Puck Soup - Risk and Reward

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Sean and Ryan break down the big trades, the cap going up, the Utah team name, and more. Sponsored by Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And, boy, quite the week in the NHL, I think you would say. Yeah. A little bit of news going on. Sure. Well, maybe let's not get into all that. Let's not.

I guess we'll start with the most consequential piece of news, which is, the Vancouver Canucks traded J.T. Miller on Friday night, I guess it was. Second Friday in a row I was at a college hockey game, and they were like, you're not allowed to watch the second period of this. You have other things to do. Okay, oops. Trade him back to the New York Rangers with Eric Brandstrom

and NCAA defenseman Jackson Doorington for Philip Heedle, a young a HL defenseman named Victor Mancini and a conditional first round pick. What was your reaction

to this, the first of two yeah, Penguins trades on Friday night or Canucks trades? Just came out of nowhere. I did not see this coming. Yeah, no.

I this was the obvious fit pretty much from the beginning. and I think given the J.T. Miller contract, which I am, I think, more wary of than some, I think that if anyone was going to take him and certainly take them without retention or without bad contracts going back the other way, it was going to have to be a team that was pretty desperately in win now mode. And I think when you looked around the league, the Rangers were the,

not only the leading candidate, but maybe the only one. And especially once Carolina was out, I think, you know, Vancouver wasn't going to get fair value for a hundred point guy, which is what he was last year, but they weren't trading him last year. They were trading him this year after he had helped contribute to a situation that had wrecked the dressing room. I thought they did okay. I thought that

you know get out from completely out from under that deal made sense obviously they had to do something they had to make a move on one or both guys

Miller and Patterson so I thought under the circumstances my expectations had already been lowered but I thought they did fine and I having said all that

I think it makes a lot of sense for the Rangers too given where they're there at. So I thought it worked for both teams. Yeah, I agree with that. Especially, I'm pretty sure this happened after we recorded last week, but there was the big article in the Globe and Mail where Jim Rutherford was just like, oh yeah,

this situation's fucked. Yeah. Yeah, I think that happened on Tuesday because I was, I got to talk to Gentilly about it the next day. And obviously, he's pretty familiar. familiar with Jim Rutherford and how he works. Yeah. Yeah.

So I, hey, I'll just say one last time, shout out to the media. We did it. We made this whole thing up and we just spoke it into existence. That's right. We lied about it enough times being the lying fake media that we are that it ended up happening. Yeah, it's crazy. I feel like maybe a month and a half ago we were saying, well, they said there's nothing to worry about. So what are we, you know, nothing to see here. Let's move on. J.T. Miller told us.

He said, I could, I could get Elias Pedersen and, you know, right now, we'll, you guys need to stop making stuff up, but I don't know. It's weird, weird how that works. Yeah. What did you think? So, like you, I kind of, I kind of think this is the best the, the Canucks we're going to do. Mancini, I think, is like the fourth, according to the early, like, beginning of the year, elite prospects ranking, I think is the fourth best defensive prospect in the Rangers organization. A guy he's like 22, he's already got a handful of NHL games under his belt. And I like them getting Philip Heel as well, because for all the reasons we've talked about

with like the reason it never felt like Caco and Hedel and even Lafrenier were hitting a year or two ago was because like they were just never going to put those guys on the power play. And now Vancouver can put them on the power play and just see, you know?

And maybe it doesn't work out. That's a real possibility, I think. But the health issue is well, of course the health issue, yes. The giant flashing morning light. I feel like I saw some allusions to maybe they weren't what people thought. they were, you know, who knows?

It's one of those things. That they're just, they've just always played it kind of close to the vest with, with him. And, and I guess we're going to find out if, you know, they're really going to, like, potentially derail his, his productivity long term. But again, like, if it doesn't work out, he's a, he's a pending free agents so they can, obviously that's not ideal to, to, to, to, maybe lose out on that, you know, the big return in the J.T. Miller trade. But, you know, again, it just feels like Miller played his way out of town and there's maybe even still a rift in the dressing room because people were like they traded the wrong guy. Well, I mean, it, reading between the lines, there's, like, for it to be this big a problem,

It couldn't be everyone against one guy. Yes, correct. You would have to assume that for it to have ruined things to this degree, that it was kind of a split. And so, yeah, there's going to be guys left in the room who were J.T. Miller guys going, all right, I mean, I was pretty ticked off when Pedersen was feuding with him. But now I'm furious because my guy just went and, okay,

so what does that mean for me and, et cetera? And, you know, obviously they moved other guys as well. So who knows, yeah, I mean, but this was step one. Like there was no. And you know what? Do it now. Like you're, the conducts are still in the playoff running. Like, let's, the fact that they did it now instead of kicking the can't even further down the road and doing this in closer to the deadline, it does two things.

First of all, it gives you a chance to get your season back on track if Miller was such a problem that it's an addition by subtraction thing. It also gives you a chance to see what happens with Elias Pedersen. Does he suddenly flip the switch and get back to normal? Or does he keep grinding away and you suddenly go, okay, maybe it wasn't all J.T. Miller. And now we've got to look even harder at potentially making a move before that no trade kicks in. Absolutely, yeah.

Other than that, I guess from the Rangers perspective, I think you use the word, they're kind of in a desperate situation. And desperation is like how I would describe this trade for them. I don't know that they like need, like they're missing. The J.T. Miller is the piece that they're missing right now. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Like he's obviously a really, really good player. and so far they have been using them on the powerplay

and he's producing for them in the early going here. But like, whatever, I think in the month of January, their power play was running at 30% or something like that. Like they weren't like, damn, if only we had a J.T. Miller. Right. You know? Frankly, I don't know what I would say. I think the Rangers do need other than Igor Shestirkin to stand on his head,

as he has been for like three seasons or whatever, you know. But, you know, taking on this contract for this long, and look, we'll talk about how the cap's going up and, you know, the Rangers aren't going to be afraid to spend money. That's not the issue. But it's just like, I don't know, you know, you don't want to bring in a guy who's currently, whatever, 31 years old, who's locked in until 2030. unless you're like, and really all that matters is like the next two or three years. Yeah, that's it.

I mean, I look at it, if I'm Chris Drury, I've got two thoughts. One is I'm looking at my team now and I'm saying we're already kind of screwed for the future cap. And we're not good enough to win the cup right now. Not even close. So I can either start tearing things down or, you know, or I can say, you know what, let's make a trade where we're still screwed later on, but now maybe we are good enough to contend for the Cup. And the other thing I'm thinking, and Ranger fans won't want to hear it, but it's true. If I'm Chris Dewey, I'm going, dude, the last three years of J.T. Miller's contract are not going to be my problem.

A million percent. As Rangers GM, unless this has worked well, in which case, great. Like, it's either, it's not win-win, but it's win or I'm not around. to take the big loss. So let's go. I'm, you know, I'm not going to James Dolan and saying, we, this roster I built can't win. Let me start tearing it down to get started on the work that the next GM you're going

to hire in the summer or a year from now is going to do. So, yeah. Like, I guess we'll get to the Pittsburgh part of it now, too. But I honestly felt like this whole thing works for all the teams involved. Well, like I say, I agree that broadly speaking, you know, I started doing the trade grades over the weekend because I was just like, okay, there were just slightly too many trades for, for me to keep not grading them, you know? So let me just scroll down here really quickly and see what I graded this one. I gave the Rangers a C plus and the Canucks a B minus. And then the next Vancouver Canucks trade, Marcus Pedersen and Drew O'Connor for that first round pick that we just referenced, which is top 13 protected this year.

For Danton Heinen, Vinnie DeHarnay, and a prospect that apparently the Penguins really liked named Melvin Fernstrom. Okay. And obviously, like, you know, taken in totality, now you're saying it's Patterson, Drew O'Connor, and Philip Heedle and Mancini for Miller, Fernstrom, Heinen, Dei, DeHarnay, Brandstrom, and Jackson Dorrington. It's a lot of guys. It's a lot of guys. A lot of chess people. pieces moved around. By the way, just two one-liners on some of the other guys.

Yeah. First of all, Frankie Corrado likes Mancini a lot, which kind of helped me feel a bit better about that. The other thing is I found it very funny when I saw references to the Canucks sending prospects to the Rangers, and then one of them was Eric Brantstrom. That's right, yeah. And I'm like, the guy with the, does that guy have the same name as the dude who got traded for Mark's own seven years ago. This guy is still a prospect.

Yeah, I don't think. I think you're going to be okay, Vancouver. I was on what chaos yesterday? Mm-hmm. And Pete was like, oh, you know, Jacob Fowler, the goalie at Boston College, who's, you know, a Hobie Baker contender. He's like, him, between him and the rest of their goalie pipeline,

like, they're going to be in really good position. And I was like, who are the other goalies you're talking about? And he's like, oh, well, like Sam Montable. I'm like, Sam Montaubo. I'm like, He's like, what? Yeah. It's just one of those things where, like,

you can really sneak up on you. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, that was funny. So what, yeah, so what grade did you give to Pittsburgh? I gave Pittsburgh a B. Okay. Because here's the thing. I think they are officially doing a thing where they're like,

we're tanking, but we're just not going to trade in Crosby. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. They take on two contracts that are not good value, let's say. Look, I think Danton Hinen's a pretty good player, but is Drew O'Connor such a huge downgrade that, like, taking on the extra like $1.2 million or whatever, you know, is a huge problem for you? I don't, I personally, I don't think so. And like I said, they would know Danton Hinen.

He's played there before, and he, you know, he's a pretty decent, like, if anonymous player. And then De Haarnay, like, that just wasn't working in Vancouver. So, like, I really like it from the Canucks point of view because they got rid of two guys that they just were like, we don't need these guys. It turns out. Okay. You know? So, so, okay, so when you said B minus for the Canucks, that was just on the Miller side. Yes, they got a B plus for this trade.

Okay. That's interesting because I've seen, I've certainly. certainly seen a lot of people really liking it from Pittsburgh's point of view, just because you get another first round pick that has some potential to be in the teens and has a low but non-zero potential to roll over to next year and potentially. And at that point, who knows. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, and especially internally, they would have already have largely made their decision

on Marcus Patterson and whether he had a future there. And if he didn't, then, yeah, get a good first round pick for a guy. Yeah, and Pederson's really good. Yeah. In his role, I should say. Like, as a middle-pairing defenseman, he's really good. And, and, I mean, that's, it's a fair price to pay for a good middle-pair defenseman who is, who is youngish, with the obvious.

caveat that they have to sign him. And, you know, as people know, this is exactly the sort of scenario I get nervous about when teams trade for a guy that they have to sign very, very often leads to an overpay. So you kind of, the grade is maybe contingent on, let's see what the contract looks like, assuming there is one. But I think there will. Like, I mean, Marcus Patterson's a good player, but he's not the sort of guy who's like, no man, I'm going to the market.

I don't want to hear offers. Like, you're certainly when, when, you know, your agent goes, yeah, we can get eight years off of Jim Rutherford now. You take that. So they'll figure it out. And he's like just statistically, his profile or whatever you want to say is just like he's the kind of guy you kind of can't overpay. He costs four million dollars this year. Well, like you can't, you know what I mean. Like, he's, they're not, they're not going to count him a check for six.

million dollars, right? Like, it's just not going to happen. He has, like, three goals this year. Five million? Totally in the ballpark. I just, I just think there's a, there's a point at which, like, nobody involved can be like, this is actually a seven and a half million dollar defense. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I did that, no, but I wouldn't be shocked if it, the number at a six. But. I'd be, I'd be a little surprised. Let's, I guess we'll find out. Yeah, I, hey, the cap's going up. I heard. You know? Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, that's goodness. Look, what have we said about the Canucks all year? The second Quinn Hughes is off the ice, they are taking on water like you wouldn't believe, you know? And maybe, just maybe, Pedersen helps them, you know, stem the tide a little bit. Just a little bit. Because even a little bit, that gets you so far in terms of the, like, you know, the standing. Like you say, they're right there in the, they're right there in the wild card.

race last I checked and you know if you can ring like you know one extra goal of goal difference per three games out of having Patterson as your

middle pair like anchor guy anchor in the good way not the bad way for once middle pair pillar guy uh you know that might that might be enough to get you over the hump they are

two points back of the flames in what is at this point, essentially a two-team race. Yes. Nobody else to pass. Nobody else. So, yeah, this is all very much right there for the taking still for the Canucks. Yep. But also, maybe it's not, because maybe everybody hates Elias Pedersen now, too. Could be.

We'll find out. Do you want to do the Flyers trade or the Sharks trade next? Let's do the Flyers. That was. Flyers, it is. So this was the day before, I want to say. The Calgary Flames acquired Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost in exchange for Andre Kuzmanko, Jacob Pellateer, a second round pick, I believe this year.

I didn't write that down, but I'm pretty sure it's this year. And a seventh round pick in 2028. Again, wouldn't you just love to have a clip of the conversation that led to the seventh round pick in 28? You got to help me out here, man. Come on. Dude, come on. Like seriously

We can do a sixth in 2020 No Yeah Right Interesting Interesting Really interesting The flames are kind of

I mean it's It's kind of like a going for a trade for the flames But not in the sense of You know they didn't They didn't add like a 34 year old But They bought without buying Is how I think I would phrase it

You know what I mean? Yeah And they bought for the future as well. Yes. So, but, you know, this trade goes hand in hand with the news that we also heard out of Calgary saying that like not trading Cadry, not trading McKenzie Weger, not trading Rassam-Sanderson, like they're holding, they're going to go for this.

And, you know, I imagine if four weeks from now, if things have fallen apart and they're eight points back, maybe they change their mind. But for now, they're going to chase this playoff. spot. So yeah, I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense from their end. And then you look at Philadelphia where it's kind of a little bit tanky and a little bit clearing space for maybe some other guys to come up. And then there's also, I know some people have kind of side-eyed this and looked at it and said, are they clearing a roster spot and salary cap space for, you know, there's also, I know, some people have kind of side-eyed this and looked at it and said, are they, are they clearing a roster spot and salary cap space for potentially taking a big swing at maybe an Elias

Pedersen this year via trade or maybe it's for free agents available in the summer, that sort of thing. Yep. Are they, are they, is this really about, right, there's three options. It's about, no, it's about giving our young players a chance. No, it's about setting the stage to bring in a big name. Or maybe it's about giving the. young guys a chance, but if they don't do it, plan B becomes go after a big name.

Right. I don't have flexibility, not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I don't buy it in the vein of like, they might, they might like hold on to some of this cap space. I think the flyers specifically are an organization that kind of goes, yeah, no, this cap space is burning a hole in our pocket. You know, like we, we freed it up to spend it. We didn't free it up to not spend it, you know.

And question is when, right? Yeah, like I say, I think this summer, I think is kind of maybe at the draft, like you say, but like, or I mean, frankly, with the amount of space they're clearing and the, and the, the way the caps rising, like maybe both. Maybe they make a big trade at the, at the, at the draft or something. then they still go out and target like a guy in free agency. It's possible. Could be.

But, yeah, to me, I just like, I like this for the flames because, you know, Kuzmanko and Pellateer, just two guys were like, eh, we don't, I don't think, well, you know, obviously Kuzmanko wasn't in their long term plans. But, like, even Pellateer, I think they were just like, yeah, you know, he's fine. We can afford to part with him if, let me put it to you this. way. Do you think Farabee is better than Kuzmanko? Ugh. Yeah. I mean, I think I'd prefer to have them, but

I don't feel super strongly. Yeah, I think that's right. I think Farabie and Frost are two guys who, like, clearly Torz wasn't going to use them in the way that you would maybe want to, to maximize their value. Yeah, which doesn't make me want them less. It makes me, like,

point to them and go, like, maybe we airlift these guys out of Philadelphia and see what they can do. Right. Coach who doesn't hate them. Yeah. And same thing with Frost for Pellate. Like, I think pretty clear upgrade for the flames there. Obviously, they're taking on a bit of financial risk with making these trades just because, as you say, there's like the longer tail on the Farabee contract in particular. But I think the flames clearly upgraded.

and moved on from, or were able to get two guys that the flyers were willing to move on from. And Kuzmanko, as has been pointed out by just about everybody at this point, played with Matt Vehmichkov, another guy who doesn't seem to be getting along with Torts too well in Russia. And so maybe this is like the guy who can be the go-between for them or whatever. But then again, do you feel like Torts is going to like enjoy coaching Andre Kuzmanko? I think they're going to get along great. Oh, okay. I think what we're going to see is they're going to be hitting each other with hockey sticks on the bench, and then we're going to be subjected to, like, being told to like, no, they get along great.

You guys just don't understand how it works. You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. That's right. Yeah. He's going to, like, he'll be giving a press conference about, like, how much he loves the guy, and then he'll be like, oh, excuse me, and then go and super kick him, and, like, papers will fly all over in the air, and then he'll come back. and be like, where were we?

Yeah. Oh, right. We get along great. Yeah, we're best friends. So, yeah, I, you know, again, I like it for, I like it for both teams. I like the flyers are maybe getting a little more creative. And again, if they're, if torts isn't going to use the guys, you might as well trade them and get something for them, you know? It's better, it's better than the alternative of just like having those guys sulking because they're $5 million players or whatever.

I don't remember off the top of my head what Frost makes. It's certainly not $5 million. That's Farabee's approximately what Farabee makes. But like, you know, two guys who, if you can get them back to their 50-point forms or whatever, they're, you know, 45-point forms, you're feeling great about that trade if you're Calgary. Yep. And, you know, I think this is the right approach for them in terms of, again, rewarding the team without just being like,

who's kind of a shitty 33-year-old? You know? Uh-huh. So, you know, they gave up a little more than, you know, in terms of the draft pick, maybe you want to, but I don't know. Like I said, I like it for both teams. And also, like, it doesn't,

this isn't the sort of go-for-a-move that pins them down where it's like, now we're all in. They're not all in. They put some chips in the middle of the table, but they still, they got a nice stack sitting in front of them. Yeah, and then, you know, they get the oilers or somebody in the first round, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, shit.

Right, yeah. I guess I fucked up. I don't know. You want to talk about Star Sharks? Might as well. Okay. A first round pick and a conditional fourth round pick that becomes a third if the stars make the Stanley Cup final for Michael Granland and Cody Cici. full freight on both those guys too.

Yep. I like it a lot for San Jose. Granlin was a guy that was sort of weird. Like I didn't see, like he was on a lot of the trade boards, but you didn't really, or at least I wasn't seeing him talked about a ton for a guy who was like the leading score on the last place team and a pending UFA. Like typically that's, that checks all the boxes on.

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe it was just a case of there were so many bigger names moving around that didn't, you know, it didn't really rise to that level. But, you know, I guess the only, if you wanted to be critical on the San Jose side, maybe there could have been value in waiting until closer to the deadline and then let people realize like, oh, man, this is the, this guy's like the best center available. and try to squeeze the price a bit more. But this to me feels like one of those things where they're telling,

teams are calling up and they're telling teams like, we're going to need a first to do this. And teams are going, I don't know if we're going to do a first. We want to see who else is in. It's like, all right, talk to me at the deadline or call me when you're ready to give a first. And a team calls and says, we'll do the first. Okay, so you do the deal.

And you kind of get it out of the way. I get it from Dallas's perspective. It doesn't, I don't think move the needle a ton for me. I mean, this is essentially their Tyler Sagan, LTIR spend. Right. I, you know, it's an okay way to spend that money. Yeah, not how I would have been super aggressive about giving up a first round pick to spend that money. Yeah, I might have, I might have liked to have waited a bit if I'm Dallas and see if I can get.

to maybe a bit of a different place on it, but also easy for me to say sometimes, you know, bird in a hand and all of that stuff. You jump in and grab it. And again, we say stuff like this having no idea what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe there was another team in on it. Maybe San Jose made a call and said, this guy's getting traded today.

Here is, you know, do you want it to be to you or not? So we'll see. Yeah, you know, with Granlin, And like you said, for the sharks, this is a really nice trade because that's a guy they got as a cap dump. Right? Like, if I'm remembering, right, they got something to take his contract. And then they also, you know, over the course of two seasons turned him into a guy who, or one and a half seasons, I guess, turned him into a guy who can get you a first round pick. It's pretty good.

You know, it's probably about as good as you can do. do in such a scenario, you know? So, yeah, I really like it from the Sharks' perspective. And same thing with Cody Cici. Obviously, they gave up a little bit to get him out of Edmonton. But, you know, they got a pick in that deal as well. And, you know, it's funny. I looked up when this trade happened, I looked up Michael Granlin's power play time.

In his 20 games in Pittsburgh before they were like, okay, let's get him out of here. He played 33 minutes on the power play. As soon as he gets to San Jose, 205 and 64 games. And it's like, oh, yeah, no, if you put this guy on the power play, he can produce. Mm-hmm. I think you might say his production this year is a little overheated, maybe, you know? And I don't know where, like, if Dallas has plans to use him on the powerplay either.

I mean, he got two minutes in his first game, it looks like. So I don't know. Maybe they'll do the, again, the J.T. Miller thing of like, yep, we know this is a power play guy. We'll put him on the power play. But also maybe not. Who knows? Like I said, I think the stars may be overpaid a little bit, but it's, you know, there are like four teams that are selling right now. So if you want to buy, they get to dictate what the prices.

Yep. I'm not mad about it for Dallas, but, you know, I'd like to have seen them acquire a better defenseman, let's say. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's certainly not overwhelming for, for Dallas, but it makes, it makes a degree of sense. Yeah. Especially with Heiskin and out for a while now, you're just like, The defense does feel like a problem for the next little while. Their standing spot is secure. You know, I don't think anybody else in the Central's gunning for them, really.

But, you know, a little more, a little more certainty for what the Central looks like would probably go a long way for them. But only so many options, I guess. All right. Why don't we, when we take a break? I think that's all the trades. I haven't missed anything, right? Nope, that was, uh, great. That's, that was that stuff.

You never know. Yeah, so yeah. I haven't checked Twitter this morning yet, but that's right. We'll see. So yeah, that's it. Why don't we, yeah, we'll take that break and we'll come back and we'll talk about how the cap's going up. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon and folks, it's the season of love. Valentine's Day right around the corner.

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We're back. And we alluded to it earlier, but the salary cap, the NHL officially announced, which they don't usually do this kind of thing. Usually they wait till, I think, two days into free agency. Yeah, to say what the cap's going to be next year. It's going to be $95.5 million next season, which is way up from 88, which is what it currently is. And then the season after that, it's going to be $104 million projected. And then the season after that, it's going to be $113.5 projected.

That's pretty big jump. 29% growth over a three-year period. We haven't seen that since, like, the very, very, very early days of the salary cap existing. I think it went from 39 to 56 over the course of four seasons, something like that. Yeah. So, and that's an important point because you're seeing people refer to this as being, like, unprecedented. And, like, yes, to a certain extent it is, but there were, I think this is like an eight to nine jump every year.

Yeah. There were, in the early days of the cap, there were 13% jumps. Right. Now, that was back when it was a 5743 split. It was 20 years ago. It might as well be a century ago. I get that. But the point is the league didn't fall apart then.

And all the free agents didn't go sign with the Rangers back then. Like, it, it, it, so we have been through this before some of the, I don't know if I'd say doom and gloom, but some of the more pessimistic views of this, I think, are maybe not as backed by history as you might think. But yeah, it's great news for big market teams, to be determined for smaller market teams. But I do think overall it's going to be good for fans so we can stop, I hope,

just treating absolutely everything as a financial transaction. Yeah. Like it's, I wrote this in my, my column on Monday, but it's like, you know, if you're a younger fan or a newer fan of the NHL,

like there really was a time where we used to just talk about which players were good or bad or who won a trade. And like, you kind of knew that some guys made more than others and your team had a budget and sometimes you, you know, they wouldn't be able to afford to keep a guy, but it wasn't the be all and end all of every conversation

we ever had. And it was nice. Yeah. It's interesting because it comes at a time when like the cap spent artificially depressed for a few years now. And like getting to 95 and a half million is more just like this is where revenues kind of have been at for a few years. And, you know, we're just now finally adjusting upward.

I will also say that the fact that this news came out the same day as like a potential trade war was announced between the U.S. and Canada is maybe not the most encouraging of developments for the 113 and a half. But the thing that I'm really like thinking about with all this, as you said, is like the small market teams. So to your point about like back before the salary cap, we used to just talk about who won a trade by based on like who got the best players in value and stuff like that. So I went back and looked, 0304. This was just a post on Reddit. I don't know where they got these numbers from. But like you used to be able to look up every team's payroll in the like 0203 days. Like I think USA Today just had like a pretty comprehensive list if I remember right.

And so according to whatever this Reddit post was, in 0304, 15 teams were under $40 million in salary. And six were above 60. And there were a few that were like in the low 30s and even the 20s. And so like that's just such a huge gap. And like the teams that you would think like Arizona and things like that were just like, yeah, we're barely spending money here. And then the Rangers, the Leafs, the Flyers, they were all like, yeah, Detroit was another one where they were like, yeah, we're spending a shitload of money relative to everybody else.

And so I wonder if like we're kind of heading back in that direction. You know what I mean? Where there is going to be like, again, when the caps 113 million, I don't know how like Winnipeg can even hope to keep up with that without going into the rest. Yeah. You know? Yeah, it is. And that's almost certainly true. We can probably look around and, you know, Winnipeg, Ottawa.

Yeah. Maybe some of the smaller market, you know, what we consider smaller market, U.S. teams, although, you know, the way the economics are playing out, I, it's a little tougher to say. And then you just get into the question of, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Like, do we really need a league where everyone spends exactly the same amount, or is it okay for some teams to outspend others and by what degree? Yes. At what point, if you're Winnipeg, are you the feisty underdogs,

versus at what point are you the Montreal Expos and everyone's just picking your good players off the roster as you go? And I don't know exactly what the right answers are on that. I mean, I'm a fan of a big market team, so bring it on. but also, yes, it's not, you know. It's crazy. I'm in favor of it. I'm a fan of a big market team, but I'm in, I live in a small market.

So I, you know, I see that side of it too. So it's, it's, it's, will be interesting to see how it plays out. But it be a good time to be a free agent. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Yeah, I just, you know, especially, again, especially, especially with the conversion rate and things like that. Like,

I mean, I don't know what it looks like today, but like $113 million against the cap two years, three years from now. Does that, does that push a team up around $200 million Canadian and payroll alone? Yeah, I don't think it's,

it's not quite. 180. With it, but, yeah. And, you know, obviously,

if people don't know, the Canadian team, in teams, they're paying everyone in U.S. dollars. Like you pay your coaches and your players and everything. Everything's standardized in U.S. dollars. But you're taking your revenue in in Canadian dollars, which means if the Canadian dollar is only worth 60 cents to an American dollar, then you're going to have some trouble.

Again, if you're Toronto or Montreal, or, you know, it means you make less profit than you would like to. but if you're certainly Winnipeg, Ottawa, probably Calgary in extreme, you know, maybe even Edmonton and Vancouver. Remember, Edmonton was the poster child of the struggling Canadian market. Absolutely. Now that was also the pre-Econor McDavid years and that all changes a lot.

But, you know, that was a team that was, in theory, on the move. So, you know, it's going to have to be managed. it's going to have to be looked at. But at the same time, this is a 50-50 split. So you've got to account for this. Like there's only, and obviously the league could decide to do more revenue sharing if they wanted to, take some of that money away from the Toronto's and New Yorks and Chicago's and give it to the Winnipegs of the world to even the playing field.

If they feel like that's an overall benefit and they can get, buy-in an agreement to do that, then they're free to do it. If you're a player, you know, I don't know if you care or not because it doesn't change a slice of the pie you're getting. The other piece of this is, I mean, how many times have we said over the last two years and some young player, some young star in his prime signs a contract and we go, why are you locking in for eight years when the cap is going to go up? Well, here we are.

Yeah, I'm wondering what the Connor Bedard Bridge contract he insists. son looks like, you know what I mean? It's, uh, yeah. And, you know, McDavid's getting a new deal soon and all this. If I'm, I mean, look, clearly none of these guys are eating ramen noodles. They're all making more money than, you know, you could ever want to make and all of that stuff. But boy, if I'm like a Jack Hughes.

Oh, yeah. And I'm making $8 million through a, I want to say it's like 2029 still. Yep. You tell me there's no like 2 a.m. text to the agent. Like really, man? Like this is, you're not looking back over that text thread where he was talking you into it. Or maybe not.

Maybe it was, you know, you never know a lot of these guys. But geez, I hope Jack Hughes is okay with making literally half what his brother makes. Because we're about a year or two away from that. And, you know, the Tim Stutzels and their. You know, I think it was even like Mira Heiskenen is another guy. You know, there's a whole list of guys who locked in for their whole primes during a flat cap era rather than do a two or three year deal and then see where you're at. You know, again, it always struck me as team friendly to do that, you know. I would say it was extraordinarily team friendly.

Yeah. And, and hey, if you're like a fan of one of those, like, I mean, Ottawa's got a few of those guys. Montreal's got Suzuki and Coffield, which, you know, we can argue over whether those guys are superstars or not, but at $7 million and change. They're good quality players for that kind of money. You're not, you know, you're laughing right now. And it's funny, because this is what we were talking about last week with like the, like the Thompson contract in Washington, right?

Mm-hmm. Where you're like, you know, it's not the money. The money is negligible. And, you know, a $104 million cap, whatever, five in change is like nothing if he's your starting goalie. You know, but it's the term on those deals. And so, you know, I wonder, I wonder how much players are going to, if the players are fairly confident, the salary cap can keep rising, maybe not to this extent, certainly. But by a certain amount. I don't remember there's, there's a new Canadian TV contract coming next.

You know, there's expansion probably, which the expansion fees under the current CBA don't go into the player's share, but that in theory means, you know, potentially more revenue. More markets, more revenue. They're out of Arizona, you know, this stuff. So it absolutely could. I mean, there was talk that this, you know, the cap could have jumped even higher or it could have jumped, you know, more of this, this jump could have been immediate. but at some point that's not good for the player. Like you don't want a situation where it's like, hey, everyone whose contract expires in 2025 hits the jackpot and everyone.

Like you said, Max Domi gets John Tavares money. Yeah, yeah. Because that's just how the cap inflated. But yeah, no, I guess what I'm saying is I wonder how many guys are just like, yeah, that one's going to be a three-year deal for me, Big Dog. And we'll circle back, you know, three, four years down the line. If I'm a player, yeah, why would I lock in for eight years when I know that the next three are going to be like bonanzas, you know? I do not understand again.

Which is why the rant and trade like makes sense from Colorado's point of view. I have never understood the guys who locked in. I understand someone will say like, what, would you say no to $8 million? No, but I wouldn't say no to two or three or four million, so why not take that if we're all about just, you know. I just hope that they understood where the cap was going. They understood what the economics looked like. They, you know, as we like to say,

hockey players like to usually stay where they're at. So, you know, that's all well and good. I just hope it wasn't a case of agents looking at this going, I got to lock this kid in for eight years so that I get my share locked in on a big contract versus maybe in two years losing this guy to somebody else who gets to do it. That's my concern.

I'm a player, but I don't make a million a year. Yep. I hope they're okay with it because we've seen, you know, I, Nathan McKinnon wasn't in the poor house, but I feel like he wasn't okay with being, the best bargain in the league. Yeah, of course. I feel like that got under his skin a little bit eventually.

Yeah, and again, like, you know, the Rantinan thing, just to keep harping on Colorado, because they actually, if I remember right, I don't have the list in front of me anymore, but they weren't one of the teams that was spending like a colossal amount of money before the cap. They were kind of more middle of the pack. And, you know, maybe the market and, you know, maybe the market. and all that kind of thing, allows them to still be like maybe not $113 million cap team, but, you know, the idea of the internal cap being 106, 108, something like that. That allows them to keep McCar and McKinnon and whoever else they feel like they want to keep, you know,

relatively long term. But what's that McCar cap hit look like now? 18? And I do got to say, like, if you're a fan of a smaller market team and, you know, we can't compete now, it's sort of like, well, you had 20 years. Yeah. They really crammed parity down our throats, man. You had 20 years of, you know, your team being able to spend just as much as the Rangers pretty much every year.

Like, that's a huge chunk of this league's history. If you didn't get anything done during that, I don't know. Maybe it's not the CBA's fault. Yeah. And I mean, look, like, there's only so many dollars you can get out of a given market, right? Like, this is why you don't have a, you maybe don't want a team or they didn't want to have a team in Winnipeg in the 90s anymore, right? Where it was just like, economically, like, what kind of sense does this make for? us and that kind of thing.

Same thing with Quebec City. By the way, with regard to how this affects expansion, yeah, I'm not buying it with the, we're getting a team in Quebec City, but maybe do count on like Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, like the big U.S. markets, you know? Yep. But other than that, I, you know, I don't know. Other than that, every bad contract is good now. Your team was very smart to sign that guy.

Yep, that's right. Well, again, it makes the J.T. Miller deal look genius. Only $8 million? Yeah. Wow. You know what? Actually, I do want to mention this, too, about all that, and then we'll move on to other stuff. How about, how about the idea that we might get back to?

Remember when, like, the senators and the coyotes and stuff, not only were they taking, like, LTIR retired guys who, like, don't exist anymore, basically? Yep. You know, like, when's the last time somebody did that? you know, but also just like a lot of guys who are making like $7 million against the cap, but only like $3 million in actual money and that kind of thing in the last two years of their deals, those guys are going to be very popular in certain markets, you know? And, you know, to state the obvious, we're talking about the ceiling going up, but the floor goes up too. Yes, of course.

We could be back to seeing a lot of that stuff, absolutely. Yeah, I believe I don't have it in front of me now, but I believe it said that when the, if the cap's one 13 and a half, the floor would be like, I think slightly higher or just right around where it is now for the ceiling. So like all these teams that are like, yeah, we're not going to spend to the cap this year. They're going to have to spend roughly that much three years from now, like by rule. So it'll be interesting. will certainly be interesting, but anyway. I guess the other notable transaction of the last week is Brandon Sod had his contract terminated in St. Louis left, what, like, $5 million on the table or something like that? That's a ballsy move.

Yes, that's right. That's a ballsy move for Brandon Sade. It's a balsy move. It's one where, you know, when we talk about guys getting bought out, which, this is not. But when we talk about guys getting bought out, usually, you know, if you're getting two-thirds of your money, you're going to come out ahead.

Financially, at least, maybe not in terms of where you want to be and all of that. But he's not getting two-thirds. He's not getting anything. He's walking away from his contract. Yep. Which is something that players can do. There's, you

know, this is in the CBA, it's been there. if both sides want to walk away from a contract, it's allowed, you just almost never see it because players fought hard for guaranteed contracts and to walk away from one is an interesting move. Now, you know, he wants to go somewhere, he wants to win, he wants to, you know, obviously figures, you know,

probably looks at the situation and say Lewis and says, I might be in the HL for the next year and a half. And if that's where I'm at, that could be the end. of my career. So I'll go to Vegas. I'll play on the third or second line and light it up in the playoffs and be an attractive free agent in the off season, is at least the plan. So full credit to him for betting on himself.

This is a big bet. I wonder if the, you know, how much the players association loves seeing guys do this. But I, let's just say, I don't think it's going to become a pattern. It was a pretty unique situation and a unique guy to, uh, be willing to do it. Yep. Like you said, goes to Vegas and, you know, relatively short money. And, you know, the idea is, hey, the cap's going up.

Someone will give me $5 million next year and then we're back to square one. Or, you know, something around that number. You know, maybe he gets all that money but over two years instead of the one or however it works. But like, you know, he's assuming that he can get back to his 20 point form. playing for Vegas. I think there have been worse ideas put out there in the past, you know. And he wants to, he wants to be in a position to win,

which he hasn't in a while. And, you know, Vegas probably has as good a chance as anybody to win the cup. Mm-hmm. Yep. The West is weird right now. A bunch of guys are hurt.

Caprizov went on LTIR just, just the other day. And like I said, Heisken in the same. hurt and kind of don't always know what you're getting with the oilers and the kings and I mean, I think the Oilers are clearly the team to beat there. But yeah, I mean, Colorado is loading back up, Dallas is going to be good. But yeah, Vegas is right there. Yep. And yeah, I mean, it's, given how they've treated some of their players, I don't know that I'd want

to lock in long-term in Vegas, but to go for a year, yeah. Let's do it. You know, a couple of months. Let's jump in there. And for them, like, that's a nice ad at, like, the pro-rated version of 1.5. Yeah. And, you know, he, let's put it this way. Absent the contract, every team in the league should have wanted to sign Brandon

Sod for 1.5 million pro-rated. You know, like, he probably, I don't know how many teams were in the bidding, but, like, he probably had his pick from more than a few, like, legitimate contending style teams. Vegas, hey, I get it. That's fine. Hey, I mentioned Carol Khriezov, speaking in the Minnesota Wild. Ryan Hartman gets 10 games for, you know, I've never seen anything like that play the other night.

You don't see it often for sure. Yeah, it was an ass to it. Now, when you first saw it, did you immediately go, that's dirty play? Or were, you know. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't see it live. I was at a college game on Friday or a Saturday night.

So I didn't see it live. But the second I saw the replay, and it was at that point already being framed, it's a dirty hit. So maybe, you know. But yeah, just instantly, he takes his hand off the stick and just like drives his forearm into the back of the guy's head straight down into the ice. There's no, it was Stutzler, right? Yep. Yeah. It was crazy.

You know, like, you seen like crazy stuff off the face off before. Usually it's like guys spearing other guys or something like that. Yeah, or they come up with the clip or the butt end or something. Yeah. This was, you know, this was, this was, the Royal Rumbles on Saturday night, Ryan Hartman thought he was there. Yep. You know? Um, 10 games, that's a lot.

He might appeal it. Who knows? Um, get it down to eight or something, probably. Uh, but here's the thing. Did you watch the, uh, the video announcing the, I did not, no. The tone of that video. Okay. Is this fucking guy.

Holy shit, man. So they point out in the video, this is his fifth career suspension and he's also been fined seven times. And they make an effort to say that is supplemental discipline roughly every 60 games of his career. Oof. It's his, this is the other thing that they like kind of go out of their way to mention. It's his fourth suspension since April 2023. Yeah.

Less than two years, four suspensions. So this is pretty clearly the we are sick and tired of seeing you here. Yeah. No, like I said... Like I said, like, if you watch the video, he's just like, this is three straight suspensions for which he has been a repeat offender, the NHL Department of Player Safety, has suspended Ryan Hartman for 10 games. Like, it's literally almost that bad. Just like, you can tell they're kind of like pinching the bridge of their nose, you know, squinting. Oh, God.

it's not a not a not a coming at a good time for the wild they're not playing particularly well these days did you know they're sub 500 at home for the whole season yeah 11 12 and 1 at home okay um everybody's getting hurt all the time off and on caprice of you know i think he's only played three games since the new year it's it's tough man Not that Ryan Hartman's like a huge needle mover for them, but like they didn't need this, you know? Yeah, that is a, yeah, and well, they didn't need it, but also it's hard to argue. Let's let's put it that way. Even, even, I haven't even seen too many Minnesota homers. I'm sure there's some.

And please don't send me links to them or anything. But, yeah, he got his money's worth on this one for sure. You know, like, from the Mighty Ducks thing, two minutes. or, you know, 10 games well worth it in terms of, yeah, absolutely. I should have gotten 10 games. I don't know. In the video, they said, oh, they said he was like losing his balance and he put his forearm on Stutzla's helmet to like steady himself.

Yeah. And, uh, and didn't work because immediately all his weight dropped right on the back of his neck. Again, in the video, they're just like, we don't agree with that. Like, they're just like, yeah, okay, buddy. sure. It's really funny. But hey, you know what? I saw this about the wild just the other day,

before the Hartman suspension had been announced, was all that money's coming, like all their big buyout money's coming off the books. Next, like next season and the caps going up like $9 million or seven, I guess, seven and a half, I think. Yeah. It's just like, oh, they're going to have like, $40 million in cap space next year.

Oh, I mean, we're talking about guys who were happy that caps going up. Like, Carol Caprizov is going to... Oh, my God. I feel like he's going to get a lot of money, is my prediction. Yeah, they're going to have a little under $23 million in Cap Space. Not bad. Man. Yeah, Carol Caprizov, here's your $15 million.

We'll see you out there, you know? Anyway, I guess the last thing there is to really talk about this week, at least as far as the NHL goes, is the Utah team name, situation. Again, I don't know. Last week, did we even know about the Wasatch thing? Like, that they were including that as one of the choices? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. Because I learned about that through a group chat, and I, we all had to.

to have it explained to us what a Wasatch was. Yes. Well, now it turns out you didn't need that at all. Yeah, which is good because I didn't really learn. I just kind of... Right. File that away. Okay, so it's good.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm sure people know about this already, but basically, Vegas, Utah was like, yep, we're going to hold our big contest to see who, what our team name is going to be now. fans will be able to vote for the next few home games. And we're going to give them three options. It's going to be the Utah Hockey Club. And then the mammoth and the Wossatch.

And everyone was like, what's a Wossatch? And they were like, okay, never mind. Forget it. We don't need to dig into that too much further. You know, for posterity or whatever. I think everybody knows this by now. They looked it up. The Wasatch is the mountain range around Salt Lake City.

I didn't think that was a bad name. Was it good? No. But it's better than hockey club. I'll tell you that. You know, it's better than hockey club, yeah. I didn't, I didn't say it wasn't, it was significantly better. It's barely better than hockey club, but here we are.

When they, so it was open to fans who went to the games to vote on this. And after one game, they got the memo, P.U. Stinky, we don't like this. That's right. And so they said, okay, can we interest you in outlaws instead? What did you think of that swap, just face value? Positive. Agreed. You have to, right?

Outlaws and Mammoth are both acceptable NHL team names. Yes. They're not as good as Yetis and they're not as good as the Ice Scorpions, but. Hey, what is, you know? Well, crucially, it's Yeti, not Yeties. That's, well, not if, not if me and this magic marker I've snuck into the unveiling has anything to say about it. Well, again, this is, this is my problem with, like, a collective team name, like, you know, lightning, you can't call them the lightnings. So what do you call them?

You know, that's fine. I get it. The wild, that's one of the worst sports names, sports teams we got. right now. It's hard to top how bad that is. Miami Heat, I don't like it. But you can't call them the heats. So, you know, whatever, sure.

But, like, with both mammoth and Yeti, where they're singular, it's like, so wait, like, are all you guys, like, to get, like, if one of you is missing, are you not the Yeti? Because you need all 23 of you? How many grains of salt in a heap and how many Utah hockey players?

In a Yeti. That's right. Yeah. So I don't, if it was Samiths runaway winner for me. But it's not. So I'm team outlaws here. I saw people be like, oh, you know, there's no like history. Like that's just like such a random EA sports ass name. And it's true that it is.

But I pointed this out yesterday when I was on, uh, what chaos? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were operating out of Utah for a minute there. Okay. So you can just be like, hey, you know the guy that directed Slapshot, you like that movie? And they go, yeah. Yeah, he directed a movie about outlaws, too. So it actually all ties in, doesn't it? It's, yeah, perfect. George Roy Hill, Paul Newman. What movie am I talking about? Could be either one. What about the logos? Did you, did you see the? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll say this about about the logos. So it is obvious now

that colloquially they will be referring to the Utah hockey club as the Yeti or the Yeti. or whatever, because they were just like, here's the logo for Utah Hockey Club. It looks an awful lot like some sort of a big-footed creature. Yep. You know? And that is the one that definitely you could tell had the most time in the oven, let's say. You know what I mean?

That was the best designed one, buy a lot. Didn't, crucially, look like an EA sports-ass team name, you know? So, or a team logo, I mean. So it's too bad that I have to, like, be so lined up against Utah Hockey Club in principle. Well, you should be. I mean. And I am. Terrible name.

But the logo's so good, you know? And I kind of, does this feel like them stacking the deck to make him be like, oh, yeah, look how good the logo is, though. Wouldn't you love it? We don't have to pay for more design work. wouldn't you love that? We should be able to overrule a team. If they're like, yeah, here's our name. We should be able to, like...

Me and you, yes, I agree. Yes, that's right. Yeah, just you and I, final approval. I looked at it and this sucks. I have to go, okay, well, we tried. The Mammoth logo is okay. The Outlaws logo is bad. That's the one where you can.

tell, they were like, oh, we had to come up with this on, like, Friday night. It's 4.45 p.m. Mm-hmm. We got to get this out the door. But they did say, crucially, these are not the final logos. Yes. And they also had no, like, color element to them, which makes a difference. So I'm still rooting for outlaws, but I think I'm fighting a losing battle here.

I think it's going to be mammoth. Yeah. I would say Mammoth is definitely the favorite at this point. But, you know, hey, look, he's going to crunch the numbers, look at the data, put the thumb on the scale, and oh, it turns out hockey club. They'll pick whichever one he wants. That's exactly right. Yep. And by him, I mean Clayton Keller.

That's right. He's going to have like a green see-through visor on what I'm talking about. And like reading glasses. That's right. Yeah, for sure. It's going to have like a little calculator with those. long, super long roll of paper coming out of it? Absolutely.

And he's going to be, and he's going to be like leaning over it with like the little, a little bit of his tongue like out of the corner of his mouth. Like he's really concentrating. And then it, then it says, Utah HC in a fucking runaway. Go Yeties. You know, that's what he says. It's so funny that like they tried to make a deal with the cooler company. And the cooler company was just like, fuck off, man. We're not getting involved.

Could be. Oh, hey, when a piece of news it broke as we were recording, Matthew Barzell potentially out for the year. Whoa. According to Patrick Waugh. I had seen yesterday that he was out indefinitely. Yes. So I guess somebody asked Patrick Waugh today, like, hey, does that mean he'll still be back during the season, right?

And Patrick Waugh basically said he doesn't know. He doesn't know if he'll be back by the end of the regular season. So, of course, for that Islanders playoff run, that's definitely happened. Well, I mean, hey, name a team that was hotter in the East in the last few weeks than them. Oh, the Detroit Red Wings. That's the only other one. How about those damn Red Wings, huh? I'll say this, to their credit, they almost have me buying it.

I still don't think I buy it, but I'm getting there, you know? Yeah, okay. All right. I need to see that five-on-five play improve. But they've won like 14 out of 18 since McClellan took over. So, you know, wins or wins. especially in that conference this year, you know? Could be.

Even with the, you know, by points percentage, they're still technically in a playoff spot. They're tied with Columbus in points percentage, but they have more regulation wins. Oh, geez, man. Carol Marchenko, this is the thing. You've got to be paying attention out there, you know? Yeah, that's, it's just yapping away. Yeah. Looking at his phone.

Probably looking at his phone. Exactly. These freaking millennials, their damn phones. No, I mean, I don't think I've seen, I've seen, I've seen like coaches get hit in the head and like have to go get maybe not stitched up, but like a bandage or something, that kind of thing. I've never seen a guy get his jaw broken by a puck cut. And I've, look, I've seen a lot of pox going to a lot of benches over the years, you know. Yeah, I don't know that I've ever seen someone like have to miss significant time. Yeah, they're saying like six.

six to eight weeks or something like that? Yeah, and apparently it's like, you know, not just a broken jaw as if that wouldn't be bad enough, but like, you know, like had to like dislocated and, you know, they stayed behind and to, you know, in hospital on the road, which is never a good sign. Yeah. James Rand Reimsdike had a tooth in his lip. That's not good. No. You know what someone pointed out in the mailbag, by the way? is this is like, you know, for all the talk about,

oh, there's always something up with the maple leaves. There's like nothing up with the maple leaves this year. Yes, I know. I get accused because I never write about them in the weekend column that like I'm doing a bit or I'm like some reverse. Like, there's just not, like, what do you want? They're just fine. They're trying to win two one.

Good to great, yeah. They win two to one a little bit more often than they lose two to one. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. They're going to play the senators in the first round and dot, dot, dot. Mm-hmm. Yep, there you go. That's Leif's Corner.

But, like, the crazy thing is that really is Leif's Corner. And, you know, like, even the Marner contract, people are just like, yeah, I guess that'll get figured out or something. Maybe I don't know. Who cares? You know? But again, this all goes back to the, to the, the, the, the, the, the, and the, and the, and, the cap going up and that kind of thing, I just feel like every free agent was like, yeah, why don't we wait to see what the NHL says the cap number is going to be next year.

And like, you know, again, like I was, I was at TD Garden. So that's what that Cesar, Crosby should have done. Dumbly. Get it, man. He could have got 87 million a year to the right. That's right. Yeah. But yeah, I was at TD Garden last night and people were like, oh, yeah, you know, Marshan.

Like, Dawn Sweeney was there, you know, whatever. and we were like, oh, yeah, what's going on with all this kind of thing and blah, blah, blah, and we were just like, yeah, isn't it weird that Brad Marshand? Like, you haven't heard a word about the fact that he's a pending free agent? He's a captain of the team. Yeah. He won a Stanley Cup with him in 2011. He's been there forever.

And it's just like, yeah, he might stay, you might go. We don't know. Who cares? Oh, well. Really weird. Anyway, I guess that's the show. Sean, what are you got to plug this week, bud? I got a piece that I think is going tomorrow that ties into a lot of what we talked about,

where I have a feature that I do a couple times a year called Cap Court, where I try to figure out if guys have bad contracts or not. And I'm opening it up for appeals tomorrow. I'm going to go back to five guys that I found guilty of having a bad contract. And in a world where the cap's going up by 20 million bucks, we're going to figure out if these guys still have bad contracts or whether I need to issue some pardons. Did you already write this?

I've got it 80% done. Okay. Can we get a preview of one of the guys? J.T. Miller's on the list? Yeah. I also go back to last fall's Mark Sheifley versus Mika Zabanajad debate. Probably. The good old days, huh?

Maybe tipping. Yeah. Yeah, a few others. Yeah, the Miller contract, it really is like, it's not good. But is it, I don't know that it's bad anymore. And that one I had, that's the oldest one that I'm pulling up because I had done that one in like 2002 when he had just signed it and he hadn't had the hundred point season yet. So I guess, you know, it's interesting.

Was Alvin the guy who signed that one? What's that? Was that all, had Alvin been hired at that point? Or was that like one of the last thing? That may have still been in the Benning. I think it's right around the, I think it's right around the cutoff point at that. But it was, it was interesting to go back and read what I wrote then because I'm like, you know, the Canucks aren't good.

They're not going to be good for a few years. What are they doing? And, you know, they've already been very good and then back to not good anymore. Benning fired December 6th, 2021. Okay. So, yeah, it would have been. Oh, no, they, because did they sign him in 2021 and the deal hadn't. They signed it.

He agreed to a seven-year deal on September 6th, 2022. So Alvin was hired at that point. Mm-hmm. And he had been in the job roughly nine or ten months. So there you have it. Okay. But yeah. It's interesting.

Oh, for me, yeah. I just got a bunch of college hockey coverage. coming up, the bean pot was last night, combined score in the two games. B.U. and B.C. 15, Harvard and Northeastern 3. Ryan Leonard, who's a Washington Capitals draft pick, has been going psycho for the last little while. I think he's up to nine goals and 12 points in his last four games or something like that. Three hat trick or two hat tricks in a two-goal game in there. BC's really, really good.

B.U. Less good, but still quite good. So, yeah, I'm writing about the bean pot. I'm writing about other stuff in college hockey throughout the next couple of weeks here as the regular season winds down and conference tournaments approach. And then, you know, usual NHL stuff, like I said, we're doing trade grades and I have some takes on all the trades we just talked about. They don't differ too much from what we said here. But click on them anyway, so my bosses think I'm actually really popular. There you go.

And then head over to patreon.com slash puck soup. We are doing a call-in show for our Patreon members on our Discord on Thursday night, where we'll take calls and play trivia games like we do sometimes on this show. And, you know, answer questions, tell jokes. A bunch of grab ass on there, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. And, you know, $5 a month gets you access to the Discord and the PuckSoup bonus stuff, including the mailbag that we're about to go record. And then $8 a month gets you a bunch of other bonus episodes of various podcasts, stick to sports, overrated, underrated, miz on pod, all that kind of stuff.

So lots of value there for your entertainment dollar, Patreon.com slash Puck Soup. Thanks for listening to the main show this week. And like I said, me and Sean are just going to go record the mailbag right now. Have a good one. Bye bye. Bye-bye.