Puck Soup - PreTrade Division

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Sean and Ryan talk about the big trade and its impact on all involved, key injuries, and more.

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McAnew of the Athletic. And Sean, before we get to, what was it kind of, you would say, not much going on kind of a week in the NHL. Slow week, yeah. Yeah. I wanted to tell you a funny story from BC BU. Okay.

So, BU, one of the best teams in the country this year, but their goal tendings a little iffy, I think you would say. And, you know, they outscore a lot of their problems. one of the best offenses in the nation. And so they brought in a goalie from the USHL who is going to come in next year. He's a devil's second rounder named Mikhail Yegorov. And he starts in the game against BC on Saturday night at BC. First college start.

Okay. And he is so amped up to play that, you know how when they open the doors for the linesmen to come out and skate around before warmups? Uh-huh. This kid just fucking sprits out onto the ice. Okay. You're not allowed to do that. You're supposed to let the linesmen go first, and then the home team, and then the visitors. That's how the rule works.

Okay. And so BU gets a penalty to open the game for breach of protocol. I think they technically call it a delay of game penalty, but it's a protocol penalty. And BC scores 24 seconds in and wins. two nothing on an empty, with an empty nickel. Oh. Isn't that fucking brutal? This kid was awesome.

Dude. This kid was unbelievable. He's 6'6. He looked enormous. And he looked great. Is this like one of those things where does this happen? Like is there, is there no choice or is this like some ref just like, you couldn't have let this go for?

So that, that was kind of B.U's argument, if you can, if you can imagine. You know. This kid's Russian. Maybe the rules are different in the USHL. I imagine they're not, but maybe they are. And after the game, B.U's coach was like, look, it's on me because I should have told him, like, all the protocol stuff. But, like, also, come on, this is fucking ridiculous. And even BC was like, I've never, like, B.C.'s coach was like, I've never seen that.

Ryan Leonard, who had four goals on the weekend, and is going to really help the Washington Capitals this spring, I think. Even he was like, yeah, I don't like starting the game on the power play. It's weird to do it. I don't think I've ever done it, but it felt insane. Yeah, that is something that almost never would happen, right? Yeah, I was going to ask you, you're the guy who, you know, knows all the history stuff. Yeah.

Do you remember this kind of thing? ever happening before? Man, I'm trying to think... I've seen teams come out. And back in the olden days, there would occasionally be like pregame brawls that they would have to deal with. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind

is when teams have like illegal lineups where they've got the wrong guy, but that's, A, that's not a penalty, and B, that happens after the first shift, so it's not a right out of the game. gate sort of deal. Yeah. Yeah.

That's strange. How do you do? What's your power play that you draw up for like clean sheet of ice, center ice face off? Yeah. I mean, they scored on it in 24 seconds. So it was a good, good, whatever it was. Yeah. Well, you know, what their, their magic formula was was having Ryan Leonard on the ice.

You know what I mean? Like this kid is unbelievable. Well, I was going to ask if like they scored because the goal it was like still like doing sprints around the ice. No, no, no, yeah. Climbing in the stands. But yeah, it was just, I never seen something like that. Well, I've seen stuff where, like, a team came out early for warm out, like the whole team, but never just one guy and never in his first game.

So. I like the enthusiasm. Yeah. Keep that same energy, buddy. Like I said, he was so good. And the one goal he gave up was like, Ryan Leonard shot immediately. to an unpicked up Teddy Stiga, who's another really good young player for BC.

Like bang, bang, you've seen it a million times, makes the first save. There's nobody picking up the second guy and it's in the back of the net. Brutal. Anyway. We all learned a valuable lesson. We did.

Let the linesmen go out first. They get mad if you don't. I think that's it, right? That wraps up this week. All right. Thanks, everybody. No, well, so on Friday night, I'm at the other BCBQ game, of course. And I would say like late in the second period, big trade about to happen comes across the wire.

Everybody's like, oh, okay, you know, this is exciting. Around the start of the second intermission, Miko Ranton is getting moved. Everybody's like, hold on, what? And then the trade works out, it's Miko Ranton and Taylor Hall to the Carolina Hurricanes for Marty Natchez. I wanted to say, Chris Drury, it's shack derry. And like a third round pick in a couple of seconds or something like that. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. I had the experience of I went on to Twitter, I think it was, and saw, you know, blah, blah, trade happening, and then I saw Taylor Hall to Carolina. I was like, oh, okay. Good for that. I think that was the first thing that kind of trickled out. And then I just, you know, scroll, scroll, scroll, oh, Miko Raton, why is his name? What the hell? Crazy.

That was a, and I will say, like, not. Got to give some credit. I don't know if this made it down to the States, but like two days before Nick Kiprios put out his tradeboard, and he had rent in like near the top and got yelled at by a lot of people. Sure. You're crazy. You're, you know, doing this for clicks. You're in all this. And yeah, sure enough.

Yeah, you know, it's funny because I, you know, it's one of those things where people were like, you know, nobody saw this coming. what good are insiders. Like you say, Nick Kiprios had that, and I hadn't seen that. So that's interesting that he put it out there. But also, like, for two, I think two episodes of 32 thoughts in a row,

Elliot kind of talked about, you know, this random thing is pretty interesting without, like, saying, and they might trade him. But, you know, if you want to read between the lines, and he's talking, too,

about, you know, in Carolina, they want to be really aggressive, you know, in the coming weeks here, blah, blah, blah. So, like, he was, he, I feel like Elliot was around it, even if he didn't necessarily, you know, have all the details nailed down.

So, um, it's just, you know, like. I don't think this was, I don't think it this is a case where people didn't see it coming. I think it, they didn't see it coming this quickly. Yeah, I think that's a good way of, this soon in the season and also quickly in the sense that there wasn't a lot of buzz around. Like very often with these sort of deals, I mean, geez, look at what's happening in Vancouver. We've been hearing about the same guys for a month now. And while we now know that Carolina had been working on this deal for a while now, it hadn't really gotten out there. Right.

And certainly Miko Rana sounds like he was surprised at how quickly it happened. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll talk about the Colorado aspect. Let's talk about the Carolina of it all. first. And I, you know, I think you'd have to say they won the trade. They got two of the three best players in it, you know, and certainly the number one.

You might argue with a bullet, although the way Marty Natchez has hit the ground running in Colorado, maybe not so much. But I thought this is a really interesting trade for them just because it's like, yeah, I guess they really did want to trade Marty Natchez after all. Yep. You know? Yep. And we all kind of waited for that to play out in the summer and then.

It didn't. And everyone was like, oh, okay. I don't know. I mean, I don't know that we can say that Carolina wins the trade until we see what the extension looks like. Right. If there is one. That's fair. Clearly the two scenarios here that would be concerning all.

are that they can't sign him, and he walks for nothing in the summer, or they do sign him, but it's to some outrageous number, the old shiny new toy. And I'm less concerned about that. Really, I'm not super concerned about either scenario. I think what makes sense here is that a deal gets done, that is probably higher than Colorado was willing to go, but not so high that it immediately feels like they've just done a Jonathan Herbido, Huberto. Yep.

Style of contract. But we do have to wait and see. Yeah, I think that's fair. I'm just saying. But the old cliche about you get the best player, blah, blah, blah. That's why I'm saying. Certainly, yeah. I love dealing in cliches, so that's fine.

That's right. But, you know, I let, here's another reason I like this is, uh, Rantanin and Aho play together in international hockey when, when the opportunity arises. We're going to, I would assume we're going to see that in a few weeks here. And so like, there's already a familiarity there. They love having their fins on the team, obviously. And so I don't know. I think that's, that doesn't hurt, uh, Carolina for, for that to, like, them to have

a little bit of pre-existing chemistry. Yeah, and you know Ajo's going to be like the big salesman on this too. Yeah, of course. And it's, what's interesting is Carolina is not a team I think of as they pay guys a bunch of money. You know what I mean? Like everybody on that on that team, you're kind of like, that's actually a pretty good deal. Yeah. Including the coach.

Right. Yeah. So is that something that Miko Ranton is interested in buying into? because clearly in Colorado, that was part of the concern was, hey, we've already got Nathan McKinnon, we've got Kill McCar. Yeah, McCar's up next year or two years from that? Two years, so next summer he would get his extension, presumably. So how high can we go?

Is there an internal limit? Can you make more than Nathan McKininin, that sort of thing? And on a team that had drafted him that he's been with his whole career that he had won a Stanley Cup with, he clearly was a little bit hesitant to play ball with that sort of thing. So him arriving on a brand new team that he has no connection to and being told, oh, by the way, everyone here takes less money. Right.

I could see him being like, well, that's nice for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to do that to buy into a culture that I have literally just dropped into and have no loyalty to. Now, that haven't been said. you know, again, he gets to play with Aho. He gets to play for Rod Brindamore,

who is a guy with a reputation for somebody players love playing for. So that all helps. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Well, and I mean, the thing we're not talking about is it certainly makes them more dangerous on the ice. Like, because here's the thing, Martin Aitchis. He was their leading scorer this year, I think, in both goals and total points. And what's interesting about that is, again, this is a guy that they were kind of like,

maybe we're not like super into committing to this guy big money long term. But then you're like, well, so why is he, you know, he's going off this year. He's kind of playing for a contract because he is also eligible to re-up in the summer and all this kind of thing. But what's interesting to me is, I don't know if you saw this, he has, he has. has more power play time this season so far than he did all of last year. Hmm. So this to me, at least a little bit, you know, I don't want to say like the guy is bad or anything like that. He's certainly not.

But at least to me, this reads a little bit, like one of those gimmicks where it's like, oh, yeah, we, we're just going to, like, put this guy in a position to put up a ton of points, boost his value and then make it so he is able to be traded for, say, a Miko Rantan. And if so, it worked. Big salute. Yeah. Congrats on the success of your plan. So I like, you know, whether it works or not for now, not knowing any of the things we don't know, I like it a lot for Carolina.

Yeah, it certainly makes them more dangerous this year. I like it when teams take big swings. There is a case to be made that Miko Ranton is already the best forward in Carolina Hurricanes history. Right. As far as what he is right now, you know, no disrespect to like the late stages of Ron Francis or, you know, obviously Rod Brindamore or Eric Stahl, guys like that, that this may be at least the most dangerous, most talented player that they've ever had. Yeah. even if it's only for this season. I mean, remember, NACIS was signed for one additional year.

So, you know, it's not like you were necessarily locked into that guy forever. I think it's right now, knowing what the unknowns are and just being able to sort of say, okay, based on the likelihood of this or that, it's the right book. It's a gap. Totally. And there's risk involved, but also, you know, as we find ourselves saying in a lot of these situations, yeah, the risk is why the player was available. Yes.

If Miko Ranton was signed, locked into a nice team-friendly contract, he never gets traded in a million years. So, yes, the uncertainty around the contract is why you have this opportunity. So you can either let that scare you off and never make any big bold moves ever. or you can pick your spots where the risk reward ratio feels right. I think it is for Carolina here. Yeah, and, you know, I think to your point about them, like, just getting, like, a guy who, you know, a superstar level talent, obviously there's some risk that, like, you get him away from Nathan McKinnon and he's Martin Natchez level good instead of Miko Ranton level good, right? but they've never had a guy that's good and so to be the the team that's aggressive and like we should want more of this in the league. We should want every team being like,

absolutely. Fuck it. Let's go trade for a superstar. Let's be willing to give up on a guy who's a couple years younger and a little bit cheaper, although, you know, not once you factor in cap retention, which we'll also get to. but like this is this is what it's all about if we want if we want to like have it where uh you know we're trading like we're playing nchl 25 or whatever you know what i mean you got to give to get and they get and they gave and uh i love i love it for carolina even even if ranting and doesn't resign long term i love the idea i love the vibe of it you know

And to bang the same drum that I kind of never shut up about, this is the sort of move that if you've got one of those GMs who's always talking about how hard it is and you know, you just can't do it during the season and all of this, it kind of makes you just turn to him and go like, what are you doing all day? Right. And, you know, we'll get to it later in the show, I imagine,

but there are apparently other very big names available out there. So, I don't know. There is a very small part of me and this is, this is wishful thinking and you can play this clip back to me in three months and point and laugh at me. But when you look at some of the big names that are out there, there is a part of me that wonders like, does this, you know, we talk about like the first shoe that drops or whatever, like, does this dislodge something? And suddenly this ends up being the year of the,

big mid-season move. Yeah, and I think there's, I think there's a lot of reasons that that it could be because there's the weird international break where you're actually allowed to make trades. Yep. And all these GMs will just be sitting at home looking at their phones, like, I don't know, whatever. Yeah. And I was told that their, the expectation was there wouldn't be movement during the break.

It's allowed, but that just that wasn't going to be what, what was going on. but maybe now let's see man i mean this is again this is i've i've said it often but if i was an owner of an nchel team i would be you know probably talking to my gym going like so what are we doing yeah that's our deal um but the other the other thing with like gms being kind of empowered to to make big moves or what have you i i do wonder how much like all this stuff about the caps going up. And I want to talk about that more later as well. But like if teams are like, well, if we're going to have, because Eric Tulski said after, like, after the trade on his like press conference call or whatever, like, we're going to have like 30, 40 million dollars in cap space.

I think we can make this work. Like what the number is almost immaterial, which I wouldn't personally be out there saying that kind of a thing if I'm about to enter a negotiation. agent, just Undertakers sit up to... Yeah, he's like, oh, okay, sounds like $18 million a year. Sounds great, thank you. Sure does. But yeah, I mean, I wonder if teams will be more willing if we find out the cap next year is going to be like $95, $96 million.

It's a huge increase, you know? And there's a lot of names out that are expected to be available, let's say, or not available what's the word I'm looking for. Like unrestricted free agents. Like not necessarily signed for next season. So we'll see. We'll just have to see. So for Colorado.

Yes, Colorado. Where are we at on this? And where are we at on Miko Randin's reaction? Where he is essentially said that he was caught off guard. He did not think a trade was at all limited. and had apparently made some comments that he was even willing to take a below market deal to stay in Colorado. Right. Yes.

So there is all that, of course. But let's start with just the, yeah, like you say, the implications for what it means that they were willing to trade him is I just think it means that like they, you know, the thing about rantan. I think Ranton and phrased it perfectly to not be the bad guy here. Okay. Where he's like, I'm taking below market value. What does that mean? You know, like, what's the number that he thinks is below market value is the question? What is market value?

Right. And I think there's a lot of people who would look at it and say it's for a winger, it's a number that, you know, maybe starts with an 11. Right. Maybe at 12, you probably don't want to go over Nathan McKinnon. there's other side of it to say, no, market value is Leon Dricidal set the market for an elite top 10 player in the league pending UFA. And his number was 14. So that's market value.

And in which point Miko Ranton can come in and go, you know what, I'll be a good guy and do 13.8. That's exactly right. Yeah. I'm, I got to admit, I am fascinated by the implication here. that his, rantan and his team, you know, his agents,

the people around him, were caught off guard by this. Yes. Because that could certainly indicate a breakdown, a failure in communication by the avalanche. Like if, if his legitimate real reaction here is,

hey, man, like I thought we were negotiating, I was going to get to a lower number to stay. And you guys jumped the gun and, you know, made a deal. six weeks before you needed to, if you even felt the need to do this during the season.

Right. The other side of it is there is a little bit of a taste of like a mess around and find out situation where... Sure. Hey man, you're going to... If you're going to run this bluff, sometimes bluffs get called. And I think it was Elliot in the written 32 thoughts where he was saying before the trade happened. that they were getting to a point in Colorado

where it's like let's put the cards on the table. Enough with the bluffs, enough with the acts. And that certainly felt like it was probably referencing more of the player's side than the team side, although it could have been both. And yeah, maybe Miko Renton and his people got a little too cute here and figured that they could push for a high number

knowing in their back pocket that they could, they were comfortable dropping down if they needed to before a trade happened, assuming that a trade wouldn't happen until the deadline at the earliest, and that there would be lots of heads up of it happening. And instead, Colorado just kind of went, you know what? No, we're not doing this. We're going to take a deal now. We're not going to worry about an injury or, you know, whatever could happen down the line. Yep. It's interesting. The other thing is the reaction from like the Colorado room and the coaches was not positive. I think it's safe to say.

Yeah, that's right. So they seemed a little ticked off. So we'll see how that plays out. And whether we look at this and go, we always hear about GMs talking, again, the GMs who don't want to make moves are always talking about their precious chemistry and not wanting to disrupt that.

It always sounds like an excuse, but who knows, maybe Colorado will turn out to be the cautionary example. of, yeah, maybe don't trade the beloved superstar player and blindside everybody. Yep. Yeah. So I think, I think I can't remember where I heard or saw this or whatever, but Colorado was willing to make Ranton the highest paid winger in the league.

And that would be what, Panarin right now? Panarin, who's like 113 or something like that. And so, yeah, like you say, he might be thinking. Well, the number starts with a 12. The deal signed like four or five years ago. Yes. But so, yeah, so like... Six years ago actually coming in.

Wow. Jesus. Where does the time go? Anyway. Yeah, like to your point, is he going, the number actually starts with the 12. They're like, I don't think it does. And how do you resolve that? You resolve that by trading him, I guess.

I guess. I mean, you resolve it by like how big is the actual difference here. I mean, we've seen guys get traded over. and then in Einstein you find out it's like some small amount. I will give Chris McFarland some credit here. Like it's take some guts to make this move. Absolutely.

Both sides. Both sides, but like a different kind of, you know, this is. You're going to be willing to be yelled at. Carolina is kind of a no guts, no glory. Like, hey, we're going to take a big swing here. And, you know, if we miss, we miss. is more of the, like, this could play out badly in a few different ways. And, I mean, given that, the package they got back was good. It wasn't great. It wasn't, this wasn't a situation where

you go, you know what? Yeah, I'd jump at that deal too. I mean, I guess, but, you know, Carolina slapped an offer down on the table. It was so, so good that they just had to take it. Right. But clearly there was a feeling that it just wasn't going to get done. Can I say this, too, about the whole, like, because Nathan McKinnon was like, you know, I don't care about who makes money, who doesn't make money if he wanted to make more than me, blah, blah, blah. And I saw all these people saying, Nathan McKinnon took below market value, you know, everybody else should be willing to, too.

Did Nathan McKinnon take below market value when he became the highest paid player in the league? That's, that's it. I mean, Nathan McKinnon's previous contract for years. Yeah, of course, right. The example of a below market contract. Again, as with almost every below market contract you could ever point to, not because he was willing to take less, not because he was being a good dude,

but because it just the timing of it. The cap, yes. For a lot of years, right at the time where he took off and went up a tier or two as far as being a franchise level, superstar that he hadn't been previously. I don't know. I mean, did he take less? There's the argument that every superstar in this league takes less.

Right. Yes, of course. But, no, I don't know that he took that much less. When he signed that extension, it was for the highest AAB in the league. Yeah. So the idea that he took less money, like, I don't know what that is referring to. You know what I mean? I think that's a crazy take to have.

But anyway, it'll be interesting just because, you know, again, obviously on paper, Colorado downgraded, except to say that maybe you would say, like, oh, Jack Drury bolsters their depth or, you know, that kind of thing. But, like, NACIS isn't Rantanin. Rantin, I think, has, like, the seventh or eighth most points in the league over the last four or five years or maybe even more than that. I can't remember the numbers I pulled down. the other night writing the article. But, you know, this is a top 10 productive player in the league over any number of years in his career, basically.

But to me, I just, you know, if they just feel like we can put fucking a lucky prize winner next to Nathan McKinnon, he's going to run a point of game if we give him enough power play time, you know? Like, just pull some kid out of the audience. You're an eight-year-old? Yeah, you just stand next to the game. this guy. He's going to fucking get you a few secondary assists. You know?

I wonder how much that's just kind of the calculus that's built into this, but I'll, you know, I guess we'll see. And then there's the Blackhawks. Then there's Chicago. Yes, indeed. They, people aren't going to want to hear this. They save money on this deal and got their own pickback. That's why they made the trade.

Yeah. They lowered their cap commitments. They don't have to pay Taylor Hall anymore. And they got a pick that allows them to, in theory, be an offer sheet and team this summer. Yes, as well as the fact that it's a third round pick, but it's almost a second round pick because it's there. It's theirs, yeah. So I got to be, like, I think like a lot of people, when I first saw this, I didn't understand what Chicago was doing. I have seen a few explanations that allow me to understand better.

But this still feels pretty disappointing to me if you're the Blackhawks. Because, I mean, you've got Taylor Hall. Obviously, that hasn't worked since they acquired him last summer. He has one year, kind of blown up by injury this year. I mean, he just hasn't produced. But you still figure you're going to be able to get something for them at the deadline. And I don't know what the something is. It's not going to be a first-round pick.

It's not going to be an elite prospect. But they essentially get a third round pick for retaining even more salary than they would have retained on Taylor Hall. And that kind of works both ways because, It was assumed that if they trade at Taylor Hall of the deadline, that they were going to have to eat probably 50% of it. And maybe not even get a third round pick for them. Maybe not even get a third round pick. So here they eat more than 50% of Taylor Hall's deal,

but they end up eating a huge chunk of Rantin's deal, but it's only for one year. And it's with half the season ago instead of a third of the season. So that adds up to a few more dollars. Yep. And they get the same third. ground pick that they were hoping to get for Taylor Hall, except you could say it's not the same third ground pick.

It's 25 spots higher, which is, which makes a difference. And again, also, it allows them to, because it's their own pick, it allows them to sign somebody to an offer sheet this summer if they so choose. And it's not like they're not going to have fucking cap space. They got lots of cap space. I think they may have one or two holes in the roster that they'll be looking to fill. That's right. And yeah, I mean, it was talked about the,

in the aftermath of this, that, yeah, that Chicago's going to be aggressive in the offseason, whether it's Ranting in or a Mitch Marner or whoever could shake free or offer sheets, look out for the Blackhawks. And I think that's the messaging you would expect to hear when a team is having a disappointing year two of the...

Totally. Let's contend stage of the rebuild. So I guess I get what Chicago. was doing here. I mean, it was, my thing is... It's certainly not great from their perspective. Yes, my thing is it was framed as a disaster and they're, what are these fucking morons doing? And it's like, yeah, I think if you don't see the logic that they're working with, you don't have to agree with it.

But if you don't see what their, like, angle on it is, I think you're being willfully obtuse. Okay. What are they doing? I don't know. They're getting rid of a guy they had no plans for in saving money and getting a third round pick. I feel like I cracked it. I don't know. Yeah, that's, that's, I think that's reasonable.

It's just, yeah, boy, what a, what a deal, eh, when like a former MVP being in the deal is like, eh. Oh, right, that guy. Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Complete throwing. Hey, speaking of former MVP's, one thing you're not allowed to say coming out of all this is the, Sidney Crosby might get traded at some point in the indeterminate future. Sounds disres. You can't even imply it.

No. If you imply it, you're going to, you are going to make somebody really mad at Pittsburgh. You're going to be, and it's not Sidney Crosby, by the way, just FYI. It's not, it's not that guy. He's not the one that's going to be mad. Some of the media have expressed frustration. So if people, for whatever weird reason, were out doing something fun on Friday

instead of being terminally online. In the aftermath of the Rantinand Trade, it was Frank, right? Frank Saravelli, I believe, tweeted out that he had heard that this wasn't even the biggest move that was being talked about or that had been talked about that week. And then I don't remember who it was,

but there was some implication about someone from new Ufenland is joining. Yeah. Nathan McKinnon or whatever. There was, yeah. Everybody kind of quickly put the dots together. And I think it was like the spit and chick flick guys were part of it. Well, and then Kevin Weeks just posted a picture of Pittsburgh, as he loves to do, with the eyeball emoji.

Look, man, can I just say, I don't know what U.S. cities look like. So every time Kevin Weeks does that, I have no idea. I only knew because of the yellow bridge or a sphere. Or a Statue of Liberty, I got nothing for you. So, like, stop doing that, Kevin. It's the Yellow Bridge from The Dark Night Rises. You don't know about this? I don't.

No, sorry. I didn't see that. Congrats to you. That one sucks. Okay. So you dodged a bullet there. That one's horrible. But I don't like any of those movies, but that's the, I mean, that's the worst one by a lot.

Okay. It's not even close. Even people who like those movies will be like, yeah, I don't know what was going on with the dark night. That's one where they blow up the football field, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay. So I guess I did know that was a Pittsburgh thing.

Yeah. But Paul Bisonette says, like, basically starts tweeting about Crosby to Colorado. And he's doing it in a way where I think if you look at the tweets, he's not reporting anything. He's just clearly speculating, connecting dots, that kind of thing. But given that he has, he's obviously well connected and he has broken stories in the past, I think some people maybe thought he was going a little further on what he was hinting at. And people start to freak out. And I see J post something saying, you know, I'm told Sidney Crosby's not being traded,

which just felt like, I mean, just seeing that, like it was the sort of like, my Sydney Crosby is not being traded. Sure, it is raising a lot of questions. Yeah, absolutely. So you've got that going on. mean what you've got the Vancouver stuff, you've got all this other, all these other pieces. But yes, there has been, I would say significant pushback from the Pittsburgh local media to say, how dare you?

This is not going to happen. So 60% chance, I think, is where. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But so I wanted to talk about two things with this. One, it turns out that the Kevin Weeks thing, was he, I would say, using an opportune time to, some might say, get some clicks.

Because the news was that Fenway Sports Group is thinking about selling a minority stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins while retaining control. That's it. That's the news. That's the penguins news. Now, to me, that's the most who gives a shit thing imaginable. Yeah. You know, like, who fucking cares? selling a minority state.

That's... I care about watching a minority report. You ever see this one? That's a great movie. That's a good one. Yeah. The red ball comes out. It says Sidney Crosby is being traded.

Oh, no. Uh-oh. I have to go on an hours-long mission to prevent that from happening. That's right. And I guess you could say that in some ways, insiders are precogs. You know what? Frank Sarah Valley sits up in a big tub of goo, and he's like, Trade. Minority Report. That's a great film. Stephen Spielberg directed to check it out.

But I think the other thing that you got to say with the Penguins at this point is something has to happen, right? They're fucking horrible. And they're not getting better. They're like, oh, you know, they're kicking the tires on Buffalo's young guys, blah, blah, blah. You think the solution here is a guy who isn't good enough to be on the Buffalo Sabres? I don't know, man. When you put it that way. Yeah. Still, they are four games below NHL 500. A negative 40 goal difference.

These guys fucking stink. Yep. The Buffalo Sabers goal difference is twice as good as. the Pittsburgh Penguins. They, they, and I said this a few times this year, my running bit of like, I'm not willing to put a flag in the ground on the penguins because every time I do. I'd love to see old Sidney Crosby wriggle out of this one.

Yeah, I feel like this is kind of three straight losses, seven of their last 10, behind the Islanders, behind the Flyers, have played more games than everyone. They're out. They're cooked, man. They are horrible. And so, you know, again, there was this stuff about like, oh, how much blamed his

Kyle Dubas taken? It's like not none, but also like the whole thing was you can't let, I think I said this last week, the whole thing was you can't like Crosby Malkin and Latang Walk. So how do you, how do you square that, you know? Mm-hmm. And, you know, he wasn't the one that. extended everybody. Like he extended Crosby, obviously, but...

What you're supposed to do? Yes. Apparently. Well, I mean... You know, look, I'm just saying, maybe there's a team in Denver that might be interested in picking them up. Well, I feel like they'd still be interested

with a couple of years left on his contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're not allowed to say that, so don't even bring it up. But like, okay, we're not allowed to say it about Crosby. What about Malkin? What about Lattang? What about Carlson?

and I think the, you know, the contract is the issue there. But you know what I mean? There has to be something kind of radical done with this team, and I don't know what the answer is. You would imagine. They seem really committed to this group just, you know, financially and contractually. Carlson's got two years left. Yeah. Do you think if they ate half of it, do you think someone would take him?

at six million? Yeah. I don't think somebody's giving you a fortune for him but would they take them off your hands? Yeah. Chris LaTang has got three years left after this one.

How do we feel about that? That's a tough one. And what's Malkin at? Malkin's close. This year and next. Complete no move though. Oops. And the penguins

I just looked have already used two of their three retention spots. Oh, man. Jeff Petrie and Riley Smith. So. Oh, but both of those are up this summer. So in theory. But you could not do anything.

Until the end of the season. Well, I mean, you could. You could do one thing at the deadline. Right. And again, this is where, you know, we'll get into the whole, oh, well, you know, if you're going to do this, you do it in the off season, not during the season. You know, and then the season comes along and you go, well, you know, everyone's got cap space.

everyone likes their teams in the summer. You've got to wait until whatever it is. The amount of everybody has cap space, though, is the interesting thing. Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. Because, and this is another thing is Elliot has been saying for the last, like, week or two, you know, we're probably two years away from a hundred million dollar cap.

Yep. And what's interesting about that is there are a lot of teams that can make like 80, 85, 88 work. there aren't as many teams that can make $100 million work as they're going commitment to an NHL roster. And, you know, people say, oh, well, you could make trades like this before the cap, before the cap, before the cap, there was still a cap. It was just different for every team.

And it was flexible because you could go to your owner and go, hey, man, we can get this, you know, Palo Burr is available. Can we spend a little bit more money? But teams have always had internal budgets. And that has sort of been hidden for a while now because with a handful of exceptions that sort of stand out by being exceptions, everyone can spend to the cap.

And that might not be the case. And that'll be interesting because it's been, God, what, 20 years since we've seen small market teams in not able to keep their players because of salary season, situations and losing them to the bigger markets, and are we going to go back to that? I hope so, personally. Yeah.

It's really interesting just because, like, you know, the Canadian dollars relative, like, I'll tell you who's not going to be a hundred million dollar payroll team is the Winnipeg Jets. You know what I mean? They don't have the building size. They don't have the market size. Yeah. And the other team, the other small market Canadian team that's going to have a problem is the Quebec City Senators.

I don't think they're going to. Yeah. We'll do that later. We will do that later. But yeah, I mean, so all of the, but my thing is, what I'm saying is, if we get to a hundred million dollar cap in the next, again, it could be 96 next season, right? And if it's 96, 97, whatever the number is, maybe that Eric Carlson contract is a little more tradable. Not a lot, but a little bit. And especially, like you say, if the penguins retained.

but I also think it creates a situation where every team is going to be like, hey, would you, I got a great idea. Would you like our problem contract? You got the cap space, huh? What do you say? Yep. And like I don't, I just think that it's going to be a really weird market that because the implication is that they're going to kind of announce what the salary cap is, maybe not even just next year, but for a few years beyond that. Yeah. in the near future.

And when they do that, I wonder how that juices the trade market and all these guys who, you know, again, the Vancouver guy, Cam Robinson just tweeted that Brock Bessor is going to be available

or, you know, if things don't change in a serious way there. And I just wonder if teams are just like, you know what, fuck it. Let's just spend a crazy amount of money for the next two years then.

Let's go wild. I don't know. It's interesting. Maybe. Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about a couple of situations that affect the upcoming four nations faceoff or whatever they're calling it. I think that's the name of it. I'm still not really totally clear.

Let's start with big one, New Jersey Devils, Jacob Marks from about four to six weeks, rules him out of the four nations. but because two of the, well, you know, a week and three quarters of those four to six weeks are not devils related. This actually isn't the worst news for them. It's not the worst. It's not great. No. Check the tape from last night and tell me how good it is or isn't, you know? Especially when one of the other contenders in your division is upgrading significantly.

That's right. It's, but, yeah, it's certainly not as bad as it could be. Yeah, what's Sweden down to in goaltending? Because we don't know if Allmark will be available. Doesn't seem like he will be. By the way that- He sounds like he's ready to be back soon, but would the senators want him coming back and then quickly heading to an international?

So, yeah, let me pull up the, the Four Nations rosters, because I haven't looked at it, I guess. Final rosters announced. Here we go. Sweden, Sweden, their goalies are Philip Gustafson, who I think would have been the starter anyway, is still healthy. So that's the only guy. They're going to have to find somebody else, it feels like. Okay.

To somebody else's, I guess. In theory, yeah. Maybe the senators, if they get some assurances that old Mark won't be playing a lot. Okay, go have fun out there, you know, but we'll see. I mean, it's not going to be playing a lot. I'd rather him be sticking around. Back home, lifting weights. Yeah, that's right.

But I guess I guess we'll see. I'm assuming he would probably, he probably wouldn't mind playing Boston. Yeah. Sort of thing, right? Like, you know, kind of a home company. Is U.S. Sweden? I think USA Sweden might be one of the games in Boston. It is.

Well, there you have it. That could be Swamen versus Olmark if we all play our cards, right? Wouldn't that be so fun? Boy, Swinman's playing really well since he came back, or since Christmas, huh? Yes. It's like 920 or something like that. The Bruins have, I think, one win. Oops.

Anyway, oh yeah, I wanted to say this about the Devils, too. one regulation win in their last nine games. Yep. Seems bad. That's me. It does. Yeah. I'm with you on that one.

Thanks. The other bit of Four Nations news is that I think it was on Sunday, Vegas announced. Alex Petrangelo will be held out of the tournament while he deals with an ailment. They said ailment. Yeah. And then a few hours later, he played for the Vegas Golden League. nights. Right.

So he has an ailment. Is that allowed? Not an injury. Well, it is allowed. As our buddy Gerg pointed out yesterday, the league is not treating the Four Nations the way they treat the All-Star game with respect to you can't skip it if you're not missing games for your actual team. So yeah, apparently he's playing through something, presumably, and they are kind of pre-announcing

that they're not going to, whatever it is, they, it's somehow not bad enough that it keeps him out of the lineup now, but it's bad enough that they know it's still going to be an issue a few weeks from now. Yep. Okay. Okay. I just wonder with all this, well, okay, let's actually first talk about what do you, what do you think they do to replace, to replace him?

a Canadian right shot defenseman is basically, you know, who's one you like is. Douggy Hamilton, Mackenzie Uygar, and what was the other one? There was another name. Weiger seems like the guy they would go with. Because, yeah, and because he can also play both sides. Yep. That would be fine.

Yeah, he's a good player. It just does make you wonder, like, if this is, boy, you really hope this isn't like a first domino of other teams going, yeah, you know what? we got, well, that's what I was going to say. Beaten up, right? Like,

I mean, Vegas has got Mark Stone. He's always an injury risk. Is he, can he still go? That's, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's like how many guys who are on the little roster page that I just read the

three Swedish goalies from, how many of those guys can we just cross off before, between now and, uh, whatever, the, the Wednesday after the Super Bowl. Yeah.

I think that's when it starts. Um, I would guess, you know, I would guess the number is pretty significant. You know, six, eight guys just like, ooh, I got a, I got a hip thing. I got a cough. Look at that whole list. How many of those guys are completely healthy? That's what I'm saying.

Like zero probably? 20% is a maximum, you know? So obviously, you know, Austin Matthews is one that everyone's kind of looking at. but there's there's a bunch and you just hope like it becomes a thing where you know one team does it or right whatever and then a second and third and now suddenly you're going well

geez you know if the oilers are looking around going well the teams we're we're competing with in the West are all pulling guys out maybe we should I don't know maybe Connor McDavid doesn't want to play maybe he's a little banged up and then the whole thing falls apart yeah quickly

and my $800 tickets to see the U.S. play Canada doesn't work out all that great for me. Yeah. This was the risk, right? It's like when you put together a tournament that is fake, we just cook this up like over the summer, let's make it happen kind of a thing. You can tell me guys are like rare,

to go here. They're fired up. I can't wait to play best on best. But you remove like, it feels like a jenga tower. You remove like one log too many and all of a sudden we're fucked, you know? So, I guess we'll see. And the players love it. The players want to

do it, but the teams themselves. Well, this is, but what I'm saying is. And by the way, this isn't even, I mean, God help us when the one guy inevitably gets injured during the tournament. Right. And then we have to listen to that team cry for for years to come about how nobody could have foreseen a hockey player getting injured in a hockey game well again what i'm what i'm saying is like when like you're like

you're mentioning like when two or three more guys like if austin matthews is like i can't i can't i can't go you know and then and then maybe nathan mcannon but see that's what i don't think it's austin matthew saying that i think it's brandon shanahan or brydra lyr Well, okay, right, right, right, man. Like, you're a little bad. I don't think this is a good idea. And then it, you know, well, regardless, regardless of who says it, at some point, enough guys, it could reach a,

I don't think this would happen, but it could reach a critical mass where it's just like, is this even really a best on best anymore? Yep. You know? And then, and then do guys lose, do guys lose their stated enthusiasm? Oh, Sidney Crosby's not going to be there? What do I give a shit then? You know what I mean?

Like, that's kind of, and then it just turns into a glorified all-star tournament. I don't know. Yep. Yep. Anyway, you mentioned earlier that senators fans are very upset. I feel like I missed this. I saw like a headline or two, and then I saw the CEO or somebody like that being like, ah, we fucked up.

But I don't know what the implications around all this is. So please educate me. So what happened is the senators had an event yesterday. that I think was in Quebec City. But basically they, the senators have for a little while now been kind of eyeing Quebec City and Quebec as a province outside of Montreal as an area that has some untapped potential for them as a market. Sure. And this isn't about selling tickets. I know people probably don't know their Canadian geography super well.

Quebec City is far from Ottawa. It's like seven hours. It's not, you're not getting game day walk-up crowds. But as far as selling the jerseys and, you know, just expanding the fan base, it's made a lot of success. Obviously, there's no team in Quebec City probably isn't going to be one. A lot of those fans are not going to cheer for the Montreal Canadians. So a lot of them do kind of cheer for the senators by default. But if you really went after that market, it could potentially pay some dividends.

and so the senators had an event where I think they announced they're going to play some exhibition games there, like some training camp games. And all of that was fine. But they then went further and a couple of things happened. One is the owner, Mangalangeloar, made a comment about how he would like to play regular season games in Quebec City and basically saying like, hey, if they can send us to Europe,

they can, you know, we should be able to play a couple games in Quebec City. And then there was also a photo that was taken and tweeted out by the senators of Sparta Cat, who was their mascot, wearing like a half-and-half Senators Quebec Nordiques jersey. You can't be wearing that, Sparta Cat. That's not a lot. The fans didn't like. So here's what's going on if this, because I get that this probably seemed quite weird to maybe other fan bases

watching this play out. It was sort of two things. First of all, there was just the usual, like, you cannot disrespect the crest, the logo by wearing, splitting it in two and connecting another team's logo to or whatever. And for the record,

every single case of wearing two jerseys at once is bad. Yes. With the pause, I did see somebody say, like, if two brothers, Others are playing against each other and the mom wants to wear. Like that's okay. But even that, it has to be the mom.

Not even the dad can do it, all right? That's just if you have a half and half jersey of any sort, no, it's bad. And it makes baby Wendell cry. So don't, don't do that. But the bigger thing here is senators, fans have been hearing for a while about the team moving to Quebec City. And it's never been like a real serious threat, but just kind of like one of the those under the surface things. It's something they have to hear

from other fan bases. You know, it's like a put down. Like, yeah, you guys are just going to move to Quebec City and, you know, whatever. Like, under Melnick, there was, you know, a little, just bubbling under the surface talks about it. Again, never something that

was close to reality, but just enough of it that it's a bit of a sensitive spot. And I think the team got a little too excited about a smart thing, which is going after this larger market, sure.

And didn't quite dial into the sensitivity that the fan base would have over, you know, potentially losing some home games to a market, potentially, you know. And some people looked at this news and went like, oh, is this step one of a potential move to Quebec City? And it's not. But anyway, Senators had to backtrack a little bit. I thought they did a pretty good job of getting, you know, people in front of microphones to clarify and somewhat apologize for how it was handled. I don't know who does their PR, but whoever it was, they did a pretty good job of handling the outbreak. But, yeah, it was a weird thing in Ottawa for a couple of days here to watch this play out because, yeah, people were not happy.

A big giant. wearing a combined hockey jersey really, really was frustrating. Can I say this, by the way? I feel like, I might be wrong about this, but I feel like the whole Spartacat thing and like the guy coming out and doing the 300 thing, I thought they were supposed to be Roman senators. This has been an ongoing thing. The difference between the Roman senator and the, the, you know, the Roman senator and the

well what's so what there's there's there's the roman senator yeah and then there's the like the sparticus guy is not the same thing no um and like when they sent like the dude out with the little gladator costume and the speech tape to the back of his shield people were like that's not even the same uh the same piece of history right i i could yeah okay i just i just i feel like I'm not super up on my ancient Greek history, but I feel like they didn't even have senators in ancient Greece. That is possible. So why,

obviously they had them in Roman times. Those are the guys that got Caesar, you know? Yeah, sure. Yeah. But, yeah, you know what? I just Googled Athenian democracy and, okay. Something that often happens on.

Yeah. There's a really complicated flowchart. I'm not going to, I feel like I can't parse this. So I'll just control F for Senate and see where that gets me. Okay. Oh, they're apparently, no, wait, that's influence on Rome. I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's actually a Senate, there was actually a Senate back then.

But again, you know, I can't read all these. You know what, folks? Just go to the Wikipedia page for Athenian democracy, and you see if you can fucking make or tales of it before you get mad at me. Yeah. Don't get mad at Ryan about this. No. There's many other things you can get mad at him.

Well, not this one. I disagree with that. People are going to be mad at me about this take right here. I'm going to read you four numbers, Sean. I want you to tell me what those numbers, like what's the unifying thing there. Okay. Okay. 2.2, minus 0.4, 6.85, 26.1.

Those sound like expected, or goals saved above expected numbers? That's right. But I had no idea what they would be. Yeah, they're Logan Thompson's year by year. Oh, those saved above expected numbers. And so we welcome you now to inadvisable contract corner, six years. years 5.85 million A.A.V. buying as high as humanly possible. The Washington Capitals, they were like, on Friday afternoon, they were like, oh, Nvidia stock. This sounds great.

Let's load up on that. Look, I think Logan Thompson's a good goalie. I think this contract is really asking for trouble. That's all. That's it. Yeah, it's To me it's less the The cap hit and more the It's the years, yeah, of course Six years And again, I

You know, I Tweeted something about this Like this is sort of a pattern Of NHL teams giving Big contracts To guys based on very limited sample sizes Of strong play And the examples

In addition to this would be Mackenzie Blackwood And Joey DeCord Where guys have a good season Good half a season And get locked in And again, it's not so much The cap hit because

I think the Logan Thompson cap hit For next season, as of right now, puts him 15th among goaltenders in the league. Yeah. So you probably maybe even a couple spots lower by the time of the season starts.

Three years from now, we're going to be looking at $5.85 million and being like, what is he making minimum wage? Yeah. You know, it's going to be a $105 million cap. Who is going to give a shit

about less than $6 million? It's going to be virtually nothing to a lot of these scenes. The way they give out like three, three and a half million dollar contracts now and it's like, yeah, okay, I guess that's just what you pay in NHL player.

That's what it's going to be for Logan Thomas. But my point is, he turns 28 on February 25th. So they're going to be paying this guy, this amount of money, until he's 34 years old. This guy who, you know, again, I think he's a good goalie. I don't think he's a great goalie. I think they just looked at the fact that he's 22, 2, and 3 with a 925 save percentage through 27 games and said, Well, we figured it out.

This is the best goalie in the world. No problem. Connor Hullabuck, who? Yeah. He has been very good this year. And had shown pieces of being very good in Vegas, certainly. Yeah, fits and starts for that. Yeah, absolutely.

Which, I mean, that's nice, but every goal has done that. Like, there's no, pick whoever you think is the worst goalie in the NHL right now, and they've had stretches. where they looked amazing. It's just, you know, again, like in order, even putting aside the cap going up, he just has to be a league average starter next year to be worth this money.

Yeah. So I get why that feels like a reasonable gamble. It's just, well, what's the upside? What's the downside? Well, we've seen the downside. The downside to these sorts of deals is Tristan Jari. Or Cal Peter. if you really want to go extreme.

Now, I'm not saying Logan Thompson's going to end up there. But I also wasn't saying it for Cal Peterson. I certainly wasn't saying it for Tristan Jari. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's a risk. And I personally, if I'm in charge of an NHL team, I'd rather go shorter term and eat a higher AVA to do it.

Yep. And I understand that, you know, that's, I'm sure, the many NHLGMs who listen to this show are like, yeah, that has occurred to us, thanks. Well, if that's true, they don't put that occurrence into practice. Well, and maybe they can't because, you know, the players and their agents are really pushing for the term. But it just, it does feel like there is some risk. Yep. And now we figure out what they do with Charlie Lindgren, if anything.

I got an idea. six years, $5.85 million. What do you think? Okay. Okay. I feel like that. Another contract in in-advisable contract corner here. The New York Rangers extended Will Borg in five years, $4.1 million.

Okay. How many games do you think he has played for the New York Rangers? Not a lot. 18 is the number. Okay. At five on five, what do you think the goal difference is for this? this defenseman that they just gave five years in $4.1 million. I'm going to say for that much money, probably plus 10 goals.

Minus three, as a matter of fact. Oh, that's not. You don't want to start with the minus. What happened was at the same time he showed up, the Rangers stopped being bad. And it turns out correlations causation, we don't have to worry about it. He's stabilized everything. Now, has he done that by having a. 49.7 expected goals difference?

Yeah, sure, he has. Has he done that by them out shooting the opponents only by plus seven when he's on the ice at 5 on 5? Getting out attempted by minus 27? Yeah, sure, all that's true. But guess what? Keandre Miller doesn't stink anymore. So is that worth giving Will Borgon five years,

4.1 million? Sure it is. Why not? Again, it's not the money. The money, who gives a shit? $4.1 million. The Rangers have spent way worse money on way worse players than that. Let's put it that way.

Five years for Will Borgon? Oh, okay. We're doing this now. Because here's the thing. Didn't it feel like we were like three games away, two games away from maybe we just got to trade everybody. Get Keondre Miller out of here. Let's see what we can get for Alexis Lafrenier. You know what I mean?

Like, they were going to get rid of Vincent Trocheck. They were trading Mika Zabandajad. Then they win, like, six games in their own. It's like, never mind. We actually have to extend everybody. What? What happened? Mm-hmm.

It's, what happened is they kind of turned it around? Well, what happened is Igor Shasturkin started playing like Igor Shasturkin again. That's a good way to put it, yeah. 930 in the month of January, piggy-igie. Which is, I mean. I mean, that's what you pay them to those big bucks for. Literally, yes, that's true. But here's the thing, if the Rangers are, to kind of circle this back to where we started,

if the Rangers are in actually we were good now mode, if they're out on J.T. Miller, what hell does Vancouver do now? That's a hell of a question. Trade Brock Besser, I guess. and Pedersen. Oh, we didn't even talk about that. Apparently, the Canucks thought they had a deal for Pedersen, like, pretty much nailed down, sending them to Carolina. And then, never mind.

We're going to take the guy who's better instead. Smart by Carolina. So they had something, you know, close to being done. And, and, again, this is what worries me if I'm Vancouver. Like, and it's not, when I say that they've been dragging their feet, I don't think it's been intentional. I mean, I think very clearly this is an organization that's ready to make some pretty big moves

and wants to break up that core, but for whatever reason it just hasn't happened. And you're suddenly at this point where it's like, all right, if Carolina's got their guy and if we just forsake it, let's assume Carolina's out on any other big names, although maybe you never know, if they're out, if the Rangers,

are feeling good about where they're at all of a sudden and they're out. It's almost like the worst case scenario for the Canucks would be to do this all year long, have all these rumors, all this tension and stress around the team, and then not actually have a market materialized for any of these guys because, oops, we waited too long, and now the market isn't there. Yeah. Elias Pedersen to Buffalo is what I'm saying. they're around it.

Didn't I read that the other night? They're around it. I don't know what he's solving for them, but they're around it. All right. Anything else on Will Borgon? No. I have nothing at all on Will Borgon.

Great. Well, let's stay in the greater New York area here and keep talking about defensemen. New York Islander is very busy on the blue line. Over the weekend, they signed Tony DeAngelo. And then they traded for Scott Perunovich. Interesting. They needed help back there.

That's for sure. But I'll say this. And, you know, look, I think that Tony DeAngelo has in the past been a good NHL defenseman. I wouldn't say it's in the recent past, you know. But here's the thing. And I said this in my article the other day, talking about this briefly. There were two things I didn't think we'd be saying about Tony DeAngelo. Welcome back to the NHL this year.

And also, please play 25 minutes a night for us. That's right. But here we are. That happened. So, hey, guy who can't seem to stop himself from being weird on social media, here's your new boss, Lou Lamarillo. I'm sure you guys have got a long grade. Yeah, I would imagine that apparently they had a face-to-face meeting,

and I would imagine that Lou Lamarillo went, Mike Babcock mode said, give me your phone. We're not letting you do that anymore. And that's fine. You know, whatever. Like,

it didn't seem like he could play at an especially high level in the KHL. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I'm not watching a ton of KHL games, you know? So, but the more interesting thing to me is why go get two defensemen? I guess you can never have enough, but.

convinced that either one of them is going to... Yeah, maybe that is it. Move the needle for you. I really like Scott Perunovich. I don't want to say the blues did him dirty because it doesn't seem like he's really able to, you know, elevate to the level that maybe they'd want him to. But, like, if you tried to tell me that this is a Will Butcher-style guy

just to pick two defensemen who won a Hobie Baker, I want to say, Like, you know, there's a way Will Butcher can be in the league. There's a way Scott Perunovic can be in the league, you know? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I'm curious. I guess my other thing is like, is this, do the aisles feel like they're still in this? Because I don't think they are.

I... Six points back of the Tampa Bay Lightning, you're catching those guys? I don't think they're still in this, but I could see how. how they would think that. Yeah. And hey, they won four in a row. So what can you say? So, yeah.

But yeah, I don't know. That's all I have to say about the Islanders. They're busy. Two more things here real quick. One, tough to name that Utah team, it turns out. Yeah, I guess other people have. Like, I need somebody to explain to me why this is a thing.

that half the new team, I'm not even talking to the NHL, half the new teams that come into sports feel like they can't find a name at all. And the other half just come in and they're like, we're the, I don't know, we're the Teslas and that's it. And it's fine. We're like, we're the giants. We're, you know, some name that like is already being used in a bunch of other places. But yeah, apparently we can't be the Utah Yeti.

Yep, because of the cooler company. And it's, and specifically in the cooler company's case, I think I saw someone explaining that it was like, because they're, they're, the way they filed it is like, yeah, we, we own the name Yeti in, you know, in use for blah, blah, blah, like the following uses and just sport is one of them. Uh-uh. And so it's like, oh, it sounds like you're trying to put together a sports team. Yeah. to me, I don't feel like I, you know, the idea of this is you don't want to create confusion in the marketplace, right? But I'm not, I just feel like I'm not going to open the fucking paper and be like, wait a minute, the Bruins played the coolers last night. They were out there skating around against a bunch of coolers and they didn't win, you know, like that.

I don't think that's ever going to happen. So, you know, whatever. But it's, it's one of those things where it's not, here's the thing. It's not just the Yeti. It was, I think the Venom, I think Utah H.C. And hockey club were, like the Blizzard, maybe. Just like a bunch of the names they put out there, they were just like, yeah, not so much. And then the other ones were like clerical errors or something like that that would need to be amended.

And it's like, you can't be making clerical errors on top of that. What do you want to bet they just ran it through chat, GPT, and we're just like, yeah, let's fucking. circle back. We don't want these team names anyway, so let's just circle back if we need to. That sounds about right. And these are only preliminary rejections? Scorpions is still there. Yeah, right up until you find out that... The band has a problem with it. Yeah. The band has a beer league hockey Friday night team. Good band. Try to go beyond the hits, you know? But yeah, so it's... Like you say,

It's not just this league, but it is just like, this is classic NHL shit, huh? Yep, absolutely. Oh, you know what? We didn't talk about this last week. I think it's Carol Vemelka's new mask is a bunch of raptors from Jurassic Park and whatnot. Oh, I hadn't heard that. Because, well, here's the thing. I want to give a big salute to him because, you know, in the movie Jurassic Park,

directed by Stephen Spielberg. Velociraptors aren't that big. And in fact, at the time they made the movie, no Raptor had been found to be that big. But I think between when they made it and when the movie came out, the discovery of a raptor roughly that size was made in the great state of Utah,

the Beehive State. And the raptor, like the name they gave of the raptor is the Utah Raptor. Okay. And so, I'm starting to think maybe Carol of Melk is a bit of a fucking dinosaur head,

and this is maybe my favorite goalie in the world. Oh, we got a new favorite player. So wait, is that... So Jurassic Park when it came out was inaccurate about the Raptors, but then turned out to be accurate? Like Steven Spielberg knew more about dinosaurs than all the dinosaur experts?

This is why no director has more box office receipts than big stevie s you know what i mean what a genius yeah um but yeah no they uh they were just like actual velociraptors were maybe between chicken and turkey sized

and that doesn't play on screen you know yeah so they're just like ah they're big now um and then finally anyway oh the reason I brought that up is I've seen people suggest well they should just be the Utah Raptors. Sorry, there is,

there was, I don't know if they still exist, a minor league baseball team in Ogden, Utah called the Ogden Raptors, so tough bounce. Yeah, and I do feel like there was another sports team called out. Well, so here's a very that is a very, okay, what

is the thing? Is there like a difference in Raptors here? No, I don't think there is, but what I'm saying is either the Ogden or I don't know which came first, the Ogden Raptors or the Toronto Raptors, but they didn't have these fucking issues to your point earlier.

Yes. You know? So I don't know what the solution there is, but let's just call them the fucking Utah Raptors. There you go. All one word, because that's the name of the dinosaur, the Utah Raptors, all one word. That would be such a sick team name. They'll never do it, though. They're afraid.

Wouldn't have the guts. Nope. Finally, some news that made me sick to my stomach when I saw. thought the other day. Sean Monaghan is like a complication in recovery from his relatively minor injury. Now he's out until March. This made me go out loud, ugh, that sucks. I hate that.

This is a guy I was saying, like, he shouldn't be like the MVP of the league, but, you know, top 10 most valuable player in the league so far this season. Absolutely. He was my pick over Zach Werenski from Columbus. And now he's out. till March. That sucks for him. That sucks for them.

They're having, or they were having a great season. Now maybe we won't be saying that in a few weeks, you know? Yeah. Well, fingers crossed. Hold on. Defying expectations all along. Yeah. True.

True enough. And, yeah. That just hurt to read. I was bummed about that. I don't have any more input on that. I was shouting about a few weeks ago and now this. A Puck soup. Different kind of a Puck Soup curse, I guess.

I guess that's it. You got anything you want to plug? Not really. Find me at the Athletic. Read my stuff there. Listen to me with Sean Jintilly and Frankie Carrado on Wednesday's editions of the Athletic Show, the Athletic Hockey Show podcast. That's it.

Okay. great. And then for me, all my college hockey and NHL coverage remains at EliteProspects.com slash news. I don't know if all the... I got to look into if there's still codes and stuff like that. Now that we don't have EP ringside anymore,

it might have... They might have done away with the codes. Try the code I love EP when you sign up for an annual subscription. If it works great, if it doesn't... You know, I didn't know about it, you know? So, yeah. All that stuff's over. over there.

And hey, we're getting to, uh, we're getting to like prospect rating time and that kind of thing. So we just had like our, our top 20 or something like that come out recently. So if you, if you want to start the process of being a prospect sicko ahead of the draft and everything like that, now's the time to get involved, especially because like, uh, undrafted free agents season is going to be coming up in the, in the CHL and NCAA. A, so just something to be aware of. And then head over to patreon.com

slash puck soup. We got all kinds of bonus episodes. Me, Sean and Greg, yesterday recorded an episode where we were commanded to remember some of the goalies that Alex Ovecun scored on. And so we just kind of went at random

down the whole list of 179 goalies. And we're like, oh yeah, remember that guy? Remember Jason LaBarbra? Et cetera. Had a lot of fun with that. And then the other thing is me and Sean are about to go over right now and record a mailbag from the Patreon.

So you can get your questions in and all that every week. Patreon.com slash Puck Soup. And that's it for us this week. Thank you for listening. And we'll be back next week with presumably more bad injury news related to the Four Nations face off. Probably. All right. Thanks so much, folks.

Bye bye-bye. Bye-bye.