't begrudge them signing Kevin Hayes and maybe even overpaying them and I think it's maybe not the worst gamble to get Niskinan but to spend $19 million to do it all told it's psychotic. Yeah, and the combination, by the way, retained salary for Goudis,

$1,000,000, $1.16 million, the buyout for McDonald. I mean, that's basically a David Schlemco's worth of money on your cap that's just dead space right now, and that's kind of bad. Moving over to San Jose, boys. What did you think about Sean, Eric Carlson? Because we didn't talk about,

this happened after our last podcast. What did you think about Eric Carlson reupping with the? Sharkey's, were you surprised? Yeah, well, I was surprised. If you told me at the beginning of the year, that's the deal, then that probably would have seemed just about right, but it did feel like it was trending away from that happening. You know, I think this is one of those deals that we can all see is an eight-year deal that is not going to be, feel like a great deal for all eight of those years. The question is how quickly does it go bad? But you know what? If your window is

open right now. We've talked about San Jose and whether the window is still open. But if it is open, it's certainly closing quickly. So I kind of respect the idea that you go out there. You're going to, you say, you know what, maybe three, four, five

years from now, we're just going to be an absolute mess. But if we've got a cup in the meantime, we won't mind. And if not, then at least we took our shot. I think this is them saying that they're convinced they would have won this year if he was healthy. Like, they're convinced of it.

They might have. And, yeah, there's something to be said for that they might have if he didn't fall apart. But fuck, man, you look at that roster right now, and they have, they have seven forward signed. They've seven forward signed. They've got to, I mean, they're going to find room for Thornton, obviously. What do you do with Pavelski? How much do you give Meyer? Are you worried Meyer gets offer sheeted?

LeBank needs a contract. Like, what? Are you worried Meyer gets offer sheeted? Greg, it's the NHL, baby. Oh, boy, there it is. Anything can happen in the NHL. you know that. Come on.

It's not, Ray Shiro told me this week, sir, that it is fucking bullshit that there's a gentleman's agreement on offer sheets. That's from the horse's mouth, buddy. Well, he's right, but not in the way he thinks he is.

Yeah, right, exactly. Come on. But I'm saying for the sharks, though, like, they clearly have some heavy lifting to do to fill out the rest of that roster. But I agree with Sean at the end of day. Like, shoot your shot. I mean, if you've,

convinced Carlson to stay with you and Carlson you believe after surgery could be Carlson again. I mean, go ahead. That's like if he's healthy, he's a guy that in theory could age well. And we haven't really seen, like there was, we have seen Hall of Fame caliber defensemen play well up to 40. You know, Ray Bork did it. Al McKinnis did it, Nicholas Littstrom. Now that was a different era. Maybe you can't do it today, but maybe.

The only caveat I'd have is that speed was such an essential. part of his game. Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. You know, if he's, yeah, if he loses that half step, but it was speed, but it was the, recovery. And it was the, yeah, it was, knowing when to use the speed. Like, it's, like, he's not a guy who just goes out there and, and just compensates for bad decisions by just being faster than everyone.

He knows how to use it. And that's, that's not going to go away. But, yeah, I mean, it'll be, you just, this is one of those where you hope you get three or four more years of prime Eric Carlson and then the decline. comes in a manageable way and not that he gets out there in year one and still looks half a step slow and you're sitting there going oh man we've really or they get eric carlson prime as opposed to the eric carlson's in the multiverse other versions of eric carlson with shorter hair maybe there's one dressed like a pirate future eric carlson from 2009 any other one's a missing right i don't i don't

I know that this is a comic book thing. I don't know. Doesn't matter. They need the alternate Eric Carlson who was going to go back to Ottawa because he wanted to come home. That's right. And by the way, it's funny that, like, in his conversations about why he stayed in San Jose, it was like, oh, I really loved the organization and the professionalism of the management. I'm like, motherfucker, look, again, not to make the poop covered Titanic comparison again,

but look at your frame of references. It's like, here is a. competent owner that invests in his team and gives everybody giant contracts or Eugene Melnick. Yeah. On the other hand. Like, come on now. So good move out of them. I was sort of surprised.

I guess I was buying the heading back East hype a little bit for him. But at the end of the day, man, nobody else can give him eight years and probably very few teams were going to give him at least seven at 11.5 million a season. Yeah. I'd also like to personally thank Eric Carlson for signing this deal like six minutes after I wrote about how great it would be, how the free agent auction was going to be fantastic. I was really looking forward to. Your chaos theory. I hope people really enjoyed the six minute window of that being relevant content.

Yeah, I was just surprised along those lines. I was just surprised that he didn't go to market and then go back to San Jose. but I figured that it was either that or Tampa and like 50-50 kind of a thing. But you didn't go to market, so I guess I was wrong. Yeah, and it's all right. Tampa re-signed Braden Coberance, they're fine. Speaking of defensemen, Jacob Truba goes to the New York Hockey Ranges. And as I've been saying to everybody that's been asking about the compensation here for Winnipeg,

you can look at it two ways. One is that they blew this because, we were talking about Jacob Truba going back to the United States during the World Cup of hockey. Like, that's how long this has been going on for. And they stuck with him. They hoped he changed his mind. They thought they were better with him than without him. They dicked around.

And they put themselves in a situation where there was now a finite number of teams that could acquire him based on how much money he would earn. And an even smaller number of teams with whom he'd actually sign because of the family considerations that he'd mentioned to the, son. So, like, they really put themselves behind the eight ball, but at the end of the day, can you argue that you could make the argument that Winnipeg saw a window to win for the last couple of years, keeping Troopa on the team, made them a better team, and gave them a chance to win the cup, and now they're paying the consequences. You shoot your shot, yada, yada, yada, I kind of see both ways, but that's the reason

why the compensation for him sucked. Now, I don't know if this is true, but I saw it reported earlier this week that Winnipeg didn't let the teams that were bidding for Truba talk to him about an extension first. Yeah. And I think that was in the New York Post maybe. Yeah. And like, that's just, that's, again, like, what are you doing?

Like, you know you're losing the player. Who cares? I've got a theory. Oh, he's got a theory. I've got a theory that kind of connects into that. And I know we just finished talking about how offer sheets never happened, but I really do wonder if the Jets were worried that some team out there was going to give Jacob Truba a one-year offer sheet. Because Jacob Truba is an unrestricted free agent next year.

He's got one year left before he hits the open market. And when you've got one year left, you are uniquely vulnerable to an offer sheet. Because if they give you a one-year deal, let's say somebody goes and signs them one-year offer sheet, six million. Okay. That puts you in the level of compensation where it's a first and a third. Not great compensation. Right. But if you match that, you cannot trade a player you've matched on offer sheet for one year, which means you lose the ability to trade him the rest of this year. You can't trade him at the deadline. And you have money on your cap. Which means you now, he has walked up to free agency and he's gone. In the case of Jacob Truby, you know he's not signing an extension for you on July 1. He's gone.

So you're sitting there going and to get to Ryan's point, Why wouldn't they let other teams talk to them? I don't necessarily want other GMs to be able to talk to my player and say, oh, by the way, if we can't work out a deal, there's an offer sheet coming in a week. So I just wonder if, like, I'm surprised nobody did it for Mark Stone last year. That would have been the guy to try it on because the senators would have had no choice. I mean, the Jets could at least say, all right, one year of Jacob Troop is better than that. But I think if they, it is quite possible, they think that the compensation they got is better.

better than the first and third they would have got if somebody had offer sheeted him on a one-year deal that might have felt like they couldn't match. Two things on that. One, do you think Truba signed somewhere else for 6.3, 4, or less? Because that's first and third. On a one-year deal, if he knows that that's his ticket to get out of Winnipeg and go to his destination that he wants to go to, maybe. Fair enough.

But they gave up a first round pick with him. Or no, I'm sorry. They got the pick back. Is that right? They got a first, which wasn't a great first. Pionk. And they got Pionk who they must value higher than a third. And the other thing is they got the pick now and not a year from now, which every GM

prefers. They want their picks this year, not next year. And to your point, I mean, he made 5.5 on his last contract. So that escalation. He's going to get a lot more. You wouldn't get him on a five-year offer sheet for six and change. He's not going to do that. But if it's one year and he knows it, especially considering that there,

you know, there has been some bad blood or some, you know, between the player and the team. That's the thing. People forget about offshoots. The player has to actually sign it and won out. And this is a player who maybe that would actually apply to. Yeah, I don't know. I just like, they're fucking Pat Brasson over here. It was pretty good. It's my theory. They just limited their own market so much, though. And I don't think Pionk's that much. Like, I think he's maybe a six, you know, but.

My favorite thing I heard about Pionk was someone who said that, His name sounds like a sound effect from Mad Magazine, which I think it was pretty much the greatest thing I've ever heard. Yeah, that's that little optical illusion from Mad Magazine. That's a real, I mean, nobody's going to get that reference, but. No one's going to get that reference, but it's pretty good, though. Before we get to Marnerville, your thoughts on Corey Perry getting bought out. And are we seeing a guy that might actually have something left to offer,

or are we seeing Danny Heatley 2.0? Yeah, I think he's done, dude. I think he's, like, even if he can get back to being 100% healthy and, like, not, you know, if he can play the full 82 games or that kind of thing, I think he can, I think maybe he can do that. Like, I'm not a doctor. I don't, I haven't seen his charts or anything. But I just, I don't know, I don't know that he can keep up with the league such as it is, you know? He's only a season removed from being a 50-point player, I think,

and there's something to be said for that. But, man, I don't know. He's, what, 33, 34? It's tough, man, I don't know. I think it's likely that he's done, but I do think he's worth a gamble for some team out there on a short deal. Yeah, if you can get him for a $1.5 million? Hell yeah.

Go for it. Why not? Give it a shot and let him, as a reclamation project. I think that's, there shouldn't be a great shortage. And then you run the risk of it being Mike Medano going to Detroit, but that's a risk you take for a million and a half bucks. Yeah, that's, you know, you're not going to find too many. Most of the other guys, you're going to give a million and a half or two million to in free agency have zero chance of being 50 point players.

And this is a guy who has a small chance. Yeah. I've asked guys before. I even asked Getslap about it. And like, I still haven't gotten a good answer why his numbers fell off a fucking close. I mean, it is a, you look at his numbers at the peak of his goal scoring powers. I mean, he was in the conversation with guys like Ovechkin for being best goals scorers in the league. He was a league MVP one time.

You remember that? I do remember that, yeah. But his numbers fall, and it's not just last season when he got hurt. It's like three years of decline. It's fucking crazy. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, he's over 30. Like, it has.

Hey, just because you're over 30 doesn't mean that you don't have any value in society, you dick. Well. Well, it's a 36-year-old, I mean, you know. But, no, it's one of those things where, like, I very earnestly believe this, that, like, you can just come. Like, if you're over 30, it doesn't matter how good you were, whatever, like, it can be your, the summer between your 31st and 32nd season, or age 31, 32. it can be the summer between your age 36 37 season. You just come back done, like cooked. It doesn't matter.

Like there's no rhyme or reason to it. Look at Roberta Luongo, right? Like he was unbelievable last year. Or not last year, the year before the season that just ended. He was fantastic and single-handedly like almost got the Panthers into the playoffs. And then this year he looked like he was a 30-year. year old goalie or whatever he is. Like, he just looked completely cooked.

And that happens, man. Like, whether it's, you know, just you played through too many injuries or what have you, guys just, it happened to Jerome McGinlet, too. Jerome McGinlet didn't have, like, a steady decline into being useless. He just turned useless one summer. Yeah, and that's the thing, like, when you see these long deals get signed and people go, well, you know, he's an 80-point player now. If he declines, that's okay.

He's a 70. He's a 60. It's the Danny Heatley. Like some guys age like Timoselani, and some guys age like Danny Heatley, and some guys somewhere in the middle. But yeah, you never know when that's the risk you run. That's the gamble you take. Finally, on the transactional front, man, I love the Mitch Marner stuff this week.

I love the Mitch Marner stuff, first of all, because of the just cesspool that's become social media with regards to Marner, his alleged asking price. Steve Dangle writes a fucking open letter to Mitch Marner basically saying, hey, when you score the game winning goal in the Stanley Cup final, what jersey do you envision yourself to? Who the fuck is asking that of Austin Matthews?

And once again, we're praying upon the Ontario kids to take less because you are a Leafs fan. And it's getting becoming a giant mess. And then yesterday, Kyle Dubus ups the ante by saying, hey, buddy, you know that contract, your dad thinks you deserve? If you go someplace else and try to get it, there's no guarantee that you're still going to be a leaf. I mean, he didn't say it in such stark terms. He kind of grouped in Marner with the other unrestricted free agents.

But that's basically what he was saying. So the Marner stuff is getting super juicy, Sean. It's getting juicy and, you know, I don't, I'm, I never hold myself up as some sort of plugged in the insider, but just being here this week and talking to people who seem to know things or have a good sense. And I keep waiting for somebody to reassure me that this is just all smoke and no fire. And I'm not hearing that. Like this is, I think, getting juicier than people think. And look, here's the thing.

Kyle Dubas has largely continued the Lulamorello Conan Silence when it comes to this sort of stuff. That leaves organization does not put a lot of stuff out there. You know, and when they do, it's somebody in front of a camera. It's, they don't leak a lot of it. And the Marner camp has been leaking like crazy. They've been feeding stuff. And I've got to say, they've done, if their goal was to move the public perception as far as what this kid is worth, they've done a fantastic job.

Because there are a lot of people who are convinced that a contract that would make Mitch Marner the highest paid winger in history would not only be insufficient, but would be some sort of mortal insult that he should be, uh, you know, You know, that you can't even put out there. That he deserves it or doesn't deserve it? Well, I mean, it's split. But there was a lot of fans out there who, you know, there was the, I think it was McKenzie had a radio hit where, you know, he said that if, you know, Miko Ranton

goes in signs for $9 million, that Mitch Marner will say, that's not my comparable. My comparable is Austin Matthews. Yeah, people lost their fucking minds. I get to choose my comparable. Well, no, you don't. That's not how this works. You are a playmaking winger. Playmaking winger make this a certain range of,

money and you will get at the very top end of that range. But if you want to be a goal scoring center, then you should change positions and start scoring goals. And then, you know, then we can talk. But this idea that the player just gets to say, no, my comparable is some player who isn't a comparable other than that they're on the same team. Let me put this out there, though. Didn't Jonathan Taves and Patrick Kane sign identical contracts?

They did. No, I mean, isn't there an argument to me that Mitch Marner and Austin Matthews, and you know you can't put Tavares in this conversation that's not anything that they could control that he's there and making that money but you could make the argument that this is Mitch and Austin's team that you could do that I mean Patrick Kane I mean they did it twice the second time Patrick Kane had been in a league MVP yeah by that point the first time he had been like an 80 or 90 point player and Jonathan Taves was a 60 or 70 point player and they got the same money because one of them's the center and that's a more

important position. So I, yeah, and I found the offer sheet thing was fascinating to me because for years and years and years, every GM always said, we will always sign. And that made sense. Like if you just the game theory of how offer sheets work, if I can convince you that I will automatically match, even if it's bad for my team, I win because you won't submit an offer sheet. And it was not only that, but it was also the swagger of guys like Dean Lombardi being like,

you know, I believe it was the Roman general trichonosis who said that if you you come for my guys, I'll come after your guys, so don't come after my guys. And it was like, I've never heard a GM. Yeah, I've never heard of GM being like, you know what? If he signs, we'll see. But the thing, that becomes so common that now it flips over the other way, where if you're Mitch Marner, and by all accounts, you know, Mitch Marner's a local kid, we've heard that he wants to be a Maple Leaf.

This is, you know, he pictures himself being the guy. And maybe part of the problem is he wants to be the guy on the Leafs, and he feels like he can't be if he's making $2 million less than Austin Matthews. but that, you know, if he wants to be a leaf, maybe his ticket to the high salary is I'll go sign an offer sheet. I know they're going to match. Some other team knows they're going to match. They'll just sign me to a high value to screw over the Maple Leafs. It works for everybody.

And Kyle Dubas says, you know what? Careful, kid, because go ahead and sign your offer sheet with whoever and maybe. Praying on the idea that he wants to be a leaf. And this is the card, this is clearly the card they're playing. It's like, we know you want to be here. We know you don't want to go sign. The card they're playing is we're going to make you the highest paid winner in the league. And that should probably be enough.

But if you... They're not asking him to take a hometown discount. No, but when you do... They're asking him to take a discount off of what he thinks he's worth. They're, right. They're asking him to not... No, they're not asking him. A hometown discount would be the best wingerers in the league get $9 million and we want you to take

seven or eight. Saying we want you to take something in the high nines in the Mark Stone range, in the Nikita Kuturob ranch who just won the MVP. That's not a hometown discount. And by the way, if they do ask him to take a hometown discount, he should tell them to go get stuffed because Matthews didn't take a discount. Tavares didn't take a discount. So, you know, he should get absolutely in the high end of the range for that sort of player,

but he doesn't get to invent a new range and say, that's, you know, I'm going to, like a goal scoring center. What did you mean by it is, but it isn't? Like, it's one of those things where every Maple Leafs fan now is going, and I've written about this in the newsletter a couple of times, so like if this sounds familiar to people, I apologize. But it's one of those things where Leafs fans are going up until this point, like the last month, let's say, are going, Mitch Martin's a top three, top four winger in the whole world. And we want you, we want you to get as much money as possible. But if you play for the Leafs, you should. should take less money because actually you're caught and it's like no you don't like the thing is now that elite players get paid like elite players by position get paid what like you know basically

what used to be Alex Ovechkin money right like Ovechkin really kind of set a bar that nobody passed for a very long time then Cain and Taves took 10 and a half and everybody's like holy shit we can start making, you know, eight figures a year? Great. Let's start doing that. And a bunch of guys did that. I was talking to Dom Lecision about this the other day, and he said it kind of started with dry-sidal taking nine and a half, where it's like RFAs are just, if RFAs are elite, they're just going to take as much money as they would have gotten on the UFA market, regardless. Yeah, which they should. Like the days of Nathan McKinnon getting six million is, is, should be long gone.

Yeah. And there's no, no RFA should be willing to, to take a deal like that. Right. And I, and I kind of think it's the Nielander thing where, like, because, you know,

a few guys took, took lesser deals after Drysidal. And now with Nielander going, yeah, I'm just going to sit out until, like, December and you're going to give me exactly the amount of money I want, and that's the end of that discussion.

And it worked. Like, now everybody is just like, yeah, no, give me as much, much money as I want. Well, and so... The question is, does everybody do that? Because we have all these RFAs and is this something where

you know, if Sebastian Ajo was out there saying, I should be an $11 million player. Braden Point says I should be an $11 million player. If Mattie Kachuk says I should be an $8 million player, then, okay, then the market's resetting in front of us. That's a good point though. Like, I think it will be unique to certain situations because I can't imagine

Braden Point's going to pull shit with lightning. Like if Miko Ranton goes and gets $11 million to be a winger, then okay. Now the market's been reset. And that's the thing. If Mitch Marner is trying to reset the market for everybody, then, all right, we've seen it happen before. Go ahead and try it. He's trying to reset the market for Mitch Marner.

But if his view is that the market, as it stands right now, is that he should be paid as a goal-scoring center, I mean, I don't know what the Leafs do in that situation, because that's not the reality. Then let's use Neelander as, as the goal-scoring center. the example. What's Nealander's cap hit? I don't remember off the top of my head. It's like six point, high six. It was high this year because he signed late, but it's like six eight or six nine. Six nine. Okay. So is he only worth two million dollars more than Alex, than Willie Nealander? Is Marner, because I don't think so. I think he's worth three million. Three million. You can say what you want about. Three million. That's, I mean, it's, it's almost

50% more. I mean, yeah, I think William Nealander is a pretty good player. Yeah, I agree. And so I think that, yeah, I mean. Let's say this, though. You can say what you want about where, about, you know, they signed dry-sidal to that deal to be a center. The guy's a winger, right? And if he makes nine and a half million dollars. Well, according to the PHWA voting, I believe. He's also a defenseman in the backup goalie.

But like, so if, if he's worth nine and a half million is, Mitch Marner not worth more than him? Is that, is recital nine and a half or eight and a half? I'm pretty sure. I think he's nine and a half. Let me double check here. I get, I got cat friend here.

I'm pretty sure it's not half. But, but, but, you know, right, you can do that the other way, right? You can say Nikita Kuturov was just a near unanimous MVP of the entire league.

Yeah, eight and a half. Yeah. So is he, is he worth, is Mitch Marner worth a million, two or three million more than a guy, a 50 goal score, uh,

who can also play center. I, you know what? Dracetal signed a couple years ago. So the market changes. It does go up. I just, you know, if your argument for Mitch Marner is we should reset the market for wingers, then, okay, go ahead and argue that it's $10 million or $11 million or whatever

it is. But if your argument is that under the current market, he should be making that, that case just isn't there. And it's, if that's what's coming from the camp, then it's, it's, they're in fantasy land. Elite, elite players in their position now make more, now make 10 million plus. Elite players. And he's one. But even 10 million, so 10 million plus, there's a big difference between that and 11 and a half.

Yeah. Which is apparently, you know, that's the number. And look, it's a negotiation. Sometimes you put a higher number out there. You know, there's one school of thought that says they're, they're flooding the market with talk of 11 million so that when he takes nine and a half, he's the good hometown boy who took a discount that wasn't really a discount. but he's the hero. You can see that happen. But I just, everything that I'm hearing and feeling about this is that this could get

uglier than it is. And in fact, even Dregor had a tweet earlier today where he said that right now the plan is Marner is going to be visiting with other teams next week when the window opens. Oh, that's awesome. Which is going to be, if you're a leaf fan, you hate it, but if you're anybody else and like you're looking for the popcorn, this is going to be great. This is going to be something, especially when the Islanders and, Lou come in and on.

Good to see you again, Mitchell. I like your smooth skin. Last topic of conversation on Puck's deep this week. Baseball. The Tampa Bay Rays are exploring an opportunity to play half of their games in Tampa, I'm sorry, St. Peter, or the fuck they are, and half of their games in Montreal,

Montreal at one point had a team that played half of their games or whatever, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. What the fuck? Like, what, why? And Fendrell lost that team 20 years ago because their stadiums sucked. Right. And in case you're wondering, they don't have a new one.

Same stadiums. I got to, being, we, the athletic with the whole team had meetings yesterday. And being there with all of those sports writers when that news broke was one of the highlights of my week. Because just like, just to see it ripple, like people looking at their phones like, what the fun. It's so crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's, it feels like just a, this is a new ballpark push, and this is a way to sort of blackmail the, uh, the, the fan base, but holy smokes.

Would Montreal sell out those games? Like, would they, would they draw fans for a team that's their half the time? It's, it's, it's going to be a tough sell if it's the second half, and some team comes in that's 25 and 45 and already 20 games out of the, uh, out of first place. Montreal has done quite well at the Blue Jays go and play a couple games in spring training and they always have really big crowds. It's a great atmosphere and everything, but I don't know. I mean, would they embrace half a team as their own? I think they would embrace half a team if it was a step towards them getting the full team.

Yeah. Right? Like if this was the obvious transition to get them the full team, then yes, if it's just we're going to share as a long-term. solution. Bolster our revenue with your... It's going to be... It's going to be tough.

You're getting them the second half every year and they're crap. Like, you're never going to see a meaningful game. Yeah. That's a tough. And then it comes back to like, how does this team approach free agents and like, I mean, like, what do you, what do you possibly? Oh, by the way, here, buy a house here, but also here. Like, it's like insane. The whole thing makes no fucking sense.

The only thing that I do want to see it happen is all the people who over the last year magically on Twitter became tax experts. on the impact of tax. I want to see them try to figure out how half Tampa with no taxes, and half Montreal with all the taxes. How does that actually... Passports and fucking all kinds of shit, man. It's crazy. What did you think of this, Ryan?

Yeah, I mean, so maybe people know this, maybe they don't. I was an ex-pos fan growing up for... And then I, you know, I made a good faith effort, I would say, to be a Red Sox fan, and it just didn't really stick. You know, when the Red Sox fan... stocks got good. I was like, oh, pretty cool. And then when they kind of slunk back into being not so good for a little while there, I was like, yeah, I guess I really don't care about this anymore. But yeah, so like, as a person who I was in, I went to a game the last season, they

were in Olympic Stadium and all that kind of stuff. Like, I, you know, I guess it's good, but like, I wouldn't care about this team, you know, like, as a person who doesn't live there. And, And I guess the bigger issue is, yeah, like, they already tried splitting time with the expos and a warm weather team and nobody cared. So why? But that was, I mean, that was the start of the exit, right? That was the beginning of the end, whereas this theory could be the beginning of the beginning. That wasn't, yeah. Yeah.

So it's tough, right? Because you want to say, oh, Montreal is a good baseball market. look at all the times they, you know, they were selling out. They led the league in attendance when the strike happened and all that shit, but it's like... When they would have won the World Series if a strike didn't happen? Is that the year you're talking about? That is the year. And that's what people always say.

Well, they let... And it's like, yeah, teams that have good records typically do well in attendance. The problem is the Tampa Bay Rays, I don't know if you guys have seen the news about this. They suck shit. They're terrible. They do suck shit. Yes. So, like, that's the problem is that, like, you're going, now, what if we gave you half of a really bad team?

How would you guys feel about baseball then? Because, you know, if you just say they're moving to Montreal, like, I think that's a different situation. But they're not moving to Montreal. This is, by the way, we should say, this is all a transparent ploy to get Tampa to pony up the money for a new stadium. It's probably not going to happen regardless, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just hear me out. I know it's a challenging market,

and I know they're having trouble, they might have trouble here, bringing fans. Just hear me out. They play duck, duck goose after the time. Okay. I hear that turns it right around. Duck, duck goose, silly celebrations.

Come on. You know, I watch baseball. I stand up doing these jerk things, these jerk players. What happened to Larry Walker? Boy, you want to talk about teams that stink. Oh, boy, the Toronto Blue Jays not good this year. But the other thing I was going to say about it, though, is, yes, this is a pretty transparent attempt to just get a new stadium.

And maybe it's a transparent attempt to get a new stadium out of Montreal, which, hey, sure, why not? But also, like, I can't remember who, somebody on Twitter put it this way. And it's like, here are Tampa's options. Either lose a bunch of money on a team that you've got to pay for their stuff. stadium and they still like are spending time elsewhere for for two, three, four years while the new stadium is being built. Or just some other city like Hartford or something comes in and goes, uh, there are our team now, actually.

Have a good one. Yeah, Hartford. You're the best. All right. The guy said Hartford on Twitter. That was, I was just doing his bit. Thanks, uh, everybody for listening to the podcast this week. Thanks to Sean for being in my hotel room.

hope it doesn't have a man stink to it. I've only been here for one night. Thanks to Ryan for, I mean, for being on the East Coast and working around our schedule on the West Coast, being that we're in Vancouver. Yes, I'm very magnanimous. It's true. You are. Thanks to all of you for listening to this podcast.

We'll do the mailbag next on the Patreon, supportly coming up before the end of the month. and join us next week where we will talk about everything that happened at a few hours and then also talk about the things that hadn't happened yet

which is what happens when you do a show in between the draft and July 1st. All right. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Bye.

Thanks, G.H. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons we've got sportly commentary to what if you commute but we also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tools It's your weekly bowl of

Hockey and Nonsense Part 2