Puck Soup - Ray Ratto

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

The boys welcome famous sports curmudgeon Ray Ratto to talk Sharks, robot umpires and the state of the sports media. Plus we break down the Jonathan Toews NHL schedule fix, the WNHL, outdoor games, Tarasenko's injury, healthy scratches and what Stephen King adaptations we want to see. Sponsored by Seat Geek!

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That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot CA. Cargooros.ca. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. Part two. I'm Greg Wischinski of ESPN, and also ESPN too, and also ESPN News, and also ESPN News.

I'll stop. There's a lot of networks. I'm Ryan Lambert. I think we just have the one site at Yahoo. I'm Sean McHugh from The Athletic. It bothers me that the guy on the West Coast seems to have more energy this morning than I do. Yeah. No shit. Did you, like, are you still awake from the night before? Or what, how does it work? You're in Puck suit. This is the day before a vacation for me.

So I don't know how you guys work. work it when and if you do take a break. But it's usually like the two days leading up to it are your most manic and busiest days of life. Yep. To try to get everything done. So I was, as we do the show, it's like five, sorry, six o'clock my time in the morning. And I probably went to bed, I'd say about three and a half hours ago because I had to do like notes for an article that I'm doing today. So it's like, and also I'm just, I'm just someone who gets.

shot out of a cannon in the morning. I just, I rarely, when I have a task at hand, um, am, uh, you know, like a, a shambolic zombie in the morning. Like if, if, I think it's, I think it goes back to like waking up to go to the airport for this dumb job and that you can't just like, like, dick around. You have to like get out of bed and, and actually like get in the car or get in the Uber or else you're going to like miss your flight. I think my, my lizard brain has been tricked to now be a lot more alert and awake than, you. maybe I would be if I was, you know, an accountant, let's say. People are the worst.

What, morning people? Yeah. Really? Yep. Absolutely. Hey, go. 100%. I don't know, man.

Like, I, it's, I, yeah, I got, I go back and forth as to whether or not I am a morning person because, quite frankly, um, I am somebody who will sleep until, like, noon. Like, I don't know if I've ever said this, but the single greatest day of my life didn't involve, you know, my wife or the birth of my child was when I was a kid, there was one night when I stayed up until like, I think it was during winter break. I stayed up until like three or four in the morning playing Nintendo in my basement. And then I went to sleep. And then I woke up at like four the next afternoon. And then my dad came home and we immediately went to a devil's game.

That is awesome. That's solid. That's fantastic. Like the perfect sort of what if you were. vampire but also a hockey fan scenario but also you played video games until like the crack of thought it was the greatest my that that sounds like my college years like my crowning achievement in university was one night i i stayed up uh so late that i slept in the next day and missed dinner like i right i was too late to go for dinner uh that's right that's when i was like even like

19 year old me was like, I might need to get it together. Yeah. And again, it's, I think on occasion that can feel good. You don't want some sort of, you know, less than zero type life where this is the norm, where you're a fucking character from a Tom Petty song or some shit. But on occasion, on occasion, it's pretty great to just sleep the whole fucking day away and just get up and then do things at night, like your Lestat or something. It's great. I'm all in favor of it.

Speaking of sleep, this is, I mean, I can't qualify this as breaking news, but I guess it's like, as we're coming on to talk about it news. The Athletic published a story this morning by Mark Lazarus based on a conversation with Jonathan Tate. This feels like, you know, it's the movie trailer. It's like the adaptations based on the idea by Jonathan Tave. So Mark Lazarus production. Jonathan Taves is tired and he would like there to be less travel for NHL teams. So he's kicked around the idea of the, they're calling it the Tave's schedule. Right. Which I guess is that you play Selky Worthy hockey for about 30 years and then fall off a cliff.

Is that the Tave schedule? Anyways. Something like that. The Tave schedule is where you are going with more of a baseball-like schedule where you're going to play the same team like three, three times in a row, like a baseball series. And not like a home and home, but like you would host a division rival for three straight home games

over the course of five or six things. The breakdown of the games are that you would play six games against each of your division opponents, three games against your conference opponents, and then one game, a little one game special. against the other conferences teams. So in other words, you know, you'll get these like,

to give you a better example. So the first 11 games of the Chicago schedule under the Taves plan would be the three-game homestand against the Colorado Avalanche, one game in Calgary, three games at the Winnipeg Jets, two games at the Edmonton Oilers, and then two games at home against the Vegas Golden Knights. So 3-1-3-2-2 would be the schedule to kick off the season. And so obviously the first question is, do hockey fans have the stomach for homestands? I think hockey fans have the stomach for homestands.

I don't think they have the stomach for anything that's different. and that's like I feel that I'm looking at this because if you if you subscribe to the athletic and you look at the article read the whole thing but scroll down to the graphic that visually represents the Chicago schedule and like I'm sitting here looking at this thing and my hockey fan brain is screaming at me that this this is not okay you can't do it this way this is not how we've ever done it but then like my logical brain is like yeah this actually makes a lot of sense because, like, travel is an issue. It's a big issue. It's way bigger than we think about and not just travel, but these home and homes and, you know, this is this is a big thing in Leafsland right now. It's the home and home where one team travels and the other team is rested and it's, and it really just kind of throws off the balance of of the schedule. And this would address a lot of that. And it's, but it looks weird. Like it's, it's, I

I can't imagine looking at it and not having your first, you know, your first thought just be like, this is, this is weird. It looks like a baseball schedule. And I don't know. I'm trying to get my head around it just as I look at it. I think the bigger problem in theory on this is that there are too many road games in a row, like 15 of Chicago's 21 games to start the season under this schedule. And obviously, this is hypothetical or whatever. but 15 of 21 are on the road to start out and I can see a lot of teams really not having the stomach

for you know dealing with that I guess but I feel like you could you could you could massage that a little bit like this is from like there was the idea and then I think was Dom came up with a sort of a prototype of what it could look like this isn't necessarily set in stone of how it would look but you're right there certainly would be lot like the the days of of like the two-game road trip or the, you know, we're on the road on Monday, come back home Wednesday, go on the road for two on the weekend, that would kind of go away. It would be like, yeah,

they're on the road for the next two weeks because they play, they go out to L.A. and they play each of the, you know, if you're a Pacific team, like the Oilers, let's say, your California road trip would be nine games, maybe 12 if you did Vegas or, you know, or Arizona or something. And it, but it's same. time. We see teams have long road trips these days, and we see teams play like six out of seven on the road over a two or three week period. So I don't know. It would be longer road trips, but with a lot less travel. So you're not on a, you're not playing a game jumping on a plane and playing another game in the next day. So it, I guess a lot of this comes down to how much

of an issue you perceive travel to be. And that that clearly is different for different teams. Right. It's clear that a guy from Chicago is coming up with this schedule. Yeah. It's not hard to imagine why, like, if you're Chicago, Detroit, probably the Western teams, it's a bigger issue than it would be if you're like Toronto or New York or. You wonder, too, how much you can just do that with just a Western conference, you know? And like the Eastern Conference, they can kind of keep the same schedule as long as they're staying in the East. But like once you leave the Eastern time zone, then things can get a little weird, I think. Because like, I can't imagine, say, the Rangers being like, oh, yeah, we're going to go spend a week in Florida and then four days in Carolina. We'll hit Philly for three on the way back and then, you know, we'll be at home against the islanders and the devil.

I think, yeah, my, I understand the travel aspect of it. And I think for Western Conference teams, this is obviously a bigger issue than it is for, you know, the devils. And obviously, we're dealing with somebody who at many times in his career has had to go on the road for, what, like five weeks because the fucking circus was in town. So I think there's like an aspect of that as well. he's probably got some PTSD from that. I just, I'm wondering, I come back to the marketing aspect of it. I know that's something that's touched on in this, in this story a little bit as far as like, you know, would this have a bunch of games in a row of thing work?

And they actually talked to Bill Daly about it, and they said the league has kicked around some of the ideas behind the TAVE schedule over the years, but that the teams prefer variety. They'd rather see Patrick Kane, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby come through their town two or three times over the course of the season rather than for one big weekend. I think in some markets, they want the variation of club to club to club as opposed to having to sell the same club multiple nights in a row. I get that. And I think that, you know, it goes back to the classic conundrum about the NHL, which is

what's the best way to present your product is the best way to present your product through the idea of rivalry because, quite frankly, a three-game series against any team will probably breed more contempt than a one and done. You know, we see it all the time back to, in home and homes. I mean, the theory that if you open up with three games against the Colorado Avalanche, by game three, it feeling a little bit more playoffy is not necessarily an outlandish theory. But are you then because of this format limiting yourself with the opportunity to expose the entirety of the league against the entirety of the league? is it better for hockey to have Connor McDavid never come through an Eastern Conference

City in a season? I don't know if it is. That's the problem that stands out to me here. I would like to see a version of this where you still maintain the two games between teams and different conferences. So you get one home game each time because I see that being the objection here. And you're right. I mean, clearly, it's going to depend on the matchup.

I'm sitting here in Ottawa. I'm already picturing like Panthers Week, like the week that the Florida Pan, like, that's going to be dead. How are you going to ever sell that? But at the same time, like, I don't know. Maybe different fans have different, like, I sit there like as a Leafs fan. I don't know who the Leafs are playing like two games from now. I have no idea.

I just like the new week rolls around and it's like, oh, they're playing the capitals tonight. Okay, but sure. Like, I don't, I kind of, there's part of me that kind of likes the idea saying like, yeah, this is, this is Bruins week. They're hosting the Bruins three times this week. That's going to get pretty nasty. And it would be like a real playoff atmosphere, not like these fake home and homes we get now. Like I'm old school, I remember Norris Division home and homes where it was like back-to-back nights and you knew the second night was always going to be a gong show versus once we get.

or even now when you have a home and home, but it's like, there's like three days in between or like this week, the Leafs played the Bruins on Saturday and then they played them again on Tuesday, but the Leafs had a game in Columbus in between, but the Bruins did.

And it was just like, what are we doing? Like just squish them together and let's, let's do this old school. I, it would feel a little bit playoff. And like nobody in the playoffs complains like, oh,

it's the same team over and over again. Right. You know, it's, nobody, misses the variety then. So I don't like like I say my hockey fan brain is like just that instinctive kind of knee jerk like no. We're we're going to start from no and go from there. But like my go from there is the more I look at it, it's it's grown on me a little bit. There it is.

Like a fungus. I don't I don't hate it. I just find it to be a little more problematic than probably John, like John, John, John, the Taves has one thing in mind with the schedule, which is keep me off a fucking plane. That's basically it. And also, let's be honest, and this was sort of touched on as well, we're also talking about the air to the Andrew Farrant's throne of the NHL's most green thinking, forward thinking, environmental thinking player. Yeah, that's horrible. What a piece of shit, right? No, I'm not saying he's a piece of shit. I'm just saying that there's also an ulterior motivation for trying to keep guys.

off of planes. Well, they're, they can be. But also, like, this is for better for worse, this is still like the, I don't think the idea of the NHL's marquee team not being exhausted from travel all the time is really that bad of a selling point. Like, if we're going to, it touches in the article, like how, especially the Blackhawks, because of TV, their schedule gets messed around because NBC always wants them. And we can obviously talk about whether that's a smart way to market a league to constantly

feature the same team. But if you're going to do it, maybe having them not be sleepwalking through games because they've been on planes every day for a week, I don't know. I think Chicago's bigger problem is sleepwalking through games because they want to come five years ago, but sure. That's true. Got them. Yeah, they're finished. Yeah. So I don't know. I've got, I've got some time for the Jonathan Tave schedule. It's not the best idea in the world, but not the worst idea in the world. And the NHL's like, we only do the worst ideas in the world. So please be right in mind for all suggestions going forward.

I do think, I do think, I find it ironic that like we talked about at the start of this conversation, which is that for the league that constantly is harping on the quality of rivalries and rivalries being the lifeblood of the league, like this really would seem like the easiest fucking way to create a rivalry or to stoke the flames of one. Especially because someone in a Calgary, LA series would literally die by game three of that home state. Yeah. This would either really stoke the rivalries or really drive home the fact that there

are no more rivalries when you saw like the, the Leafs and Habs play three straight and nobody, like nothing interesting happens. And the other thing, too, about it that I guess we haven't discussed is that, you know, in baseball, the repetition works because it's three straight days. I mean, that's the thing. It's a home stand. It's a bunch of games all in a row. If the Cubs come to play the Mets, well, you can maybe see the Cubs a Friday and a Saturday

and a Sunday, and how exciting is that? This would not be that. I mean, this would be like, at best, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and probably not even that. I mean, in most cases, it's probably like Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. So it's not. It's not three games. You could do two nights in a row pretty easily.

Like, you could do three games, three games and four nights if nobody had traveled. You could in theory, right? And, oh, boy, that's opened up a other fucking can of worms, which is that a condensed schedule. A little bit. Yeah. Okay. Now, now are we trading off time spent on plane for time spent on ice, is the real question. Yeah, I mean, it's, if it gets us to the point where old people don't be like, I can't believe they play the Stanley Cup.

final in June, like they've been fucking bringing up for 40 years since they started playing the Stanley Cup final in June. Like, that might be worth it to me, just to not have to hear those complaints anymore. Yeah, but there's also, like, going to be times when the building's not available and you're going to have to go Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. And now it now, right? Yeah, that's fine. But that's the case now, right? There's always... Because that's like, that's like one thing for an entire week.

It's kind of boring. I don't know. Variety's the spice of life. I'm not a fan of buffets necessarily, but. Variety's the spice of life, but maybe not when you've got like the Panthers, Columbus, you know, whatever stretch of your schedule. And then you're like, oh, this variety sucks. I would rather be watching a team I care about over and over.

No, that's fine. But like Ryan said, though, that like not every, not everybody gets to have that choice. No. I mean, you're going to be in a division with Ottawa. You're going to be in a division with Winnipeg. You're going to be in a division with... Ottawa or Winnipeg, right? Like you're...

Yeah. Where it's like, oh, I don't really want to go see. But, I mean, you're going to get a lot of ticket sales and a lot of jersey sales and beer sales or whatever when the Bruins and then the Lightning and then the Leafs all come to town for over the course of two straight weeks. And there's a tradeoff. I mean, like, I still remember living in D.C. And that when the Redskins weren't fucking horrible, like when Dallas would come in, it was Dallas week. and for an entire week you just talk about Dallas. And there's something to be said for if you're, if you're a Leaves fan and it's, you know, Boston week.

Sometimes you've got to play the Cleveland Browns, man. Like, they're just going to be on the schedule. It's true as well. It's true as well. It's good stuff. Yeah. So Jonathan Taves, our next commissioner, in my opinion. Let's go.

What do you say? No? That's fine. Be an upgrade. I think the thing that we aren't talking about is how this whole thing will, affect the secondary ticket market, which brings up an interesting point. Seatheek is a proud sponsor of the Puxi podcast, yeah, with millions of live event tickets from sports, live music to comedy and more.

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I've got the Seeky cap on my phone. It's easiest way I find, easiest way I have to find tickets. So if I'm, you know, looking here in San Jose for that three-game homestand against the Arizona C-Coyotes, I'm probably going to use C-Keekeek and find out which game of the three has the biggest, thickest, greenest circles. Seekek even gives you $10 off your first C-Kkeek purchase. All I have to do is use our promo code. You download the C-Kkeek app today.

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Now, granted, I don't know if they end up happy because it's usually like them sitting down with their beer and their hot dog and they take a picture of the Jumbotron and they're like, I'm at this game right now. They never take a picture at the end of the game and they're like, fuck you guys for enticing me to come and see this Florida Vancouver game.

I'm a Panthers fan and they just skull fuck this. We never get that part of it. But I assume most of the time people leave happy. That's just because they're like, they spent like 10 less dollars. That's at least where I'm thinking. Seek, they have the tickets.

Speaking of tickets, there was an outdoor game that everybody cared about not caring about it. Why don't people understand what the Heritage Classic is at this point? Like, people seem surprised that they didn't hear anything about the Heritage Classic when clearly the Heritage Classic is the localist of local events that the NHL puts on every year. Well, I always feel like the Heritage Classic is like the, let's throw the Canadian teams of bone on the whole outdoor thing. Yes, 100%. Which is why I wasn't surprised that you guys didn't necessarily. know there was an outdoor game coming. I was kind of surprised that I didn't know. Like,

it was like Wednesday and I was looking at this guy and I was like, oh crap, there's an outdoor game in like a few days. And you're right. I mean, it is, it's local, especially this one because it was in, uh, in Saskatchewan. So there wasn't like even a local. It was like it was a neutral site game in, in that sense. Um, but yeah, it is, I guess it just speaks to, I don't know what the league is supposed to do. Like, I don't know how they're supposed to get a, excited about a Jets Flames game three weeks in advance. So this might not be something that they can do anything about. But it does just drive home the fact that the novelty has worn off these games to the point where it no longer feels special or even newsworthy if it's not your team or your local area that's hosting.

And that's just, you know, that's, I guess not unusual. but it would have felt unusual if someone had told you 10 years ago that, you know, in a decade, these outdoor games will just be kind of like ho-hum and you won't even know they're happening until the day before. Does anybody remember what the final score was? I think it went to a shootout, right? It was like 5 to 4? No, yeah, I want to say 5-4 overtime as Brian Little had the OT winner.

And this is the, this was Saturday, right, between the jets and the flames? Yep. Two one. That's how much we paid attention to all those stuff. I've said for a while that, like, I, it's funny, while acknowledging the fact that the outdoor game gimmick is clearly overplayed and there is not nearly anywhere near the buzz there even was for these games, what, five years ago, I kind of want to see more of them.

I feel like we've got... Finally, call for more outdoor games. I love it. Absolutely. And I think every team should have an outdoor game of their schedule. I don't think that it's overplayed in that sense. Because I think if you go to these games, when you're there for what is essentially a giant community celebration of the local hockey team or hockey culture, it's fucking cool. It's fucking cool to go to a game on tailgate in the big football stadium parking lot.

the games qualities are, you know, I would say probably, what, three out of every 10 are actually good games. So you're not going for that. But for the experience of being there with your others and with the experience of seeing a game in a different venue and maybe it's a cool venue that you haven't, you know, ever conceived seeing a hockey game in. I'm sure that's probably like a Dallas fan going to the Cotton Bowl and for the Winter Classic, for example. Like, I like it. I feel like the the hype being worn off of the outdoor game from a national perspective is undercut by how much hype there is and how much interest there is locally for these games when you go to them. I feel like it's sort of like the All-Star game now. Like no one gives a fucking shit about the All-Star game except for me.

But we don't have three All-Star games a year or four or six. But that's, but it doesn't matter. Like, like, because it's not, these games aren't for us, the outdoor games. The outdoor games are for the people. I think you just hit the new NHL marketing slogan. These games aren't for us. This game is not for you. No, but I'm serious.

Like, like, if you, if, if, if there's a Tampa, Florida outdoor game in Tampa, like, great. It'd be cool if this could attract the national television audience, but ultimately, it's about how many people fill that stadium in Tampa, how many people buy the jerseys for that game in Tampa and what you know the local economy is is adduced by in Tampa it has nothing to do with whether or not you or me or Ryan watch the game on NBCSN on a Saturday night it's like it doesn't matter and it well maybe it doesn't now but that's what I'm saying 10 years ago if you would explain that scenario people would have been shocked and and they would

have said that that sounded like the concept had failed because 10 years ago this was a way to get not just national hockey fans interested, but national sports fans. It had that novelty factor. And now it's basically, I think you're right. It's kind of the equivalent of like when the NFL goes to London a few times a year and you're just sort of like, oh, well, like, why does this game look a little weird? Oh, okay, it's one of the London games. They are fun to go to.

You know, if anyone out there is listening and hasn't been to one of these, everything around them is all sorts of fun. the game itself usually like you it's it's not as fun to watch as you think it would be it's the views aren't right the sight lines it's too far away and all that stuff and this and the sound too like that's one of the things that always I'm fascinated by when it going to these outdoor games is that like you don't realize being closer to the rink and hearing those noises or uh even just having the cavernous effect of an arena changes the acoustics of a game so much there are times when you're in a football stadium or a baseball stadium, what these winter classics or whatever,

and you're just like, why is it so fucking quiet? And that's even with them micing up the rink. It's a really weird dynamic. Yeah. So it takes some getting used. I don't know. I feel like they really did some damage in whenever it was 2050, when they did the six games in the year. And they had like two in the Yankee Stadium back to back.

And then there was like another one that weekend. And that was like, like, the turning point where they beat it into the ground. I feel like three is the right number. You've got the Winter Classic, which is your big marquee game. You've got the Heritage Classic, which shuts up the Canadians. And then you've got one more that's sort of like your undercard, but still get some other teams involved so that you don't end up having to put like the coyotes in a winter classic, which would never happen. And yet you can maybe put them in a matchup. that's in the stadium series.

I feel like that's okay. And, you know, they space them out too. This one, I think part of the reason it caught people off guard is because it felt like it came early this year. Early, very early, yeah. But if you have one in like November, 1 to January 1st and then another one you wait until February, like I feel like that's about right. We're never going to get it back to where it felt special the way it did when there was only one a year and it was just the classic, the winter classic.

But I feel like three. is okay. I hope they don't go to go back to doing more than that. Ryan, I'm getting the whiff of I don't give a shit about the outdoor games anymore from you. Yeah, there should be one or two. You know, like Sean said, throw the Canadians a bone every other year or whatever. But there should be one and that's, it should be on New Year's Day and that should be like the special one. and like I obviously understand the appeal of you know you're going to get it you're going to get it so Dallas has one you're going to get it so Colorado has one and maybe that's the only way Florida would ever get to play in one is by making it the not special game but but at the same time it's like everybody kind of goes oh nobody cares about the outdoor games anymore and it's like right well you had that season where there were fucking eight of them. So that's what, like, made it not special in much the same way of it doesn't feel special

when a Star Wars movie comes out anymore because the Star Wars movie comes out every year at this point. Yeah, thanks solo. Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Moving to On the Ice, Vladimir Tarasanko is out for five fucking months. Five months and then being reevaluated. Revaluated. He's done for the year.

Let's be honest. Yeah. Is this welcome to the bubble St. Louis Blues? No? All of a sudden? I don't think the loss of even one really good player necessarily does it, especially if they go out and say trade for Tyler to Foley, which they should do. But, you know, it obviously doesn't help them.

Yeah. Especially in a tough division where, like, there's going to be a couple of points. Like last year, a couple of points will be the difference between winning the division and starting on the road as a three-seed. It, I mean, that clearly hurts a lot. It's five months from now would take us to March. And in theory, you could come back, get back up to speed, jump into the playoffs, and you're still in the playoffs. And now you're full power and off you go, that's the ideal scenario.

But, yeah, reevaluated in five months to me does not sound like somebody who's coming back in five months. Yeah, you'd have to think so. Or, you know, maybe if they go on a deep run, you can be the, the, the. The guy shows up late, but even that, I have a hard time seeing. That's, that's, it's, it's, it's brutal for, for a fun player and, you know, a really, a guy that I think fans everywhere enjoy. That sucks. And, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't think the blues miss the playoffs now, but this certainly does. The interesting thing is, of course, it's, it's the blue.

So even if they do spiral, like, no one's going to evaluate them properly all year because of last year, right? Like, we're all going to be, they could lose their next 10. We're all going to be sitting there in November going like, well, wait for it. Figure it out. Yeah. Wait for it. And then it, you know, it never happens. And but.

Yeah, I remember having to do that with the L.A. King some years where everybody's like, don't worry. They're going to, they're going to, they're just going to sneak in and then they don't. Here's my concern about the blues. You've conceded the first place. the second place to the avalanche and predators. Let's just be honest. Those are probably going to be a top two teams in division. You're probably

fine as long as Winnipeg remains the team we think they're going to be and Dallas doesn't put their shit together. Like the Dallas thing of like a all of a sudden putting your shit together and going on like a 10 game run and getting back into this fucking thing, I think is a real concern. Although they've

not given ample of it and so far that they can do that. As long as Winnipeg is middling, Dallas is a disaster. Chicago and Minnesota exist. You're probably okay. But if one of those teams all of a sudden starts nipping at your heels, I don't want to be in the-

I don't want to be in the bubble. I don't want to be in the bubble of the blues. Like your best bet right now is to finish third net division and not have to worry about one of these fucking Western Conference teams all of a sudden, you know, amassing points against their weaker others. That's the thing that you don't want to have happened. I don't know. You finish third in the division.

You're playing Nashville or Colorado. You finish in the wild card. Maybe you have a chance to play whoever wins the Pacific. I don't know. You also are going to say that St. Louis hasn't really played that well this year. No, they haven't. They're, you know, I'm looking at it now. They're five-on-five numbers are bad.

Like they've been out expected goals in 12 games. I mean, it's, and then, you know, on defensively, not been all that stout. I'm a little more worried about them than you guys are, just because of the dynamics of the division in the conference. And because, I mean, it's not as if they lost fucking, you know, Jaden Schwartz for the umpteenth time in the last four years. I mean, Teresanko's a pretty big fucking player to lose.

Yeah. So I. What's your worth, like three wins, two? He makes them a lot less threatening. Oh, it's just overall. I mean, the interesting thing is that, you know, where does this, what does this mean for like your Robert Thomas's and your Sammy Blay and guys that are going to maybe get a better opportunity now because of this injury.

I'm excited to see that, but it's not going to be Teresenko. So I'm a little concerned about that. And then the other nice thing I wanted to mention was the Healthy Scratchen that went on this week, where Brint Seabrook, Healthy Scratch, that's a contract through 2024, I believe, right, Ryan? That sounds right, yeah. And Bobby Ryan, a Healthy Scratch. And Bobby Ryan, the toughest healthy scratch of all, which is that your team scratches you and then plays probably their best game of the last two years by beating the San Jose sharks on home ice.

Like, fuck, man. Like pull that thread and all of a sudden the different sweater is unraveling, man. That's a tough look. And this came after his DJ Smith, the coach had been pretty openly critical of him. And it's a tough situation because I know people look at it and they see Bobby Ryan with his $7 million cap hit. and they go, well, the senators have to get to the floor, so why not hold it? The problem is it doesn't, it's not front-loaded at all. So he's making like $7 million in cash, which is Eugene Melnick's money just going to somebody

who's going to be a healthy scratch every year. I don't see how that continues, and yet I don't see who else is going to step up and take that deal. So it's, yeah, this could get up. Yeah, I saw somebody say this in the last couple of days, like, well, maybe they package them with a first round pick. And it's like, this team's going to finish the year with 34 points. They can't give up a first round pick.

Their chance to do it was Carlson. And apparently they had that almost done and it didn't happen. So I don't know what you do. Yeah. Well, that was, you know, that was a great, great job by Pierodoria. And because I know for a fact that Vegas was a team that would have taken on that contract. Yep. But no, give me more, he says.

And that's why he's. Pierre Radoe is a real awesome dude, a longtime admirer of this man's work and very happy to have spent some time with him here in the Bay Area since moving out here. He is the Kermudgeon's Kermudgeon, an old school, crusty, cynical, although it isn't like any of these words applied to him, sports writer. We get into a lot of topics. Fuck, man. The sharks, the journalism, the late great national. Did you ever have the national, or are you too young for the national, Ryan? I forget.

Alligator, we're talking about a high violet? I'm easy to find. No, no, no. I'm not talking about the sports newspaper that used to contain such luminaries as Mike Lupica. Yeah, no. Okay, there. So anyways, it was, for those I don't know, it was a daily sports paper that they've created, and Ray wrote for it.

So there's your context for that discussion. You're going to dig this. He's a real fun dude. And here's Ray. Ray Rado, a hero of mine, I've seen you described as cranky, cynical, cantankerous. Did you ever have a favorite description of yourself that someone has applied to you? Oh, shut up. No, because, you know, everybody's always wrong about everybody, including me.

So it didn't really matter. I mean, because at some point, you know, you are what. somebody thinks you are. And as long as I haven't committed any crimes or done any wrongs to people who don't deserve that, then, you know, call me what you want. I don't care. But these are, but these are compliments. I mean, if someone called me cynical or cantankerous, to me that would mean that I've developed over the years a style and a delivery of opinion and news that has resonated with somebody. No one will ever call you vanilla.

They will say that you are specific. Well, I think if you've done what we've done for as long as we have and you are not, at least cynical to a certain measure, you're not paying attention. Right. Just, I mean, follow the Iowa senators for a year and tell me that won't ruin your case for this point. I wanted to ask, yeah. Yeah, no, I just think that, you know, it's, I want the people who report sports for me to have some of that because it means they're not swallowing all of the nonsense that they're fed. The true fan, and I mean that in the most pejorative way, who believes what they're told, is someone, frankly, I mean, I would emigrate to a vote.

avoid. No, I don't want to hear what your, you know, clearly, you know, anti-dispopian view of the world is because I've seen the other side. So credit we're due, even if grudgingly, blame we're applicable in all cases, and the rest of the time we drink. It's an interesting conundrum, though, because I imagine that before you were a writer, you were a fan, and do you ever wish? that you could go back to a time where you didn't know how the sausage was made.

Do you ever wish that you'd go back to the, use the men-in-black blinky machine to zap your brain and make you forget all of you learned about professional sports? No. Well, one, I was never a fan of a particular team. I always just liked the games. So I never had fandom to that extent. I never rooted for results. I just wanted the game.

And the game is the one thing that, despite all efforts, you know, the grownups can't ruin. You can put in stupid rules. You can have, you know, ridiculous ideas of what people want. But ultimately, the game is still going to be the game. So in that way, they didn't get the one thing that I always prized, which was, show me 60 minutes. and if necessary, 65 minutes of whatever you've got. And then I'll judge whether I had a good time or not. And then we'll both go away happy.

I mean, to me, there is nothing better than sudden death overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs because you get all of it. And, you know, it's just even stupid games where, you know, you just don't, you know, where it's hard to watch, you know, you always have the option of, you know, get nothing changing it. So, you know, we're largely pitching about things that aren't terribly important, and we're applying way too much value to it when if you just look at it as a way to kill two and a half hours, you win. I find it interesting, though. I was going to ask you about this later, but I might as well move it up now. So you talk about the 60 minutes of play, and it's really hard to fuck that up.

I was wondering your opinion on robot umpires, which was a thing that's been bought up this week. There were a couple of very close balls and strikes calls in the World Series. A few people have written columns about the automation or whatever, what I'm going for there, of balls and strikes and getting the human element away from that part of baseball. Is that something you'd be in favor of, or is that a step too far? No, I believe in chaos. I believe in human chaos. I don't believe that everything should be fair.

I think every once in a while an inaccuracy is okay. And I don't want to measure a robot's ability to do its job. I mean, last week in the Arizona Fall League, Giants Minor League got thrown out for arguing with the guy who basically confirmed the robot's call. You know, I mean, you know, what fresh level of hell is this? I don't, you know, I don't, I'm okay with the idea of, hey, we got screwed. And the worst thing that's happened in this century was when Tim Donaghy basically said that, you know, that he worked fixed games and he helped fix them.

because I want my officials, mine, because I own them all, they are my sleigh. I want them to make the odd mistake, but to make it honestly. I want the leagues that hire them to train them better and then support them. Because I think people could live with the odd inaccuracy here and there if they thought everybody was putting in an honest effort. but I think you have, you have officials who have gotten a little too imperious. You've gotten league officials who like using officials as, you know, human shields when something goes wrong. And I don't think that the pursuit of judgmental perfection is something that I want to waste a whole lot of time on.

You know, part of the story of sports that we tell our grandkids, children is, now, sometimes you're just going to get rogered, and that's how this works. It's a more valuable life lesson than, no, a robot will save your ass in the end. Right. You know, if I wanted to be Isaac Asimov, I do that. To me, you know, just go up a call now and then, as long as you do it, not trying to do it. You know, and then make sure that your bosses are willing to give you the tools to be the best official you can be. I mean, it's, it's, it's, we're overthinking a problem that isn't usually a problem.

And if you have somebody who's routinely awful, we place them. You know, this is not difficult. Right. You know, buying technology to save yourself from yourself is just a fresh way of blowing off your own leg for your own amusement. Right. And while I would say to watch that, I don't know that it's a good entertainment value. you bring up the bridge too far for I think every fan that we don't talk about enough, which is the moment we feel as though the results have been predetermined by somebody

or that somebody is not on the level when it comes to doing their job. That's why the Pete Rose thing was always a thing for me. Like people were always like, well, let him back in or whatever. I'm like, no, you don't understand, man. Like he was a manager betting on his own games. The moment that you walk into a stadium and pay your money and buy a hot dog and buy a soda and have even a scintilla of an idea that somebody is predetermining what you're about to see for their own benefit, the whole thing's fucked. And you're right.

That's the ultimate. Well, it's worse than that, though. Every time I read a story about how, you know, how the league is rooting for, you know, Toronto and Chicago to play in the Stanley Cup final, I don't care what the league's rooting for. I don't care what the TV networks are rooting for. You know, they'll get there when they get there. And if they don't get there, they hell with them. Right. I mean, because it's not a far walk from,

boy, this is what the league and the networks want, to so, you know, vicious little bastard in one of those offices to say, hey, why don't we fix it so we can get that? Yeah. You know, because I have, as little faith as I have in humanity, I believe in every league office, every sport, and in every network, there is that guy who's thinking, you know what? this is a great thing if we can pull it off.

I mean, I like the fact that they can't pull it off. I mean, I like that that's a protection because the bigger a conspiracy is, the easier it is to unravel. But I believe that there is one of those miserable little walking lap coats who is trying to devise away that you get Leiths Hawks or that you get, you know, I don't know, Rangers oilers. You know, I mean, just, you know, because they're there. They're all, I mean, they couldn't get into hedge funds, so they're doing this. I mean, they're just slugs. And they are everywhere, and one of them is thinking about it somewhere, even as we speak. In fact, it's your job to hang up on me right now.

Go find that guy and beat him to death. The lizard brain of me, though, believes in some of that. Like, I don't, I find it to be the ultimate coincidence that after the Major League Baseball nearly ruined itself by canceling the World Series. that for the next decade, everybody hit home runs and the Yankees won everything. And that after the NHL canceled a full season, outside of two anomalous years in the first two years, it was all big market original six teams and glamour franchises going on unprecedented Stanley Cup title runs for the next decade to fix the sport. I know it's probably coincidence, but my lizard brain says, what if it ain't? well see and it's not just your lizard brain

it's that there are lizard brains in positions of influence that we're thinking the same thing and even if they didn't carry it off it's the idea that you know that that little germ is somewhere in the back of their cerebellums and they're going why what if we did it you know to me sports is about chance and luck and the lack of saying and so the more you think about solutions to your little problem, the more you're trying to figure it away to take away chance and luck.

You know, it's just to me, if you're going to have the game, let the humans handle it. You know, I want, you know, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want Conner McDavid to be the guy who decides it for good or ill. and I don't want you know a bunch of people in suits saying tea that's Canada kind of a small market and I know Edmonton they're not as big as as Calgary what do we do you know

shut up if you didn't want them to win don't put a team there yeah you I'm you want everything and then you don't like the everything that you got right precisely I'm uh

that's your lizard brain I've only lived amongst Sharks fans for a little while. You've been here since the team came here through all of it. What's your overall assessment of that experience for these fans and of this weird franchise, which is at the same time one of the most successful and least successful in hockey? I want it noted, for the record, they have not won a Stanley Cup since they left the Cow Palace. It's true. It should be said right up top.

It does need to be said. That's exactly right. Yeah. They remind me in a lot of ways of those Portland Trailblazer teams who made the playoffs every year. With the only exception being that one year, they want it. The sharks have always had, in every year that they've had, they've always lacked one thing. and it's been different every time. If either the goaltender can't stand on his head in those games where, you know,

the rest of the boys take the night off, or they don't have enough third and fourth line depth, or they needed two more defensemen. You know, they're always just short on one ingredient, and it's not the same ingredient all the time. So it's harder, I think, for fans to grasp on to the, you know, what is it we're not doing? Because the thing that they don't get done is different.

Right. You know, I mean, last year was sort of the year that explained all of it. You know, they went out and they got a VanderCain and they got Eric Carlson. Now they're loaded with talents. You know, well, what didn't they have? Great goaltending. And what does they need at the end? Great goaltending.

I mean, it's just, there's, there was, I got this sense when they were starting. the series with the Blues, that they were doomed. Because, one, I thought people were sleeping on the blues the whole, you know, the whole second half of the year. Because they looked like, for me, anyway, they looked like a Stanley Cup team that had figured out the one thing that was murdering them, and they actually got fixed it. Right. You know, and Bennington was the guy. I didn't think that was going to happen.

But once the playoffs started, I just got a sense like, if you give these guys half a foot, they'll take the rest of the rank. And that's what they did. And I never got that sense with the shirt. I thought the shirts were the kind of team that said, we've got everything fixed now. And those are the teams that die the most horrible guys. And I think that's sort of been their history to the point where I think people are now jaded a bit.

You know, just we know this is going to end badly, you know. Do we really want to commit to this? You know, I just, I mean, the people who like the sharks are absolutely and unwaveringly devoted to them. And it should be what the hell, be a fan. But I think by now, they also go into every season going, we're not going to get what we want because something's going to go wrong. And it maddens them that they don't know what it is. You know, I think right now the easy thing to blame is, you know, Martin Jones is not the elite goaltender they thought they were getting.

But, you know, it's a lot of things. I mean, their third and fourth lines have been new. You know, they don't get any scoring chances right now, which makes them really hard to look at. But, you know, in the long term, they'll get to the playoffs. They'll probably win around because, you know, as many good teams are in the Pacific, nobody's really elite except Vegas.

and they can avoid Vegas, they could go kind of deep. But in the end, something's going to hit him right in the netheres, and they're not going to get, they're not going to get what they want, because that's who they are. Where's Joe Thornton in your Pantheon of Bay Area legends?

I think I like him as much as I like anybody because nobody works harder to avoid being the center of attention. Yeah, right? He figured out a long time ago that if he could play his best hockey, hang around with the fellas in the club in the locker room after, and then go about his day without anybody bothering him,

he wins the lottery. And there are so few people in sports who are afforded that luxury because, I mean, Jimmy Garapolo right now. now, not having a great year by quarterback standards, but he's seven and oh, so everybody thinks he's a genius and they all want his time. Gordon, I think, turns down more opportunities to, you know, sort of brand himself than any other superb Bay Area athlete I can ever remember. And I genuinely think it's because it not only bores him, it bothers him. He doesn't want to be that. And so he's sort of, he's sort of, have taken command of his own world and just says, I'm not going to be that.

You know, I'm sure he gets tons more interview requests than any other shark ever, including Patrick Marwell. But it doesn't interest him. And it's not because he's a lot, you know, he's a bad guy or the comedias burned him. It's sort of because he'd rather sit in the bathroom and have a beer or rather play with his kids, you know, or there's something equally horrendous. I mean, he's a wild child's not going to be wrong kids, but I just think he sort of mapped out how he wants this to go off the ice. Right.

To the point where if he retires without a cup, whatever he says, people will not believe it. They'll say, oh, no, it killed him that he'd never want a Stanley Cup. I think it'll bother him. but I don't think it will kill him. I think he'll just go, you know what? I did everything I could do. I played with ridiculous injuries. I was a pro, and I was a pro every year.

And I think he'll be okay with that. I mean, he won't be great about it. I think he would rather have his name on the thing. He'd rather have the print. But if he doesn't get it, you know, he's not going to stand on his rooftop in his underwear with four loaded rifles. He's just not that guy. And I don't think that he'd get the blame for it either.

Like, I feel like his reputation as a playoff performer changed dramatically within like the last decade where there used to be a, you know, Joe pulls in a disappearing act. It's his fault. Why can't they win? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. To, like you said, being more of a victim of circumstance. I did everything I could do. It's not my fault that this guy couldn't stop a shot or it's not my fault that the penalty kill fell apart or some shit like that in the playoffs. I'm happy.

That's why I'm happy for a guy like Lavechkin to win because it eliminates any of those bullshit. at arguments you'd hear otherwise about, you know, you're all these stats, but you never won the big one. I just, for whatever reason, I never thought Thornt would be put in that same boat if he retires without a cup. Well, I think there is that sort of knee-jerk thing is who's the best player never to win the cup and how can we make it his fault? And that goes in every sport now.

I mean, Dean Smith was an idiot until he won a national championship. Then he was one of the great coaches in the history of the sport. And in fact, he was always one of the great coaches in history of the sport. You just needed the narrative. Yeah, I don't know when his narrative turned that way. I think people just got bored with it because the evidence was so overwhelming the other way. And it might have been the year when basically he, when they lost to Vancouver in the conference final, when he was essentially playing with half his body numb.

And I think people say, you know what? A guy who's playing it out that much clearly cannot be blamed justifiably for anything. Right. Because he showed up when he shouldn't have. And he did that sort of, you know, Gary Cooper, you know, quiet suffering star thing. And never, you know, never complain,

always lied about his injuries like any good hockey player does. And I think maybe it was about that time that people said, you know what? Hockey isn't about one guy. The best guy in the world plays 20 minutes a night. You know, maybe all those cliches are actually true. You know, I just, it's, I think people just got sort of, either they got tired of the narrative or they got tired of having no facts to defend the narrative. Right.

I wanted to ask you a couple journalism things. what were press box what were press boxes like in the 1970s and the 1980s I never went to one until maybe like the turn of the century because I just never had the chance to I can't conceive what it was like back then could you smoke smoking was sort of already

out of favor then I think I think it turned before I got to become a press box regular. I mean, you know, they, I think the last real vestige of, you know, in most places, there were a few that, you know, would have a bar in the back and a bartender, but those are older buildings. But by the time I got there, the most you could get in terms of sort of weasily vice was like a dining room where you could take food for free and a beer tap. Oh. You know, but it wasn't, you know, nobody wore up the door.

while I have ever covered. You know, and nobody had it, you know, they never had the card that said press in the brim. I remember reading a piece with you. It was already turning by the time I got there. I remember reading a piece with you in The Ringer, I think it was, where you chastised people for wearing a suit and tie to games. Yeah, that's inexcusable.

That's just, look at me pretending that what I do is important. And there are a lot of my very close friends who do this. and I just want to hit them in the face with an oar. Are you selling insurance? I mean, what exactly is your function here? You know, are you sitting in a suite? Are you trying to close a deal? No, you're going to spend at least an hour of your night

in this coat and tie talking to naked men and are going to step out of the shower and are doing the cowboy sneeze on your shoes. Why would you use good clothes for any of that? What kind of preening dope are you? God, what's the stupid? What people appear on television with the coat? And even if they don't have the tie, they look like, well, I'm really casual, you know.

Yeah. I'm taking this and straight. No, you're not. You're dressed in the costume. They just took the news away from you. I, I, I, you know, regular clothes. I mean, don't show up in like, you know, you know, sweats and a t-shirt looking like you just changed your oil.

But, you know, wear work clothes because you're working. You know, you're not, I think, I think I, you're not an arbitraiser. Stop dressing up for stuff that doesn't need dressing up. You've seen me at games. I do, I wear a tie. And I think it's, I think it's a, backing us for it.

Well, I know, but I think it's about. byproduct of when I was coming up as a blogger and it's sort of like dressed for the job that you want. I always felt like an obligation or pressure to not look like a fucking slob at the games because I was like

I was like, you know, it was a time when bloggers were first getting into the press box and I always felt like I had to start dressing like you know, Sam Ramey on a movie set to make sure that people knew that I was a good boy and not a troublemaker. Fair enough. We all live in the

optic world where costumes are important. But you have the job you want now. Are you still wearing a tie? No. And I'll tell you why, because I'd like to wear a tie with a suit because I think it thins up my face. But at ESPN, I've come, I do some TV stuff there now. And I've come to realize that it is a no tie culture. They're all doing the cool guy, open collar shirt jacket thing because they wanted to seem

like they're super cash. And I think it looks awkward. I think I look like a, like I'm on a fucking bender. when I'm on TV without a tie on and a suit jacket. But that's the way it goes there for some reason. Well, I mean, well, then get rid of the jacket. I mean, I don't know if that's part of the uniform. Well, I have slender shoulders, though.

If you feel awkward in the stuff you're wearing, then you lost the day. You know, God, I mean, people are going to scream the F-bomb at you. Do you need to get dressed up for that? you do not. No, you don't. The reason why I wear a sweater is because I don't have to wear a coat and I don't have to wear a tie. It's basically my version of not being the preening phony because I don't have a tie.

I don't have a coat. I'm not even going to be buried. I'm not even going to be buried. I'm just going to be thrown out in a curb and left there. That's how this ends for me. I don't need to get dressed up for that. No, you don't. So you're not it. I mean, I love Trevor Curse.

He's one of my favorite people in the world. He does the coat tie. And I literally, if I were a human being with human proportions, rather than this, you know, gussied up troll that I am, I'd kill him. I just slit his throat and put a bullet out of our misery. But then I realized that murder is not a solution for fashion issues. It's not. And also probably hard to get blood out of a sweater, I imagine. Well, yeah, but you've seen my sweaters. I can throw those out and not feel like I lost anything.

And plus they're kind of multicolored, so they would probably obscure the blood anyway than I think about it. You wrote for The National, which was a publication that was near and dear to my heart as a kid. I was wondering what your take is on the athletic insofar as seeing it through the national prism. Okay, the people who work at the athletic and are old enough to remember the national sort of blanche at the notion that they are the new national. And in a lot of ways, they're right to do so because the national had its own conceits that got in the way of their survival.

I mean, for one, you couldn't get it anywhere. They thought all they had to do was publish in a few select cities so that all the right people could read it. You know, well, first of all, shut up. You're an asshole. Secondly, you know, rents and trucks. You know, get the paper everywhere. USA Today, which is finally abandoning its print product,

lasted for 40 years because you couldn't avoid it. You couldn't. Every hotel room. Yeah, everywhere, yeah. Yeah. The National was nowhere. And you know the thing I found out about journalism? If you can't find it, you can't read it.

Good point. And that was the big failure there. They also went through $100 million in 17 months, which back then was a catastrophic amount of money. Yeah. I mean, they hired a fashion photographer to take mug shots for their columnists. Yeah. I mean, sweet Jesus.

They took over an entire floor of a Manhattan high rise because they needed that. Yeah. Are you kidding me? You know, it just, they want. to show everybody how important they were. And the good work that they did, you know, got obscured by the idea that they were, by definition, really better people than everybody else. And I never really got to get exposed to much of that because we were out in San Francisco,

which may as well have been Bulgaria for them. And we just me and Mark Van Ruaada and And as sort of a skeleton staff Yeah, yeah So we just sort of scraped together what we did We sent our stuff We never saw anybody It was perfect

Every once in a while They'd send a box full of beach towels And we'd each take a couple And that was our link to the front office Right So I think they failed because They put them They put their reputations

ahead of the work. I think with the athletic, they put the work out there. That's clear, yeah. And even if you think the subscription model cannot survive, and I don't know if it can't. I do know

that if they have to change the business model, they will. Because they are now at the stage where their existence is now a given. And the only way this can go badly for them is if

Alex Mather and Adam Housam and the two founders decide it's time to cash out and, you know, go live in the Caribbean and they sell it to the hedge fund people who promptly turn it in the old type of if you loop.

But in all other ways, they've established that yeah, that people actually do want this stuff. They want to know about their teams. They want to know about other people's teams. And it's you know, in a world in which nothing is free anymore, this is pretty close to free.

I mean, it's, you know, it's cheaper per day than a newspaper. Yeah. Get more stuff than a newspaper. In a lot of ways, it's what the national should have been. But the national failed because it felt like, oh, we got all the important people. You know, well, no, you don't. And you know what? If you can't, if the best you can do in a city like Minneapolis, give them a day old paper, then you deserve the guy.

I hesitate to ask this finally because I honestly don't know what the answer is going to be. Because it could go a million different ways. But when a young writer asks you for advice, what advice do you give young writers? Ask to sample the drugs before you buy them. And is that just a quality control issue? Well, I mean, you know, if you're going to be in journalism, if you're going to be in journalism, you hate money. So the money we have is important and you don't want to end up with chalcum powder.

You don't, no. Yeah. No, if I had to give them advice and it's amazing how few people have asked me for advice because I think they know what they're going to get. I would say, if you're going to be a journalist, then you either have to love it so much that money and crummy treatment doesn't matter, or you do enough good work that they have to hire you at your number, and then make sure you have a lawyer for everything.

Because this is an era, and I don't see it changing, where employers view your work as nothing special because they don't read it. They just sort of take it, they slap it up on their website, and then they figure out ways not to pay you. So work your ass off until you get to the point where you can make them pay you something. And then at that point, never assume that anybody's going to take care of you unless you take care of yourself first. Right.

Because journalism is a calling for some. It's a job for most. And if you want to have things like a companion or children or a place with a roof on it, that costs money. And I don't, you know, I don't want, you know, if your love of journalism as such that you can figure out ways around all that, that's great. I think you owe it to the generation after you to at least tell them, look, it's a hard world out there. And the people you work for more often than not are going to make it harder, not easier.

So protect yourself. Do great work because, I mean, that's a given. I mean, do great work every day. Be proud of anything you write or say or read. and make it so that when people change it, it hurts a little bit. Always have your facts. All that journalism stuff is right. But the other thing is take care of yourself,

because if you can take care of yourself, this is a pretty great dodge. And you don't have to be in an office all the time. And you don't have to dress up in a coat and tie like the other nitwitz robot army. You know, you can, you're a little. lot of freedoms to journalism, but freedom comes at a cost, and the cost is rent. Yeah.

So do all of that. It makes you become an adult a lot faster than you'd like to, but, you know, you can live in the park. I, uh, I feel like that's more optimistic than I was expecting. Oh, no, no, no, really shit wall to wall. Don't, don't, don't, don't, I'm trying to give you with the very low ceiling that we're talking about. There are ways to still survive.

In 20 years, there won't be. I mean, journalists, they'll be bounties on them. They'll be using their skin for, you know, coats. But that hasn't come. Right. Okay, good. There's the answer I was looking for. Right.

I will be long and safely dead before that happens. And let's keep a good thought on that. But for now, you can still be young and idealistic. and earnest and all those other things, as long as you can put a morsel of food in your mouth every day and go to a place where when it rains, you don't get wet. There you go. And if you wear a coat and tie, you're a failure to the culture

and should be hunted down like the pig that you are. Bad news for Kevin Curse. That's one way in which women have it better than men because they don't have to do that. It's true. Ray, where can people find yourself? way because, you know, we still treat women journalists the way we treat women anything, but it's atrociously. Yeah, exactly, especially if you're the Euston Astros.

Ray, where can people find your stuff? Usually in a dumpster. Were you doing stuff for Deadspin recently? Isn't that a thing that you're doing? I'm doing a couple to three a week for Deadspin. Gary Pitchie and Megan Greenwell and Tom Lee and David Roth have been exceedingly kind in allowing me to scratch. my writing itch. And I'm on a radio show daily

2 to 6 in San Francisco at 957, and I hate saying this part, The Game. I don't know if it's being fashionable for radio stations, yeah, we need some sort of acronym because people don't understand numbers. It's FAAN's fault.

It's the fan's fault. It's the fan's fault for so many things. I'm serious. If I would, were the king of the universe, I would save my money up and buy enough rocket fuel to shoot WFAN into the sun. They changed everything, and while they were really good at it, the people who followed them

weren't. No, they weren't. It's the Sergeant Pepper theory. Sergeant Pepper was a great album. Everybody who tried to make their version of Sergeant Pepper was a hack and a fraud. I see. I go a generation. the unique thing

Stanford itself you decided to copy it and because you weren't half the talent well you deserve death I go a generation later I think it's the Howard Stern theory where Howard Stern

did it better than anybody else and then everybody else who tried to do Howard Stern did it poorly yeah just well just not everybody did I mean I don't know that everybody did Howard Stern poorly

they didn't do it as well as him but a lot of them did do it poorly if you work at a place where they had a morning zoo yeah jail is your reward. Ray, you're one of a kind, and I'm so

happy that we finally got you on Puck Soup, my friend. Well, if it helps it all, fuck you. Thanks to Ray Rado for joining us here on Puck Soup. Go find Ray's stuff. It's all very good. Before we get to some awards shit, I do want to touch on a topic

of conversation that we had with Ray. The ongoing controversy over in Major League Baseball about whether the strike zone should be automated. What say you on that, boys? It should. Okay. If it works, sure.

Although, I don't know. I find ever since we, like I grew up watching baseball and thinking the umps were all blind. And like ever since we put the little square strike zone on the screen, they seem to be right like almost all the time. And I realize the almost always is. not the same as always, always. And there was like the one pitch in game five that was like an inch away from the strike zone. But these guys are actually pretty good. I was surprised when that

technology became like more of part of the viewing experience that I did not, I didn't think these guys were right on as much as they were kind of ruined that fun of sitting at home just being mad at the umpire the entire game. Now we're just mad at them occasionally. And that last point is my most important point on this, which is that although I am in favor of expanded video review in a lot of cases for plays that dramatically alter a game, be it a goal being scored or a major penalty in the NHL, be it a pass interference in the NFL, I don't think balls and strikes necessarily rise to that level. Until they do, in which case. But they never do. I was surprised to see you not being on the robot ump bandwagon given given your just get it right stance when we kind of went over this stuff in in when it came to hockey like that that that seems it seems odd to me that you you are okay with something not reviewing something that seems easily much more easily revealable than penalties or interference or that sort of thing.

I mean, no, in my twisted worldview, this makes total sense. Like, I am all for a certain level of human error when it comes to penalties. I don't want cyborg T-1,000 referees skating around the ice calling every infraction. I mean, it does bother me, obviously, when they call games narratively and put the whistle away to write the script in their mind at the end of games. But I don't want the rulebook called to a T. I like the fact that there's a little bit of controversy when it comes to those calls. I am a get it right when it comes to the big shit. Like, to me, a goal being scored or not scored is akin to whether or not a guy touched home plate before the tag.

Like, that's the thing. The base is loaded. Ninth inning of the world series. Full count. Balls, you know, two inches outside the street. Strike zone umpire says he he struck out looking. Oh, well, you know. No, that's a good point.

So what happened, what happened on the previous five pitches? Did the, did the hitter, was he, what, did his arms fall off? Did he, did he, did he, did he had the ability to try to affect the play himself? Jesus Christ. What is just, no, no, no. No, I'm asking you because on a play where a goal is scored, you know, there's a shot. It either goes in the net or it doesn't. Well, what about in the second inning?

What about in the second inning? What about in the, no. the second inning, Greg, when, you know, it was an area tag on a double play and he didn't actually touch the base, but the umpire gave him the past because it's an area, like, just fucking automate it. It's not, it's not hard. But like, but I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm saying to you and before this, this weird conundrum that you've presented is that. The weird conundrum, yeah.

There's a good amount of human error that makes sports interesting. I feel like getting the really important stuff right through video review and some level of automation, that's fine. But I don't need it for every facet of the game. And balls and strikes is a facet of the game. I simply don't need automated. I have no problem with there being a variable strike zone. I have no problem getting mad at an umpire because you think he fucked up a call. This is a function in sports that I don't think necessarily needs fixing.

And by the way, the thing that I'm shocked by Sean, is for all these motherfuckers who watch baseball and are constantly complaining about the integrity of the game and the history of the game and oh my God, what about this home run record that's being threatened because somebody took a pill and oh my, do you know how many fucking records have to be rewritten or how you literally have to cement shut the rulebook

if you get rid of umpires? Great. I hate to tell you this, but the people who are saying, you know, we shouldn't be. Because they, you know, they play more games now than they didn't baby. Like, those aren't the same people saying, we need robot umps. The people who say we need robot umps are like people who are actually progressive. And I'm giving a rat's ass about the fucking...

That's a generalization. That's a generalization. Okay, sure. Yep. Well, you know, it is. But, I mean, we're talking about millions of fans. So, yeah, we're not. Right. Yeah, I didn't run a fucking pull on every single person.

What are you talking about? I want to be clear on something. Right. No, but that, but Ryan, but that's why it's horseshit because you just say, like, oh, it's the fucking forward-thinking fucking moneyball motherfuckers that are the only ones that want robot umps. And you don't know that for sure. I guess you're right. You're saying that to prove your point, but you don't know that for sure. This, this is like sports radio drive time fucking stance you're taking on this is insane to me.

Oh, no, no. I like that because now it's an, now you come at me and say, oh, by the way, you're just putting. on errors. You're making my point for me. You're actually caller. You're making, like, come on, dude. Like, as a broad general rule, you can say there's a pretty good, like, the quote unquote money ball people are not, are not the ones who are like the sanctity of the game and we need to go back to a time. You know, like, it's not the same people. The people who are, who want to get the calls right are also the people who are like, it's more important to get the calls right than to worry about Is baseball yes or no of the four major sports the ones where the fans of the sport have a slavish

appreciation for the accomplishments of the past? No hockey. Oh, I disagree. I completely disagree. But okay. I mean, I think it's baseball. but I'd take issue with slavish. I mean, I think being interested in the history of your sport isn't a negative

and isn't something that we should be dumping on. I don't have any problem with somebody who knows the record book and knows the history. I want to make one point on this, only because I can see it getting thrown back at me because I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek earlier. To me, there is zero appeal in, the human element or in mistakes just for the sake of being interesting.

I think that's a very kind of media-ish take of like, oh, it gives us something to talk about. Fans don't want something to talk about. Fans want their team to win. And that's really all that most fans care about. You want to make it interesting, have the bat or hold the bat upside down every third plate appearance. I feel like the Blue Jays already did that this year. It's like, so I don't, the fact that a call is wrong every, you know, however, that's not interesting. That's not an appeal.

Stupid. And in baseball or hockey or any other sport, I don't want, you know, just because it gives us something to talk about. My thing is always, can we do it? What are the unintended consequences? How is it going to work? Nobody ever thinks that stuff through in hockey, which we've had that argument a dozen times already. Baseball, let's see. I mean, I heard Ryan say, it'll be easy. I don't know if it would be easy. What does it mean? You know, even if it's, is, is, is, do you still have an umpire back there? Is he getting a signal somehow to make these calls?

Is it, what's the delay? Is it a quarter of a second? That doesn't sound like anything. But then you're watching the game and you're like, oh, this is throwing everything off. I don't know about this. I don't know. I'm, I guess my stance is I'm open to it if it can be done really seamlessly and really well. And it avoids those occasional, very surprisingly rare mistakes that could influence the outcome of a game.

but let's just actually think through what could go wrong because that's what we never do in hockey and we continually get screwed by this stuff because of it. That's a good point because I can see. Here's a scenario I could see coming down on the pike. You know, one of the ways that you're supposed to get out of a speeding ticket, it's to complain that the radar gun... Reach for the car service weapon.

That's a way to get out of life. It's to complain that the radar gun wasn't properly calibrated. That's like trying to beat a ticket 101. Like you throw that out there in the hopes that the radar gun wasn't calibrated. The year is 2008. Somebody's lost a game on a close ball and strike call. They protest to the Major League Baseball that the machine wasn't calibrated correctly within the specific time frame of before the game.

It turns out it wasn't. And now what do we got? It's going to be some bullshit like thing. And the Dean Lombardi Columboons thing. This idea that if we have robot, umps that that will remove the controversy and the diehard Yankees fan who watches his guy get called out on strikes against the Red Sox will be like oh I accept this call and doesn't come up with some conspiracy like the oh then it's your then it's your friend who's bad in video games like

fucking controller broke and he throws it on the floor like this idea that if we just get it right that will remove the controversy when the controversy is baked into our sports fan DNA to always think that our team got screwed is a pleasantly naive. Like the Pirates fan who sees a game and against, you know, the Dodgers. You didn't know that the robots are calibrated to make the Dodgers the better team. You didn't know that, right? Yeah, we would absolutely hear that. It could be a constantly thing.

Probably in the correct accent, but yeah, we would hear it for sure. Oh, that's, it's impeccable. I mean, I get my Pittsburgh accent from Rob Rossi. You know, it's good. I still like a little human error in my sports. I think sports are escapism and the ability to be angry at the administration versus being angry at an athlete, I think, is a healthy thing. I accept human error and I can live with it a lot better than many sports fans seem to be able to, but I don't view it as a selling point or a positive. Right.

And the other thing I would say is everybody fucking hates Major League Baseball umpires. The wide consensus on them is that they're all arrogant pieces of shit who like, you know, like Anhell Hernandez or Joe West or whatever. Like the famous MLBumps that you know are going to fuck you over because they're just never going to accept that they might have been wrong and they're going to resent you for making them review things. And then gun you down in the coming Civil War, which is the other piece of it. Yeah. From a general perspective, who do you think gets boned more from a robot strike zone? Pitchers or hitters? Pitchers, 100%.

Meaning so? Probably veteran catchers, actually, who would no longer be able to. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Be out of a job. Yeah, you would just need someone to catch the ball now. You don't need anybody to frame the pitch or anything like that. Yeah, let me rephrase. Like, pitchers who have a reputation for being good because then it's like, well, it was within an inch of the black.

I guess I'll give it to it. like I feel like a lot of say Pedro Martinez strikeouts maybe don't get called strikeouts anymore. But it'd be interesting to see how that goes. Well, I mean, and you're right, though. It would be absolutely like through the first month of the season, offense is down slightly. And then suddenly, oh, did the strike zone get like a quarter of an inch tighter? Hmm. Well, the thing is, like we'd be able to look that up because of how well they track this stuff.

Like, they're tracking it anyway. Yeah. You know, like, like every pitch location for more than a decade at this point is, like, in a fucking Excel spreadsheet somewhere. Yep. You know, so, so like, they could tell you, like, oh, this is how, what percent the umpires get wrong and in what situation. Like, you know, they could tell you on a Thursday in American League ballparks, left-handed pitchers with a two-one count, this is what umpires are giving. them versus what they actually throw. Like, you could look that up.

And the fact that you can do that, I think that's the, that's the end of the discussion of should we have it? It's like, yeah, we've had it forever. We just act like we shouldn't do it because, you know, it's not part of the game's history. It's like, well, they didn't let black players play for a long time either. I don't know if you guys. Oh, come on. That's just, now, yeah, now I'm the talk radio guy, right?

Well, I was not serious is the difference. I look forward to the World Series in a few years when it turns out that Theo Epstein hired Goosephor to hack the Balls and Strikes Robot and hand the World Series over to the Cubs. It's good times. So going from one really well-runner league to another, what do we think about the the NHL having plans formulating for a women's league. Do we trust this? It's kind of a thing where, at one side of their mouth, they're like,

well, obviously, we're not going to deal with this at all until there's no women's leagues left. And on the other hand, they're like, well, let's just make sure we have a contingency plan in place. I don't know what to make of this. This is an Elliott Friedman report over the weekend. Yeah, I saw a lot of women's hockey fans going, I don't want the NHL anywhere near this. But it's strange because I, and maybe this is a little bit of selective

memory on my part, but I feel like I've seen a fair amount of criticism of the NHL over the last couple of years for not being involved and not stepping in and not doing the equivalent to the NBA, what they did with the WNBA and taking a stronger leadership role in this. And then when word comes out that they are preparing contingency plans, I think would be the way to put it. Not that they're actively doing something, not that they're trying to step in and strong arm this thing, but, but that they're potentially, at least thinking through scenarios and wanting to be ready if it came to it. And now a lot of people are saying, no, let get them out of there. I do think as, as much as, yeah, like, I don't

fully trust the NHL to do this right, because I don't trust them to do pretty much anything right. But at the same time, I feel like we've all sort of been citizens. around going, hey, when are you guys going to step in and get involved here? If they're at least thinking about doing that, I don't know that we can preemptively rip them for that. Right. I think what people want, and I don't blame them at all, is just sign the checks and shut the fuck off. You know what I mean? Like, they want the NHL to bankroll it, and they want to make sure women can make, you know, an actual living as professional.

hockey players, but they don't want like Gary Bettman and Bill Daly making any kinds of decisions about it. And I think that's more than fair. I think it's all about scale if they ever get around to this. You know, the rinks that the NWHL plays in are, they're small. I mean, like, it's not a place where they're packing in, you know, $20,000 a night or anything like that. if they keep it at the right scale and keep it at, you know, six teams, eight teams to start, I think they'll be okay. They can't go and do what the WUSA, the women's soccer team, tried to do back in the 1990s, which is like play their games in like RFK Stadium.

I mean, it just doesn't work that way. It's got to be scaled correctly. Now, there was a time when I thought the solution to the Gary Betman and Bail Day Ellie will fuck this up problem was to kind of find the triple H of hockey, a woman who could go and run her own Mxte the way she sees fit. Right. But the more I think about it, the more I think that the real wrestling proxy model would be AEW. Like give the league to the players. Let the players figure it out.

Like the play, one of the most inspiring things about women's hockey is how much HACI, agency those players have insofar as fighting for what they believe should be equality in pay and in travel and everything else. Like the women that would in theory play in a WNHL already have done so much fucking legwork away from the rink to make their sport better. Give them the league. Like just let the players run the league and see where it goes from there. Like I'm kind of enamored with that idea.

who knows if they want it. Maybe they want it to be a situation like, fuck this. Like just sign my check. Give me Commissioner Kendall Coin and let's go. Or maybe they would love the idea of being able to kind of develop their own thing and develop their own marketing and find their own sponsors and that shit too. I would be open to that idea. But it's all going to be based on what the NHL does for scale and whether they allow this thing

to kind of grow organically and not try to start it off. too big too soon where all of a sudden it's like, you know, people sending photos to empty seats fucking Twitter for the women's games on the weekend. It's like the last thing they need. I think all of that sounds great. I think if we're setting the bar for success at the NHL writing checks and otherwise not being involved in the decision making, we're probably setting ourselves up for disappointment. Oh, yeah, for sure. No, I just think that's what people want. Very few billion dollar organizations are willing to write checks without having some sort of say. But yeah, it's... I'm not... I can't criticize the league for at least it sounds like having...

starting to formulate a plan in the back of their minds of where this could go, while at the same time not strong-arming what's already happening out of the way. I think they haven't done... I'm not going to applaud them because they haven't done anything yet, but I'm, this at least sounds like maybe it's on the right track to eventually getting there. Do I look like a guy with a plan? I had to do my awards watch for October because nothing says NHL awards like three and a half weeks of hockey. I'm going to give you my top three is you tell me, if I'm wrong.

Ready? Yeah. Do it. Heart trophy. Connor, the leader. Eichl and Pastranach, your finalists. Yeah, that's tough to argue. Yeah, I think Pasternak is a tough one because he's like, he might be the most valuable

player in the league as terms of just straight value, him and McDavid, but the way that we think about the award is going to work against him because the fact that he plays on this great line and the Bruins are not viewed as a one player or one or two player team works against him a little bit, but yeah. You know, I was looking at it yesterday, though. Like, they are the, that's the only line that is scoring at all for them. Right. Like, I think the next closest guy on the team after Bergeron, who has like 15 points or

something like that has like eight or 10 maybe. Right. And that's a function of Krati being hurt for most of the month, I think, to not really have a second line established. But, yeah. But, yeah, no, I think, you know, it's funny. Like, the argument could be made of what do you? do with Pashtenac because the team's so good.

But then you realize that Kutjuroff won the heart last year. So it's like, you know, the best score, best team can in fact break through. But the interesting thing is, you know, there's a lot of people. And I want to say I was talking to Dmitri Filipovich offline about this, that dry sidels been better than McDavid in some ways in the first month of the season. I just don't think that if both are going and both are healthy and the oilers are a playoff team, that just any fucking way. Connor doesn't win, like, based on what the voters would do.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Norris, Carlson, your leader, Roman Yossi, and Crystal Tang, the other two. Yossi should be number one. I completely agree. Keep in mind, this is what I think the voters would do. Okay.

Oh, then yes, of course. There's absolutely, I completely agree with you. He has been the best defenseman in hockey. Carlson has the numbers, but Roman's been the better defenseman. I completely agree. Yeah, I would agree with all that. Carlson would clearly win if the voting was now given his scoring. And just on the, by the way, we should probably flag this because I'm just looking at Twitter right now.

And people are saying that the predators are getting set to make, quote, a major hockey announcement shortly, which is presumably going to be the new Roman Yosey contract. So if you're listening to this and you're wondering why we're not talking about the massive contract he just signed, it's because it's going to happen imminently as we're recording it. But it's that that is going to be, see, it's going to be a big number. I wonder what the years are. I wonder if it ends up being like a big eight-year deal that. I'm happy you said, let's flag this and then said it was going to be a contract because

I do remember one time doing this podcast, Lozo, where he said, let's flag this. It was because Gordie Howe died and we had to go and redo the show. So I'm hoping that the predators aren't going to announce the death of a major. figure, but I guess... Pecker-René. Got hit by a mail truck. So, let's hope it's not that. And if it is, then you probably will not have heard any of this section of the discussion.

That's right. We'll never, never make the air. But what, just like, just to throw it out there, what, would you guys give Romanoisi an eight-year deal? Nope. He's 29. He's a hundred years old. Yeah.

He's a year. He's going to turn 30, so it's around the same range that Brent Burns was. when he got. Yeah, that was not a good contract either. Exactly. I mean, my advice is it is with... I bet he makes more, I bet he gets a higher AAB than Burns does. My advice with NGM go high in the AAV, lower on the, but, but, and that's the other thing that's fascinating is he's spent the last, what, seven years on a deal with a four million

dollar cap. Yeah, crazy. They're, like, if anybody, every player should always, every player should always try to cash it and get maximum dollars, but if any player, you should always try to cash it and get maximum dollars, but if any player can sit down with the team and say you guys are going to overpay me after everything I've done on a $4 million deal. If they're announcing it now, my God, like, it's got to be eight, right? There's no way it's not going to be eight years if they're announcing it.

I can see six with a higher A.A.V. But yeah, I mean, either way, he's getting signed until his mid to late 30s. So, yeah. Yes. Interesting. Anyway, he should win the Norris this year so far. Yeah, he should win the Norris. But also, but also, but. but also like, without question, to go back to Pastor Deck. My God, you talk. McKinnon's contract always gets put over as the biggest bargain in hockey. 6.67 for Pastor Nack, man.

Yeah, that's. And I was going back and reading our shit when we, when we write, both you and I, I think, wrote about it at Puck Daddy. The big concern was that they would have to give them dry settle money. But even if they gave them dry settle money, like that contract would look really fucking good right now. Yeah, it really would. It's kind of crazy.

He signed until 2023 at that deal, too. It is really good. Selke, speaking of Boston, Bergeron, your leader, Couturier and Stone, your finalist. Mark Stone, no, no, no. So here's the thing. Like, I... He hasn't been as good as you would think. No, that's the...

Yeah, he's, I've really... I put in the time to do this stupid fucking award stuff, maybe too much of it. Stone is the guy we all want to win, but it's kind of that situation we had with Barkoff a couple years ago where, like, everybody wanted Barkoff to win, and then all of a sudden the year, wherever he's like, all right, it's his time he didn't play all that well. And right now that's Stone.

I think it'll equal out. I'm sure he'll be fucking fine. But if you were going to hold the vote today, I think it's either Bergeron or Cotterrier with Stone, the clear third choice, because he's not been very good defensively early in the season, because the Knights overall haven't been very good defensively early in season. I was going to say, though,

I mean, like, he's, he seems like he's a save percentage victim. Yeah, his on-ice save percentage at five-on-five is 8-81 right now. I don't put that on him. You know? And he's still getting his takeaways and he's still playing well. I mean, it's just one of those, like, not up to Mark Stone standards kind of things right now for him. I don't know.

I mean, like, he's playing really well. I guess what you would say is he's maybe not doing everything you would possibly want him to do. You know, like, he's been very, very fucking good, but he hasn't been, like, a, world beater and, you know, if you want to say Bergeron as the default until somebody is a world beter, I guess so, man. I think if the vote was held today, it would be based on reputation the way it usually is. It's Bergeron or Mark Stone getting his lifetime achievement award, one of the two. That's a good point.

The Vezina, I think it's a two-horse race. I think it's Pekka or Tuka, and then Flurry would be the third choice. I think it's Peckor or two, probably Pecca, then Tuka. I don't know. The third one, I mean, I guess it doesn't ultimately matter the third guy on the list in fucking October. Flurry's like he's playing okay, but he gets like the goalie MVP award version of the Vezna. Yeah.

Yeah. The John Gibson. You know who's been really fucking good is Darcy Kemper? He's been really good. So I think, I think our boy, Connor Hollybuck's been pretty good, too. He has been. He has been. Despite all the shit going on there.

Calder, I think you still have to give Oliveson the lead just based on the records. Why don't we wait until he scores a goal at five on five? That's what I'm saying. Like, he's clearly not going to be the leader in this category. It's Cal McCaw. Yeah, the other two that I have is finalists are Quinn Hughes and Kail McCar. Quinn Hughes is... Jack Hughes is...

Jack Hughes is starting to get going. Soup boy in Toronto. He's been good. He's been very good. He's not going to win him. He's 25, of course. No, third line. I do wonder...

I do wonder about the potential of an Elias Samsonoff or Thatcher Demko goalie run at at being a finalist here. Demco is going to need to play more games. I mean, what's he at four right now? Marks are playing pretty well, so it's, I don't think that's we're going to open up for him. No, I think, I think, listen, I picked McCar before this season. I think it's going to be Macar.

I would say, though, that, like, it's hard to ignore the Oliveson, like, first eight goals of his career role-power play goals, kind of record bullshit. That's not, that's not impressive to me. Who cares? It's super impressive. I don't care about the Lady Bing. Jack Adam.

Grueger, right? Kruger's your leader and then I would say, Tipit and Trots. I think Trots is probably a finalist right now based on what the Islanders have done. A hundred percent. I don't know about Tippett until the last week or so. Yeah, you know, well, they got fucking smoked last night, but you know who had a streak of like eight games in a row with at least one point in the standings? The Florida Panthers, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's going to be an. interesting one. That was outside of last night, and that's sort of a very sort of end of the road trip type thing. That's a really good run. Arizona had a really good road trip too. They did. Yeah, two good stabilizations for those guys. So there you go. There you go. Awards people. Just to point out, though, I mean, Barry Trots won the Jack Adams last year, so he can't win it two years in a row because you have to be surprisingly good. And nobody's, nobody's won that award twice since since Jacques de Merse and that was 30 years ago. If Tippett does end up somehow winning it,

he legally has to give it to Connor McDavid and Leon Drysidal, right? There's just no way. I wrote about that in the piece. How exciting would it be if he wins it? And then all of a sudden we come to the conclusion that it's not just goalies that can win their coaches awards. It's also two forwards that win their coaches. Of course equals one goal.

Two of the like eight best forwards in the world. Yeah. All right. Last topic for today, it is Halloween week as we do this show. And that means it's time to talk about pokey things. Ryan, you binged Castle Rock? Yeah, season one of Castle Rock. Season two just started a couple weeks ago.

For those who don't know, Castle Rock is the, what station is it on? It's on Hulu. It's on Hulu. It is the sort of Stephen King Universe show. where all of the things in different Stephen King works kind of all coexist in the same ethereal plane. Is that sort of how it works? That's more or less correct. Yeah, one of the characters is Jack Torrance's niece.

And then the second season is the origin story for Annie Wilkes from misery. Oh, there you go. It got us thinking about Stephen King, who also was in the zeitgeist, you know, with the success of it in the last two years. And the Shining sequel's coming out in a week and a half or whatever. Dr. Sleep starring Obi-Wan Kenobi. So I guess first baseline, did we all read Stephen King books growing up? I've read a handful, the stand, the shining, the big ones, I guess you would say. I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about Stephen King, the former Anaheim Mighty Duck in New York Ranger.

I prepared. The fascist guy from Iowa, yeah. No, I thought we were going to talk about him. I read a couple. I don't remember which ones. It was never, like horror has never been my genre even for movies, so to sit down and read a book when I was younger was unlikely. I feel like I read some of the short story ones and enjoy those.

But like to dive into like a full, full-on novel. It was not my thing. I definitely read Salem's lot. I think this was one of my favorite books as a kid. And I've definitely read it. I don't think I actually maybe I did read the stand. I don't know. Like, I feel like I maybe tried to read the stand after I saw the miniseries that they did. The stand's cool, man. Like, well, you know, they did the

basically like the director's cut of the stand and had like 400 pages or something like that. Right. Right. Yeah. And that's really. good. I've heard the original is kind of disjointed. Like I said, it feels like I've read all the long ones, the stand, it, that sort of thing. And I feel like

there's sort of like the level of Stephen King shit that's like, oh, you know, monsters and what have you. And then there's like one extra level of like, oh, I read the Dark Tower. Like there's another sort of super level. Right, I'm never going to read the Dark Tower.

Oh, by the way, Sean just alerted us. Roman Yose, eight years, nine million per, above nine million per. According to Illinois Friedman, so that's not confirmed yet, but I don't know what else they could do, but that's not going to be. That's going to be bad. It's going to be bad towards the end, but you're going to look back over Romanozi's entire career with the Predators, and you're going to say they got more value out of him than they lost. So I don't know how you're supposed And obviously David Poyle, I don't think,

is too worried about eight years from now. And thank you, thank you New Jersey Devils for allowing this contract to exist next season by taking P.K. Subbin off their hands. Yep. So, oh, good. I'm glad we were able to tie a bow around that before the end of the show. Best Stephen King film adaptation, Sean.

Do you have one? Oh, geez. No, I don't. Wait, have you ever seen a Stephen King movie? Are you too afraid? Have I ever seen a Stephen King movie? Let's see. We got Stand By Me.

I haven't seen It. Green Mile. Shawshank Redemption. Shawshank, I've seen, yes. So there you go. That's my fate. That's my favorite. It's overrated, but it's good.

It's overrated. People act like it's one of the best movies of the 90s, and it's like, you know, it's good. Where I find it overrated is that when people try to group it into that diehard tier of every time it's on TNT, I'm watching it. That's horseshit. That movie is a sit. Yeah. I don't think that movie is a very rewatchable film, but.

I've seen it like three times probably. And, you know, like I said, it's a good movie. But the answer to this question is obviously the Shining. Yeah. Like, that's not really up for debate. I don't feel like it's, the Shines incredible. My favorite thing, I would throw, I would throw misery in there, too, only because Misery the book was was pretty good.

And then like the film, the cinematic version of that book with the, uh, Kathy Bates performance was fucking phenomenal. Oh yeah. She's great in that movie. She's incredible. For sure. Um, the, the thing about the shining that I love is that like, like, Stephen King famously disowned, um, Kubrick's vision for the shining.

And then like, I remember Stephen King like worked with like the sci-fi channel to create. Yeah, it was, when I was in junior high, they did a. It was on NBC or ABC. Yeah, it was on one of those stations. And it was like one of these like, finally Stephen King says rubbing his hands together, people could see what my vision of this shining looks like. And it sucked balls. Like, it was not good.

Part of the limitation there is definitely that they had to make it on, like for broadcast television. And like fucking Stephen Weber played Jack Torrey. That's right. He did. Those were another problem with it too. But like, but yeah, the shining is is fucking cool. Is there a Stephen King book or property that has been done that you want to see done better? And I imagine your answer is going to be the stand.

Yeah, I'm really interested to see. I think it's Hulu or maybe a different platform is doing like a series. And that's the only thing that makes sense because it's a 1,400,400 page book. But with that having been said, like, you know, I didn't. I think they probably did as well with it as you reasonably could have. Um, what's the other ones I read? I don't, I don't even remember now. But yeah, I, like I said, I just don't have enough familiarity, I guess, with the, you know, like I've never read Tommy Knockers.

I've never read Salem's Lot. Apparently they're remaking Salem's Lot as well. Salem's Lot would be my choice. That was a very old, again, I think TV movie that they did with some really cool sort of creature effects. But that, that's a, I mean, I don't think, I think the time might be right to, dabble back into vampires. I think for a while, like, in the, in the aftermath of Twilight, you couldn't really do vampires. Yeah.

But now you can do vampires again, probably. And I think Samo's Lot would be pretty good. Other than that, like, they're all fine. You know, maybe a maximum overdrive remake with, like, electric cars being possessed or some shit. You know, by the way, you know what's another really good one? Carrie. Carrey's a great Stephen King adaptation. They shouldn't have made the remake.

No, they should not have. Carrie is pretty fucking great. So there you go. Go get yourself a Stephen King thing. It's pooky. Oh, and also, if you are someone who dabbles in journalism, pick up Stephen King's on writing. Pretty good. Really, really good book about writing.

Sean, you should probably get that one. That's not too scary. It's mostly about writing. Are you suggesting I need to learn about good writing? Is that the implication? No. It's not true. at all.

It wouldn't necessarily be wrong. I think everybody in this podcast is amongst the best writers on this podcast. All right, that's Puck's Soup for this week. Our thanks to Ray Rado for joining us. Our thanks to everybody who interacts with us on a daily basis on Twitter about this dumb show. Early release show this week. One, because our producer is going on vacation and needed us to put together the show early.

too, because I'm going on vacation. So no Greggie next week for the soup, heading out for the classic early-season vacation to go and stick around for a little bit and not have to write anything. So that's where I'll all be. Ryan? Sign up for the Patreon, I guess, I would say.

Yes. We do at least one bonus episode every week. Usually it's a mailbag, but last week we did one two weeks ago. I don't remember now. Yeah. And by the way, kudos to, again, you guys are amazing. Like, over 1,800 patrons now for Puck's Soup Patreon is phenomenal. And the growth in the last year has been awesome.

And you guys are all fantastic. and I'm so happy that you dig what we do on the Patreon. Sean, plug the athletic, quick. Let's go. Hurry up. You can find me on the athletic, and I actually can plug something else because my book is coming out in paperback next week.

Okay. Now we're talking. If you have got, if you didn't get a chance to grab it last year heading into the holiday season, or if you did and you liked it and you think some people you know would enjoy it, you can get your pre-order in now and they will ship you a lovely paperback copy. I got my box full of books from the publisher just yesterday, which is always a cool moment.

And yeah, go check it out, Amazon or wherever else you buy your books. You'll find it there. The reviews are very good. And if you enjoyed the book, add your own review. And if you didn't, screw you. Don't touch my five-star review. Whoa, geez. All right, that's Puck Soup for this week.

Go to the Patreon to hear us in the mailbag, and thanks for listening. Take care. Bye you. Later. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute,

but we also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tools. It's your weekly bowl of Hockey and Nonsense. Puck Sue.