Puck Soup - ProStars, Assemble!

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

The boys talk about Greg's unfortunate luck with mascots, Gary Bettman, Alex Ovechkin vs. Wayne Gretzky on xBox, remembering Howard Finkel, Drew Doughty's comments, the salary cap headache and Bill Peters. Ryan and Sean face off in a quiz called "Was This an Actual ProStars Episode?" in honor of the new Michael Jordan doc. Plus, we dive deep into Keanu Reeves movies. Sponsored by Burrow! 

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wichinsky of the Worldwide Leader in Michael Jordan Documentaries, ESPN. I'm Ryan Lambert from the Worldwide Leader in watching the Michael Jordan documentary in a few days. Sean McInerner from the Athletic We're probably going to make our own Michael Jordan documentary at some point

We might hire Michael Jordan to do it There was actually a story on the athletic that I read yesterday And greatly enjoyed about the first time Various people in the NBA met Michael Jordan And like all the crazy stories they had from it Where Michael Jordan walked into their locker room Tap a guy on the leg And was like, put your fucking shoes on buddy

I'm going to put up 60 tonight and then he did it. Yeah. It was the Hawks locker room, right? And like Dominique's like, I couldn't figure out why Michael Jordan was in our locker room. And it was just to talk shit to like a rookie guard. That one's great.

And the other one is, if you haven't seen it, the Larry Bird trash talk. Oh, yeah. It's basically just all these. Like, because Michael Jordan, we all know was pretty much a huge jerk on the court. But like Larry Bird, you kind of think maybe was this like nice Indiana kid. And apparently he was just vicious, like absolutely brutal. And so it's him making, making rookies cry.

I loved Jordan saying that he was worried that people might see him as like a bad guy. When the documentary comes out, it's like, dude, we know. I got some news for you. Everybody both knows and has accepted this circle like 1998. Nobody's like going to watch this and go, wait a minute, Michael Jordan's famously a dick. Like, there might be two people in the world that don't think Michael Jordan's a dick. It's like BJ Armstrong and Ted Leonesis. That might be it.

And even then. And even then, right? Even Dennis Rodman's like, dude, chill. Yeah, exactly. We'll talk about the Jordan Bulls a little bit later, but I wanted to start out with a sad story. Not like sad as in like the trouble's sad, but sad because it happened to me yesterday. I was invited to complete a lifelong, dream, which was to be a contestant on a match game-like game show.

The game show was created and paneled by the NHL's mascots. Wow. So it was a Zoom call, and on the Zoom call was me, like, eight mascots. We're talking S.J. Sharky, Ganesh, Bailey, N.J. Devil, my boy. whatever the wild mascot is, Stanley C. Panther from the Florida Panthers, a crazily named mascot, considering the success of the franchise.

And so it was like the match game. My opponent, Darren Ravelle. Wow. One of the most reviled individuals on sports Twitter. I mean, it's hard to book me as a face, right? In most situations. But in this case, I mean, I was up against a monster heel. So this is exciting.

And we do the game show. I'm wearing my team North America jersey. I look pretty good. I'm the Zoom call. The categories are all breaking in my favorite boys. Categories on Gremlins lost. A Gilmore Girls question that I knew. This doesn't sound like match game anymore, though.

No, no, no, but it's basically they say, they name a question. They say like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the, the mascot that you choose, right, writes down on a whiteboard because they can't fucking talk. They're mascots. Unless they're chunky. Some mascots can talk, yeah. Chunky talk. They're not supposed to.

They're not supposed to. They write down on a whiteboard what the answer is. So it's like, you know, they showed a picture of Donna. Dominic Monaghan with his hand pressed up against the glass on Lost and like what was on his hand. And so like the mascot from the fucking avalanche will write down what he thinks the answer is. And I then agree or disagree. Sure. So it's it's more, I guess, Hollywood Squares than it is match game.

Yes. In that sense. But still a celebrity panel, yada, yada, yada. So anyways, I kick his ass. Kick his ass is awesome. show goes good There's some chuckles here and there And then

They're like It's going to be out on Friday on Twitch People are aware of the show The first episode was Will Wheaton versus CM Punk So this was quite a come down And so I'm feeling good about life

I get a phone call From Bailey the Lion From Los Angeles Kings Bailey the Lion says this is the first time he's run a Zoom call audio got all fucked up Can't do it, can't run the show

Lost in history My victory over Darren Ravel You know what this sounds like to me Match game It sounds to me like you got your ass kicked by Darren Ravel in a quiz That is absolutely not true This is all a little bit of revisionist history I will say this

Darren Ravell lamenting the fact on the show that there were no questions, quote, about history or Shakespeare? History. Like, those are his two. Oh, yeah. We all definitely think he, he's up on is, uh. He said, he said history. He's, every time he'd get one wrong, by the way, just since the episode never be

seen, Muffucker didn't know who Barry Allen was. And literally the mascot wrote the Flash and then drew the Flash logo. That's how sure the mascot was of who Barry Allen was. They should have had some questions on the Black Play. and like how much marketing dollars were lost. Would have been all over it. Yeah. How much was Caesar worth getting his face on all that money?

Actually, Catholicism is made out quite well during the Inquisition. So like, anyways, lost in history. But I go back to this point. And again, I am not a conspiratorial guy. I leave that to my sister. Um, this is, this is now, the same person who lost the episode in which I excelled and, and basically was like a Ken Jennings type on this show with my dominance is the same mascot who once hit me in the face with a pie at Center Ice. So, I mean, I detect the pattern at this point. Yeah.

Bailey to lie. Be quite candid. Wait, so like, Bailey calls you, do you just hear, like, muffled, like, does Bailey speak to you? Like, does, and does, I'm more interested in this part than the game show. Like, when you pick up the phone, does the person at the other end say, like, hey, it's Ted, the guy who plays Bailey? Or does he say, like, it's Bailey in, like, a mascot voice?

Or does he, like, do you have to FaceTime and, like, he has to act out what happened, like, make, a little sad face for pointing it at the zoo? call? Like, how do you get a phone call from a mascot? The K-Fave answer is that he says, I don't have much time and then drops a Carol Baskin reference, which I, you know, I didn't watch Tiger King. I don't know what the fuck that means. It just seemed pretty good. The actual answer is that when Bailey hit me in the face with the pie, Bailey helped orchestrate the whole night. For those that don't know, if you're new to the Rishinsky brand,

T.M. Revelle. And you're getting the whole story, because you're following the headlines these days. This is, this whole podcast is going to be an hour of mascot stories. Yeah. So I made a bet with Bailey the mascot

when the sharks were up 3-0 in their series against the Kings, that they would like definitely win the series. and then lo and behold, the king's reverse swept them. And the bet was that I would take a pie to the face

if that happened. It's center ice of a king's game. You did. There are photos. There are some excellent photos. Not only are their photos, it's photos on Getty images, no less. Yes.

Like my only known photo on Getty images, like, you know, just go ahead. When you die and say they have to, like, search on Getty for a picture to run at the top of the little bit. Like, that's going to be it. That's, it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be. They put a, they put a, uh, they put me in, in a painter's suit like you'd get at Home Depot.

Uh, and then put me in a, uh, oversized sharks t-shirt. It was a King's Playoff game. Uh, they sat me in a chair at center. I was the between periods entertainment at a King's playoff game, getting hit in the face, with multiple pies by Bailey the mascot, by Star Trek's own Will Wheaton. I believe by both announcers for the Kings as well. And yeah, and famously, Will's pie throw, the tin of the pie sliced my nose. So at the end of the pie tossing.

So you got busted open Hardway by Will Wheaton? Yeah, I did. I did. I didn't have to blade. at the end of the at the end of the pie tossing I shuffled off the ice in my in my painters but my plastic covered sneakers I think at that point and I was covered in pie and blood

as I walked off the ice so yeah long story short motherfucker hit me in the face of the pie and now conveniently like can't run the game show that I want in triumphant fashion two things first of all I I didn't realize. To answer your question, to answer your question,

because there was a point for this, after I got pied, Bailey, whose name I will not reveal, Bailey let me go into his personal dressing room at Staples Center to clean up. And then we hung out afterwards with Will Wheaton and his wife.

So I have an actual relationship with the man behind the tiger mask. Wow. So basically, so basically apparently the rule is if you get assaulted by an NHL mascot, you then get to learn who they are and talk to them. So basically Gritty probably has like hundreds of people by this point who... Right.

I just, my favorite part of that... If you've taken a popcorn bathroom Gritty, then you're like type for life. He's like, come you're old friend. My favorite part of that story is I knew all of me. about the pie from the mascot, and I think I remembered Will Wheaton was involved, but I didn't realize there was this whole lineup of people, and now I'm picturing like the scene from airplane. The airplane, right, of course.

Just this line out the ice of people just waiting to come in like, yeah, we're at a pie. That's okay. We'll be fine. Although open hand, it'll be okay. Yep, that's right. There's somebody slapping his bat into his hand, you know, wanting to go up there. Yeah, it was a memorable night. In the pantheon of puck daddy accomplishments,

I don't know if it knocks getting John Scott into the All-Star game off the pedestal. It does not. I can confirm for you that it doesn't. Well, hold on. So you have three choices. It's either John Scott in the All-Star game, getting Tim Peel suspended for doing tequila shots with him, or taking a pie in the face from Will Wheaton and a lion in between the game.

I want to hear more about this post-game hangout session with Will Wheaton and an NHL mascot. I feel like that could tip it over the... It wasn't... It was just a sort of a debriefing. It was kind of like the green room after doing, like, a show. You know, we were just hanging out for a second. Yeah, it was like that freaking movie green room. No, it was not like the movie green room.

No. Somebody got their arm cut off. There was no white... no white supremacy in in this green room as far as i know i mean i you know let's be honest good to hear times times are weird uh no we just hung out for a second and and it was cool and i don't think i i bought up any next generation season one shit with will weeaten tried to play it play it cool you know and uh yeah but i mean i i i guess to answer your question it there might not be anything that happened in the green room that would push it past say like getting a referee's

because you did tequila shots with them and put it online. Probably not. So, yeah. So you probably write it's the John Scott thing. Getting into some news, Gary Betman made the rounds. This week, he was on CNN, late last week. He was on Fox Business Network, I guess it is, this week. Kind of saying the same thing.

Would like to see him on more networks for, Food Network. If Brad Pitt could be on HDTV, so Gary Betman. Yeah, comparable celebrities, for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. The big news about Gary Betman this week was Gary was Gary was invited to be part of the Let's Start Sports Against Task Force with the president.

Yeah. Which is very exciting. Gary Betman and almost every other commissioner. And I couldn't help but think that what is Gary's role in this? If you were overseeing a sport that was postponed or canceled, what information would you want to get from Gary Betman? What work experience could Gary Betman give you to help you get your league back on its feet? He's going to teach Vince McMahon how to get real heel heat.

And that's pretty much it. Yeah, I would like to listen in on that call when like Roger Goodell and Adam Silver have to be, Like, what do you think about TV contracts, Gary? And then just immediately mute and, like, go get coffee and just. But, like, isn't the first thing, isn't it like, anybody have any suggestions on how to get your sports back on a seat? Well, first thing you do is cut the player salaries by 24%. Like, what is he going to tell him? Yeah, he's going to say, all right, guys, when this is over, we have to paint thank you on the ice.

And that's it. That's the complete list of my. ideas. Look, I don't want to tell you how to market your sports, but how about a commercial with one of your players as a samurai? Except it's not one of your players. It's some random actors. It's just a guy.

It's just a guy. God, what a weird fucking time that was. I think it was cool. Imagine if Sid OV and Outdoor Games didn't have, if Sid OV, outdoor games and the Blackhawks didn't happen. What the fuck would be, we'd be doing right now in this one? talking about basketball. Talking about a 24-team league, maybe.

Yeah. Like, shit. It is kind of amazing. I've always credited the juke-up home-run shit. And the jukees-up home-run shit and the Yankees for basically saving baseball in the 1990s after the strike. Right? Like, without question. And O.V. Sid, and not just the Blackhawks, but you'd have to probably, you'd have to throw

the resurgence of the penguins as a whole and the flyers. Detroit was always good, so I don't throw them in the mix. But like those teams and then later the Kings and then the outdoor games, I think, were a huge thing too. To kind of get like juice. Well, that, and I guess you'd have to probably also throw in the rules changes. Yeah, puck over the glass was a big, big change. Yeah, the Chappazzoic loves out brought a lot of casual fans in. The two line pass shit.

And they're like on again, off again, enforcement of obstruction would be the other thing. Scoring went up by like 0.14 goals a game. That's really what brought the fans back. Well, it went up 0.4, at one point, whatever the fuck, in 0607. In 05.06, it was like, come on, everybody, grab your six shooters. And another part of the reason all the fans came back. Just, you know, 14 power play is a game.

the Merrick Malik shootout goal. You know, it was a great time to be a hockey fan. Fucking shootout. I forget where I was on this, but, yeah, Gary's going to fix sports. I know I feel better about the current situation, knowing that Donald Trump and Gary Betman and Vince McMahon and David and David. And Vince McMahon. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah.

Jesus Christ. I mean, what a bloodletting this week. but yeah so big area is going to fix sports other coronavirus NHL shit Drew Daddy said the quiet part out loud He said I don't think I don't think we're coming back and playing

And immediately everybody says you're only saying that Because you're on the Kings The Kings suck And if your team like you're right That's absolutely true I asked them That was the last question that was asked On the conference call

And I will pat myself in the back For asking him I'm like, would you be saying this if the kings were any good? He's like, probably not. Which is awesome because Drew Downey is pretty cool when it comes to that shit. But the thing that bothered me, though, is that, like, so many people didn't read past the headline on that conversation. Because the two things that came out of it were, hey, I don't think we're coming back. And also, the Stanley Cup is tainted if it gets rewarded, right?

So, like, those are two big things. And I understand what they got a lot of attention. But what the crux of that call was, or at least that part of the call for me, was kind of saying the thing that we've all talked about here, which is what the fuck is in it if you're an L.A. King or a Detroit Red Wing or an Ottawa senator or a duck or a shark. Like if you have to come back and finish your season just so the Islanders can get to 72 games, like what the fuck? Who cares? And he bought up something very interesting that didn't get a lot of play. he said that in 2016 when the World Cup happened, and all those guys had to come and play in September.

And granted, those games outside of the T&A games and maybe a couple other ones, weren't exactly like the most... They were played in 75%. Yeah, it wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't like the Stanley Cup final or anything like that. But he said that just because of his training being disjointed and his calendar being messed up, that he was basically like in pain. the rest of the season. So part of his whole thing is he brings people back to play in the summer.

They get like a month off. They come back and play in like November or whatever. It's going to really fuck with guys. And he's just sort of speaking from personal experience. And I thought that probably should have gotten more play is the idea of a guy being like, I don't think this is going to be safe for players to do the thing they're talking about. But then the question becomes, okay, players, if it's not safe, are you willing to let 30% of your salary or whatever it is, disappear in order to be safe.

And that's the thing here. Betman, too. That was the other thing we heard from Gary Bettman this week was that he doesn't think it's going to be fair if we don't finish at least some of the regular season or do something to get the playoffs, to get the bubble teams a chance to make the playoffs. And maybe, like, but we got to all get our heads around the fact that, like, we, We got to get rid of this idea of like what's going to be fair. Like there's no fair answer here.

This is an unprecedented situation. It sucks. There's far bigger stuff going on than then obviously just who wins a hockey tournament. But there isn't going to be an answer where everyone goes, okay, yeah, that works. We're all happy and on board. Like we're just going to have to figure out something that works good enough, if anything, and go with that. And I'm kind of like, there's a part of me that, you know, I miss sports and I would love to get back to just arguing. over stupid sports stuff all the time and have that be like the main thing I worry about during

the day. But there is a part of me that is dreading like the constant complaining that's going to come in whenever, whatever, if the NHL does come back, whatever format they come back, whichever team, you know, loses out or whatever it is, it's just going to be endless. And it's, like I just feel like right now is the time for us all to go, you know what, it's not going to be perfect. It's going to be what it is. can we maybe just understand and accept that and not complain constantly whenever they do it? With that said, if whatever they come up with screws over the Maple Leafs, I'm going to complain constantly. And I just, people need to be prepared for that.

That's why I advocate for P.K. Sue Bands 31 team playoff format, because as he said this week, McKenzie Blackwood and Corey Schneider were playing really well at the pause. No, that's a good point. And there's a part of me that wishes that every sports fan could come together and be like, hey, it's better than nothing, which is sort of the, I think, economic model right now for the NHL and holding the playoffs in empty arenas. But I don't think that they will. I think you're right. Like, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, whatever format they choose to advance the playoffs is going to fuck over somebody. If they do it by points percentage, it's going to fuck over the Jets and the Blue Jackets.

If they expand the playoffs, it's going to fuck over that, you know, 11th team in each conference that thinks that they should be right there on the bubble with them. Like, if somebody's going to get fucked and it's going to be inequitable or unequitable and it's, uh, and I wish that we could all come together and be like, hey, best we could do, but I very much doubt that's going to happen. Yeah, no, I've been saying it for a while now where it's like, no matter what anybody chooses, no matter what the playoff format is, Everybody's going to go, there are nine asterisks attached to, you know, the fucking Boston Bruins winning the Stanley Cup this year. Nobody's going to accept it as legitimate. And I think they're probably right to do that, honestly. And so, you know, like to get into the, well, you know, we need to do X, Y, and Z to make sure this is as fair. Who gives a shit?

It's, nobody's going to care about this Stanley Cup. years from now, five years from now. Like, everybody's just going to go, oh, the bullshit Stanley Cup. Right, right, right, right. We don't like. Right. And so, and so like that, just do whatever the fuck you want then. Who cares?

Yeah. And listen, if you're a team that wins the cup this year, let me tell you, as long as you win another regular cup within the next five years, no one will care that you won an asterisk cup. I speak as a devil's fan. Yeah. And Chicago, same deal. Right.

Exactly. Just win it again. Wipe it away off the record. Yeah, I'm with you guys. Like, I'm a little bit concerned about that. But it does, again, like, I, the good, there was good news and bad news this week about games. The bad news is that, like, every medical expert in the country is coming out and saying, oh, by the way, there's not going to be crowds at anything until, like, fall 2021 at the earliest.

But the good news is that, like, Dr. Fauci came out and said, oh, but by the way, there's totally going to be games in, like, empty arenas. if they do X, Y, Z. So, I don't know, good news, bad news, maybe this week, it seems like, a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I don't care, right? Like, I'm just going to, I was just going to watch these games on TV anyway. So not going to them, going to them, what do I give a shit? Right.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a made-for-television event if they bring it back, which it has its advantages. Not economically for the league, but does have its advantage. It's going to be weird, though. Like, we're all going to. We're all going to be like, like, all right, hockey's back, sit down, and you're going to watch. You're going to get five minutes in the first game. You're going to be like, I don't know about this. And then hopefully after that you'll get used to it.

But it is, yeah, it's going to be strange. Well, yeah. And again, I will defer for a moment to one of our listeners who said on Twitter this morning, he didn't want to hear 50 minutes of wrestling talk. I think we're about tough shit. Three minutes in. Here we go. But to your point.

Sean, when hockey comes back and there's no crowd, they're going to have to do something to make it not as noticeable that there's no crowd. I watched a 30-minute, maybe plus match last night on AEW between John Moxley and the former Jack Swagger. And it was brutal and it was just hard as nails great and whatever. But it was held in an arena with absolutely nobody watching with absolutely no sound and with Jim Ross. what seemed like calling the match from his bathroom back in Oklahoma. And it wasn't good. Like, I skipped through it. I was bored because this thing that in any other environment would have been an awesome Ironman-like match did not play in that environment.

And we don't know what hockey's going to look like in that environment. It could suck. I mean, to compare it to wrestling, I think is maybe not fair or because, like, wrestling is, performance art. And so, like, to do performance art in empty buildings, like, has always been, like, you know, wrestling has a long tradition of empty arena matches and stuff. Right. And they always are kind of shitty and boring.

And it's because those guys, like, need a crowd to play to. Like, if you watch WrestleMania, all the people doing their, like, cute little hand motions to a crowd that didn't exist and stuff like that was just like, yeah, that's fucking stupid. And because they don't, they don't even do the postmodern thing of like doing it with the wink of like, yeah, we, you know, we know what's going on. Yeah, it was, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like the entrances in an old WWE video game where they, you know, they come out and they wave to the crowd because they have to. You know what the one thing I think might help hockey fans a little bit is the outdoor games. Because the outdoor games, like, they also look very weird. And they also have no crowd around.

Now, obviously you have the crowd noise, but you know, you're watching hockey with no, no fans in the stands. And I don't know about you guys, but like the first few times I watched an outdoor game, I was like, this seems weird. But then you do kind of get used to it. So maybe as opposed to the other sports who have never kind of seen anything like what they're going to see, I don't know. That's my optimist view.

Maybe the having six outdoor games every year is going to turn out to it. have been a good thing because it gets us used to watching NHL hockey played without any fans in the immediate vicinity. Yeah, I think the difference is that I feel like the noise level and the consistency of noise is always different in the playoffs. Like you do have regular season games where if you tune it in, you might not hear a crowd reaction for 10 minutes, right? It's just depending on the arena.

The dead puck era has thankfully conditioned us to not expect any sort of crowd. response to anything that's happening in an NHL game. How many times do you guys think when they bring these arena, these empty arena games, like just to our living rooms or whatever, people are going to go, it's like watching a freaking Florida Panthers game. No. Everybody's going to be like, he fucking did it. It's the funniest joke that's ever been said.

Oh, my God. And Vinnie Varyl is going to be like, hey, knock that off, huh? That's how Vinnie Viola talks in my world, probably. Vinnie Viola was the owner of the Florida Panthers. Oh, I miss heard of him said. I think it was a... Remember when his kid did the draft? No, because I only...

It's every owner's like 14-year-old son who's like too old to be doing it is holding the jersey for the kid who's getting drafted who's like a year and a half older than him. But he was at the draft. He was at the draft lottery, this kid. Like Vinny Viola's son was like a executive on the team. I'm not watching a lot of draft lotteries in my... life. See, this is why I've always said that the draft lottery should not be any executives.

Nobody wants to see fucking Pierre Dorian there. They want to see mascots. If it was all mascots, sing at the little tables, and then, you know, Mr. Mascot friend. The audio is all fucked up and you can't, you know, from before the joke I was doing. What? What was your joke, the rate that the Rangers would have to still send J.D. Because I don't have a mascot.

No, the freaking, the audio is all messed up. Do you see? Yeah. Not all of us have been assaulted by a mascot. and gained the magic power to hear them, Greg. Do you know the original devil's mascot did assault fans, and that's why they had to get rid of him? He was the devil, Greg.

This is what I expect from him. This guy dressed like a puck. He was a puck. And he had to go because, as soon as he, he was doing the old reach-around on some of those photos he was taken, if you know what I'm saying. And he got in trouble for it. And not only did they get rid of the mascot,

this was in the early 90s or the 80s. They got rid of the mascot person, but they got rid of the suit. They changed the whole fucking thing because of the reputation of the puck. It was a... So wait, so they killed a puck mascot and then two years later,

the devils were responsible for the start of the dead puck era. Like, have we not figured this out? Can we bring this guy back, Maybe there's some sort of hockey god curse things. This is some Illuminati shit. Yeah. But yeah, go look it up.

The devil's mascot situation was a bad one. I have some very bad breaking news. I saw. Go ahead. Howard Finkel. Yeah. Dead at age 69. The one of freaking legends of professional wrestling.

This is the, yeah. The ring announcer? Ring announcer, yeah. I met the think at. at the fan fest in Miami before the WrestleMania that I attended. It couldn't be a nicer guy. My favorite Howard Finkel thing was as a kid watching the WWF when they would run Madison Square Garden, the full card of the house show would eventually end up on MSG network.

And like the next week, you could watch the whole house show that they had there that wasn't on TV anywhere else, but it was on on MSG. And my favorite part of the house show was always Howard Finkel. At one point, we'd get up during the show during a break, like an intermission, go get your popcorn or whatever. And he would announce the next house show's card during that show. Right. And it was always the most exciting thing in the world because, like, the crowd would play along.

He'd be like, you know, Big John Stud. And everybody were like, boo. We'll take on Jake the Snake Rubber. to like, yeah. And it was as exciting as anything else on that fucking card was Howard Finkel's previewing the next card coming to MSG. I think I've said this before, but Howard Finkel has a very, very special place in my heart because growing up, my uncle's neighbor across the street was his sister. Was Howard Finkel's sister? Wow.

And so her husband one day saw me wearing a wrestling shirt while we were playing. in the front yard or something and I was like, oh, you like wrestling? You know, my sister, or my wife is, Howard Finkel's sister, do you want to go to free wrestling shows all through your teenage years? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And so I did. Wow. Yeah.

The Fink. What a king. Rip the Fink. Yeah. We love them, folks. Yeah. I was used to get bum when they would, like, farm out Michael Buffer for, like, big events. Like, why do you need Michael Buffer?

You got fucking Harold Finkle right there. subsequent ring announcer WWE has ever had has paled in comparison. Not a Lillian Garcia fan? You sing in the national anthem. Get out of here. Well, that's sad news.

It is. Yeah. I agree. It was a week of sad news. The Sabres fired everybody. That's not good. They did. Yeah. The thing that was pointed out

by I believe Tim Graham of the athletic was that the Pagula's asked their employees to contribute to a COVID-19 charity fund like a week before they like literally terminated. Yep. Put it on your credit card, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was the thing. It was put it up. You could use your credit card to donate to our fund. And oh, by the way, a week later, you're terminated. Very cool. Not cool. Yeah, it's this, this new trend of businesses using the pandemic to get rid of or cut the salaries of all the people they wanted to get rid of and cut the salaries of anyways and then dressing it up as well, given the current events. And it's like, yeah, you're not fooling anyone.

Yeah, the report by John Vogel and in The Athletic about the firings. was a thing where they were like, the people that got fired were probably going to get fired in the summer. They just moved it up. I'm like, oh, so instead of doing it in the off season, they did it during a pandemic. That's great. Right, cool. They just did it under the cover of that. And, but the thing that's interesting is, is two things.

First of all, they didn't make it, that I'm aware of, make any changes on the Buffalo Bill side, which kind of puts, puts the lie to some of this idea that, oh, this is just because of what's happening in the world. But it seems increasingly clear to me, and I'm probably late figuring this out, but Sabres fans have turned on the ownership pretty severely. And, you know, it was only 10 years ago that the Gulles came in and kind of were the Sabres. They were going to rescue the Sabres from becoming the Montreal Expos of the NHL who could never keep their players.

And you get a certain kind of honeymoon period. but when it's over, it's over, and it definitely seems over in Buffalo because there's not a lot of, not a lot of good things being said about, being said about those owners any longer. Yeah, right. And, you know, I think Lambert's referenced this a few times in life when Terry Bugula said, if I need more money, I'll just, what, drill more holes? Yeah, something like, dig another natural gas well from fracking. I don't know what the fuck, but... Yeah. Yeah.

Well, interesting that that hasn't actually happened at all. Yeah. Chris Bender was one of the people who was terminated. He was their vice president of communications. For those who don't know, like, every team has their point person that we, in the media, you guys in the media, you guys in the media, all talk to. Chris was one of the really good ones. And as we've just addressed, it's not always easy to sell stories about the Sabres.

and it's not always easy to not write really negative things about the sabres. Chris was somebody who would work with you, you know, no matter what you were writing. And a lot of times would also be like, hey, here's the thing that is pretty good that's not totally shitty. And it wouldn't be like him shining you. It'd be him saying there's other stories that you can write that are just as good that are not just going to be super negative. And it takes a real talented guy to be able to do that and not have me be like, fuck you. You're just trying to obfuscate me. But he was really good at his job.

And I think he'll end up someplace really quick because, as many people pointed out, like the idea of him not being in that gig anymore is kind of shocking. And I'm sure the savers will replace him with someone equally good and not some brown-nosing. Not something is really. I'm just calling everybody at Hockey Night in Canada going, do you want to do a story about how Terry Pagula is nice? Iraqi information minister, it's me. Terry Bagula.

What do I have a gig for you? other great news this week the KHL hired Bill Peters so exciting to see Bill Bill had to wait a whole five months to see good things happen to good people Oh five months in Five months in hell for Bill Peters

After he resigned from the Calgary Flames Before he found a head coaching job In the second biggest professional league in the world So really did Yes Did I not read the thing Like maybe a month or two ago Or it's like half the teams in the KHL

might dissolve because of this coronavirus thing? There's a few that I think are in trouble, but... Okay. I feel like I read something about that, but... One would assume that the one that he's on isn't going to dissolve, because they just hired a coaching staff. Sid Bill Peter is on a conference call with Russian media.

Get the bleat button ready, because we're not going to be allowed to say some of this stuff, I feel like, but... I think his time goes on, we all grow and improve and become better versions of ourselves, and I'm no different than that. you learn from all the experiences that you're in and you become better. One of the things that he had a chance to learn from was in his letter that he wrote after

resigning in which he said, quote, that the n bombs he dropped were, quote, not directed at anyone at particular. That's nice. And this is after Akeem-A-Lew said that he dropped a bunch of N-bombs because he didn't like Akema-Lew's music. So in Bill, again, in Bill Peelew, Peter's world, the nuance here was I didn't call Akeem-a-Lu in N-Bomb. I just said that the things he likes were the stuff that N-bom's like. Yeah, it wasn't directed at anyone, like the only person of

color in the room. That would have been wrong. Further accused him of actively trying to subvert his career because he went to management about this stuff. Yeah, and I also wonder if current guy on that team, Nigel Dawes, who's a pending free agent might maybe go somewhere else this summer. You never know. Yeah, I mean, I've seen teams try to give a player a hint before about their future plans. This is really a hint. This is like, this is worse than like moving your locker to the back of the room.

Yeah, so Bill Peters gets another shot. So, so excited. So happy to see him land on his feet. I really thought Babcock would come back before Peters did. But then again, Peters isn't making the money that Babcock is. Yeah, Babcock's got... I'm sitting on his ass. Five or six million reasons to take another year off if he wants to.

Yep. Mike Babcock just hanging out, laying on the couch. Speaking of couches, today's episode of Puck Soup is sponsored by Burrow. Okay. You know, it's kind of hard to screw up a sofa. As long as you can sit on it, it's doing its job, right? Well, I mean, I think we all do different things and just sit on it. But newsflash, your couch doesn't have to be just...

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This came from the Washington Capitals. Better news of the breaking news that are obituary correspondence, Brian Lambert, apparently bought to the table. Wayne Gretzky and Alex Ovetchin are going to have a best of three Xbox NHL 20 competition on Wednesday, April 22nd. It's going to be on Twitch.

Fans will have an opportunity to make a charitable donation during the live stream to benefit the Edmonton Food Bank and Monumental Sports Foundations Feeding the Frontlines Fund. It is called the Great One versus the Great Eighth Showcase. So my question to you, my beloved co-host, is whether Wayne Gretzky knows how to play Xbox. No, absolutely not. No. There's no chance. Wayne Gretzky has had more video games with his name on them than he has actually ever played in his life. So, but I mean, he's going to be

playing this game against Ovechkin. Do you think that he's currently going to take it like a crash course and have plays? Okay. In the same way that I take a crash course on how to play Mario Kart with my kids, which is I sit there for 10 minutes. They tell me a bunch of just stuff I don't understand. I get frustrated and then I lose and everyone's happy. Is it possible he just, you know, gives the controller to McSorley and has him do all the work? Yeah. That is, that is definitely possible. Like, what they should do is, like, this, forget NHL. Like, they should have to play, like, Wayne Gretzky 3D hockey and the one that, like, kept spinning around and stuff and was impossible to play.

Like, play that. And then you'll... And it's not even who scores the most goals. It's just who can last the longest before they're like, this sucks. I want to play something else. You get the whole thing wrapped up in about four minutes. It'll be good. Just play NES ice hockey and have Ovetchkin be Russia and Gratzky's Canada.

There you go. And you can go skinny medium fat, fat, like, do the whole fucking thing. Bubble hockey, man. You can boo the national anthems, set off an international incident. It'll be great. And is a bubble hockey table long enough for social distancing? Maybe? Maybe not? I don't know. Yeah, it kind of depends if you're one of those guys who leans right over to get the full top-down view, which all good players are.

Right. I mean, you have to be able, you have to do that to play the angles. You might have to go air hockey. Yeah. I want to point out the sponsors of this Xbox three-on-three because it's best of three, it's great. It's tech snap. I'm sorry, Tech Synap. Tech Synap, I don't know what it is, but it sounds very Leonsesee. Yeah, for sure. Right?

And the other sponsor is such a class, this is such a classic sponsor. I can't imagine that it hasn't sponsored a between period show on NBCSN. Pest Management Services Incorporated, PMSI. Yeah, sure, why not? That's real. What was the, was it waste management? Was that the actual name of the company that used to be sponsored? Between periods.

I think that was when it was still OLN, though. I don't know if that made it over to. No, I think it carried over. I remember, because I remember chuckling where it'd be like, you know, Mike Milbury gets done speaking and all of a sudden you hear sponsored by waste management. And you're like, no, that sounds right. I get it. That's right.

It's on brand. So there you go. So Gretzky v. Ovetchkin will finally settle who, is the greatest goal score of all time as a tech savvy Russian takes on an old man who has to figure out how to play the video game. The only way this is going to be fair, I feel like, just because, you know, Ovechkin's a relatively young guy and Wayne Gretzky probably hasn't picked up a video game controller since the Atari is they have to have EA create a setting where Gretzky gets to shoot on 80s goal tending. And we act like, oh, it's actually really cool that

he scored all these fucking goals. And it's not impressive at all. Oh, that's good. That's very good. Take off off sides. Put it on easy setting. Mentioning Gretzky, I guess should bring us to this week's quiz, as we'll just have this show flow one thing into another. I told Ryan and Sean I had a quiz for them.

As you know, this weekend is the first episode of The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan documentary on ESPN. It is going to be something that I know I'm very much looking forward to watching because I was a huge Michael Jordan fan and I think it's going to be a really well-done documentary. It's like 10 parts.

I think it might be 10 hours and five parts like the OJ documentary was, but it's long. Yeah. Well, you know, content. Hell yeah. But looking back on the Jordan Bulls is something that I I look forward to. But as you know, boys, there's a strong hockey connection between Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Oh, boy.

And Bo Jackson. Okay. Because all of them appeared on the classic Saturday morning cartoon show ProStars. Now, this is a ProStars quiz. And the quiz is, was this an actual plot from a ProStars episode? Nice. Keep this in mind. I did some very deep dive internet research to make sure specifically that Sean hadn't done a ProStars episode guide. The only thing I found was in 2016 on Vice, you did spotlight a ProStars episode, which is not part of this quiz. Okay. Okay. So I just want to put that on the table that if all of a sudden one of these contestants starts,

fucking firing off answers and they're all right. It may be because he has a little bit of history with ProStars, but I did not put that episode in this quiz. Here we go. Who gets to go first? Who won the last quiz? Ryan did? I think Ryan's won them all lately.

Oh, okay. The quiz is ProStars, colon. Was this an actual ProStars episode plot? Question number one to Ryan. The ProStars must stop a pirate who steals an ancient pirate treasure found by an island of peaceful Caribians. I'm going to say that's not one.

Incorrect. That was the, uh, a pro star's episode. The Pirates name short John Silver. Good stuff. That's not even like a good idea, like a first idea. That's, that's like,

the, the bare minimum you could do to make up a fake pirate name. I feel like that was like the final episode of the series where they're like, we're done. Well, the series wasn't that long. So it wasn't, but it may be up in a situation where they knew what they had on their hands and said, you know what?

We're not even going to try. All right. Question number two. To Sean, the pro stars enter a BMX race so that they can win the prize money for Bo Jackson's auntie. I'm going to just say that B. MX race sounds very appropriate to the time period. So I'll say that that is a real episode.

It is not a real pro-stars episode, but your instincts are good because it was actually an episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, minus the Bo Jackson's Auntie part. I was going to say. I added that in. That would be a good crossover episode. But Mario and Luigi entered a Super Mario brother, entered a BMX race against some of the Kuplings to try to win the prize money. So your instincts were right.

It was a late 80s, early 90s cartoon plot, just not for pro stars. So we were off to a flying start. Question three to Ryan. The pro stars attend a masquerade ball and must stop a gorilla who was trained by thieves to rob a fancy hotel. Yeah, sure. Why not?

That sounds great. No, actually, that was a plot from a Hulkhole. and rock and wrestling cartoon. Oh boy. Awesome. You may remember that episode if you saw it

because the gorilla who was trained by thieves they confuse it with Andre the giant who was dressed like a gorilla for the masquerade bra. So it was a big

mess of a misunderstanding. It happens. It happens. Yeah. It happens. But yeah, that was false.

So then we go back to Sean. this is again was this an actual pro stars episode plot Michael Jordan Wayne Gretzky, Bo Jackson, the pro stars they only needed three even though there's four major sports because Bo Jackson played both baseball and football that's his yeah when they reboot it they can do Dion Sanders remember he played for the Cincinnati Reds and the Dallas Cowboys

remember this we don't have a two sport athlete right now do we I don't think we're ever going to again that seem that seems truly fucking insane. Well, there's, there, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's like, could, you could have him do it. I don't know who that is. Who's that guy? Yeah, he was, he, he, he was a, uh, first round pick in, uh, by the Oakland

athletics and then he went first overall in the NFL draft. Oh. He's quarterback. But he may be, but he might be, but he might be too short to be a quarterback, but they said that about Russell Wilson, who's also a baseball player. But yeah, that he's not playing both. Although, I'm sure when he needs his next new contract, he'll pretend like maybe he might. and yeah

Sean on the Canadian pro stars did you did you guys have Tom Glaven yeah who played both baseball and hockey exactly

it was just Tom Glavin and Wayne Gretzky and they just cut all the scenes with those other guys you have two hockey guys that's that's

Ty Domi as a soccer player was also another one Peter Zezel it was excellent I love me some Peter Zezzel all right so both

none of you have one got one right. Sean, the pro stars must stop Captain Nemo from destroying the Brazilian rainforest to steal all of its rare Amazonite. Captain Nemo.

Why does that feel like it's maybe from another show? Sorry, what is he stealing? Well, he's not stealing unobtainium or anamantium or vibranium. Captain Nemo is destroying the Brazilian rainforest

steal all of its precious Amazonite. So I'm going to say this is definitely a plot from a late 80s cartoon, but is it pro... You know what, yeah, put me down for yes. This sounds like Captain Planet shit to me, though. Oh, man, maybe it is. So Ryan's thought is true that it does sound like Captain Planet Chip,

but that's because most of the plots of ProStars were about, like, saving the environment and saving villagers and shit. This is an actual plot from a ProStars episode. Captain Nembo destroying the Brazilian rainforest to steal all of its rare Amazonite. Not any of the other, you know, resources. Not the wildlife or anything like that. That was fine. In the Amazon. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like, you don't find, but the Amazonite, he needed. Yeah. Captain Nemo did. All right. So I got that one right? Yeah, you did. Good for me. Ryan's going to get this one.

The ProStars must find the Stanley Cup, which has been stolen by a super villain, because Wayne Gretzky is distraught because his name is on it multiple times. Run that by me again. I don't understand. The ProStars must find the Stanley Cup, which has been stolen by a supervillain. because Wayne Gretzky is distraught, seeing as how his name is on it multiple times. I'm going to say no to that because why would the other guys give a shit? There's no way they went that hard into the hockey marketing.

No, for sure. That is actually a plot from real life Canadian history. The supervillain was Gary Bettman. and we have yet to be able to successfully get the cup back. Oh, man. The villain's name was Clockwork Delrange, And it was episode 12 of the only season of Pro Stars. Wow.

He stole the Stanley Cup, and Wayne Gretzky wanted to get it back because his name was on it multiple times. And that's the only reason. Yep. All right, let's see this thing through. Last question, Sean's got this in the bag, but we'll do it anyway. Is this a real pro stars episode plot, Sean? The pro stars go on a cruise shift to safeguard a rare statue from criminals who have attempted to steal it.

That's it. That's the, seems like there's less detail in that one than in the other ones. I'm going to say that's, I'm going to say that's fake. Nobody goes on a cruise ship to be safer or anything. Well, I mean, you're incorrect. Of course. Because Jackie Chan went on a cruise ship to safeguard a rare statue. So Jackie Chan has been on a cruise ship.

The Pro Stars did not, though. So you are correct. Okay. That that is not a pros of like. I thought you were going to say Jackie Chan was in an episode of Pro Stars. No, Jackie Chan was in an episode of the Jackie Chan Adventures, his own cartoon series. Of course it was. Yeah. So that was the plot from the Jackie Chan Adventures. So there you go, Sean, with a 2-0 shutout.

Classic Brod-Ore action in the mid-90s. I'll throw the tiebreaker out there just for shits and giggles. What's the pro-stars rating on IMDB, Sean? Closest to the T. Probably not good. I'll say 5.5. Ryan? 6.2. 5.6. Look at that motherfucker. Wow. It's his day.

his day. It's just this day. And that's, you know it's not a good show if even with like 25 years of nostalgia, it's only in the five range. Absolutely. I thought of, uh, when I was a kid, there was a, a police academy, um, animated series. And I was like, what the fuck? Like, what did that? What was the story with that? And so I, I looked it up on Wikipedia the other day. And it was a thing of like, it ran for four seasons or something like that. And I was like, how? I was like, How is that possible? It's, I mean, like, that's not a movie that you used to launch a children's television. And yet.

But, but that's, but there was actually a strong tradition of that, because if you'll remember, there was also a cartoon called Rambo and the Forces of Freedom. Now, also dedicated to the gray fighters of the Mujah Hedine, I'm sure. Right. I was going to say, kids, kids should not be watching Rambo. They just should not. Or first blood. Either of them.

I really, my favorite cartoon back then was the basic instinct, Saturday morning cartoon. That was really, that was a fun one. You know what? I thought they went a little bit too far with the Talking Beaver, but, you know, for the most part, the other one was our Crystal Lake Adventures. Just a lot of fun.

Some of those teens. Come on, come on, kids. Come on down to Mall Holland Drive and enjoy. fun adventures with a cowboy that you will see once or twice. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Yeah, so ProStars. In your story about that one episode,

you bought up the most memorable thing about ProStars, which was the fact that no of the... Bo Jackson, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan didn't provide the voices. No. for their own characters. Stunningly, they were not able to make the time, secure the services of Michael Jordan.

I think that's also what happened on Hulk Hogan's Rock and Wrestling, too. I don't think that they provided the voices of their cartoon avatars either. But on ProStars, what's remarkable about it, the voice of Michael Jordan was done by the guy who played Jesse Owens in the Jesse Owens story and the voice of Wayne Gretzky.

Do you remember this, Sean? No. It was provided by the guy who did Michael Michelangelo on the original Ninja Turtles cartoon. I know. There you go. The world of like cartoon voiceovers, I feel like it's kind of like Canadian commercials. There's like six guys who just do everything.

Yes, that's absolutely true. I went to high school with a couple of people who did voices for like cartoons of the day. And which is kind of a weird claim to fame. But it was just, it was a thing at the school. and I remember like one guy I'd be like oh you did it like what voice and he was like oh I do this and this and this and I was like holy crap and he's like no I'm not done

and also I do this and he's just going down the list and you're like and he's like yeah because they're all done in like one studio we just knock them all out in one day and then it's like yeah so well before like back in the day for like the action cartoons before you got to like tiny tunes

let's say when like Rob Paulson was doing voices and stuff like well he did voices for these shows too but he was primarily that there was three guys right so you had your your peter cullen who did the voice of optimus prime then you had frank welker who did the voice of megatron right and then you had this guy chris collins um who uh and i think his name was also chris ladda he went by a couple names um who did the voices of both cobra commander and starscream Same voice, right? But like two different shows.

And those are like the Mount Rushmore of a voice of actors for like action cartoons. And probably whoever did Skeletor. I don't know who did Skeletor. Yeah. That's an all-time voice. Yeah, you didn't have to put like a lot of subtle differences in the voices that you were doing. Oh, but the thing that you pointed out that also in your piece was the best part about ProStars, which was that even though the athletes didn't provide the voices of the characters,

Um, they did, they did appear on the episodes. Yeah. Um, but they didn't, they clearly didn't film their scenes together. It was the thing. Yeah. Yeah. How could you possibly get those three schedules to line up? Seems impossible.

So it was like all of them in different rooms kind of pretending that they, I think Bo Jackson and Gretzky pretended they talked with each other and then Jordan wasn't even like acknowledging that he was part of us. famously. Not a good guy. the yeah that the only time they ever worked together what other time was the bo jackson do you remember the bo jackson uh bow knows commercial yep where he did all the different sports and then absolutely and then the and there was the hilarious part where they show him playing hockey and then wayne gretsky

skates up and says no because it's like everyone else is like bow knows this bow knows that and then Wayne Gretzky shows up and he's like, no, I guess because it's hilarious to think that Bo Jackson would actually play hockey. Be good at hockey. But apparently the story behind that is not that that was meant to be like some hilarious, but it was just that they couldn't get Wayne Gretzky to say three words, Bo knows hockey in a way that sounded vaguely realistic because he was the worst, because he's the worst actor.

And so finally, they were like, the director was like, just saying. know and we'll use that and so they got him to just and and that's where like that memorable moment came from was Wayne Gretzky's complete inability to string three words together in a way that didn't sound ridiculous. He skates to the camera he's like bow nose no way no bow bow bow bow bow bow bo no come on ball yeah if you've ever seen his Saturday night live you do not have a hard time believing yeah the idea that he couldn't nail down uh like the correct inflection on four syllables is truly like the most hockey player thing imaginable. Yeah.

Yeah. And then what do you do if you have Wayne Gretzky and he can't act? You hire the party dude from the Ninja Turtles to the voice of Wayne Gretzky. That's what you do. That's the obvious. I was surprised, by the way. I was always under the impression. I don't know why that Jordan and Gretzky were both part of the All-Star Cafe chain.

But it wasn't Jordan. It was Chiquel O'Neill was. was the investor in the sports-themed restaurant chain that was sort of like the sports hard rock cafe. Yeah. Or the sports plan of Hollywood. Yeah. It was Gretzky, Joe Montana, Shaquille O'Neal, Ken Griffey Jr., Andre Agassie, Monica Sellis. That is the fucking murderer's row.

Like murderers row of like 90s sports. Yeah. That's crazy. That's incredible. I love it. All-Star. Did either of you ever go to an All-Star Cafe? Was there an All-Star Cafe in Canada?

I don't remember if there was. Wayne Gretzky has a restaurant in Toronto, or at least he did. I don't know if he still exists. I feel like closed. It may have, yeah. I think it opened in like the early 90s, which was the exact right time to open a sports-themed restaurant with Wayne Gretzky's name on it in Toronto. Like just as he's high-sticking guys and knocking the Leafs out of the playoffs. Wait, I've never heard about this.

What happened? Yeah. Did it close? Yeah, I feel like it closed. somewhat recently. That sucks. Who's going to give McSorra? But I feel like he wasn't involved in it at all, like for...

The other thing I remember about it was open. They had to like rezone the entire area because they wanted the address to be 99. And it was like six or something. So they had to like change, change all like all these places there. We're like, yeah, but we have like we're a mail order business. You can't change our address. And they're like, yeah, Wayne wants 99. So you're...

That's the last. So it goes, it goes like four, five, 99, seven. And just the whole street is like confused ambulances doing U-turns and stuff. And it's just, but, you know, where else are you going to pay $22 for a basket of chicken wings? This is true. Yeah, I mean, besides that. Besides literally every other restaurant in Toronto. Right.

What's the fucking place that's right next to the arena, that sports bar? Oh, real sports, the Leafs one. Real sports, yeah. Yeah, real sports. Yeah, for sure. All right. ProStars. Yeah, for those who haven't seen it, you know, you can probably find some YouTube stuff on ProStars, but it's not good.

I mean, it was a rather horrible cartoon. And it only lasted one season. 13 episodes. 1991 was the year for ProStars. And that was it, one and done. All right. Let's, I don't think we got any more hockey should talk about, do we? I can't imagine.

I'm not sure we had any to start with. I mean, there was a salary cap thing. I wrote about that today in the column. I talked to some people this week, and it is going to fucking suck for unrestricted free agents this summer. Like, it's not good. And there's a thought out there that I think was also bought up in LeBron's piece this week with Taylor Hall, that some of these elite high-end guys might just take a one or two-year deal. Yeah.

Most likely a one-year deal. That might be what you do if you're Taylor Hall. I know he said he didn't want to, but get one year and then come back when things are sort of close to normal. The guy who I think is right for that is Alex Peter Angelo. Like, take a one-year deal. You want to stay in St. Louis anyway. See if conditions change there. See if conditions change anywhere else in the league.

And then go get your money. The only issue is that he's already 30. So, like, he's a few years older than some of the other free agents that are going to be in the market. But, like, Hall, Peter Angelo, Krug, Holtby, all these guys, I mean, they've got, there's two things that I heard this week. One was take a one-year deal, come back to the market when the country's more opened up and the economics change. Or if you really want that Taylor Hall, you know, contract security, flip the script and take a backload deal. Back loaded, yep, yep, because which sounds crazy at first, but then the logic there is that the first year or two of that deal are, you're going to lose so much to escrow that put the low salary there and put the big dollars towards the end. But that idea doesn't address the real problem, which is that, you know, salary cap numbers are averaged out.

And so like a team can't go, oh, yeah, like, I'm Taylor Hall. I'll play for $12 million in my last season or whatever because you still got to count that in the average of the first season. You have to, yeah, it's just, it's just from the players' perspective of you. Yeah, sure. But, like, I don't know why a team would do that is what I'm saying. No, that's, that's it. And the teams are going to have all the leverage here. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's going to be a mess.

And it's not, I mean, the salary cap is not going to drop 30% or whatever, whatever numbers are. He said 40. They will figure. Pierre McGuire won out of the radio in Pittsburgh and said fear. It's a 40. Well, 25 to 40. Like revenue might drop 25 to 40.

And in theory, the salary cap is linked to revenue. But there's no, I mean, first of all, I haven't looked at it. But I'm guessing if you drop the salary cap 40%. I think every team is probably over the cap just based on.

By $20 million. They already have. Yeah. So, I mean, Yeah. If it drops 40%, like next season,

it would drop to a lot. a little under $49 million. Just like that's how the math works. And you know what? I can't imagine. Even if everybody, even if everybody was buying guys out, like,

it literally might be impossible to get under that number for some teams. Like it's, like, yeah. And at which point, if you're going to do that, just like, that doesn't do,

that doesn't benefit that, you know, obviously that's bad for the players, but it doesn't benefit the league in any way. Like, hey, remember last year we canceled the season and we didn't have a Stanley Cup? Well,

we're back. And all your favorite players are back on the ice, except half your favorite players don't play for your team anymore because we had salary cap, Armageddon, and the entire league is all screwed up. Like, they're going to figure out a way to keep the cap at at least something close to this year's level.

It's just going to be how do you do the escrow around that. So that the, like, basically what's going to happen is next year, the numbers that you hear are all going to be fake. Like, you're going to hear about Taylor Hall got a $10 million deal, but it's not going to be 10 million. It's going to be 7 million by the time he's done paying back escrow and everything. But that's fine. It's just that this talk about, yeah, the cap's just going to drop.

That doesn't even benefit the owners in any real way. So we don't have to worry about that. I do feel, I mean, like, I feel for Taylor Hall. Like nobody wants to, he kind of hinted that his performance this season, which wasn't always great, was influenced by having. to be in a contract year and the stress and strain of that. And if you feel that way, then you don't want to go through it again. So I understand the desire to try to get this thing done.

I just don't know if the cap is flat, you know, there's going to be a market for him, obviously, but not a robust market. So, you know, it's just players are different, right? Like, I mean, you look at Jake Gardner last year where he kind of went deep in a free agency and you're like, all right, clearly just the market didn't materialize, sign a one-year deal. And instead, he signs like a four-year deal. It was a four-year deal. And a super cheap price.

I mean, I'm still shocked. But he just wanted to get along. He just didn't want to do this again in a year or two. And, you know, in hindsight, probably is pretty glad he didn't sign a one-year deal. But that's just, it's, you know, for some of these guys, it's just the security and not just financial security, but the security of just like, okay, I'm locked in. I don't have to do this. I don't have to go through this again.

I don't know if Taylor Hall is that sort of guy. Like, it's, and the difference is Taylor Hall being, in theory, an elite player, he might feel more, just more pressure to go and get a number that matches that status versus a guy like Jake Gardner, who's more of a, you know, a good player, but a middle of the pack guy who doesn't, doesn't really care about sitting the bar for anyone else. Yeah. I will say, though, if teams are looking, I hear Nigel Dawes is available. So that's what the key in mind. HL Hall of Famer. Yeah. Maybe a hall of favor.

I wanted to say with respect to that, this came up. It's not strictly hockey related, but did you see that for the past 17 years when Wimbledon has been paying a $2 million insurance premium for pandemic coverage? Yes. And because of that, they got $141 million dollars for having to cancel. Incredible. Right? Incredible. That's some planning right there.

I wonder if the guy who originally signed. signed up for that, it still works there, or if he's, like, long gone. And they're like, what the hell? What did Gus sign us up to some sort of... Right. But, man, like, you know, the NHL, if they're like, oh, yeah, if we were just giving out, you know, the equivalent of one Jake Gardner contract every year, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess. That's right. Who knew that our players could get infected?

They wear face shields. Sammy Blay signed a two-year contract with the St. Louis Blues. Do you think that he had to send a text to all of his friends in the league that did the whole thing where, like, if somebody had to announce a new job on Twitter within the last month, they're like, you know, this is really awkward, but working for blah, blah, blah, now. It's so weird to see someone sign right now. It's very weird. Especially because even a lot of, like, the college-free agents who are drafted college players like Ian Mitchell from Denver, signed with Chicago this week, and they were like, well, he didn't really sign because we don't know if he'd be like eligible to play this year or if that would roll into next year. So we're like

agreeing that he's signed, but nothing has been written down. It's very strange. Right. It's very strange. All right. That's literally all the hockey talk that we have this week. We're going to end the episode as we've been ending the episodes with your suggestions. Well, wait a minute, because Sean mentioned before the show that he had a question. for me, and I don't know. Sean had a question, a Simpsons question for Ryan, right? I do.

And this is, it's not, it's not a trivia or a quiz or anything. This is, I actually need some, some life advice from, from both of you. But Ryan is like, you're both Simpsons fans, but Ryan is, uh, seems to be at a, another level. So I want his feedback on this. Uh, during the quarantine, my, my family, we've invested in, uh, Disney Plus so that we could watch Marvel movies and Star Wars and stuff. Sure.

And found that there was also all the Simpsons episodes on there. And my kids have never watched The Simpsons. Crazy. They've never really got their familiar because, well, that generation. Oh, yeah, for sure. They don't watch TV. They don't come home at like 5 o'clock and flip over to the Fox affiliate and find reruns. So this is all new to them.

So my question is, if I want to get them watching this show, I want to know, like, what like five or so episodes Ryan would recommend as the best not the best Simpsons episodes period but the best Simpsons episodes for like a new viewer yeah exactly sure where and also kids so I mean not anything that's got like a lot of guest stars or whatever

that they're not going to know probably wouldn't wouldn't work but like just they've seen a few they're like I feel like they've enjoyed it they're on the hook and now I got to reel them in Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, you don't want to go anything before season three, I would say, because they didn't really have it nailed down, like, tonally or any of that kind of stuff. Definitely.

Boy, chocolate, frosty milkshakes. Yeah, of course. Now, look, you said not a lot of guest stars, but the earliest episode I can think of that, like, really is like, oh, yeah, this is a classic Simpsons episode, is filled with guest stars, but it's sports guest stars. It's Homer at the bat. Yeah.

See, that's late season three. Yeah. Because that's my all-time favorite episode. I don't know if they'd... I feel like on the one hand, some of it would be lost to them, but maybe if I was just like, these are all famous baseball players. Yeah, I don't think there are too many jokes where it's like, maybe the Darrell joke is maybe the only one where you'd have to be like, okay, here's what you need to know about

Darrell Strawberry's career. You don't have to be intimately familiar with Steve Sacks's stat line. Correct. Okay. All right. I've taken that off the list, but I'll put it back on. Have they seen Lisa on ice? No. Pretty good one. The ones that we've watched, the ones we've watched so far, uh, we saw the one where Apu gets fired from the Quiky Mart because they had, we had been somewhere and there had been like a Simpsons thing with an actual Quiky Mart, like a real life version. And so they, they were like, oh, yeah, we want to see that one. that's just that's just because you get to show them the song the who needs the quick they like the song yeah they like the song and and and homer getting the back-to-back

ambulance rides from the spoiled meat was a was a big hit uh they did they did they did the malibu stacey because that's the next one after that sure uh and my son has been calling everyone stupid lisa garbage face for the uh for the last few days and then what else we did we did uh we did cape fear and we did the uh valentines one with Ralph with Ralph. You showed them? That one is more... Wow.

Wow. Because they... They love the HMS Pinafore. I was going to say, come for the rakes, stay for the HMS Pinafore. Honestly, that one I wanted just for the Mr. Thompson scene.

Sure. Because they really like, anything where Homer's being an idiot, and I was like, this is the best dumb Homer scene. And then the rest of it, I was like... Oh, you want a good Homer's idiot episode then, huh?

Yeah, anything, anything where Homer's being... I think two off the top of my head would be Homer gets fat. Yes. Is it home? Okay.

King size Homer. Yeah. That's it. King size Homer. And then one of my favorite episodes, and I think it'll play is, it might be my favorite Simpsons episode ever, was Bart sells a soul. It's a good one. It's a good one.

I was going to say Marge versus the monorail, a classic. And we watched that one. Okay. We did watch that one too. Yes. So they, yeah. They like songs then. Interesting.

Oh, yeah. They like songs. A really good Marge-centric episode is Springfield or how I learned to stop worrying and love legalized gambling, because that features a lot of stupid Homer. I mean, my favorite episode of all time is a millhouse divided, but I don't know. Oh, you know what? Lemon Tree episode. Lemon of Troy. Everybody loves that episode. It's a good episode. And, you know, of course, someone's attractive cousin is in that episode. Bart versus Australia is a great one. That's good.

Yeah. I really love sideshow Bob Roberts, but again, like, I don't know how that's going to play with children who aren't, like, familiar with American politics. They've just seen Cape Fear, so they're already in... Well, if you're going to, I guess a better... Maybe show them one or two other Side Show Bob episodes, but, like, that one and also the one with Cecil, a brother from another series, is really good. Oh, and you know what? This is the one to start with.

Homey the clown. Homer is an idiot. He becomes a Krusty impersonator. He gets, you know, I'm seeing double four crusties. Like, this is an all-time classic episode to me. Okay. That's good. All right, that gives me a lot.

I will feed a few of those in and I'll report back on how it's going. All right. All right. To cap the episode, we've been asking you for your suggestions for an overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite. Our suggestion this week comes from Red Riot, Fight Ruiz Fight. That's a solid wrestling reference. And she suggests Keanu Reeves movies. Ooh, okay.

For overrated, underrated, favorite, and least favorite. overrated Keanu Reeves movie man oh shit you know I got into a lot of fights with Lozo about this and I'll I'll stick with it I think John Wick chapter 2 is overrated I was going to say that might be the best movie Keanu Reeves ever done so

I think I think it's a little overrated I love the first John Wick I appreciate the world building I think maybe chapter 2 gets better in viewing chapter three. I still think, though, that chapter two being held in the pantheon of great action movies

is a bit much for me. I'll say it's a bit overrated. Point break is overrated. Fuck. People... It's fighting words. I mean, it's good. Nobody's saying it's not good, but people act like it's this

all-time classic and I'm not totally sure. Like, you know, I like it, but I'll just give my, from a personal standpoint, the Matrix. And that's largely my fault because I saw it, I've said this before, I saw it out of order. I was the only person who saw like this, the last Matrix before I saw the first one. Your favorite character from the Matrix series is the Merivindian. So I was completely confused.

And then I heard, like, I didn't see the actual original matrix until like a year or two ago. Like, I'd just been shamed for so long. And I went in expecting like the citizen cane of sci-fi movies. And it was fine. And I was probably also not fully paying attention. So that's, that's, that's mostly on me. But I, yeah, to me. Last summer they did like the part. Part of it was because I'd seen every great part. Like all the cool scenes. I already knew. So last summer I saw it. They, they re-released it in theaters for one weekend for the, uh, 20th anniversary, and the theater nearest me had it in IMAX, actually. And I was like, well, fuck, yeah, I'll definitely go see The Matrix.

And I hadn't seen it probably since like 2000, let's say. I probably saw it on like a VHS copy somewhere or something like that. But man, that movie's fucking great. It's so fucking good. You know what? I'm going to take back John Wick Chapter 2. You know what I think is overrated? But because of the smarts,

Bill and Ted's bogus journey. Bill and Ted's bogus journey has like one really good thing going for it, and that's the Grim Reaper. And everything else sucks. But people have a affinity for it because it was a little... Yeah, it was a little bit subvertive, and the Grim Reaper stuff is so fucking funny that I think people hold it in a higher,

It's not Grimblins to the new batch. Like, it's not a very good sequel. It has one good thing going for it. So I would say it's overrated based on how much love it gets. So you're saying it's the Dark Night of the Keanu Reeves filmography. I have not saying that. I have said the Dark Night is the best Batman movie of that trilogy. Well, it's not really saying much, but you're right about that.

It's over a lot. stink. All those movies are bad except for when Heath Ledger's on the screen and he's being the Joker. Does he so twisted, right? Does he have twisted written on Aspharia? I think that's a different Joker. Okay. Underrated? I'll go, I'll go. This is kind of a chalk pick because I think there's been a revisiting of this film for being better than it was upon release. But the Matrix Reloaded, I think is underrated. It's an incredible action movie. Honestly, I've never seen it because, or never seen all of it because like the first 40 minutes sucks so bad that I'm just like, I can't fucking do this.

But that once you get to the highway chase and stuff. I've never done. I've never succeeded in doing so. I do like the Merovingian, by the way, for the record. The man who gave a woman an orgasm when she ate a dessert in a restaurant because he's that. villainous question mark? I don't know.

That seems like a pretty cool thing to do. And then what's underrated? Trinity turned to the camera and go, I don't have what she's having, right?

Holy shit. The most underrated Keanu Reeves movie is Constantine. It's so fucking good. It's really good. It's really good. I like that choice.

That's a movie. Speaking of, Now, because now he's just doing a shitlet. They're doing a fourth Matrix movie. They're doing a third Bill and Ted movie. We need a second Constantine movie, and he's, like, fucking way past being over it. And, you know, he...

That's a vintage, uh, vintage Rachel Weiss and then also a Shia LaBuff in that movie as well. Fucking, what's his name? The guy who plays Satan in it. I can never remember his name. Listen to this fucking, Sean, listen to this fucking cast. Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weiss, Shia LaBuff, Digimon, Hughes. Shimon Honsu, yeah.

Thank you. I can ever say his last name, right. Gavin Rossdale from Bush. He's in it. That's true. Tilda Switten? She isn't. And Pete Stormer is safe.

He's so good. And the long-running joke I have is that he was originally supposed to be played by Donald Trump. He comes in and he says, John Constantine, you fired. And everybody fucking loses their minds. Wee. We love it. underrated Keanu, Sean. I've got an honorable mention I just want to throw out there, which is the devil's advocate.

I love any Al Pacino movie that's just Al Pacino doing an impression of Al Pacino. Yes, of course. And that one is like the classic of the genre. I don't remember anything about it or what Kino actually did or whether the movie itself was any good. But just give me like Al Pacino screaming at the camera for two hours. But that was that was not my pick my pick I went with the obvious correct answer, which is Youngblood, underrated, a classic. I don't know when we all decided that Slapshot was the go-to classic hockey movie and just kind of discarded Youngblood aside. Slapshot's a very good movie, but Youngblood is also a very good movie and it should be talked about with the same reverence.

and Key News in it for like six seconds. So, yeah, that's what I'm going on with. I think we decided it when Slapshot came out. When everybody was like, because it was an incredible, a fucking perfect movie, yeah. But otherwise. Favorite Keanu's movie, Speed. I think that's a really good fucking answer.

That's a really good answer. It is, it is, it is an incredibly, that is in the pantheon of rewatchable movies for me. Every time it's on, I'm fucking tuning in. I might not need that last. like 20 minutes of like Dennis Hopper and him fighting out a train or some shit. But the way they kill Dennis Hopper is very good. It's so good that they ripped it off for the third Mission Impossible movie.

By the way, Mission Impossible, the greatest film series of all times. Yeah, well, we'll talk about that another day. But the, but yeah, speed is terrific. Sandra Bullock, like, the quickest start making performance maybe in movie history. And the stunt work is incredible. And I'm still fucking fascinated that the movie somehow got made because, like, it's all practical stuff. And they jumped a bus. What do you say?

Favorite game? It's the Matrix. I mean, come on. It literally redefined the action genre. Every movie for five years was like, what can we do this like the fucking Matrix, though? Sean, you can't use Youngblood again. You've already used it. Yes, I can.

But no, I'm actually just going to go with John Wick, which was kind of for me, like, almost like the, similar to the Matrix experience in that I didn't see it for a few years. And I kept hearing about how great it was. And I'm like, this is a constant problem with me with movies. I only get around to seeing them after I've been told how amazing they are for so long that they can't live up to it. And it actually did live up to it. I kind of went in like, all right, there's no way this is going to be as good as everyone says. And it was really good. Yeah, I rewatched them all recently.

And I was like, these movies still kick ass. They're insanely good. Yeah. I was just like, you know, I went in like almost expecting not to like it because I wanted to like it so much. And like five minutes in when like the dog is crawling over to him, I'm like, I'm all in. I'm all in on this. They really shouldn't kill that fucking dog, man. They really shouldn't have.

least favorite piano movie I was thinking chain reaction where he plays a nuclear physicist just because, you know, but I would probably have to say my least favorite is the remake of the day of the earth.

It's pretty bad. It's really bad, it's really boring, and it is, your classic, this does not require a remake film. like you just don't need it's a perfect movie the original um and to do you could do the same setup you just don't need to do the movie right like you could do another movie where a fucking

alien comes down and he's benevolent or whatever but like they just didn't need to remake it i i did not like it i remember the special effects were really like gray and murky not a fan fuck fuck the day the other sits still everything. It's not good at all. Hmm. There's a lot of, he did a lot of really bad stuff for a while there. I think chain reaction, no, the gift is definitely the worst. That movie stinks.

It does it though. Yes, it definitely does. Incredible cast that really went to waste. Yeah, I was going to say, the gift gave us Katie Holmes, though. Oh yeah. And what would Hollywood be like if we never had Katie Holmes? Well, no, I mean, it gave us the Katie Holmes scene. The Katie Holmes scene that was referenced, it was a plot point in Harold and Kumar, it was so famous. Oh, yeah. And again, what would Hollywood be like if the fucking first Harold and Kumar movie had never been made? Well, I mean, that's a good question. There wouldn't have been the other two sequels. That's for sure. They would have never gone to Guantanamo Bay. Sean, your least favorite Keanu movies movie. I think I've named every keynote movie I've ever seen, I think, with the four that I've covered. So I will, I'll defer to you guys and say, yeah, those movies sound. Youngblood it is.

That's the show for this week. We thank you all for listening to Puggeau Soup. Thank you to Burrow for sponsoring the show. I'm Greg. You could read my stuff on ESPN.com. My column The Wishlist ran on Thursday. and my other podcast, ESPN, and I, had a really fun episode, P.K. Suban,

and a really fun interview with Christopher Steig, where we talked about life as a young player in Chicago both pre-the-Blackhawks being really fucking good and post-the-Blackhawks being really fucking good. And how much easier it was for him to get into a club after, like, 2007 in Chicago. It was a really good chat. Uh, yeah, sign up for the freaking Puckoo Patreon.

I have a newsletter on there. We do bonus episodes. It's all good stuff, and it's cheap, so. Come find me on The Athletic. There's a 90-day trial right now if you're not a subscriber and you'd like to read my stuff or all the other stuff that pretty much many of your favorite sports writers have written. It sort of had a fun piece this week. It was an idea we came up with.

Four writers from four different sports got together, and we did a draft where we could steal ideas and concepts from other leagues to try to make our own leagues better. And it was a five-round draft, and I went in with a list of about 40 things I wanted to steal from other leagues. And everybody's like, the NHL. Nothing from them, thanks. Yeah, the NHL, the state.

The Nellie Cup was a high draft pick, and that was not quite it, but it was, yeah, but I feel like I made the NHL significantly better. I got to, and I got to do that GM thing where I came out of the draft going like, well, I can't believe those picks are still available where they were. And so, yeah, if you want to see me kind of match wits with Jason Starks and other writers from different leagues, and let me know which one of you, which one of us you think improved the most. Good stuff. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. This is a fun one. And we will talk to you next week.

See you. Bye. Bye. Stay safe. All that stuff. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute.

We also cover movies, TV shows. It's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Part two.