Puck Soup - Rock Out, Hitchcock Out

Episode Date: February 2, 2017

Greg and Dave discuss the firing of St. Louis Blues coach Ken Hitchcock. OK, they actually talk about hotel bathroom etiquette, and then get around to Hitchcock. Plus, the NHL All-Star Weekend, Justin Bieber, the NHL 100 list's biggest flaw, Ilya Bryzgalov interviews Republican Ryan Suter; the NHL and the Olympics; Dave gives Greg a pop culture quiz; the NHL takes a political stand on immigrants and gay rights … well, sorta; the first Puck Soup Podcast listener contest, such as it is; and the listener mailbag, featuring if "Ocean's 11" was cast with NHL players.

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So should you. Download the Seekek app today and enjoy the show. Now entering nerdist.com. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got. the commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in twos. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet.

PuckSoup. I'm Greg Wyshsky of Yahoo Sports Puck Daddy Blog. And I'm Dave Lozo of the dying planet Earth. And you're in Puck Soup. We're here in the Yahoo Studios today in a very important day for other sports. We're taping this on National Signing Day. Do you know what National Signing Day is? That's the day when Ruckers doesn't get anybody to come to their school.

That's the day when Maryland sees all of their local products go elsewhere. That's when all the guys that could go to Ruckers go to Penn State instead. Right, despite our schools now being in a conference that allegedly is going to help in recruiting, it's the day when which everybody from New Jersey or Montgomery County or P.G. County goes elsewhere. It's pretty great. Like Ruckers doesn't even get the hat on the table. It's every one of the three hats. That's how far back we are at this point.

The only time the recruits go on television and say they're coming to Maryland is that they have a handle of whiskey next to them and a bunch of crumpled up paper that they all assume was going to be acceptance letters from other better colleges. You know what my hell is? My hell is Rutgers being bad at football again for the next decade, yet somehow all of the good Rutgers players winding up on the fucking New England Patriots. That's what made me laugh, by the way, about the Patriots. And happy Super Bowl weekend, everybody. Your outrage over people not knowing the origins of the Maddie Ice nickname for the Atlanta Falcons quarterback There was like four stories this week about who knows what Maddie Ice means What could that possibly have? It's from Natty Ice the beer

Yeah next story next story please It's cheap shitty beer Like Ken Tremendous picked apart a Bill Plashky thing today where it was like 20 reasons why this God's work really there by the way And why the Falcons are good and like it falls apart obviously by like number 12 But one of them was like, this guy's nickname is like the... Tom Terrific. And this guy's nickname is Maddie Ice.

And no one knows where Maddie Ice came from. No, no, his thing was like, oh, his friends gave it to him as a nickname in high school. And then even Ken Shirendis was like, no, Natty Ice is what they call natural light. No, they call that Natty Light. Natural Ice is Natty. This isn't complicated. Right. Like, I walked around.

Like, Matt Ryan's been in football for 10 years. I assumed everybody knew why they called him Maddie Ice and what it was based on. They don't. Yeah. I hate everybody. I hate the world. The world's so stupid. You know, a lot of our listeners have noticed that you don't like things.

No, these are listeners that are fucking babies because I don't like the thing they like. They're such fucking, I don't like Rogue One. Do you like anything? Yeah, I like your mom. How about that? You fucking whiny, fucking babies. Do you like, you don't like the movie to hangover? No, it fucking sucks.

It's a stupid fucking movie. It's the same joke over and over again for two hours. But they find them on the roof. That's, that, I can't remember what happened here. Oh no, can we get some clues? Guys, there's a tiger in the... I like the hangover. Oh, Ken Jong just popped out of the trunk in his underwear.

L-O-L-L. No, that's just said he wasn't into one underwear. He was completely naked, and I never felt better about life. Was he naked in that scene? He certainly was. There's a long list of things that I love. Trust me. Just because I don't like the crap.

I'm on Twitter. You know what I hate is two broke girls? You don't like two broke girls? Don't you think that Twitter has just been a way for you to Yes, whatever the answer is. Well, yeah, I was going to say to, to like open the exhaust valve and have all this foul stench of hate inside of you be filtered somewhere. No, that's what I use the Yahoo bathroom for when I get here to do the podcast. Are you kidding me?

I hold it in all day, so I have to do it in my place. No, we're going to get into this later. We're going to get it because people on Twitter were criticizing your pop culture tastes. And I'm going to, I'm going to list some things later. And we're going to see exactly where you are on the pop culture barometer. If I can pause on bathroom etiquette for a second. Sure. Now, I, you know, obviously room with my wife in a hotel.

She doesn't get her own room despite the obvious threats. But I also have roomed, obviously, with, like, Leahy. Oh, my God. And let me ask you this. In the times that you've ever roomed with anybody in a hotel room, have you ever, when you needed to drop a big old stink bomb, done the courteous thing, and go to another bathroom inside the hotel? No.

What do you enjoy? Are you crazy? I've done it. Wait, wait, wait. So you share your life with somebody at this point. The highs and lows, all the great things that come with marriage. But you would rather not crap within 20 feet of her. And you'd rather go downstairs to a bathroom where, like, four dudes just crapped in the lobby like 20 minutes earlier.

Well, first of all, it's not about going to the lobby. Okay, hotels are very vast. Well, what other bathrooms are there in a hotel? I'll tell you exactly where you go. Let me lay a, let me. You're like George Costanza with the bathrooms. You know all the secret bathrooms in the hotel? You know what they call this in today's Paraly?

They call it hacking. Let me give you a little hotel bathroom hack, okay? You go to the conference room floor. If it's the weekend, there's nobody there. You get an immaculate, beautiful bathroom to yourself, and you preserve the integrity of the... Let me tell you something right now about hotel bathrooms. They're gorgeous.

They're beautiful. It's like walking into paradise. It's like that episode of Roseanne where she envisioned her bathroom as being like this goddess-like place of spot. and gold fixtures, you know, like Trump's bathroom. I totally get that reference from 25 years ago. Thank you. And so I try to preserve the integrity of it.

So like when my wife will take like a shower, it doesn't smell like Degaba. And like I can just, you know, I preserve the integrity of the bathroom for her. So if I have to go, I'll just go on like, I'll just take the elevator down to another floor and go. So it doesn't stink. No, that's fair. I never consider the conference room floor as a like, you were thinking of like the lobby. Right, like when you first check in and you go on there. And full disclosure, you're thinking of the lobby of like a best western.

No, like any hotel lobby, because when people arrive at the hotel and they're ready to check in and they have to wait a couple hours or they're online, that's where you take your emergency shit. That's the grossest shit you're going to take all day. Or if you're just like if it's a city hotel, you know that there's always going to be a readily available bathroom. So instead of it's like taking shit into Wendy's or whatever inside of New York, you'd probably just go to the lobby bathroom of a nice place, right? Have you ever stayed at the, what's the casino in Detroit? Oh, I know which one you're talking about. The Motor City? Yeah, Motor City, I think it's called.

Yeah. You ever stay in that hotel? I have not. True story. And if you stay in that hotel, it's really nice, a nice hotel. But the bathroom is too nice where there's a wall-sized mirror right next to the toilet. So it's like you're shitting with your twin brother. It's, I can't do it.

You look over next to you and there's a side. There's some other dude with his pants down taking a dump looking right at you. It's like, I can't do that. He's making eye contact with me. I feel the same way about mirrors right in front of the toilet when you're pissing in it. That's the thing is like hotel bathroom mirrors are putting there by some dude who's like really into like golden showers and like Cleveland steamers. They want to watch you shit. I don't want to watch myself shit.

I don't want to look at myself while I'm dedicating your ear any. I don't want to look myself when I take a piss. I don't need that. Oh, oh look. Now I have shame and I'm pissing. It's just the worst. You look over. you see yourself all sweaty.

You're like, oh, my God, I can't walk out of this bathroom now. Yeah, exactly. It's hard enough having a mirror right across me to get out of the shower. And you're feeling all good about life. And you look over and like, ah, a narwhal. And it's like, no, it's you.

Dummy. Good job eating that in and out last night. Yeah, hotels are really bad. I don't know the bathrooms are bad for your self-esteem. Yeah, they are. But at the same time, though, like I said, like hotel bathrooms are in and of themselves immaculate. They give you, the shampoo that I had in L.A.

For the All-Star game had, had like rosemary and shit and you always feel great it's like the shit smells nice everything's clean there's no hair on the floor well there's never hair on the floor with you I'm gonna talk about it but there's never

it's just like a very immaculate and lovely thing and I don't want to soil it for anybody and then with Leahy it's like when I room with him like I just I just don't want him to know I don't want him to deal with it I just go go someplace else it's a courteous thing to do

oh you mean you you actually do this for both Ruby N and I do it If I'm room with somebody. Most times. Other times you can't help it. Yeah. Like me and my friends, when we take baseball trips or whatever, go to Atlantic City, we don't care about our feelings enough to do that.

Basically, it's like a race to annihilate the bathroom once we get off the plane and arrive in a city. We're basically like doing like rock paper scissors to destroy the bathroom. A bunch of fucking animals marking your territory. Oh, you're the fifth guy to go in that bathroom after a two and a half hour of after you had a bacon and cheese in the morning and coffee. Exactly. It's not a scene that you want to be a part of.

No. I leave it to other people to mess the bathroom. I don't need that. I'm trying to be courteous and trying to maintain the integrity of the hotel. That's all I'm trying to do. Why are we talking about this? So Ken Hitchcock was fired.

Oh, obviously. Good segue. Speaking of giant shits. Speaking of someone who probably is destroyed a bathroom once or twice in his time. I've been following this story all day before we did the podcast today, and I have to say that, like,

it's pretty apparent that Doug Armstrong, the GM feels like there's blood on his hands for him having really fucked up a playoff team. He let Backus go and Brower go, whatever. I mean, you can say that that's the right financial decision or whatever. They had to.

They traded Elliott, which I guess is the thing they felt like they had to do in order to clear the decks for Jake Allen. That one they didn't have. They hired Jim Corsi, who is no longer in possession of a job. Ah, but I'm thump. And to be a goalie coach

and him and Allen didn't apparently hit it off all that well. It kind of remind me of like the Braden Holpey Olaf Colzig issue from back in the day when he was in Washington and Holpe was terrible with him as the goalie coach. But, you know, it's, I guess I feel like, I feel bad for Hitch in some ways because this was it. This was the last ride for him in St. Louis. He's one win away from tying Al Arbor for third in the all-time list. And I feel like his GM did him very. by not getting the team that he needed to coach this year.

Disagree. If you really wanted to screw the team up, he could have traded Kevin Chattankirk in the summer for a player that wasn't going to be as effective as Kevin Chattonkirk. Teams, do you remember the playoff series against Minnesota a couple years ago? I do. Where they lost to Minnesota in six. And I was watching it on the way over here to refresh my memory,

but it was game six. Wait, what? Yeah. Research. Like on your phone? Yeah. You're watching an old hockey game on your phone over here to get it. Research?

It was a highlight because it was, I forgot how funny it was. Of course. It's game six. Minnesota's got a three-two lead in the series. Blues are desperate. Jake Allen has not been good in this series. So who do they start in game six? Jake Allen.

It's like, all right, fine. We'll see what happens. Zach Porezze scores seven minutes in a shorthanded goal from an angle that no goal should ever be scored from. A horrible goal. And it's like, all right, elimination game. You're on the road. You're down one.

You got Brian Elliott on your bench. Now is the top. Nope, nope, gonna leave him in. Like, all right, fine. So fast forward to the second period. It's still won nothing. And Brian Engbaum is on the bench with Ken Hitchcock. And he's just like, hey, it seems like you're really getting it going here in the second period with shots and stuff.

And it's just like, yeah, we really got our legs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, one more question. At any point did you really feel like you might take out Jake Allen and go up Brian Lyd? He's like, no, he's our goal. He's a young guy. You got to go with the ups and downs. 20 seconds later, Justin Fontaine scores the worst goal I've ever seen. even a hockey game on Jake Allen and he immediately pulls Jake

from the game and that was where I was like that's what that's how you can tell Hitch has to kind of go because he's lost his finger on the pulse of the team at that point one nothing you got to pull him he's given up a bad goal his his head's not right do you do you are you bothered by the slavish commitment to Jake Allen from that franchise like they all think he's got the the certain genusayqua of a cup winning goalie like Brodor is in on him he's tall Doug's in on him is it does that why because he's tall because he's got the body of a star goalie it's like a quarterback like ryan leaf he's he's he's built like a quarterback well he's i've watched them play a quarterback and i've

watched jake allen play goalie for a while and like i get it like you wanted to get something for brian elli because you didn't want to lose him but this is exactly why like tampa and pittsburg didn't want to trade their extra goalies is because well if your goalie fucks up right you got another one there and here jake allen's fucking up which pause on that by the way this this new thing on the penguins potentially trading flurry by the deadline just stop Like, you have a cup winning team and a team that could win another cup. Don't do that. Like, keep your goalies.

What are you going to do? Go to War with Matt Murray and Justin Peters or something? Well, actually, I... The thing is, I think they can't trade him because he's contracts too big and he's not good. He's not good enough. But remember last year when they were like, oh, Matt Murray is really struggling, let's put in Mark Andre Fleury against the lightning. And then Mark Andre Flurry crapped his pants.

they were like, actually, we're going to go back to Matt Murray for the rest of the playoffs. So if you already know you got Matt Murray who can win these 16 playoff games. So this is just your opinion that even though Flurry was suffering through like concussion shit last year or whatever, like that doesn't go away. He's just his goose is cooked.

It's like Carrey Lennon. Cary Lennon. Since his concussion hasn't been the same. Like some guys just don't ever come back from. Yeah, which is why Dallas is totally trading for Flurry. Can you imagine that? We're going to use three goalies and two of them at once. If you could do that, if you mean, like, we're always kind of fan casting trades here.

I still believe in the Duchy and Chattonkirk trade, by the way. I've traded Kevin Chattonkirk 47 times in the last six months, so let's keep doing that. Flurry to the stars, and they get Niemie back. Would that be something you'd like for the Penguins? Flurry to the Stars. And then they get Niami back. Oh, and the penguins get Niami back.

Yeah. Well, see, this is what I'm talking about. You just made the noise. But that's the point, is that if you trade Flurry, whoever is going to be backing up Matt Murray is going to be, it's not going to be somebody of high quality. So if Murray gets hurt, you're fucked.

I'm saying if Murray gets hurt, you're fucked anyway. I see, I disagree with you. If you have Fleury or if you have Nehmi or if you have. I talked to Rob Rossi and he said, you know who's great? Flower. Put flour. Murray fails you. Put in flour.

And I'll say flour? You ever go to Permianis and get some fries on you, on your sandwich? I can't do a Pittsburgh voice. I can't continue to do it. I don't even know if that is a Pittsburgh voice. I know him saying flower is definitely Pittsburgh. The rest of it's probably just Philly.

And I'm just like projecting. It sounds like phone. It's a weird curve. It starts in Baltimore. It curves up to Philly in South Jersey. I've never heard of Baltimore accident until Scott Van Pelt started doing it. And then it keeps on curving over to Pittsburgh where it becomes something even like. It's like a steroid version of the Baltimore X at Hun.

Is to see what I didn't pick that one up Let's go to the O's game Meet me by the Brim Motel Or have some three extra fries Malkin should have been top 100 you I can't do it I don't know what the voice is I can't hear of Philly

Have we done this on the show before Like Philly I can do Pittsburgh I don't know what it is Do we do this with Trey I think it was here No it was How I think it was Katie No I wasn't Katie

It was a geologist I think we did it with Probably nobody heard it then Yeah It was like This is every call to WIP In the 1990s Joe from Philly

You're next You get real creative with this city there Hey Howard What do you think You think Donovan's the right quarterback for this team Do you think the Egel should probably get rid of Donovan Maybe they should bring back Randall I'll hang up and listen

And then the host on WIPO will just go Dog from Philly you're next That's it Oh god What a place Yeah it's the best What a city

It's the best city Best I mean listen honestly Like let's let's say Let's say that you are an immigrant You're from one of the few countries That can still get here Okay Okay let's say you're in immigrant

You're Johan Lozo And you have and all you are is Borka Borka I'm a sports fan. You get to choose any city in the United States in which to become a sports fan. Let's say that you're like a digital freelancer. You can live anywhere. You can choose what city you'd like to be a fan in. Where would you go?

Jacksonville. Five off. One team, good weather, college football a little bit down there. Shitty team, though. That's the thing. Because there ought to be other one-team cities you'd rather go and live in Oklahoma City for fuck's sake. Oh, but like $15 tickets probably. in there cheap. I'll never forget

going to the Expos game that last year they were there. Tickets were like $5. It was awesome. Right behind it. Five dollar, dugout. $5.00. Taunting Chipper Jones. I taunted Chipper Jones for six. What did you say to Larry? That's what I said to him.

Actually got him to look over and do the little mouth thing with his hands at one point. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. Like you were drawn him so much that he gave you the Pac-Man hands? It was when he was playing left field. He wasn't at third base, but like he was, whatever he'd come in and out, The dugout was just Larry. And then people in our section started to join in.

God bless the people in Montreal. I was a good night. Did ever tell the Talk It story on the show? I forget. The worst chirp I ever heard my entire life was it a Devil's preseason game. Wait, let me talk it. Yeah, no, he goes like, it was a devil's preseason game.

It was the first time I ever realized how completely nasty a crowd can be to somebody. We were in the upper deck of a preseason game, no less. And this guy, and there's no way Rick Tocket of the flyers at that point is ever going to hear this. This guy goes like this. He stands up and he goes, hey, talk it. You suck.

And your mother never loved you. Whoa, that's actually pretty harsh. I know, right? I looked over it. I'm like, oh, my God, people take it this seriously. That's how all insults should be. It shouldn't be like, you suck. Nice shot, Crosby.

Crosby, your mother and father had you by accident. They never really cared about you. I was at a high school. teachers versus students basketball game sitting in the stands and the and our band teacher was Mr. Schleiker okay? Have you set man?

No. Skinny guy actually. And there was a dude sitting next to me and I can't remember if he was in my grade or not in my grade. It's a student versus teacher basketball game and Mr. Schleiker is dribbling down court and this kid screams. Oh, give it to me. Mr.

Schlecker is the abortion that lived. Okay, okay. In that kid's defense. He got pulled out. He got pulled out of the stands. Oh, and he got kicked out of the gym. Bullshit. If you can't handle the trash talk on the court, don't get on the court, Mr. Schlecker.

Tough shit, Mr. Schlecker. It's a game, man. I remember we had, we had parent, or not parent, we had teacher student volleyball games that got super intense. Like, the fact that you could, like, jump up and, like, spike a ball into, like, your history professor's face. Oh, my God. Like, people would get into it, man. Why did teachers do that? Is it just, like, why are their student teacher?

Oh, it's for aggression. Get it out. Is that what it is? Everybody hates everybody. It's like a, you know, you can't put on boxing gloves and take out somebody that in your class is mocking you all the time. More like, test is the Dumberville's. You can't, like, hit that kid. But you can spike a ball on his head in volleyball.

Because, like, you can't, like, play, like, football against the kids. You can't play, you can't box. You have, like, a sport where there's no contact where, like, you have to kind of, like, take out your aggressions either through chance from. Maybe like, think about it, like, imagine if you're on the court and some teacher was like, Wish has got a little weenie. That'd be awesome. You're like, you can't say that to me. He's like, it's a sport.

I can say whatever I want. Kids today. Kids today can't take a joke about their weiner from the teacher. Soft. Shit, it's not the weaner. I'll be like, you know what? I made up all my answers in math. I just used the odd answers in the back and then just put a bunch of shit on top of them and you passed me,

you rude, you fucking roob. That's an admission, by the way. Foil. You know, it's not first, outer, interlast. It's fuck. Obstructionist, illegitimate losers. I legitimately didn't do any work in your class. I just used the calculator to write boobless over and over and over again.

Yeah, so Mark Andre Flurry. Oh, going back to, so you're Johann Lozo. Oh, right, yeah. What city would you choose? Honestly, like, fuck Jacksonville. Like, what city would you choose to be a sports fan in? Well, I go West Coast. Probably go San Francisco.

Despite the current state of the Niners? Yeah, but I mean, like, you got the Warriors. Got the Warriors, got the Giants. You got the Raiders. You got the A's. You got two baseball teams. The New York baseball. Sorry, the San Francisco baseball Giants. Sharks games don't sell out still, right, since the whole one-year rebuild thing,

you can probably get good cheap tickets there. Also a great place to watch a game. I was one of my big revelations from covering the finals last year. I hadn't really been out to San Jose all that much. Good place to watch a game. I'm down with San Francisco being the kind of sports town you choose. But for me, it would be like Philly would be on the list because being a Philadelphia sports fan is a cult-like. It's cult-like.

And like any good cult, you have a sense of belonging and then also tons of abuse. You want that? Clearly. You want to show up at like a giant Eagles game and get the shit kicked out of? This is for Philly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Suck it, Eli. We got Carson Wentz now.

Yeah. Or Chicago. via one. I've always said that if I ever had to move to Chicago, like, I will always be a Jets fan, but I would probably root for the Bears. I don't think, I mean, the Bulls fandom confuses me, because I feel like nothing

nothing that, it's like being a Star Wars fan. Like, nothing that comes later will ever compare to the Jordan Bulls, right? So it's like, what's the point? What's the point of trying to build up? I've seen people ranking Rogue One as their second favorite Star Wars movie which is insane. Which is absolutely insane. That's obviously insane.

wasn't good. And then, well, I guess like, shit, I'd have to be a Blackhawks fan. I don't want that. If it was a cold weather city, I'd go Chicago. But otherwise, I really don't want to deal with snow ever again in my life. So I would probably, anywhere on the West Coast. L.A., San Francisco, Vegas, home to two teams, potentially. Gun to your head, would you rather be a Flyers fan or a Blackhawks fan?

A real Soviet choice. Oh, my God. I know. I'd be a Flyers fan. Because you know why? Because in this point in the life cycle, okay? In this point of the life cycle. Starting right now, I move over.

Johann Lozo in from packing my bag. Yeah. Some beautiful cold weather country where, you know, that's fair skin and fair hair, but you're moving here. Johan Lozo, I would say I would become a flyer fan because they're still in the down cycle, the life cycle, and I want to be there when they win. That to me, it's much more intriguing as a fan to be long-suffering than to be a bandwagon on a dynasty. Chicago Is that just because of Philly?

I mean, I grew up hating Philly more. Like people either grew up hating Philly or Boston, and I grew up hating Philly. I didn't grow up really hating. I like Boston because I hated the Yankees, and Boston was always a rival to the Yankees, so I would always root for Boston. Chicago, I have really no, like I'm fucking sick of the Blackhawks, as I've stated many times, both in print and orally on this show. But I would probably rather root for Chicago.

See, it's funny. When I was growing up, my city that I hated. was New York. It's like I hated the Rangers and I hated the Knicks and I hated the Yankees and the Giants were whatever. I was a Jets fan I can't hate the Giants. Like I was 50-50 at New York because I didn't give a shit about like the Islanders and the Mets but I hated the Yankees. Hating the Giants for me

was like hating the smart kid in class. It's just like, boy I don't like your success but you're so much better than I am in every way and I can never aspire to be you but I resent you. I can't believe the fucking Giants loss of the Packers. Ah man. Yeah. It's like oh we have Lawrence Taylor. We have Mark

Gaston... Oh shit, what's the point? We have Carl Banks. Oh, yeah? We've got Marty Lying. Ah, shit. You guys went to the AFC title game two years in a row, like six years ago. I know. It's not like you're this... You and Lions fans, you and Lions fans bitch way too much about your teens. No, but the Jets are a different kind of

shitty. Like, they're more of a Red Sox shitty before they won. Like, they would push it to a certain point and then disaster would strike. They weren't like Cub's shitty or Brown's shitty. Right, but like there's the Jaguars, the Browns. I'd rather be Jets shitty. than Texans shitty, where, like, you're going to win your shitty division by accident once every four years by going seven and nine. Like, I'd rather go four and twelve and have draft hope.

But Texan shitty is different because there's, unless you consider the Cowboys to be competition, there's no basis for comparison. Oh, like, in terms of, like, having, like, a rival sticking in a team? In terms of, like, having seven or eight different teams in the market. And then you're, like, the biggest disaster in the market. But, like, Lions fans have had Matt Stafford for seven, eight years. Like, I get it. Yeah, so it's my fantasy team inexplicably. Yeah, he's like a perfectly Like that's probably like once the Jets get a quarterback It's not my fault your team drafts fucking

Christian Hackenberg Yeah And there's the other guy in Bryce Petty Yeah over fucking Pax de Lynch This is not a football podcast Welcome to welcome to football suit Well we did begin with talking about signing day But all right listen Hitchcock

I don't blame him I think that It was his time It was his time to go But his time to go was going to be the end of the season Like I don't This team is weird to me I don't think they have a real identity.

I feel like they are, as someone pointed out today on Twitter, a little bit pregnant. They don't know if they want to rebuild. They don't want if they're a playoff team. They don't know if they should trade somebody at the deadline or trade off assets at the deadline. I know that the next month is going to show what they are to Doug Armstrong in theory. But then again, should Doug Armstrong even be the guy entrusted with building this team? I don't even know. It's a weird place for the franchise.

And the most interesting thing that he said today in his press conference, I had never heard this term before in my life. Independent contractors? Independent contractors? Contractors and at first I'm like I'm looking I go to to fucking Whatever you use for Cap Geek now what am I using? Cap friendly? Yeah, cap friendly. Yeah I go to cap friendly and I'm looking at the at the page for the the the blues and I'm like well they don't have a lot of guys on one-year contracts I don't know what the hell he's talking about but then he tells later he says independent contractors means Yeah, I thought I thought I just went like I got a bunch of guys who don't give a shit because they're all one-year deals

No, but he doesn't have a bunch of guys who don't give a shit right but they're just all on multi-year deals The reason he said that was Which I don't believe by that. He said if you're going after a 50-50 puck and you decide to go in an offensive way instead of a defensive way, that means you're an independent contract, you're just trying to serve yourself. And I was trying to figure out who he might be talking

about in that team. I'm guessing he's talking about Berglund. If you're talking about Teresanko, shut the fuck up. Because like Teresanco is the next in your great line of Brett Hall, Alex Ovechkin, Mike Bossy, whomever, as guys who you should not complain about their defense because that's not why they're getting paid. They have too many

guys to be this bad that are, it's the goal tending. Like the end of the day, like they're giving up 27 shots a game and Jake Allen's putting three or four of them in the net every night. Like that's their problem. And I feel like it's like the Jai Capuano firing where it's like you got nothing to lose. You just put somebody else in there. Roll the dice.

If you get better, great if you don't. You trade Shatt and Kirk. You trade burglum. You're still going to be pretty good for next year. But I just think Hitchcock, at some point, it's like Claude Julianne. Like he's a very good coach. But at some point, you just, you need to kind of just press that reset button and bring somebody else in there. And obviously, Mike Yo is not. So how much do you think that factored into things, though? Not only, I mean, Armstrong,

Armstrong said it didn't factor into the coaching change, but how much do you think having Yo on that bench factored into this team having no identity and no commitment to any kind of system? I don't watch them enough to know about their identity or anything like that. But I just think having like a coach who's like, I'm piecing out at the end of the year. I think that's a bigger issue than having Mike Yo or anybody waiting in the wings. But that's what we'll talk about with a little bit pregnant. Like, they are so scared about giving up that regular season success to keep hitch around. All right.

And they probably would have been better through of just passing the torch last season. Because I just feel, I feel like, what's the sense of having them around for one more year? Like, Mike Yo, coach the fucking NHL team for five seasons. Was he needs somebody, he needs his fucking dead poet society teacher to inspire him? Come on. Like, I don't get it. Like, there's probably a manual he can read. when he gets there about how to coach the blues.

You only get Hitchcock there to tell you. They all get on the desk. Oh, Hitchcock, Mike Hitchcock! Actually, you say it out loud like that. Oh, geez. Yeah. Well, I don't know. They should have done it after the 14-15 in playoffs.

But then again, they got to the conference finals last year. I don't know. Yeah, with a goaltender they've then jettisoned. But, like, Hitch, he reminds me of, like, Like Mark Andre Fleury. He reminds me of like Tony Romo, like these guys who are super duper good in their regular season. And then something happens in the playoffs. And I know people today always want to, yeah, they always want to be like, well, it's a small sample size.

Well, there is something different about playing in the playoffs and coaching in the playoffs. And maybe his system in the current NHO where the final was the penguin San Jose, where St. Louis got skated out of the building by San Jose. The one can play an effort from multiple former blues players that I think is valid is that he used to skate them under the fucking ground during the season. And then when the playoffs would hit, they'd be done. They'd be toast. They were just exhausted because he put the pedal down so hard in the regular season. I think there's something to that.

I think there's something to that. I think there's something to that. The system is not conducive to beating the best teams anymore in the NHL. Like the Kings won the Cup in 2012 and 2014 by being a heavy hockey team, quote, unquote. But the Kings are just way better top the bottom than the Blues. So they can play that way and rely on John Quick to just make enough saves to barely win. And the Blues kind of had that, like they had like the shast. the version of that where it was like

it's good it's good if you can't get the coke but the coke is always going to find a way to win the Stanley Cup and Ken Hitchcock just again I'm all that's the same thing with Flory although last year I did think the Penguins are probably going to win the cup of Flurry was healthy but at some point

just try something else because the same thing with the Islanders are at a point where it's like we got nothing to lose by fire in Capuano we got nothing to lose at this point by fire he's gone in two months anyway we might as well see what my the New York the New York playoff Islanders by the way based on how they played since the fire of Jack Capuano.

I feel like I was very spot on. You might have been. I thought very good about that. I was wrong about other stuff. So if the St. Louis Blues are Shasta, I would say the Dallas stars are Fago. What's Fago? Fago's the insane clown posse soda.

What's the insane clown? You're making stuff up again. See if I'm going to like get trapped and suck it in and pretend that I know something that doesn't exist. That's not a real thing. Vancouver is sort of like, what's a good old, what's an old, what's an old soda that's no longer a popular brand. Tab. They're tab.

Oh, it's good. Yeah, yeah. I can do this all day. I can go on busting you up all night. St. Louis, Los Angeles Kings are definitely the kind of mountain do you get a Taco Bell. By the way, I'm going to tell you right now, the conference final is going to be Kings

Blackhawks again. It might be. I'm so depressed by it. Minnesota is going to fucking run into somebody in the first round or something and just get just to lose because Devin Dubnick stopped standing on his head, and it's going to be the same old goddamn conference final we always have pretty much all the time. The Minnesota Wild are Coca-Cola with cane sugar. It's like, ah, we've had this before, but now it's got cane sugar. You're going to love it. The Minnesota Wilder actually,

do you ever have, you ever have Dr. Perfect? No, what is Dr. Perfect? It's like the star brand version of Dr. Pepper. I thought it was a generic version of Mr. Perfect. Back in my early 20s, when we used to go out of my buddy Shorehouse, we used to mix that with Captain Morgan and call them Captain Perfects. Oh, nice. They're pretty tasty. But that's Minnesota. Like, they're good. Like, don't be wrong. Dr. Perfect. If you want to sponsor the show, just, like, email me, but they're just not quite

ever that team that gets out of the first or second round. Santa Day Sharks, Dr. Pepper, Edmonton Oilers. What's a weird Canadian drink? Or like a new, a new soda that has been kind of... Oh, they're probably like one of those fucking flavored sodas from, you know, Hansons or something.

They're Laquois. Oh, nice! That flavored salsa shit, everybody loves. They're a tangerine laqua. Right. Oh, that's great. All of a sudden, they're popping up on Instagram. Oh, I love it. God, I haven't heard about this and ever. Why is this now a thing? Connor McDavid is a coconut-flavored seltzer water. Exactly. And Nashville is cotton candy soda. Oh, is that a thing? Yeah. Hanson's, I think it is. Somebody makes it. It's that like four-pack that costs like $85 in the store. And it's like, oh, that's an interesting flavor. Oh, wait, it costs more than a

a fucking turkey. It's like root beer flavored beer. You ever have that doctor? What is it? Oh, yeah, I know you're talking about, but I've never had it. Boy, those first couple of sips are amazing, but then you get to the bottom of that beer and you want to throw up because it's too sweet.

Speaking of throwing up, the All-Star game. So, yes. First of all, thank you to everybody who's bought the book. Yeah, thanks. The top 100, oh, Jesus. You know, I should probably get the name of the book, right? Honestly, God, I have to copy and paste it anytime I mention it. The 100 greatest players in NHL History and other.

their stuff in arbitrary collection of arbitrary lists. Number one hockey book on Amazon. Number one hockey sports book in Canada. Thanks for that. And also, all the people that said such nice things about us actually ranking the players vis-a-vis the NHL, which just presented its list. Yeah, we nailed it, didn't we? Just fucking nailed it. We're so good at hockey.

A couple of things. Mitch Rake writes in on Amazon, I was very ready to be all mad about the rankings, getting mad about that player number 49. was below player number 48, but I finished the book, put down my Kindle, and realized there really wasn't much to squabble about, which again is your problem with our book, isn't it? Right, right. We should have had fucking Dustin Bufflin at like 72, just so we could have gotten people to like, oh my God, you believe,

look at this, you have to buy this to read how stupid it is. Neil B. Day writes, big fan of Greg and Sean, Down Goes Brown, and NVSWR2 of my go-to hockey sources. The book is great, and not just because they made sure to include Henmerclinquist. I just wish that Lozo wrote more than a couple of brief lines on each player. Oh, right. I want to get into that fucking, because he, because, okay, all right, I want the, I want the listeners slash readers to understand how that happened, because we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we're doing this, who's doing that, let's do this, let's do this. And wish was, like, here's what we're going to do, because, like, originally it was, like, we were going to do every third guy, so our voices were kind of broken up, but then we kind of rearrange some stuff, so you probably got some back-to-back, Lozo, back-to-back wish. Wish was like, let's do it like this. Every guy we write between two and five paragraphs. But once we get beyond number 30 to like 33, 39, let's just go shorter because we don't want to keep. And I'm like, okay, great.

So I write mine up, never going more than five paragraphs as ordered by Gregory Wichinsky. I get my list of 34 guys typed up. I put it in a word doc. I send it over. Then I got the other two word docs. And I opened up Shans. And Shons is like 5,000, 55500 words. And I'm like, how long was mine?

I look it's like 4200 was mine I'm like well all right 1300 divided by 30 that's only like 50 words a guy I open up wishes it was like 14,000 words the first line he wrote 11 paragraphs on jerome ginnla who is like 80th on the list and I'm like what do we do so now it looks like I was basically in the break room like like drinking and getting drunk and just like typing bullshit in when I was trying to do what I thought we were all going to do the first the first thing that lozo sees when he opens up my copy is it was the best of times it was the worst of times and then it goes on for like a 3,000. He was born in a small Canadian town in 19. I'm like, oh, no. But at the end of the day, I felt like that all worked out because, like, you wrote short and I wrote long,

and down goes around, wrote just right. Amazon customer writes, and I'm sitting here writing this review, and all I could think of is, wow, I should be studying. But who wants to do that? The book was certainly more fun than studying. I would rather spend six bucks and read some fresh content than worry about my future.

Anyways, pretty good. Shout out to Millennial Dave Lozo. Thanks again for spoiling Mr. Robot. This is great. Where's this one? Isn't there like the verified reviews one on here? I should give a shout out to the one middling review we received so far for the book from Francis T. It's a good, entertaining quick read, but I feel like two to three paragraphs for each player in the top 30 is too short to make a convincing case.

Not quite the NHL equivalent of Bill Simmons, the book of basketball, the NBA according to the sports guy that I was expecting. Were you really expecting that in a $599 Kindle book released the week of the NHL list? I don't know. Maybe you were. How about this guy? Ruggins wrote like most people. There were a few players that I thought would be higher. Koff, Steve Eiserman.

Yeah, someone on Deadspin called us out about that. About Eismerman? Sackick above Eiserman. Sackick's a better player. All right. Listen, thank you for buying the book and supporting the list. You guys are the best. The book's still available.

It's now on Nook if you want to get it there. But the only thing I want to say about this NHL list, because I don't want to believe the point. Their list is whatever. We know why it exists. We know that it's, they need to get five guys that were in the All-Sour team there. It was very dynasty-centric. I didn't expect that. I disagree that we know why they did the list because if they did the list and they had like 12 active dudes, you'd be like, oh, that's why they did it. Like, they didn't have to honor Joe Neuendike or Mike Gartner. Okay. Why do they do it like that? Hold on. Taves being there makes at least a modicum of more sense if you're going to have Lemaire and Ganey there too. Like, they honored

the heavy lifting glue guys of Dianna. of which Taves is one, although his numbers aren't anywhere near where LaMeres are. Right? So that makes sense then. Billy Smith was a big surprise, but I'm not going to get too pissed off about the backbone of a dynasty being on the list, if that's how you're going to take it, right? Joe Newindyke doesn't belong on that fucking list. He doesn't belong on the top 200. I don't understand what the fuck they're thinking other than on the blue ribbon panel.

You had a bunch of people that used to general manage, coach, or play with Joe Newindyndyke, because there is not. an astral plane. You could get Dr. Strange and go through the universe through a wormhole and search for 10,000 years and there is not an astral plane in which fucking Dale Howard Chuck is not better than Joe Newindyke. So if Cory Crawford had won one more Stanley Cup, if he was the guy instead of the Emmy, is he on that list? Probably. Right. He has to be based on Grant Fjure, Billy Smith. All the dynasty goalies were there. Yeah, I mean, I take Eddie Belfort all day over Billy Smith, but it's pretty obvious they gave the goalie short shrift. By the way, the

main goalie in that blue room panel was Patrick Lillim. Just one point that out. Kevin Weeks was there too. And Weeks he was there too. But like, the fucking Rangers traded Mike Gardner the year they want. They traded him to win a cup. If we're basing this on cups, they were like, we got to get rid of Mike Gardner. We need Stefan Mattel. I don't know if that was the actual trade for that guy. Well, and it's clear. They are

number centric. Gartner being on the list is a stats play. Oates being on the list of stats play Joe Thornton's better But that's what I was going to say They were not context-centric In which they look at Joe Thornton And say, oh, he's the same kind of player

As Adam Oates except better So let's put him on Or they look at Jerome McGinla And say, oh, he scored a shit ton of goals too Just like Mike Gartner Except the goalies actually dropped to the ice To make saves during his era And there was a neutral zone trap

and there was defensive systems and defensemen playing their position well and what he did was more impressive. Jerome McGillet is Brendan Shanahan if he didn't get traded or go sign with another team. He just stayed with one team and scored a shit ton of goals. Like, why is that not as impressive? Like, why is that not...

Like, the fact that he did it in Calgary all those years. You always want to hear that too about how guys are like loyal to their team, blah, blah, blah. Like, nobody was more loyal than Jerome McGinlet. Like, he hung around Calgary longer than he should have. And like, he somehow doesn't get rewarded for it. I just don't get it. We didn't have Shanahan on the list.

list, but he was close. He was close. He's close. And I would take a Ginlow over Shanahan just because of when he did it and how he did it. But the only one that really pissed me off was knowing that I don't get that at all. That's literally a name that I don't even fucking consider for my list. Malkin makes me

I'm incredibly angry. The only argument you can make from Malkin is that against Malkin is that they were trying to spread the wealth to the other positions and Kane is a winger and Malkin's a center because otherwise, if you compare the two careers, there's no comparison that Malkins had a better career than Cain.

Or any center. He's 14th all time and points per game, and he's played his entire career in the non-eat. It just doesn't make any sense. And he has all the other things. He has individual awards. He's won two Stanley Cups. He won a Kant-Smife.

He's dominant in the playoffs. He's dominant in the regular season. And you have all the running buddies of, like, Gretzky. You have the running buddies for all the island. You have all... He didn't have Glenn Anderson, thank God. There was a chance that way to happen. He kept on tick it off these dynasty guys.

I'm like, oh, how do we're going to go? Kevin Lowe. Kevin Lowe. Let's get Steve Lamer on there. He was huge in 94 for the Rangers. Not a dynasty. The other thing, I mean, All-Star game itself, super boring.

You wrote a piece this week about how to fix it. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix it? I think you make the guys play for charities. You have a team charity. Still a million bucks, whoever wins it. And then you have, because the problem with the All-Star game, it's less about effort and less about defense. It's more about guys who do not want to shoot the puck.

Like Austin Matthews scored a goal in that game Where he was genuinely sad that he scored it He put no legs into the shot at all It was all arms and he was just like No slap shot rule in effect the entire time That's stupid I mean you don't even need slap shots though For them to actually try to shoot

It's these two on-os You know these two onos Where they're just like passing back and forth And then not really shooting I said no slap shot rule to a player I forget who it was And he looked at me He says well I mean it's three on three

Why'd you take slap shots I'm thinking to myself Because it's an exhibition game And who gives a shit But like, if you're on a two-on-one and you're coming down the wing, you can wind up and rip one from just inside the face-off circle. You don't have to like- They just don't want to hurt the goalies. I mean, it's the point. If they don't want to...

How many shots are there per year in the NHL? How many of those shots hurt a goalie to the point where he can't play? Matt Murray in the World Cup? But the point is that they don't want to do anything that's even that close to being injurious. The hockey players were tough, Greg. I thought they were tough games. The last 10 minutes of the last game were fun. The other two games weren't all that fun.

I think Elliot Freedman's right that they should, and their skills, competition, lobby the players to bring back the breakaway challenge. I thought that was really missing in the skills competition. The skills competition was bad. People were going nuts about fucking Mike Smith hitting you the middle of an empty net from the other side of the rink for like an hour on Twitter. And by the

way, easy fix for that dumb event, the one where they have to shoot. Blue line, red line, opposite goal line, easy fix for that. Have each team go through all of the shots rather than doing like, everybody shoots from the one blue line. Everybody shoots from the red line. Like, who gives shit.

Time it and have one team go through all all the shots. You know what I mean? That would make, that makes it immediately better. I would do it similar, but I would like, say, all right, so you have Shea Weber at the the attacking blue line. Don't just give him two pucks. Give him as many pucks as he can get off in 10 seconds because, like, you take two shots. No.

You got to get into a rhythm. You got to get into a rhythm. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not ready to throw dirt on that event yet. I think it's got potential, but they've got to tweak it a little bit. They got to go full Gallagher. They got to put some like watermelons in the corner. I was saying We were watching that event

We're like There needs to be like smoke cannons That go off when you When you get the puck in the net Or something like that Something has to happen Yeah For people that don't attend hockey games

You may not know this But like this is what fans do Between periods They go downstairs and they shoot From like the far blue line And they try to win a car Scoro Yeah it's a scroro type thing

I don't know if every team has it Like the Black Hawk's dude With like a famous person I think once in a while It's just not Or famous for Chicago And the fucking And I didn't watch

The whole skills competition Because like I don't have An attention span That allows me to watch four hours of ship, but there was a lot of delays and stuff. They're not doing the breakaway thing the same way anymore either. Where it's like a relay. It's just like a one guy

goes, save. Another guy goes. It's like that rapid fire of it was the best part of it. I think overall the weekend was successful because the 100 best players thing made it different. But I mean, we're starting. Like the novelty of last year obviously is worn off. I don't know if it was a

John Scott thing or what, but like it wasn't nearly as exciting as the whole thing wasn't natural. But it's a There wasn't a lot of try. But that said, if you hold it in Los Angeles, that means you're going to have Boku celebrities. You're going to have names like Robin Thick, who doesn't show up because he's facing a paternity suit and doesn't want to go to the NHL celebration. So basically he went because he didn't want to look bad in a paternity suit as though he

wasn't paying attention to, like, the kids? Or he wasn't, like, I don't understand the rationale. I think he doesn't want to be asked about it or whatever. You fucking kidding me? Who's softer than NHL media? Who doesn't it'll go up to him and ask him about that? Come on. That couldn't have been what it was. Again, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus.

I'll do it. Who is it? Did you see the video of Nazim Khadri being asked about the Trump Muslim band? I didn't see the video, but I read the quote. Yeah, but the question literally, the question that was posed to him was, now, you may want to give a no comment of this, I don't know, but. And I'm just like a paragon of journalism to go in and begin a tough question to a player with, you could probably, you know, just if I, you just, you know, Stop your foot twice and walk away if this is a bad question.

See, I wrote about this for tomorrow, for Thursday, which is today when you listen to this, like about how the NHL needs to handle it. But did you watch the Kyle Lowry interview? No. Toronto Raptors guy? He's from Philadelphia. He plays for Toronto Raptors.

He's a basketball player. He's not Muslim. He's just an American dude playing basketball in Toronto. And someone said, how do you feel about the band? He called it bullshit four times in 20 seconds. And at the end of the 20 seconds, the fucking reporter who asked the question goes, Can you say that again without the curses?

What's wrong with you, buddy? He just gave you the fucking quote of the month, the quote of the day, and you want him to cut that tape and then have him say it again where he says bull poop? What's wrong? Are you kidding? You got a top-notch athlete on the record about something as important as this, and you want him to say it again with softer language. I just don't get it.

The Justin Bieber photo, I think, is second to the, Bobby Orr photo. I think it's above Micahruzioni from 80. I didn't believe it was real until I saw like the GIF or the video of it. That was the most amazing thing. So the photo, I'm sure you've all seen it, of Chris Pronger checking Justin Bieber from behind and cackling. Mark J. Terrell. And cackling. Cackling. I know. My favorite thing about the photo is because it's shot through the

glass, it's sort of warped. And it almost makes Chris Pronger look like a monster from like insidious. Right. Like he doesn't, he shouldn't have been in the frame, but the camera happened to capture this spectral image of him as he was pressing Bieber against the boards. Like the girl coming out of the well and the ring. Yeah, exactly. He's Samara from the ring, basically. What is this? Bieber got a note that says, you know,

you've watched this videotaep, you're going to get checked by a seven-foot Phoenix coyote. You fucking drove him in there pretty. You didn't drive him in there good, but like he really held him for an uncomfortable amount of time where he was probably laughing really loudly in his... By the way, you're wired into the NHL. People from the NHL talk to him. Why wasn't that on TV?

I don't know why that wasn't on TV, but I'll say this about Bieber. Weird. They invited him. He wasn't going to show up. He called the NHL or his people. I'm not, I think he's fucking reaching for the bat phone. What up? Justin here.

Can I speak to him? Yo, Gary, what's up, dude? It's me, Justin. Why does he sound like Michael Jackson? Hello. Hey, he's just want to go out there. I'm going to be my monkey to this. But his people called during the NHL 100 celebration.

I guess when he found out that some of these legends were going to be part of the celebrity game. He's like, fuck, I'm going. So he wasn't even supposed to be there in that legends game until that night. His tweet seemed very PR, like someone told him exactly with the tweet to say he was playing. It was really like, I am playing in the NHL celebrity today, game today at. It was just like really, you didn't seem enthusiastic about it. The thing about Bieber, that's amazing is so after the game, we are in the media room waiting for these famous for the NHL celebrities to grace us with our present. their presence. I don't believe

Megastars David Boreannis or Taylor Kitch came down and talked to the media after the game. Oh, Taylor Kitch played too, I don't know that. Cuba Gooding Jr. did. Oh, hell, yeah, he did. He got up on the podium and he said, he's like,

ladies and gentlemen, I've been traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs. That's what he said? He literally said that, and then he went in and did like 20 minutes. So we're all waiting there for Bieber. There's just worried that Bieber's going to show up. And so, all waiting and we're waiting waiting, but all of a sudden

we look over and Bieber has walked through a door and he's wearing a bedazzled jean jacket and he's holding a baby and he goes he's like, what's up guys? Sorry. I love to talk to you but I got this baby and he walks out

Wait, that was the baby? I saw that baby photo. I don't realize that was the baby. I didn't realize he was using the baby as a shield to not talk to the press. It was like a prop baby I guess because like he he literally stepped in. Oh we grabbed it on the hallway and probably He must have been. He stepped in and said,

I got this baby. Then he walked back out and that was it. I got a baby, guys. I can't talk to you. I'll see you later. Peace. But it was his moment to, like, I guess thank the media

for, you know, coming and seeing the game or whatever. Don't let him score a goddamn goal in the game. You should have done five minutes after the game. They gave him a penalty shot, didn't they? Isn't that how he scored?

What did you think of Snoop Dog playing a song with a curse in it? That was a big deal. Like NBC apparently had to apologize for it. I didn't see that. Um, I didn't realize. He had a curse in it I didn't realize NBC had to apologize for it

I didn't you know I thought it would have been cool if like they could have somehow left him on the ice to do like stuff for like the whole thing as opposed to just having like Gerr McGuire talk the whole time I don't know if this was in your story or not I apologize for not having read it all that closely but did you do you believe that there should be music during these all-star games yes me too 100% I really I mean like especially in LA where sorry LA LA fans that crowd nobody cared that crowd was just it was like on a slab

with Mariska Hargadee looking over it saying, what happened to this body? Mariska Hargaddae. How'd you say your name? Mariska Hargaday. Isn't there how you say your name? It was Harge. There was a juicane? Hardia Tay. That lady from Law and Order standing over it saying that it's dead.

Olivia Benson. Just call her Olivia Benson. Sure. It was so funny because they'd score a goal and the horn would go off and the players would kind of just be like eh. And they'd have like guys in the crowd in the background just kind of sitting there looking at their phone. Just like eh. Yeah. They needed some fat beats during that game and I think it'd be a lot better.

Yeah, like, same thing for the skills. Like, you just, like, Kenny Auburts great. But, like, Jeremy Roanick is, like, earnestly asking guys, like, what's your method for when you want to shoot the targets? Oh, God. Well, I like to start low and then maybe work my way up. I can, it's not sex. Like, you just fucking, I don't need the map.

I don't need to know where you're going. The two best quotes from all of all-star weekend were, someone asking Nathan McKinnon about the top 100 list and being like, hey, do you think some of these new guys, Connor, Austin, or yourself, whoever, will be on the next 100 list. McKinnon going, I'm really hoping whoever we get in the top two picks is on the next top 100 list. Is that what he said?

He said? Wow. And the other great quote was Teresanko. He gets done with the All-Star game. The Central gets absolutely curbstomped in the All-Star game. And someone asks them, they're like, yeah, you know, is it tough? Like, you know, when the other team scores, it seemed to get a lot of momentum and defensively, it's kind of hard to recover. and Teres Inka literally goes

I am sorry I cannot take this game seriously That's the best Seriously like you just Everyone's got to get their quotes or whatever And I understand that But it's just It's weird how people take the event

The same way they would take it as like regular season Game 35 or game two of a playoff series Where it's like take me through your plan here In the four line challenge Like you need to have people out there that have personality And I don't know who those people are Now speaking of personality in Russians The other highlight of the All-Star game

was the fact that the Players' Tribune unleashed a reporter on Media Day. I'm tired of these rookie reporters showing. Stealing our gigs. Don't know what they're doing. He is a great reporter like, Edward Armourne with Russia.

And he grabbed a microphone and go and talk to players. At one point, Elya Bischaloff, who got hired by the Players' Tribune and go talk to players, at one point he was interviewing Sergey Bobrovsky, and he was holding three different microphones in his hand. I saw that picture.

To ask him a math question. But here's a sample of Brige talking to avowed Republican Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild talking to politics with Ryan Suter, which is amazing because, like, again, like, we just talked about it. No one ever talks politics to these players,

and they always never talk about politics, but they'll talk to politics with Ilya Brig-Galloff. We've got to get Briss in the pod. There you go. I'm here. Ilya Brezgallov with the Ryan Seward with the player's tribune. He's one of the best pals, best friends. Best Pals.

Glad to see it. Congratulations. And, you know, let's keep all this boring questions with the hockey. Yeah. You know, like, let's talk about it. Yeah. I remember when we play together, we have so many discussions about the politics. You know, like, who is your favorite president?

Favorite president? Probably George W. Bush. to pursue the best interest of the United States. Will Ferrell did the parody for the George W. Bush? No, I haven't seen that. It's just hilarious. I watch a couple times. I can't stop.

There was a few couple series, and he actually tried to get being reelected for the third time. I'll have to watch it for sure. I mean, again, it's like, how do you beat it? How do you possibly beat it? You can't beat it. But that's the thing. If you put Briss on the ice, asking guys questions in between the skills events, that's watchable TV.

That's great. Why did you decide to shoot the puck so hard? It's because it's hardest shot competition? He's like, oh, well, you have to do the four lines. Do you remember the time when we were at party and you do cocaine? What? I mean, what will you do from Red Line? Will you shoot higher, low?

Why you skate so fast, Conner? Is it because you're afraid Chinese. tiger is chasing you on the ice. Maybe Chinese tiger has a head start like Dylan Larkin did. Why inaccuracy do you shoot high? Why not you shoot low? I mean, it's like when we went hunting that time and we hunt a man for sport. You remember when we did that, right?

In KHL All-Star game, the Hang loves a bread where targets are, and whoever hits the target keeps the bread feed family. Totally different. Can you imagine that? He's so great. P. Pierre McGuire's fucking screaming about where guys went to... Three guys in a row that went to Wisconsin, Kenny. I wish Kenny Albert was like, fuck you, Pierre, I don't care.

Shut up. You did the puck control so good in the event. Amazing considering how much vodka and quailudes you took before the event. How do you make puck stick on stick so good? Even if Fritz was just doing a Pierre impression for two hours, I must do that too. Oh, Doc and Eddie, this guy went to the juice. Junior players in the LCHO, and he was really good at the game and the junior. Wayne Simmons is an absolute best in front of the goal.

He is my favorite player because he is flyer, and I am always talking about him and Claudeauroo about them being best players. Hello, I am Pierre Brig-Gauliffe. Talk in Eddie. So that was the best thing. One last thing about the All-Star game, we should probably talk about it, is the Betman Press Conference, and the fact that, listen, I tend to believe they're going to the Olympics only because I can't imagine, I can't envision all that rights holder money coming into the NHL and then them just being like, fuck you to the networks that host the Olympics.

It's still NBC, right? Yeah, but I'm telling you, man, like, I'm, even I'm feeling a little bit dire about this shit now. It feels worse than it did four years ago. Yeah. The Board of Governors clearly don't want to go to Pyong Chang. They see no reason to go. Why would you see your reason? to go play a preseason game in China,

but not send your best players over. Because they don't see South Korea as a market. China's got money. But, like, it's still a global situation where everyone's going to tune in to watch. I mean, I understand, like, Pyong Chang's on China, but, like, why not? I just don't know if we've ever really gotten

to the Olympic, like, issue on this show, but I'm one of these guys that can see both sides pretty vividly. Like, I clearly want them to go. It's the best. It's the got to hear both sides. Fair and balanced. it's clearly the best hockey

it's amazing it's seeing these guys battle tooth and nail to try to win something for their countries and it actually means something for them to win they care

they care it's great it's like the all-star game if people cared yeah or the World Cup if people cared you weren't two fake teams yeah um

awesome but uh but like at the same time there is absolutely no economic benefit to the NHL they close down their season they kill the momentum

spend the regular season. Not a single ticket is purchased afterwards because of the Olympics. They don't get enough money from the IOC to cover travel. They don't get anything from the IOC as far as being able to sell merchandise. I completely understand the boggle that is, use a

demolition man term, the boggle that is this Olympic issue for the Board of Governors and for the NHL. So I get, don't go and I get go. I just don't know what the answer is here, except to say that although I disagree with Gary Betman on a great many things,

I do find it absurd that the International Ice Hockey Federation says, hey, guess what, guys? We scared up some money that the IOC is not going to give you, and now you've got the money back. And they're taking it from hockey development programs around the world, and you're saying to yourself, but that's so counterintuitive to what the Olympics should be doing for hockey. And so I agree with Batman that it's kind of specious that the funding

would come that way if that's in fact where the funding is coming from. I find it odd that the NHL keeps saying that they can't make any money off of it. Like, yeah, you're not selling tickets. You're not selling jerseys. But, like, how is there no long-term benefit to having your sports best players playing in front of way more eyes that would never see them in the first place? Like, how does that not translate into ratings? How does that not bring people into the sport itself? Like, think about, like, soccer.

Like, everyone in here loves the World Cup. Yeah. And now the MLS is kind of becoming a thing. Like, MLS is, like, not, like, the NFL or anything. But that has nothing. I don't think it has anything to do with World Cup. I think it has to do with the fan experience. That's always been my take on MLS.

Like, MLS is a growing sport because the fan experience is amazing. You go there, you drink. You're all wearing the same jersey. But the World Cup is the entry point to it, though, is my point. I could see that, yeah. I mean, that's a fair point. And plus, like, when you're watching, like, the world. You're right, the World Cup.

Like, I don't give a shit about soccer. Like, I will go to a bar and watch the U.S. Completely. ...on the World Cup. But, like, it's the same thing kind of with the Olympics, where the last Olympics in Sochi, all the games were at, like, either 7 a.m. or 10 a.m. Eastern time. Like, bars were packed.

Yeah. Everybody were there. Yeah. You're telling me there's no benefit to that that the NHL sees that's not... I get what they're saying. Like, we don't sell tickets. We don't get money, insurance, and all that. But the idea that, like, the NHL gets nothing out of it seems kind of bullshit.

They don't get enough out of it. The cost benefit of shutting down the season, versus what they actually get out of the Olympics. Does it make sense? They don't lose money for that. They still play all the games. Yeah, but it ends up hurting your momentum and you risk the player's health.

I completely agree with these teams. It makes total sense to not go, except I think there is a middle ground, which is, what was the best thing in the World Cup? The best thing in the World Cup? Yeah. Like, you mean like the Young Guns team, TNA? Yeah, T&A.

Team North America was the best thing in the World Cup. to address your specific point about the benefit to the NHL from the Olympics, it would be to make new stars. Like, T.J. O'Shee was the closest thing we've come to. Ryan Miller was also a star that was made in the Olympics. But he's a goalie, so he can't really market him, and O'Shee, whatever. Like, had one great moment in that team USA, then, you know, shit the bed. But if you made the Olympic tournament 23 and under,

and you had guys that maybe aren't men, superstars yet acting as heroes for Canada, USA, Russia, whatever in the Olympics, well now you got something. Now if you're using the Olympics as the because the example I'll always give is I didn't know who the fuck

Peter Forsberg was before the Olympics. Then the Olympics came. Now he's on a potion stamp. Now when he comes to the NHL, I'm like, it's like being a wrestling fan and you hear rumors of this guy over in some other wrestling organization and then he

shows up in WWE and you're like, whoa, this guy. Oh, okay, they renamed him, but it's still that guy. It's still not real, but go ahead. Yeah, okay. But the point is, is that when Forsberg showed up in the NHL, it was like, oh, that guy, the Olympic dude. And I think it's the same thing here. If it's 23 and under... You can't have that anymore. Everyone knows everybody at this point. You know what I mean? There's not going to be a 22-year-old guy that's super awesome playing in the international tournament that you, I, who wasn't in the NHL already. But you always get that in World Junior. Like, in World Junior watching it and you're like, oh, I've heard that name before, but never seen, holy shit, this guy's great. Yeah, but

Like, that's, then you, then that guy pops up again a year or two later, and you're like, oh, that's the world junior guy. Like, you don't tune in for that. I'm just saying. I see what you're saying. As a launch, to say, what's the benefit? That would be the benefit. The benefit is to use the Olympics to grow new stars, to create new players. Would you shut down the league and just send over the other 23 guys or keep playing without?

You keep playing without. You keep playing without. It never happened. Like, like, what is it? Does MLS do that? Where they send, they keep playing, although the World Cup's going on? I have no idea. I think that's what they do.

It's like the teams are still playing, but they send their, the national team guys go play. Like the World Juniors, where they let their, they let like Ryan Eugene Hopkins go. You have to be like that? Can you imagine the Oilers were like, yeah, sure, Conner or David, go fucking play for three weeks while we're barely hanging out to a playoff spot. That would never happen. But hold on. What if it was normalized? What if it was mandated?

What if it was like restricted free agency? It's just a thing that you had to accept if you're going to be in the NHL. Yeah, because what the NHL is really great at has changed. Dramatic change is what they're really super awesome at. But no, like, you can still do that same principle. If you just know what you're doing as a league. And, you know, fucking, it's such a bad time for the NFL because all the best players are in Canada. But, like, who's a super-duper good young American?

Take all the good young players away from Canada. Clear the decks. I just, like, you don't know this, I'm sure. But, like, what time when, like, an 8 o'clock game in Pyong, I have no idea. But at middle of the night, I think, is why, you know, the issue is what it is. Yeah, you probably couldn't go to a bar at 4 a.m. Oh, of course you could. I'm usually still in a bar at 4 a.

There's laws. Like you have to close it two and open at 9. All the Chicago bars still be open at 4 a.m. Well then again, no, because like, yeah, bars in New York opened earlier than they were supposed to, I think, for the Olympics. Because, like, they opened it like six for seven a.m. games. There you go. But I'm just saying, I just think there's, I just think that's, I think that's just like a thing the NHL says so they can get more out of the IOC that they don't get anything out of it. Do you think they're going?

Yes. I kind of still say yes, too. I think something miraculous will happen and they'll still go. It was July four years ago when they decided. Yeah, the idea that there's any kind of deadline on this is poppycock, and they've got two competing schedules. My Lichester City teams are for the poppycock there, governor. Oh, boy me, it's all poppycock. They're going to Pyeong Chang.

Send you to L.A. for a couple days. You're coming back here dropping poppycock. I took the one in ten. I got off at LeBria. So our guest today is non-existent. Yeah, we don't have a guest today. I don't know why we need to say that. I think there's probably evident we've done an hour or so far. I was just trying to get to the break. You just, you need a break? Well, I mean, we usually stop halfway through.

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, we'll be right back after this. But I'm bum. And we're back. So, Lozo, we have something to give away. We haven't done many giveaways here on Puck Soup, but we do have something to give away. It's a collection of collectors,

pins from the Los Angeles Kings. Shit from the All-Star game you don't want. Now, they sent them to me at the office. Oh, I thought this is from them. And... Staples. They're kind of... I mean, they're great-looking.

Yeah. But there's whatever. Not enough for you to keep them. Right. So these pins are collector's items. You could probably throw them on eBay and make a pretty penny. It's the full set of them from what we gather. This is three?

Sure. All right. And so... I believe you. mini contest I'll tell you what we're going to give away these pins and we're going to give away

a beautiful red and green devil's hat courtesy of the New Jersey Devils these pins are courtesy of the Los Angeles Kings no jacket though

and I will give away a copy of my book take your eye off the puck that I'll autograph for you so these are the three things that we'll give away okay first second and third place

okay first place pins second place hat third place book and here's what we want out of you this is very simple yes don't get a rest to do any of stuff what we need out of you is this or get arrested who cares we are going to tweet from the puck soup podcast account an image of our logo print out the logo bring it someplace take a picture of it there and we will reward the winners that have the best locations for this Puck Soup logo.

The oddest places for this Puck Soup logo will get the pins, the hat, or the book. How are we gonna rank it? What's third, second, and first? Lozo and I will be the final judges.

You'll have a week to do it. I mean, prize-wise. Like, what's the first prize? First place is the pins. Okay. Okay, let me phrase that. First place is your choice. Yes, much better.

Second place is what's left. Third place. place will probably be my book. So we want you to take the Puck Soup logo, bring it someplace, take a picture of it, and then we'll judge by the next episode, so you have a week to do this. And we should say, like, tape it to something, right?

Like, don't just, like, hold it up. Tape it to something. Put it somewhere. You could hold it up if it's, like, if Trump's in town and you take a picture of the Puck Soup logo next to his face, Oh, if you can pull that off. Yeah, you're going to win probably. But that's what I'm saying.

Don't limit yourself. Yeah, be as creative as you want. Now, the one request I would make, and you can make a request too. No nudity. Hmm. Let me phrase that. No male nudity. A double-edged sword, because I don't want to discriminate against anybody.

But I also don't want to see anybody's junk. I'm going to say no nudity. Would you have any requests of our listeners for this contest? Um, don't die doing it. Like, you know how those people hung the, uh, the resist sign, like on that crane behind the White House? Like, don't, like, crawl out onto like a fucking pipe that's, that's, that's from like a building and, like, fall off of it and die to do this. So no nudity and, like, don't put yourself in physical harm to do it. Don't like get shot.

Like, don't, don't run up to Donald Trump waving the sign and get shot by Secret Service. That's going to be bad for us. And for you, too, I guess, because you got shot. Don't put yourself in danger. Don't put your junk through it. Oh, now they're going to do it. Don't put your junk on the sign like it's a soup ladle. Whatever you do.

Don't put your junk through it and email out to Gary Bettman. Anything with that. I'm telling you, don't do that. I will say that location what matters, like, you know, an interesting location. Maybe you have an advantage. Maybe you're one of our foreign listeners. and you can have the leading tower of Pisa coming out of the soup logo or some shit.

That'd be impressive. But get creative. Whatever comes to mind. So again, don't send it to Gary Bettman with a picture of your junk. Don't do that. Don't do it. Don't.

We're forbidding you. Not, not, not, not, not, not, not. You should do it, but you should not do it. And much like the book that we made was a pilot project to make more books, this contest is a pilot project to do more contests. If we get a good response for the shitty prizes that we're giving out this time, mayhaps will have better prizes next time, right?

Yeah. Okay. If we get picked up for a second season? I think we're okay there. Speaking of the thing is getting picked up for second seasons. Yes? Greg Wischinski has had his pop culture taste, I'll say, questioned by someone on Twitter. How dare they?

And at first I was like, boy, what a dick. This guy is just, you know, he's tweeting about a, movie he likes Suicide Squad and somebody's calling on his entire library of of of pop culture movies and and TV shows that he loves and like that's unfair and I thought you know what Craig Craig kind of does have some bad taste no it's like it's kind of 50-50 so so what I did was yeah five things a couple TV shows a few few movies I'm gonna I'm gonna read you the movie okay and much in the vein of yummy in my tummy and what was the other one diarrhea in my Pants.

Ummy in my tummy or only for a dummy. Only for a dummy. This is going to be yummy in my brain. Okay. Or sadness for my cerebral cortex. Okay. And these are pop culture takes. Just, just, just, just, just, just, just, and so what I'm saying is whether or not I like it or not.

Basically. But I'm using your nonsensical terms. Yes. You can expand if you want. Okay. But overall, there's a lot I don't like in that movie. So I'm going to say, bad for my cerebral cortex. That's correct.

And it's sad. It's alliteration. Sad. Oh, sad for my cerebral cortex. Because I love hot, giant robot action. I love one of the, the Yeagers makes a sword and slices up the kaiju with it. But I also don't like any of the people outside of Idriselba in the movie. I happen to like Charlie Day

But not here And I'll say this about Pacific Rim More than anything else I've never seen a film Where in the first like 10 minutes They present you This other movie that it could have been Of like

Kaiju attacks And building the giant wall And creating the Yeager program And how it all went to shit And I'm like Holy fuck that's a great movie And then they went off and did this other thing And I'm just like

I just don't care care about what happened to the little girl when she saw a monster. Don't care at all. Yeah. Not in the least. But like the first 10 minutes that movie, like, gave me a tantalizing peak at what could have been. And I always think when I put it on, I always see like Ron, um, what's her name again? Prolman?

Ron Perlman. I was like, oh, I wish this was Hellboy. Yeah. I wish Hellboy was helping the Yeagers fight the Kaiju. Oh my God. And, you know, if I had said that sentence in 1985, I would love to see the looks on people's faces. If I had a sports almanac and then said, I'd like to see Hellboy help the Yeagers fight the Kaiju.

Okay. Number two. Avatar. Oh. The movie Avatar. Um, yummy, yummy in my brain,

was it? That's correct. Yeah, yummy in my brain for Avatar because... It's a bad take, but it's correct. It's,

um... Again, like, I judge that movie based on the experience that I had in the theater when I watch it. I've never watched it again

on regular television. It's fucking horrible, but like... It's an eight-year-old movie. You've never seen it a second time? Oh, no. I've seen it a second time, but it's not good.

There's a lot of bad in that movie. But as a, 3D theater-going experience where it was immersive when you're on when you're on Pandora

Oh my God and you have all the little vegetation happening over Like you feel You're like you're surrounded By the tree of life I really enjoyed watching it

In the theater And I can understand Why it made the money it did Because as a theater-going experience It was really great But But I do find I am in agreement

With the people That are like Isn't it funny that this was like the highest grossing movie of all time and literally had no impact on pop culture. Like you don't go to fucking Comic Con and see the Navi walking around. Like what's your favorite scene from the movie?

When the helicopters blow up the tree. Oh, you have one. Yeah. When Stephen Lang leads the attack helicopters to blow up the Navi's holy land. I can't remember. How do you remember what they were called? Like, they were just the blue people.

Have you been to Barch review with me? You know it's a sponge up there of just nonsense. But like the, I, again, I, again, I, find it amazing that like in every other pop culture instance where something really caught the zeitgeist it's like little kids running around pertaining that they were Luke Skywalker or little kids running around pretending that they're Captain Kirk. It's not like there's a bunch

of kids being like I'm Jake Sully no I'm Jake Sully You remember his name Yummy in my brain or sad for my cerebral cortex the hangover Yummy in my brain Oh my God now ask me Hangover Trilogy

Well obviously but the first one's the Sad for my cerebral cortex like trilogy. Yommy at my brain Hangover because it's a really funny movie and it holds up. It does.

You disagree. Why don't you think why didn't you like the hangover? You know what? Part of it, I will admit, is because the hangover was the first movie I can remember

where they started advertising for it like six weeks before it came out. Yeah. I remember it was constantly on during like football at the end of the season and during the playoffs

and then like during the Super Bowl it was just nonstop. And there was so much time before it came out that meant more time for people like me to pick it apart and say how it was like, dude, where's my car? Everyone was like, oh, it's this, but it's, and then you watch it. Like, it's funny when they, when Rob Riggles got the kids tase and Zach Galfanacus, that's

funny. Yeah. But it's just the same premise over and over again for two hours. But I think that's a classic example of a film that's really funny and really well done and made better by how inferior the sequels were. By the third one, it was like a, it was like a remake of the first one. And so I think that those sequels were so bad that the first hangover improves based on that.

So I'm going to say, yummy in my brain. All right, one for three. Yummy in my brain. Sad for my cerebral cortex. Okay. You may not have seen this. The nice guys.

Yummy in my brain. Why would that even be a discussion? Like, why would that even be, are there people out there who don't like the nice guys? I'm just checking to make sure you don't have bad takes. No. That is one of my favorite movies from last year. I, in fact, and this might be a bad take,

I like it better than Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bang. I think it was a better movie. I like Gosling better. and I've always been a Russell Crow mark and I thought he was really funny in the movie and to me it played like sort of like a more straight-laced

Lebowski than anything else and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was better than Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. The scene that gets me every time I watch it now is when they go up the elevator and all the murders are happening and they just go back down the elevator

that kills me every time. If you've not seen it, I highly recommend it. It's a good movie. The last one, the tiebreaker, because we're tied it too. Okay. Yummy in my brain, sad for my cerebral cortex, the young pope. Okay, I've only seen two episodes.

That's enough to know. I'm going to say yummy in my brain. Fucking A right, man. Because I've read some, like, discussion of the young pope saying that he's sort of becoming a super villain. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable television. It's so great. Like, he's either becoming a supervillain or this is, like, some sort of, like, wild and crazy plan to, like,

reform the church and have it become like a super because like the very first episode he gives the speech where he's like everybody should masturbate right but like ever since then he's very much like we're closing off the church he's got people like you know he he doesn't he only wants the true believers and all that it's just i don't know about that part the young pope's just so good the young pope stood in the balcony and he's like you guys don't deserve me yet you haven't proven yourself that you deserve the young pope yet you got to get to episode five i want to say or four with one where he walks around town with his childhood buddy the guy the really a white guy who smokes with Diane Keaton.

I forget their names, but like, it's, it's, it's just captivating. So three, three out of five. Thank you. Sorry, I'm going to give you the credit there. Very good. It's probably that guy on Twitter said about your takes. I'm excited. Avatar, though.

I'll give you one, the Barstool Rundown. I'm kidding. I never saying an ill word about the barstool in this podcast, lest we, uh, lest we want our loved ones, uh, outed and rated. Yeah. For their looks. I'm very scared. Show is fine.

Whatever. We should talk about the NHL's What do they call it? Everybody can play hockey for everybody month? Hockey is for everyone. Everyone. Hockey is for everyone or everybody? Everyone.

Hockey is for everyone. Now, I found this to be really interesting in a way that you didn't. In a sense that the NHL in this press release, I'll read it to you real quick. Teams will have. host, hockey is for everyone awareness nights, honoring and recognizing hockey players of all ages from diverse backgrounds, including sled hockey players, blind players, youth boys and girls players, special needs

players, and recent immigrants. Now, given the current political climate, given that the NHL has declined comment on the travel ban, I found this to be as close as we're going to get to them making political comment on the Trump Muslim man. But you seem less impressed. Yeah, I'm not that impressed by a professional sports league working two extra words into the third paragraph of a press release as opposed to taking a stand on it. No. I think it's a cop out.

I think it's, to borrow a word from my new favorite basketball player, Kyle Lowry, I think it's bullshit. I think if you're a league, I look this up today. How many players in the NHL have played this year weren't born in America? You have the guess percentage-wise? America or North America? America? I would say percentage-wise, probably about 80. 75%. Very good. Thank you.

A little bit over. You wouldn't have won the showcase. But I get it. Like, there's, it's illegal white dudes, and everyone is super rich. So they're probably all, like, we talked about this before you started the show. Like, you think everyone's socially, what's the, what's the bullshit phrase if everyone uses for socially, fiscally? Oh, fiscally conservative, socially liberal. I found most hockey players to fit that paradigm. Right.

But like now we're a week into. it and it's weird because like Zabinajad who's not Muslim but his family's from Iran like he had a weird quote too where he was like I don't want to get into it until we know more which is like how much fucking more do you need to know yeah Brandon sod whose family is from Syria I was like I'm not gonna get into it which I again I got I got a load of criticism for that but I'm sorry like the mid his coach came out and basically quelled protest when it came to the flag and Black Lives Matter and shit like there's no chance Brandon Saad's going to say anything with John Tororell as coach

Or even just because of just the, like a fucking dude might show up in a mosque and fucking six, shoot six people. Yeah. You get to worry about that too. Like, I totally get it. But like as a league where, again, 75% of the people who come over to the United States and make a pretty sweet living, you're not willing to like go to bat for the idea that who knows what other travel bans might happen in the future. What other arbitrary reasons are psychotic lunatic president might come up with to keep people out of the country. Like, I think, like, I get it. Like, because, like, everyone, hockey's like, like, you're not going to get the Kyle Lowry bullshit quote from a player.

It doesn't affect them. Right. Right now. Right. Right. And it's just, even if it doesn't affect you, like, it doesn't affect me. Like, I'm going to fucking go to, I'm going to go to Seattle in the summer. I'm probably going to go, maybe go to Europe in the summer.

Like, I do whatever fuck I want. I'm a white dude. Right. Like, you would think, like, a league where, like, they're at least progressive enough to get, like, you can play going. Somebody, anybody, would come out and say, hey, this is. is fucked up. Maybe, maybe, maybe, like, this would be the league that would do it, but Nah, no. No. This season, NHL clubs will have designated one player to be a you can play ambassador. We already know that Oliver Ekman-Larsen, for example, is one from the coyotes, being a leader in the locker room and in the community on diversity, equality, and inclusion.

One assumes that probably Brad Marchand would be one, considering he's very outspoken about this stuff. Yes. Additionally, select clubs will designate one home game as a You Can Play Night, celebrating members of local LGBT community, a TQ community, rather, with ceremonial puck drops, anthem singers, features on hometown heroes, and Pride tape to be used during pre-game warm-up. Pride tape being the rainbow tape that they're also selling through the NHL store.

It's all great. That's all good. That's all fantastic. For the first time, fans can purchase Pride tape, in NHL team pride shirts on shop. So the NHL's found a way to make money off of it. Yes, that's the point.

Right, yeah. They found a way to monetize advocacy. Yes. Yeah. I'm sure the money is going to go places, though, right?

Like, it's not going to go into fucking Bill Daley's pockets to buy suits. Looking for that. Looking for that. I imagine that the limited number of pride tape wrap sticks

will be available for auction and auction NHL. I imagine those would go charity but I don't quite see yet the information here that the stuff the pride shirts you buy and shop NHL are going to go to charity. Interesting. So we got to figure out a way for the NHL to monetize standing up against the Muslim men for them to actually do something about it. All right, how do we do that? I got, listen, I think the pride shirts are going to sell out. I think it's going to be

like one of the biggest sellers that they have without question. I think it's going to be like cashed to have them. So that's great on them. I am, uh, extraordinary. interested in the in the anthem singers. What do you mean? Like, is it going to be gay men's chorus? Or is it going to be like gay celebrities? That can be very interesting. I think it's going to be fun.

But again, like I said before on Twitter, like, the biggest issue I have is that you know that they're going to have a pride night and there's still going to be some asshole showing up with a Crosby Swallows jersey. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You can't, you can't do pride that or a devil's penguins game in Jersey. Yeah, right.

Or a devil's. game for that bad. Pretty much any single devil's home game. Hey, you suck. So good on the NHL. I think this, I give them a little bit. I give them more cookies and receipts than you do for this.

No, like, they were the first league to do it. Like, that's great. But like, I just feel like, you know, we're living in extraordinary times and it would be great if, like, people weren't passive about this. Like, that's kind of how we got to where we are. And it's bad. And it's going to be real bad.

And if, you know, like, you know, you don't want to force a player to say something he doesn't want to say. But if there's, like, a player out there who feels strongly about it and is afraid to say something for various reasons, I'm sure some of them legitimate. Some of them, they're just afraid of, you know, I don't want to get ostracized in the locker room. You know what I mean? Like a guy can't talk about how great he feels when he has a hat trick. He's got to fucking talk about his line mates. Like, there's a weird culture. Like, if a guy has something to say, you know, like if you're, say you grew up in Quebec and you saw the shooting, you're not Muslim or anything, but you're a person.

player who grew up there and you saw that and you want to say something about it and you want to say how an executive order that bans Muslims from coming into the U.S. helped fan that flame and you feel strongly about it you shouldn't say it. L.A. Friban actually talked to a GM about this. He asked a few GMs about player activism. Yeah, I read that today. And he said, you can't prevent them from wanting to speak out if they decide to do so. As long as they're the only thing I ask is be informed if you're going to take a stand, make sure you understand the issues. God bless that. That's a great view, a great thought and hopefully it's followed.

It's all good things. And by the way, the whole point of this section of the show, perhaps of the NHL's hockeyist or everyone thing, there's been a lot of discussion about stick to sports. We mostly do it here, although I think our interview with Chris Dose, people like Chris. Chris was great, but definitely got a little political.

The NHL put in something about immigrants, and they're doing a Pride Month. And I'm sorry, like this is the point about this. stick to sports thing I don't get. Everybody's like, don't put your peanut butter in my jelly, keep the stuff separate. It's never going to be separate, especially if teams find a way to monetize advocacy.

Especially now. Like, again, we talked about this with Chris. Like, once you play the National Anthem, you've politicized the event. Like, it's a political event. Like, people love USA, rah-rah. People chant USA at fucking hockey games when, like, fucking, the American teams

being the Canadian team, even though the guy who scored for the American team is fucking Canadian. Right. People just do that. But I'm just saying if there had to, there was a meeting. There was a fucking, I know the NHL. There was a two-hour meeting over putting the phrase recent immigrants in the press release.

Where they had it. Where in like the collection of things they were doing? Do we put it second? They put it first. We put it on the end. Oh, yeah. And they fucking felt great about it. Colin Campbell in that meeting being like, think about your daughters.

What do you think about your daughters? Why can you put the immigrants in the press release? And everyone's looking around, like, didn't we fire you after the Marks of Ard thing? Like, how are you still here? 20 years later, email, services in a lawsuit. These fuckers, what an immigrant

inside the press releases. It's like, actually, we're all immigrants. To somebody, we're all immigrants. But I just feel like, you know, if you're going to do that, do the big thing. Like, Gary Bettman's at the All-Star Weekend, the perfect time to do it.

And instead he wants to make up stuff about it. Hey, in full disclosure, Carolina. Gary Betman and Bill Daly came to the professional hockey writers association meeting. Oh yeah, how was that?

I saw that. It was fascinating as always. It's all off the record. Yep. The Muslim band came up. We asked him to go on the record. He declined. So anything that he said there is off the record.

But like, what are you afraid of about going on the record? Because they don't. Because they don't need the comment on it yet and they won't if they don't need to. That's the bottom line. That's just such a horrible stance. All right.

Here's something else horrible. This is the time in the episode and we open up the puck suit mail bag. Oh, no. The awesome Ms. Vicki wants to know. My question, do you even? Dave Lozo, do you even? I can't.

I can't even, okay? I totally cannot even. Can't not even believe you ask that question. Albert wants to know, can you put relish on anything else other than a hot dog? I've seen people put relish on a burger at like a barbecue. I suppose it being just sort of like, like, pickly, you can do that.

But I'm not a relish person to begin with it, so I'm not a big fan of relish. It's sausage, but that's just like a bigger, better hot dog. Same thing. Oh, putting it on a sausage. I'm like a sausage and peppers. You throw some relish on there? Yeah, I've seen that.

I had hot dogs in Los Angeles, and they had 15 different kinds of ketchup. Fancy ketchup, spicy ketchup. Spicy ketchup is the shit. I love it. Yeah, put on a hot dog. Yeah, oh, anything. You can put spicy ketchup. Are you a mustard and ketchup got a hot dog or no?

Just mustard Yeah, me too I'm not, I'm not savage Thank God Thank God Mike Nothengale Nothengel wants to know

It's announced that after The all-female cast Ocean's movie There'll be an all-NHL player cast Who's in the all-NHL Ocean's movie? Oh, I see what he's saying

All right Fucking nobody Here we go Oh, you've already Thought this one through No, I haven't I'm gonna do it off the top of my head George Clooney

Taves Oh, fuck that What no, why not? he's the leader we need someone with charisma okay not taves um um lungquist yeah good looking yeah bit of a leader kind of kind of anxiety charisma isch charisma isch yeah let's pencil and tell me think of somebody better all right so pencil and uh lungwist who's your who's your brad pit patrick sharp fucking hey so good just speak the two most handsome guys and just put him down Chris and Patrick Sharp.

Who's your Matt Damon? Who's your... Like the young guy. Who's the young guy? Oh, Connor McDavid. By far. I'm incredibly skilled, young, unproven, but obviously going to be a legend at some point. Connor McDavid is Matt Damon.

He's going to go from feeling up stockbrokers to Hart Trophy. That's right. Heart trophy title. That was your best lift. That was the best lift you made all day. Basher. Wayne Simmons. You have to make a black guy.

You cannot re-cap to keep the rate. You cannot recast a white guy as basher. Or we pick a British guy. Oh, PK. Wait, should PK be Danny Ocean? Yes. PK is Danny Ocean. That's correct.

Patrick Sharp is Brad Pitt. No, we got to bump Lunkwist down to Brad Pitt. The Lundquist Brad Pitt, like, best-looking actor, best-looking... So wait. So who's Patrick Sharp? Is he not there anymore now? Patrick Sharp is... Who is Patrick Sharp?

Oh, Patrick Sharp is Terry Benedict. he's the other he's the guy they're trying to steal from um no he that means he's got okay hold on here Terry Benedict is the enemy which means that he should be either a coach or an executive isn't there a British guy in hockey now I could have sworn there was a guy I saw doing a post game interview

he was like oh it was spawn I school me you go oh no it wasn't I'm thinking of the there was a guy scored for somebody for the Oilers Terry Benedict is John Cooper. John Tortorella. John Torterella. We're getting off track.

Let's focus on the team. Forget Patrick Sharp for a second. PK is Danny Ocean. Lungquist is Brad Pitt. Connor is Matt Damon. Basher is Wayne Simmons. All right. We'll come back to that.

But we'll say Wayne Simmons for now. Okay. So who are the Mormon? The Mormon twins. Two guys that are sort of attached to the hip, but they're troublemakers. I want to say like Marchand and somebody else. Oh, yes. Marshan and Sagan.

We'll reunite the Boston boys. Done. Dancing on the table. We've got the stupid tattoos that are misspelled. Yarmir Yager is obviously... Who? Oh, Carl, Carl. Carl Reiner.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously. That's a layup. Um... Who are we forgetting? The fantastic Yan or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's got to be someone who's got amazing skills.

We got our grease man. Who's the grease man? Are you not going to make a gym pack? No, I'm not going to make a gym pack. Somebody who, oh, someone who's like very ridiculously skilled. Nathan Kirby. He's a little tiny guy. There you go.

Nathan, right, we need somebody to fit inside the things. Nathan Kirby, perfect. Who are you missing? Anybody? Oh, we're missing Eddie Jemison. We're missing nervous, sweaty tech guy. Oh, right. So someone who's really good a coursey,

good a good coursey, but not very, very good. Keith Yandel? That guy sucks. Who gives a shit about that one, actually? You, you can be that guy. Oh, no, no, Kyle Dubus. Kyle Dubus. Hey.

All right, who are you? Okay, so. Well, we need an editor-user too now. if we're going to play this all the way through. Oh, God. By the way, that scene in Oceans 13 where he finds out that the computer's called the Greco. It's like, Greco, Roman?

It's like, obviously you've never spent much time in a British Bolton School. You never said time in a British Bolton School. I love nothing more than to crush him. Who's Julia Roberts? Oh, who gives a shit? We did really well. So there you go.

All right, two more real quick. Who should be the young commissioner to replace Bettman? Ask Ryan. Kyle Dubus. It's like Carl Dubus show. There's one from Claire Peasman I was trying to find that I wanted to do because I thought was a good question. It says with neither Taves or Bergeron doing much this year, who gets the Selke?

Probably Kessler because he has a bunch of goals. See, I disagree with Claire Peasman's premise because at some point in the last five years to win the Selkees, suddenly you have to have 30 goals. Right. Like Bergeron and Taves are still monsters defensively. The Selkees become the Norris in some way. Right. I'd still give it to Bergeron. Yeah.

Because I remember, I remember the, there was two years in a row when Ryan Kessler was a runner-up. He was a finalist, but he didn't win. And I remember he came to the NHL offices, and he was scoring a bunch of goals. I was like, dude, you're never going to win the Selke if you keep scoring goals. That's just not how it happens. And he scored 41 that year, and then he got the Selke. And ever since then, it's like, now it's like Copatar and Joe Thornton. If Hosa didn't get injured, I'd say they'd probably give it to Hosa, just for legacy.

He's a wing. You got to be a center who scores 25 goals and has a really good Fenwick. It would be a legacy award. They'd be like, oh, fuck, we haven't given it to anybody since Yari Lettenan, so we're going to give it to this guy now. Somebody, who did Elliot have in his 30 thoughts today? He had listed a guy that doesn't kill penalties, so he said it was up for it this year. I forget who it was. He was averaging like three seconds a game.

It'll be first. It'll be first round. He gives a shit. Right. I just feel like that award. It used to be like Mani Mel Hoccher was a guy. He'd be like, is he going to win this award? Finally, from Tyson Thorpe, which of the four major North American men's sports would you most enjoy seeing played naked?

Somebody asked me this on me and Sean on the biscuits pocket. Oh, there you go. What was your answer? Oh, it was, it was baseball because it would be funny to see the catcher squatting with his balls hanging out for three hours. Just a swing in Johnson, just right in the old dead center of the screen for three hours. It'd be hilarious. Yeah, I would go with baseball too, because it needs some spicing up. Like basketball would also be good, too, for, like, if you dunk over a dude's head, you can, like, you know, you can probably scream these nuts as you dunk on them. Also, sliding would be amazing in baseball.

Oh, you can't slide head first anymore. You certainly couldn't. That's over. But even then it becomes a play at the play. late, my goodness. Foul tips. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. Bad hop to short. And also, just to see a slow motion pitch would be amazing.

Just see where things end up. Imagine like Hadeo Nomo's wind up with his Johnson just swinging around. Dan Quisenberry delivering it sidearm. Chad Bradford's knuckles are scraping the ground, as are his balls. Yep. Sure. Yeah. I bet Tim Wakefield's junked didn't. move just like the pitch just steady just steady just hanging it right in the move yeah you can't play baseball in April anymore because nobody want to go out there in that cold weather yeah it would just

be bad for the brand although I imagine there are probably some sluggers that are just turd it all the time just get up there and just like that's that's their turn on just smacking the balls are as they're just like crazy perv prince fielder guy walking up there although prince fielder you might not even see it now come to think of it the viagra inning where everyone has to take viagra and play play fully your act. Sure. Thanks for the question. Baseball cards banned in schools because I like how seven minutes ago we were talking about social issues which affect Muslim people coming into America and now you've got Prince Field or rock hard at the plate. Well, that's why it's called puck soup, my friend. And that's this week's episode of puck soup. Thanks to everybody

listening. I'm Greg Wichinsky of Yvesports Puck Daddy blog. You'd also listen to my other podcast. Marik Veris Wichwishinsky. You could buy my book. Take your eye off the puck. You buy our book. It's called The Mouse is Finding It. The 100 Greatest Players. in NHL history and other stuff. Get out on Amazon, new on Nook, iBooks, pretty much everywhere

except for Google Play because they're not having any new accounts. And participate in the contest. Tweet us at Puck Soup Podcast with your images of the Puck Soup logo

in odd places. And you can win yourself either this Los Angeles King's Pinset, the Devil's Hat, or a copy of my book for third place. And here is Dave Lozo

to take you home. I got nothing to say today. We're wrapping it up. I'm going to go to the bathroom. And I'm going to go to the gym to defat. There's the whole point of taking a break was so you could go to the bathroom, but now... That was like 40 minutes ago, buddy.

I got to take a pee, and I'm not... I don't care who knows. All right, everybody. Thanks. We'll probably have a guest next week. Bye. Now leaving nerdist.com.