Puck Soup - Round 2. Fight!

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Sean and Ryan talk about the start of the second round, all the teams that lost in the first one, coaching changes, the draft lottery, and more. Sponsored by Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck) and Mint Mobile (mintmobile.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean McAnneau from The Athletic. And we're on to the second round, folks. Here we are. It started last night. I would say rather unceremoniously. They were just like, ah, there's the Leafs game tonight. There was, in fact, not a ceremony.

Should have been. Because it was the Leafs and not the Habs. Am I right, folks? Remember that joke from like 12 years ago when they used to do that? They did used to do it. You can't say they didn't, you know? So Toronto's up won nothing in the series. They won, what was the final?

5-3 last night. 5-4. 5-4. That's right, it was 5-4. Boy. Well, I guess, let's just get it out of the way now. Sam Bennett, elbows Anthony Stolars in the head. At the time of this recording, we do not have an update about whether he's going to get a hearing or anything.

Yeah. Now, you said he elbowed it in the head. Are you sure you didn't mean that? there was accidental, incidental contact? Well, I saw some people calling it subtle. And it's like, you know what, honestly? My NHL standards. Well, honestly, I'm not joking.

If you're where the ref is, I can see where you call it subtle. Like if you're looking at it from that exact angle, oh, yeah, you just kind of bumped into them. But they showed you the overhead view. And it's like, I don't know, man. That's not that subtle to me. He got that elbow up. It was in a very strange way kind of fun to watch the various TV panels who by nature of being a TV panel are prone to want to debate things.

Yeah. Have to like watch that play and go. So anyone think that maybe wasn't intentional and just, yeah. Dirty play by a dirty player. that sent a key player on the other team, not only out of the game, but to the hospital on a stretcher, apparently. And we also, as of this recording, have no update on Anthony Scholar's and his ability to be available at any future point in the series and or playoffs.

And now all the least have to do is hope Joseph Wohl states to, uh-oh. Yeah. Uh-oh. Exactly. So definitely, I would say the textbook definition of like a very muted victory last night for the Leafs. Like kind of a, they played great for half the game. Panthers played bad too. That may have been more of it.

They did. Looked fantastic. And, you know, when it's 4-1 or whatever it was halfway through the game, you're like, man, this is, it. this is going to be a great game to build off of and et cetera, et cetera, and instead it sort of feels like won the game. I'm not going to say lost the series. Like, let's not get too dramatic about it, but... Quarter of the way to winning it.

Yeah. The other guy's zero percent of the way. Well, except that, I don't know if you know this, Ryan, but like the fourth one is the hardest one to get. Yeah. The wins are not all equally. So it's more... Tough end of team season.

I think they're about. 17% of the way to winning the series. But they're going to have to do it without their goal tender, presumably. I mean, this is the NHL. We could see something today that says, oh yeah, he's out practicing, he's going to be fine. But you get hit in the head and start vomiting. That's typically not a minor issue.

And I mean, look, we can say dirty play, but also not one that at the time looked like, oh, that could cause a really serious injury. I mean, we've certainly seen much more significant contact with goaltenders, at least from, you know, in terms of in real time reaction to it. But that's the thing with head injuries. And that's the thing with sneakily, intentionally elbowing vulnerable people in the head. You never really know if you're going to get them off their game or get them out of the game. Yeah. I guess the thing to say, too, is that he got hit in the face, Stolar said, earlier in the game by just like a hard shot. A hard shot.

Which... Hit him right in the face. Which... which does happen pretty often. I mean, I've seen, you know, I've seen a lot of people say, oh, that wasn't even the Bennett play that heard him. It was the, you know, earlier in the game. And yeah, maybe it's, maybe there's a compounding effect.

I also have seen a bunch of retweets of Chris Nguinsky, who I generally have a lot of time for, really, if people aren't aware he's before. He was a pro wrestler, right? Yeah, that's where he got. I believe he stopped wrestling because of concussions. Got concussions and has become like a, you know, a leading advocate and spokesperson for head injuries. And usually does a great job, but is, let's just say, seems to not be super familiar with hockey. And he, like, the one thing that people can do is please stop retweeting the part where he says that because,

there's a clip of Anthony Stoller shaking his head that that means he already had a serious concussion. Like, he's a goalie, Chris. If we pulled every goalie who twitched as they were like getting ready for a face off, we would have no goalies. Like that is something all goalies do. They're constantly futsing with their helmet,

with the face mask by shaking it. So please stop retweeting that one into my timeline because that's... Yeah, the one, about him puking after that that's that's a good one feels more significant but see that doesn't that doesn't that doesn't work for some people because that happened after the Bennett hit you got to show the thing before to show that right no he was clearly hurt all along well so yeah I mean I think we're both sitting here going oh well Sam Bennett who uh loves uh making guys leave series

uh due to head injuries in the playoffs did it to Matthew guys two years ago Brad Marsh and last I want to play that everyone, all the Leaf fans complained about and everyone else said that it was just cool playoff hockey. And then, yeah, the Marchand last year was much, much bigger deal. I don't know, man. I don't want to go too far down this because, you know, Paul Maurice told me my hair would be on fire if I made a big deal out of this. So you tell me, Ryan, I don't know if you saw the news this morning, but you're not. Now in the Department of Player Safety, they put out a thing and you're in charge.

I don't know if I'm going to be too good at this job. What are you? Where are you on this? Well, if I'm at the Department of Player's Safety, Max Fine. Very clear to me last year that they don't like it when I talk about the Department of Player's Safety as it relates to the Maple Leafs. So I won't. Yeah. You do it.

You tell me. Well, again, if I work there, I'm seeing here Max Fine. Okay. You know? Feels harsh, but I suppose. You know, first time offender. Yeah, that's right. No, I mean, to me, this is an easy two gamer.

Like, they don't call it in real time. Usually that seems to, it seems like, oh, well, you know, he already served, you know, five minute major game misconduct, that kind of thing. That kind of feels like it's half a game at least. So we'll, we'll factor that in. And like, you know, I, again, we haven't seen any tweets from the various insiders who just, like, get a text from someone who works at Department of Player's Safety. Here's why it's actually really a good normal play that everyone liked.

We haven't seen any of that. So I don't know what their justification could possibly be for this being not a headshot that resulted in what's obviously a concussion. Like, again, this is the thing about Tampa in the last round where they, who was it, got hit the head and then they put them back out there on the ensuing power play. It wasn't Gensel. Was it? Gensel did. Oh, it was Gensel.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Half the lightning roster got hit in the head in the last play. I can't remember who they were playing with. Oh, right. It was the Panthers. Crazy. So, yeah, remember that Gensel gets hit in the head and they put them back out there? And then they're like, oh, actually not looking so good.

And to me, I think it was on the Kachuk hit, right? And to me, I was like, well, just hold him. hold him out of the game because the NHL loves suspending guys only if there's an injury. So you just be like, I don't know. It's crazy, but we don't know if he's going to be good to go. And then, you know, game one, he's never, or the next game, rather, he's never been more good to go. If Stolars are just gone out on the stretcher at the time, you know, scary incident, but then they got to suspend Bennett, you know.

All this stuff about I'm hearing he left the game on a stretcher. Well, you know, nobody saw that. You didn't see that. The guy who heard it. You need the footage. We need the footage. And then it's a big problem for the league. But because it's not and because it's apparently a guy, Sam Bennett,

just got like he went to, you went to the local toy store. Does Toys R.S exist anymore? I don't know. But every Monopoly game went through all the chance and community. Chess cards. He's just got a fucking wallet full of get out of jail free cards. You know? Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. Like, to me, it's you elbowed a goalie in the head. He threw up on the bat. And the goalie was in his crease, by the way. This is another aspect of it to me. Of like, you're not supposed to touch the guy in there. Right.

I mean, it, it was a obvious and automatic, like, two-minute minor penalty for just goalie interference. but that that really is neither here nor there. I mean, you're talking about it. Right. It's the, two minutes is no big deal. And as, again, as Paul Maurice said,

referee was right there. He was right there. And again, from his, from the ref's angle, I can totally buy why you don't think that's a big deal. It is subtle from that angle. I actually would agree with that. Yeah.

And especially if you're kind of blocked out, you just see a, I go through the crease. Your first thought is not, oh yeah, he probably chicken winged the guy in the back of the head. But here we are.

Yeah, and so, yeah, like, to me, it's, it's an easy call, but I'm not one of the, Myrtle had an article

about this this morning. Mm-hmm. Yeah, good piece. Yeah. Now, like, again, anytime it's someone who covers the, the team,

where the guy got headshot it and they're like, here's why it's actually bad that they're not going to do anything about that. I just kind of take that with a grain of salt right away. You know what I mean? Just like, okay, we get it. This is the team you're around all the time. But the thing that he said that I thought was notable here is that player safety doesn't want the game to be perceived as soft.

And that's why you got to let guys. elbow goalies in the head or whatever. You know, that's a tough one for me to buy. Yeah. And again, this isn't James making this point. James is explaining how he perceives the league views it. Right. And again, to me, what it boils down to.

And he also made the comparison to was a Timo Meyer on Freddie Anderson in the last round? where he was like if there was like if there had Rod Brindamore is like if the if the puck had gone in the net on that play that's goalie interference then they look at it and he hits him in the head

and that's five you know all this kind of stuff that's that is all true the solar should have allowed like the Leaf should have allowed the Panthers to score there and then, you know, Bennett's thrown out of the game because the rest look at it from every angle. But they don't, right? Because they wouldn't look at the penalty aspect of it.

They would review the goal interference. Now, that does mean the ref has to sit and look at it, which maybe influences how the rest of the game goes. Well, anyway, you see the point. Yes, I absolutely. I'm not making it. James Nortle made it. I should say that I recommend people read the Myrtle column.

Don't read the comments. That's generally good advice, but especially on this one. You can imagine. It's angry leaf fans and all the weirdos from other fan bases who love it when something happens. It believes. Yeah. And you can imagine how it goes. But there is like one, the one highlight of the comments is, you know, some guy doing that.

Oh, well, where were you? when Mark Schifley got hit and taken out of the series in the end, like James, like, replies with like a literal link to the piece he wrote immediately after Mark Schifley got taken out saying, right. The league needs to get this under control. And, yeah, it's, it's been pretty rough. So let me ask you this. Okay.

For sake of argument, Sam Bennett doesn't get suspended. Maybe it's a fine, maybe the league, maybe the, Department of Player Safety says it's fine. What, if anything, do you do if you're the Leafs? Yeah, I saw someone say, I would never normally say this,

but you're going to get Ryan Reeves out there and have him beat the shit. I've seen more than a few. Of the more reasonable Leaf fans in my feed. I don't follow a lot of Leaf fans, but I follow a few, and many of them are even the reasonable ones are quite...

Between that and, you know, the idea that if this was Nazim Cadry, they would send them to the shadow realm. Right. Which I think tracks, but again, I don't... I'm not going to talk about the Department of Player's Safety. What is it? Is it the Forbidden Zone? Or is it the Phantom Zone?

I know those are both things in, like, comics or whatever. I don't know which one's which. But one of them's like a prison in like Superman world or whatever. This feels like a great question. Yeah, I don't, you know, I can't get into like which one, which guy Ant Man's mad at, you know? I don't know. Anyway. Yeah, to me, to me this is an easy decision, but it, you know, again, I don't work for the Department of Player's Saved.

So if it doesn't happen, like, because this is, this is going to be a thing. in Toronto is do you do you deal with it do you try to deal with Sam Bennett do you try to deal with Sergei Brabowski or do you let it go and focus and say you know

the best revenge is win the series yeah you're up you're up one nothing like you just to me like okay you take who would you say is the Leafs like 12th forward right now three games ago everyone would have said Max Patcher ready, but now he's playing like Wayne Gretzky, so he can't say him.

Yeah. And he somehow also are like most physical hitter of the, which I did not see coming. Where the hell did that come from? Look, I love it. I'm a big Max Patcher ready guy going away back. Yeah, he rocks now. Yeah. So you take Plottis Holmberg out, you throw Ryan Reeves in.

And then, and then lines up next to Sam Bennett and says, let's go. And Sam Bennett says, no thank you, skates away. And Ryan Reeves is like, crap. Yeah, the only thing you can do at that point, because why would Sam Bennett agree to fight, oh, he's honorable? Like, what is this? It's not the fucking Bushito code, you know?

He's just going to be like, fuck off, dude. You're barely in the league. And I'm an all-star. He's not going to do it with Ryan Reeves. I do wonder if he would take an invitation from like a Max Domey, off the opening face off, get it out of the way sort of thing. Yeah, even then Max Omi get his ass kick, I feel like. Yeah, I don't know.

Me neither. But. Here, I got an idea. Yeah. There's a different guy named Domi. Put him in the Max Domi jersey. It's not technically. I mean, you know, the Leafs already get confused by...

That's what I'm saying. Family relations when it comes time to throw the lineup out there. This is exactly right. Man, Max, are you okay? you look, you look rough. I didn't sleep too good last night, brother. Okay. All right.

Yeah, could happen. See, the thing that I kind of dread about this is... I hate that we're talking about this so long, by the way. Whatever, yeah, and this will be the last point. The thing I hate about this is whatever the Leafs do or don't do, if they go on to lose the series, which still feels, you know, most people were picking the Panthers going into this, let alone with the Leafs minus a Golden. Most Leafs fans, I know, were picking the Panthers.

Panther. Everybody on the timeline. And rightly so. I mean, they've won the conference two years in a row. They just smoked a very good Tampa team. They should be the favorites. Losing game one shifts the numbers around, but losing a goal, it kind of feels like it cancels that out. If the least go on and lose this series, whatever their response is or isn't, we'll get

blamed for that. It's either going to be, this was, you know, we, We heard all year that this was different in their Craig Barouba team, and this was a teammate for the playoffs, but when their goalie got run and taken out, they didn't do anything about it. And that's when it all fell apart. Or they were different.

They had won around. They won game one. They were on the way. And they got distracted by a side show, and they started chasing Sam Bennett around the ice. And they took their eyes off the ball. And they fell right into the Florida Panthers trap. It's going to be one of those two.

It's a good trap. You're going to admit. It's a good trap. It's pretty good. We'll elbow your goalie in the head and then you'll get mad at us. We're going to be the super dirtiest team in the league who never gets called to account for it. And also, we have a bunch of amazing players. Anybody know if Stolar's had the puck, by the way?

Because that's the only time guys get hit. That's true. Anyway. Last thing on Sam Bennett, how much money did he make or lose for himself as a free agent on that play? Oh, the Leafs are signing him on July 1. Can't beat him join them, you know? Somebody tweeted that, like, Sam Bennett when he, like, walks in on July 1 for his meeting with the Leafs and realizes it's a sting operation. Yeah, Joe Pesci walking into the room at the end of Goodfellas.

Oh, I think they said sting operation to arrest him for his crimes, but it would be, like, we'll let him out for the Olympics. Yeah, that's right. All right. Are there any other teams in the league, other than the League? I don't think so. Then, okay. Tonight, I believe we have Washington, Carolina. That's the other second round series.

In the East, what are your thoughts? I mean, I'm picking Carolina. I feel like I'm not sure I've even seen many people picking the Capitals, which... Yeah, and it's actually huge disrespect, and you're not allowed to say it. Well, look, if I'm a Capitals fan, I'm absolutely riding that train. Like, of course. they've been in first place in the league almost all year long

and here we are into the second round of the playoffs and you know we have the running bit of like super good teams pretending that nobody believes in them yeah you know

but in this case in this case nobody believes in the capitals in this scenario which is the super good team that no one believes it yeah that's it because that's the thing

the standing say the capitals are a super good team. I see, you know, I've seen all these guys who win the Jack Adams. At this point, we're almost at 90 games of sample size. So all I'm saying, you know, because again, I'm picking Carolina. I didn't even really have to think that hard about it. But if I'm a Caps fan, like, if I run into a Caps fan who's like, nobody believes in us, I'm actually like, you know what?

Yeah, dude, you're right. And, uh, yeah, go, go ahead. Go ahead and ride that. I'm trying to find the stat I pulled. If you include the first round, I believe, where was this? I put it in my article, and now I have to dig it up again. Since the start of February, what do you think the Capitol's team save percentages? Since the start of February, it's not great because Logan Thompson stopped being.

That's right. Terry Sawjuck. So just ballpark an answer for me here. 895. 870. You're close, though. Ooh, I'm actually not that close. No, of course.

That's a big gap. Yeah, that's a huge gap. 870, that's horrible, man. That's fucking awful. And look, like, there are other factors here. And the capitals do keep shooting 14% or whatever. I actually don't have that number in front of me, and it would be helpful if I did, but I don't. But, like, that's why I'm, that's why I'm picking the Carolina Hurricanes in here.

Like, I don't, I cannot trust this Capitol's goaltending. Yeah, it was good enough to get past the Montreal Canadiens. I got news for you, folks. That's not a good team. You know, I know, look, I know they made the playoffs, barely in a very weak conference this year. But, like, Canadian's not a good team. Mm-hmm. And I, look, I understand.

If Alexi Proto's was out there, yeah, sure. And you still beat him in six. You didn't have one of your best forwards. Sure. I agree. But I wasn't sitting there going, oh, you know,

he's a great team this year, the Montreal Canadians. You know, I wasn't impressed by them. And look, we're doing the Carolina thing that we do every year. Oh, the fancy stats all say,

the Carolina Hurricanes were the best team that ever put on skates and all this kind of stuff. And so that's why the fancy stats are wrong. I agree that all those stats overrate the Carolina hurricanes, especially because who's more of a playoff Freddie Anderson disbeliever than me? I can, however, with some degree of confidence, project that, you know,

if the goaltending trends hold up as they have for a few months now, I bet Freddie Anderson can be above 870. That's just my theory. So yeah, like it really is that simple to me. I don't trust either team's goalie here. And if we're talking about how the teams in front of them play, I trust Carolina one through 18 more than I trust Washington one through 18. That's it.

Yep, that's fair. And as much as it is silly of us to get. like all start crafting narratives based on, in the case of both these teams, five games in the first round. Let's do it anyways. Andrej Svetnikov

breakout postseason, question mark. You'd like to see it, sure. He's kind of a guy that, like, he came into the league, obviously was, you know, a second overall pick, came in with some hype, lived up to it. And then it sort of feels like it's not that even he took a step back, but he just sort of, you know,

other guys came in and not that you forgot about him, but, you know, he wasn't front and center, even necessarily on that team when you just thought about them from the outside. Sure. He was really good in the first round. We just got it. Sam Bennett is not expected to face any supplemental discipline.

Chris Johnston, Emily Kaplan, both tweeted it in, last like 30 seconds here. I don't know, man. When I talk about the Department of Player's Safety and the Maple Leafs, I'm, I'm unreasonable. It has been explained to me. So I agree.

I will let that pass. And it's just what a weird, what a weird coincidence. I, again, I think this is more, this is more Sam Bennett's allowed to do whatever he wants than, than the Leafs. That's all. Okay. But you're not allowed to say it. I'm not saying anything.

No. I don't mean you, you. I mean like the general you. Sam Bennett's allowed to do whatever he wants. So that Andre Svetnikov, eh? Yeah, anyway. No, I... We get the rematch with him and Novetskin, too. Remember that from... That was in the playoffs a few years ago, right? Yeah, well, I believe that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think this is going to be a really fun series. You know, six, seven games, all that kind of stuff. That's all fine by me. me. But, yeah, I just, I think Carolina is deeper. That's it.

Yeah, I mean, I think they certainly are. But, you know, I think, like, again, all these models say it's like 6633 or, you know, 64y or whatever. I agree that it's probably closer than that. But that's because I feel like most playoff series are closer than that. you know I I and if you want to say

it's 55 45 45 for Carolina the only thing that's going to make capitals fans happy says here 92% the Washington Capitals win the series you know like that's the only thing that's going to make these people happy sure so like let's just say that that's what it is and then we can you guys are right

you're the best team in the world ever I to me I just like I don't know I don't know why everything has to be framed is disrespect. Because it's a super fun narrative. I mean, that's honestly it. It's not realistic or anything, but it is, nobody believes in us is fun as hell.

Well, I'm not even talking about just this team. Yeah. Like, if you go, look, you know, my top three for the, for the heart truth, we're the Nathan McKinan disrespect. And it's like, well, I bet a bunch of people had them like third and fourth on their ballot instead of like second and third. Like, what are we, who gives a fuck, man? Relax.

That's my whole deal with that. That is my whole deal with that. So, so we're both picking Carolina. We kind of skipped over with the Leafs, but both of us pick Florida, I'm assuming? Yeah, we're staying the course on that one, yeah. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not changing my pick based on, even based on the outcome of game one. Yeah, again, like if the Leafs are scoring 30, seconds in, I was like, oh, it's not Florida's night.

Like, almost immediately, I was just like, okay, well, you can't win them all. Yep. And then they still almost made a comeback. It did. Anyway. Anyway, yeah, I'm picking Carolina as well. Dallas and Winnipeg. Okay. Is the other game tomorrow.

Can we? Or tonight, rather. I know we're going to talk about the teams that got eliminated. Yes, we are. But let's just use this opportunity to talk about those two game sevens over the weekend. Yeah, we're making space for that right here. Holy crap. Yeah, it rocked, man.

Those were so. So sick. So sick. I didn't get to like sit down, start to finish, watch the Dallas game. so maybe I didn't get the full impact. But that was unbelievable. And then the, that Winnipeg game, holy crap.

Yeah. Okay, let's do Dallas, Colorado then. So Colorado goes up to nothing. I'm like, well, sucks for the stars, but what can you say? You know, they're the Colorado Avalanche. They're an awesome fucking team, blah, blah, blah. And then, uh, Mika Rantman's like,

fuck them. We're not, I don't give a shit about any of this. I'm winning this game by myself. And, you know, it turns out you can't, you can't just, like, tackle a guy off a faceoff. And then Wyatt Johnson score, I believe it's his, like, third goal in a game seven, and he's, like, 21 or something like that. Okay. Well. Jake Ottinger looked awesome down the stretch. Man, this is a really good team, these Dallas stars.

And they did it with, uh, without Robert. Ortson or Heisken and both of whom were expected to be back at some point in this series. Yep. Which, I mean, we've, do we don't want to get too ahead of ourselves on, you know, if Dallas could beat Colorado without those two guys, who could they beat with them? Yep. Because we've seen guys come back and, you know, it just doesn't always have the impact you think and et cetera, et cetera. But, yikes. That's, that's scary, man.

Like, it, it wouldn't, I mean, hey, Winnipeg's. good team. They were my pick for the cup, et cetera, et cetera. But if six weeks from now, we're watching Dallas skate the cup around going, man, that Colorado series was by far their toughest challenge of this playoffs.

And once they got those guys back, they just rolled. I wouldn't be shocked at all. Yeah. Jake Ottinger, the quote after the game that just kind of like blew me away a little bit was like I have a, I don't have it in front of me, but he basically said, like, I have a hard time believing we're going to play a team that's

better than those guys the rest of the way. It's like, I agree with you, Jake. That's kind of how I feel about it as well. And I, not to get into the Colorado of it, but like, Nathan McKinnon for his part was like, I don't know, they were missing two of their like three best players and we didn't fucking beat them. So what do you, you know, I get, I get it for both sides on that front. But like, I guess what I'm saying is this doesn't give me a huge.

huge amount of confidence, given how Winnipeg limped into the second round. Well, that's it. Yeah. Like, we were all, we were all ready to. Lipped in injury-wise. I mean, kick the door and cartwheeled in as far as how it actually happened. Well, in terms of drama, yes, but like push to the absolute brink. Like, as on the brink as you could almost physically be.

literally as on the brink any team has ever been in one. Like there's no precedent for a team being that close to losing and winning. Right. So what I mean by on the brink or whatever and like limping in is,

I don't know, they kind of let the St. Louis Blues do this to them. True. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of what I'm getting at is like it's funny how much we're now not talking about Connor Hellebuck can't stop

fucking shot in the playoffs to me. It really is. Now, and it was, so you wouldn't have seen the hockey night in Canada broadcast, but, so game, game one, the jets get,

sorry, game seven, the jets gets scored on, on the first shot. Yep. Which is a weird one, like, the blues go a little Harlem Globetrotter,

so it wasn't like a bad goal for the goalie, but like, it's not a good one. is just snow angeling out in the face-off circle. Complete over-pursuit and all of that. And then the second goal is one of those like modern bad goals where he just gets beat clean on a shot. And even then it hit the guy's skate and it altered the trajectory. Like 30 years ago, that was a completely like, yeah, those are supposed to go in.

That's hockey. But, you know, these days, goalies have to stop everything that they get. a clean look at. So, you know, two nothing and you're kind of, oh, here we go. And so on Hocking on Canada, like, they literally in the first intermission were like, do you pull Connor Hallibuck now? Oh, that's what all the talk was on the, on the U.S. intermission show as well. And Rick Boness, who of course coached Connor Hallibuck for a few years there, was like, if he gives up a third, I would definitely do it. That seemed to be the thing, because it was Elliot Freeman was like, I thought they would pull him after two. Because he's, you know, his

point was, this is your season. Like, your old year is built to this. You can't be, you know, you can't have the loyalty, you can't worry about people's feelings.

And then the flip side is like, come on, your backup's Eric Comrie. Like, you put him in. What are we doing? Like this, and as it turned out, Connor Hellebuck was good

for the rest of the game. Yep. You know, you didn't love the third goal, but, you know, it gave you a period and a half of overtime

where he'd, He did everything you asked him to do. So it doesn't feel like that story went away, though. And it, you know, it especially, it wasn't going to go away even if he threw a 50 save shutout at it because so much of it has been how bad he is on the road. Right. And obviously, Game 7 was in Winnipeg, so, you know, he didn't have a chance to. Well, when your goalie's, when your goalie's bad on the road, it really helps if you won the president's trophy. Yes.

You're getting four home games every round, you know? And that's, I mean, that was the story of that series, right? Like, that was a hundred percent, yeah. The series where the home team won every game. So someone on the Patreon made the Joker the Blues in trouble yet. They didn't lose on home ice. That's right. No, they're not.

They're fine. See you in October, you know. By the way, can I just say a Miko Ranton beast mode? You aren't fucking kidding, man. What a performance. Oh, my God. That was so sick. We're getting the beast mode committee is getting together,

and we're going to consider a motion to just change it to Miko mode. He, look, I don't remember who I saw say it, and then I saw like four people say it, so I don't know who to give credit to here. But the fact that people were already throwing their hats on the ice as he's, like, crossing the blue line with the puck, is one of the sickest things to ever happen in the sport of hockey. People are like, this game's over.

Here's a fucking hat for you. Awesome. Cool shit, man. What did he end up with 11 points in the last three games of that series? Something like that, yeah. Fucking ridiculous, man. I threw it in the newsletter like was, first of all the conversation was, was that the best period by any player in playoff history?

Considering context. Four points in a game seven. And a hat trick, not just like a goal and three assists or whatever. losing 2-0, you go from 2-0 to 4-2 with a hatchery against your former team, against, you know, all this other stuff. And then my trivia question was, when was, there have only been 25 four-point periods, or maybe it's 24, four-point periods in NHL playoff history, who was the last winger before Miko Ranton in game seven to have a four-point period?

Yeah, it was Miko Ranton. And it was Miko Ranton. And it was Miko Ranton in 48 hours earlier. Right. That's crazy. The only other guy to do it twice in his. career was this French kid, Mario Lemieux? Never heard of him.

And he did it twice in his entire career. Miko Rattenen did it twice in a weekend. Yeah. Do you remember, like, Jesus, it was probably the last time we recorded where we're like, this guy's nowhere to be found, man. He needs to step up. Needs to step up. Yeah, okay.

He's like, okay, no, I agree. Yeah, he's like, I agree with these guys. Yeah. They're right. I do need to step up. I'm going to go ahead and put a little chef for next to me. fucking nuclear bomb. And step up.

Holy smokes. And that's just so, like, not even as a hockey fan, just as a sports fan. That's so fun. That is so fun. Like, you know, and especially, and look, there's,

I'm assuming at this point, we're going to get some, like, unsourced information or like, unnamed source information about, like, what actually, actually happened in those contract negotiations because there has to be at this point. Because right now the narrative for Colorado is

you were like 250K away. You traded the guy two months before the deadline when he didn't expect it. And then he came back and literally murdered you in the playoffs. Yeah. Like he went from like player to player on the bench, put his hands around their neck and shook until they fell over and then went to the next guy and did that 20 times.

Got the backup goalie too, which seemed excessive. and absolutely wrecked you. Yeah. Which just, again, is that overly simplistic narrative? Yes, it is. As a sports fan, I love that. No, again, I want to save it for losers' corner after the break here.

Okay. So, but like there is, there's a lot of, very interesting to me, Colorado Avalanche discourse all of a sudden, let's put it that way. But, yeah. Do you have anything else to say about Winnipeg? Let's just, what's your pick for the series? Is it Dallas? Oh, I got to, yeah, I got to pick Dallas.

I'm going Winnipeg. I'm going contrarian here, and I'm just, and maybe it's. Yeah, you picked Winnipeg to win the cup, too. You got to, you got to dance with who you came to the dance with, you know? You do, but here's the thing. I picked Winnipeg with Josh Morrissey and Mark Schifley to win the cup. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I feel like I do have an opening to bail on this. Yeah, I get it. I want to. And I had Dallas as my number two pick. And a lot of people were like, what are you talking about? They can't be Colorado without, you know, et cetera. So I will look smart either way. And maybe a little bit of this is just me going against the grain.

And also trying to make it so you and I don't just pick the same team. For every series, yeah. Every series. But I will go Winnipeg in seven. I get it. Yeah. No, I have to pick Dallas. Again, like, it's so funny to have to say this about a guy who is the best goalie in the world over the last.

last like eight years or whatever. But like I need to, I need this guy to show me he can stop a couple of pucks in the playoffs before I'm like, and I like if he comes out first game on the road, obviously they're opening in home so that's helpful. But if he comes out first game on the road and he gets and he gets like Miko Rantaninand, basically like he gives up three goals in a period, I'm like, these guys are fucked. Because I think Dallas is better than St. Louis.

This is a controversial stance I have. And like, I think Dallas. can win a game on the road. Hell, it might be game one. Could be game two. But that's just my thinking. It's like, even if I think Winnipeg, everybody's coming back healthy,

I just, I didn't see it. These guys got pushed around a few games by the St. Louis Blues. You know what I mean? I think the Dallas stars can do a little bit better than that. That's all. So I'm going to take Dallas, I guess, in six. Just so we're not saying every series. go seven games.

You got anything else to say about, again, like if Morrissey and Shifley are both out for... Yeah, and we don't, again, as we're doing this, we don't really know that. I mean, Shifley, it sounded like, may have been close. Yeah. But... He skated, maybe. Close for game seven and close for game one aren't necessarily the same. And he didn't play game seven, state the obvious.

And then Josh Morrissey, it was a weird one, eh? Like, gets hit, comes. up, you know, looks like his shoulder's bothering him, plays another shift, throws a hit, and then kind of checks out. So, I don't know, we will see on those. But that is, you know, it goes without saying it's huge if they're missing either of those guys or both. Yeah. But also Dallas showed us that good teams can sometimes surprise you with, even when they're missing guys. Yeah. They're just, they were, they were. They were. They were. were impressive to me against

Colorado in a way that Winnipeg never was. Okay, Vegas and Edmonton is the one game that will not be played tonight or last night. So who you got? And, you know, let's talk about. All right, well, first,

Vegas and Edmonton is tonight. It is tonight. Yep. It's the Jets or tomorrow. Oh, okay. I wrote it down wrong then. That's my bad. Hell of a series.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm picking Edmonton. Okay. I get it. I got the two guys that are really good. I mean, this is, again, like, no disrespect. Oh, screw it.

I don't respect the Golden Knights. I get it. That's why I'm picking the Oilers to win in like seven games. I think your team stinks. Awful. Yeah, no, I, you could make the case either way for me, but again, I would really like it if I knew who Edmonton's goal he was. Well, I mean, it's Calvin Pickard is like...

Well, okay, then I'm not super confident in the Edmonton Oilers' ability to win this series. You know what I mean? Like, that's what it boils down to for me, is I got to pick Vegas because, like, even if I'm not the biggest fan of their goaltending situation, I think it's better than what Edmonton's rolling out there, you know? Okay, so, I mean, I was just really kind of flippant there.

Would you, if you're Edmonton, do you consider going back to Stuart Skinner? Like, as you're, this guy's supposed to be your one. Yeah, you had to make the switch in round one. You had to, and you had to ride it once it worked, but do you say? I hate to say this kind of thing, because I think this is always a little overstated by coaches. But I got to look at how things are going in practice. Because I can't be confident that Calvin Pickard should be my. goalie going into a series against the Vegas golden nights.

You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So that's why is like, I just, there's no good answer for Edmonton right now. No, the good answer for Edmonton is go get a goalie at the deadline. That's exactly right, yeah. But that's just kind of my, my bold take on it is that like, God, do you know what stewards, I just pulled this up? Do you know what Stuart Skinner's save percentage was in round one? 8.50.

You're going to want to go lower. Are you serious? I can't. There aren't any lower numbers. 8.50 is the lowest number. 850 isn't even fucking close to how bad he was. What was it? 810.

I mean, that's... Now, granted, that's only two games. He faced 58 shots and gave up 11 goals. And again, not to... no disrespect, of course. But he got shown like that by the LA Kings, who are a good team, we'll get into that later,

but are not exactly the late 70s Canadians. That's, yeah, of course. So I guess, you know, I didn't, I didn't realize it was 810. I was like you, it's got to be in like the 860s or something, right? That sucks. And he's like, oh, it sucks all right.

It just sucks way worse than you think. So I will bravely state that I think the 893 goalie from the first round probably should get the go-ahead in game one here. But I'm not happy with either of those options if I'm Chris Knoblock. No, sure not. But I'm pretty happy to have Connor McDavid and Leandroz. Yeah. that's right. Two guys who have already been certified owners of Miko Mode.

That's right. We're going to have to reprint all the certificates for all the certified guys now. Damn it. You know what's funny is Darcy Kemper gave the King's 889 goaltending and lost in the first round. And that's also obviously not very good. But I do think that's kind of just in the range of like, yeah, Connor McDavid. Leon Drys Eidel are going to do that to us, you know? I honestly feel like if you went to the Golden Knights and you're like 889 for the whole series,

they might be like, we'll take it. Yeah, we're in good shape if that's the case. That's absolutely what you're saying. Again, maybe that doesn't win you the series, but it probably gets you to seven games, you know. 866 was the combined save percentage for Pickard and Skinner. 866. And they won that route. that's how good

we on dry side and Conner McDavid are. I don't know, man. Mm-hmm. We're not expecting Eckholm to be back for this series, right? I have not heard anything

to indicate that he the last I heard it was still like, you know, week to week, not going to play in the first round. Like they, they shut down

any talk of him playing in the first round early in that round. Yes, the latest I'm seeing right here is, the Oilers announced Monday, April 28th, that Eckholm is reportedly making progress,

but doubtful to be available until after the second round. So there you have it. Maybe the second round goes long for him. And he can work his way in in like game six or seven or something. But that's what it says here. So I said, I'm taking the Oilers. I'm taking Vegas. Got a number?

Six. Again, I said Oilers and seven. So we're both taking a roeers. win. Yeah. To me, in my opinion, I got to see that team save percentage get up above 870

before I'm changing my mind about the Edmonton Oilers. That's all. All I'm asking for, 870. That's it. Anyway, when we take a break, we'll come back and talk about all the teams that lost. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon. And folks,

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So I got to be honest, you broke that news to me. Oh, yeah, this happened yesterday. Yeah. So he has. Your thoughts? I don't know. Step down. Yeah. Which doesn't, you mutually agreed to part ways.

Yep. Hey, Rob, we think you should not work here anymore. He's like, okay. Rob, you're going to be fired. but since you've been an LA King for 30 years, if you would like to find a nicer way to do this. Go ahead. Not shocked.

Nope. Honestly, well, I am surprised in that it certainly wouldn't have shocked me if they had gotten the other way. Double down, et cetera. But it really does feel like this, front office had taken this team as far as they could. Yeah, I agree. Which was not far enough, obviously.

It was far enough to just lose to the Oilers in round one every year. Now, can a different GM get them over the hump? I don't know, man. Yeah, I mean... Like, if I'm a Kings fan, what's the case for optimism here? that maybe you don't get the Edmonton Oilers in round one next year. That's it. But I probably do.

Like the way the format works. Yep. And like, the only way to avoid that is win the division. And I don't think I'm good enough to win a division that has the Oilers and the Knights in it. Well, that's what I was going to say is the fallback option here is, okay, you don't play the Oilers in the first round. How would you like the Vegas Golden Knights? Is that how better to you?

Get the Knights instead. That's it. The Oilers go nuts and get 115 points and win the division. You finish third and you play. And again, we can, I think we both feel like the L.A. Kings gave this series away. Jim Hiller just chunking it. Boy, I would not be making any long-term. No, no, no, no, I'm not buying property.

Yeah, maybe that kitchen rental in L.A. is not something you want to go ahead with her right now. No, absolutely. That is a huge issue for me, if I'm a Kings fan, is new GMs coming in. First thing, you know, I thought about it. You know who really was the reason we lost that series? It's Jim Hill. Just you come in and you go, you know what? At first, we were going to keep Jim Hiller, but then we did a review. Decided to take another look at it. Yeah, it's tough. Like, I think he did a good job with them overall. But it is, like I've seen a few comparisons to Andrew Burnett with the Panthers, where it was like, got so badly outcoached in the playoffs that the Panthers were like, we could eat to go in a different direction a couple years ago when they switched to Paul Maurice.

Yeah. By the way, I didn't have this on the, on the sheet here, but I don't know if you saw yesterday, but Barry Trott said, Prunette's coming back. Didn't give them all the tools he needed or something like that was the quote. thought that was interesting, but it's not what we're talking about. So, yeah, I really thought it would be both, like, Hiller and Blake gone, if it was either of them.

You know what I mean? If you, if you had said, ah, they're both coming back next year, I would get it, you know? But the fact that it's only Blake is kind of surprising to me, and as you kind of implied, probably the new GM is just going to be like, I'm bringing in my own coach, actually. But, you know, there's a process that you've got to go through when you're hiring a new coach unless you're really laser-focused on one guy in particular.

And I feel like if, let's say they hire their new GM a week and a half from now, how many teams have already, of the, I think, seven that are currently looking for, coach how many teams have already made their hire and how many are just like you know farther along in the process than you that they're going to make their hire before you can even talk to all the guys you want to talk to yeah it would be it would be really tough for the kings there are a bunch of good coaches out there you're right i i just to me if i'm a king's fan that's going to be

my first sign of a new gm is if he comes in and he wants to do the full confidence. Like, if this is his guy, okay. But if he comes in and does, well, you know, there's not time. We're going to give him like the year. You know that thing that, you know, we talk about new GMs wanting their own coach, but how many times does a new GM want the old coach to kind of dangle for a year as a dead man walking? Sure.

It buys you the one year of time and then you get to make your, oh, how come you haven't made any moves? Oh, well, I'm going to fire the coach. There's my one move. now I get another year under the new coach to kind of end. It gets you basically two full years before anyone expects you to actually do anything. Yeah, I don't know. It's a really tough situation because a lot of their best players are like 23, 24, 25, and a few of their best players are like 36.

And that's just not generally the best mix, especially because of the divisional play. You're not like super confident this is the day. I don't know what you do. I really just don't know what the direction is here. That's it. This is we, we often, we often talk about teams getting stuck in the middle. Yeah. And usually when we say that, it's more like you're stuck in that like 14 to 18 range.

Right. Where maybe we can make the playoffs. And the Kings are better than that, clearly. Kings are a top 10 regular season team. But. They're like the upper middle class without a path to the penthouse, so to speak. Yeah, I think that's right. So tough.

Tough to find a huge amount of optimism right now for the case. Yeah. Again, maybe you're, well, okay, so if you look at it, you know who they would have played in the first round if it had been like a normal one through eight. I can't remember which one now, but it's either Dallas or Colorado. And I feel like they would have fucking fed the kings into the wood chipper. Yeah. You know, like that would have been the end of that. And again, like the only.

And they were, I believe. Oh, no, I was going to say they were the only road team to win. They weren't. The Panthers were a road team against Tampa. But one of, okay, so one of only. two row teams, quote unquote, upsets, even though I don't know if most people picked it that way. In a year where they had the best home record in the league,

one of the best home records of all time, got home ice didn't matter. Yep. Got beat on home ice twice. Yep. That's tough, man. Like, you, here's what really scares me if I'm a Kings fan and then we can move on after I've made all the Kings fans cry.

Sometimes you look at a team and you go, okay, you know, it wasn't this year, but, man, if we ever have a year where everything falls into place, maybe this was the year where everything fell into place for the king. That's kind of, yeah, I mean, like. Still didn't, didn't matter. How do we feel about Darcy Kemper is the number one goalie going forward, you know? I mean, the guy was a Vesda finalist. Yeah, lots of guys are Vezan finalists once or twice, you know? You're right. I'm saying going forward.

awesome fucking year from Darcy Kemper. Unbelievable. He did happen to play in a year for Connor Hellebuck. Like in November, everybody was like, well, this one's over. We don't even have to have a conversation about it, you know? So that's kind of my thing with it is just like, is this the very best Darcy Kemper's ever going to be for the rest of his career? Probably is.

Mm-hmm. And if that's the case, that's a huge, fucking problem for me if I'm the Kings. I don't know what they do. No idea. Colorado. Okay. So I kind of wrote an article that was a little bit like, wow, Dallas is really good.

And also like, hey, I'm seeing a lot of eulogies for the, this might be it for the Colorado Avalanche. They'll never be this good again. And it's like, what? Yeah, I don't. Didn't they, didn't they just lose to the, to the Dallas. stars a team we all agree is like one of the four or five best in the league. Mm-hmm. Where are we talking?

And look, I posted it on Twitter and a guy replied, like, they have no prospects. They have no picks in the top 100 for like the next three years or something like that. Like, gave me a list of read. Like, I saw someone saying they should fire Jared Bednar, like, and not like someone, like a guy on, like someone in a Dallas or a Denver newspaper. Mm-hmm. And it's just like, what? the fuck are we talking about here? This team is exactly as good as

as Nathan McKinnon wants it to be, right? Like, as long as he's good, they're going to be in a cup competitive window. You know? And it's not, to compare it to a pretty obvious guy, it's not like a Sydney Crosby thing where it's like, yeah, he's good, but he's also like 37 years old, right? Like, what is he, 29, 30?

he's got a couple more kicks at the can before you start going okay maybe nathan mckinan's lost a step or whatever that's two or three years four years down the line they they have a few more kicks at this i don't know why you're talking about firing the coach you know whatever i get it they traded miko ranting and he kicked their fucking teeth down their throat but they it's not like they traded miko ranting into the dallas stars they traded him to Carolina expecting Carolina to resign him. They moved him as far away from the Colorado avalanche as they possibly could.

And then it didn't work out so Carolina was like, well, I don't give a shit about who this guy gets traded to next. That is, I mean, that's the big one, right? With, with, because I agree with everything you said, this is, there's been a big overreaction on Colorado being, I mean, they have got. It's ludicrous. Yeah.

And look, I mean, they won the cut. What is it? 22 they won the cup? Yeah, that's right. So, yes, you would have at that moment in time said, you know, how much success is this team going to have in the next three years? You would have expected more than we've seen. Absolutely.

But this team won the cup three years ago, man. And it's, it is a very good team. They're very well set up for. the short-term future. Agreed on, you know, in terms of the prospects, the pipeline, yes. There will be a reckoning, as there are with all good teams.

But I don't think it's all that close necessarily. That being said, the whole ranting thing, there does need to be like a serious kind of post-mortem on that. There may be some tough questions to ask about how they let it get to that

point. what was the decision-making process. Right. And I'm not saying a public reckoning, but you would hope that if it hasn't happened already, that there is some really serious discussions happening about what was the thought process that led us to this.

And I often say this. The number one thing I want to know if you want me to evaluate your front office or anything like that are they having honest conversations like this or are they telling each other what they want to hear? Sure.

Don't know. No way to know. But I mean it's hard to it is very hard to look at this and not think that they got a little too cute over not very much money and certainly you know you weren't making that trade going

I hope we don't get absolutely rocked in the third period of game seven by this guy. Right, yeah. But it would be nice to have that guy on your team to do the rocking. Sure. But yeah, to me, like, obviously they have some roster questions to answer and, you know, how good is Gabe Landiscag going to be going forward and all that kind of stuff? I don't know the answer to that. I don't think anybody does.

But to your point, I do. I do I do think that the local dissatisfaction with losing to the Dallas Stars two years in a row or whatever

that does to me say that they're going to try to pin McFarland's ass to the wall here

when they do their post seat I don't know that it's going to get like Cam Neely Don Sweeney Boston Media

testy But I think they're going to out for bloods maybe a bit of an overstatement. But I think I think they're going to be demanding answers in the actual, like, what the fuck happened here, press conference for sure. So I don't know. I think that I think it's a positive that that. Well, that's a good thing. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. That's how you know you're a winner team, even though you're in our loser section. Which you are. Yeah. And again. Because you lost. If Dallas goes on and wins the Stanley Cup, I think everybody's talking about this 30% differently in June.

This is absolutely one of those cases where if Dallas wins the Cup and your Colorado, you can retroactively look at it and go, we might have been the second best team in the league this year. Yeah. Now, do you, all this haven't been said, there were some comments from like Nathan McKinnon and like other guys in the room that did, the level of frustration from within.

Like, I'm not talking about what the fans or the media or the experts would ever say. But yeah, they did seem pretty, pretty devastated by it. Yeah, McKinnon said something along the lines of they beat us without their best forward and their best defensemen. So I don't know what we do next was something along those lines. And it's like, that's true. I can chalk that up to like being really disappointed. in the moment. And I'm not saying, like, you know, Colorado has some roster issues.

Like I said, they have some roster issues that need to be worked out for sure. But this is a team that's not afraid to make big changes, obviously. And so if they're going to look at it and like I can, if they're willing to move on from Miko Ranton over 250 grand, I think they can be a little bit kind of Vegas style. We'll fucking trade anybody. we don't give a shit, you know. So if I'm an avalanche fan, I feel kind of good about that. Maybe you don't like who they end up trading, and I get that too.

But like I think that you can count on this management group. Look, here's what it is for me. They turned over like half their roster. I think there was only like six guys who were in their opening night lineup, who were in the lineup in game seven. It's something like that, six, eight guys, something, some small number. They turned over a huge portion of that roster this year.

I think it was like 10 guys out of 20 from opening night to the start of the playoffs, which was close to unprecedented, at least in the cap era. We see turnover like that from teams, but not from teams that make the playoffs. Right. For obvious reasons. and teams with serious cup aspirations even probably more than that.

So to me, like, they're not going to be able to retain all those guys. Brock Nelson's not coming back, et cetera, et cetera. But also, this is a team that guys want to play for. I'll take a little less money to play for the Colorado Avalanche, unless I'm Miko Ranton, apparently. So, like, I'm fairly confident. this is going to be fine right up until it isn't two or three years from now. Right.

At which point, me saying, I maybe wouldn't have given Nathan McKinnon all that money, like two years ago or whenever he got that contract. And everyone was like, what are you talking about? Or, or what he's about to get. Let me ask you one last thing. One less thing on Colorado that I think the people want to hear your take on. The guy sitting behind Jared Bedner, who looked like Jared Bedner, Funny or spicy broccoli?

Kind of in the middle, I would say. I don't know. Like, what I respect is he did kind of make them suits match every game. How did he do that? To me, that's what tips it over. It's a spicy broccoli concept elevated to actually funny by him nailing. It's the commitment, yeah. The commitment to very.

Commitment to veritet. Absolutely. You know, but I'll say this, though. It's going to get a better wig. I thought the hair was pretty good. It was pretty good. Like, this is the thing that when we're watching a movie or a TV show or something, my girlfriend will always be like bad wig.

Like, she can spot it way better than me, you know? And, uh, This one I was spotting from a mile away. Like, are we committing to the bit or are we committing to the bit, you know? Yep. Let's actually grow the hair out for next year. Let's make it happen. That's fair.

Yeah. Any thoughts on St. Louis? What's next for them? I mean, different team with Jim Montgomery. I feel. Totally. I feel okay about them heading into next year as far as being a playoff team. I don't know if the ceiling is.

Super high, but, man, like, it's, it was a good, good run, good second half, gave the Jets, literally all they could handle. You do wonder what a loss like that does to a team. Like, that is a pretty brutal way to lose. And you wonder if it could have an impact on some of the guys going forward. Yeah, I mean, apparently. I didn't see that someone in the discord said they saw someone say this. So like take all this with a grain of salt. But like I don't think you need to make it.

Like they were saying like maybe you trade Kyrie or something like that. That's insane. Although with that having been said, him and Robert Thomas both have no full no trades, I believe, that kick in on July 1 or whatever. So like if you're going to trade one of them, now's the time to do it. I wouldn't do it personally. but my thing is the bottom of their roster and in particular their D group, just not good enough in that division.

Obviously, I love what Jim Montgomery does for teams, regular season success, as much as anybody maybe ever in the history of the NHL at this point, right? His per 82 has to be like 115 points. It's crazy how good Jim Montgomery is as a regular season. coach. I don't know. I'm just going to read you the St. Louis Blues' defense they have signed for next season. Justin Falk, partial no trade clause. Colton Perrako, full no trade. Philip Roberg, no trade, Cam Fowler, partial no trade, Nick Letty, partial no trade, and then, like, Tyler Tucker, Matthew Kessel, right? Like those are your seventh defenseman or whatever you want to say.

Ryan Suter was getting significant minutes for this team. This guy's like almost my age. You know, I look at this blue line, and I say, this is the reason they lost this series. They just don't have the horses back there. And again, I just read that like five of their defensemen have, or four plus Torrey Krug, who knows if he's going to be able to come back. He didn't play it all this year. And if he comes back, that's another real.

really expensive, older defenseman who has trade protection, right? Like, I would say that's a kind of a problem, quite frankly. It's not like he was playing well before he got, he missed this entire season. So this is the number one thing they have to address this summer is they got a, they got a, I say, Colorado, this blue line and turn over a huge percentage of it. This just isn't good enough. I know we all think Cam Fowler, wow, he was a really good player for them after he came over.

That's true. Justin Falk had a decent season for his age. Colton Perrako had a decent season for what he brings to the table. But like, this just isn't a compete with Dallas and Colorado and Minnesota level defense to me. I don't know how else to put it. Yeah, no, I think that's... Oh, I wanted to say this too. I wanted to say this too.

Regarding Colorado, I forgot to say this earlier. Everybody in Colorado, we got to trade the coach or lose the coach. We've got to trade all these guys, make big changes. What's going on? McFarland, he's in trouble. How many teams of the eight teams still standing? Chris McFarland is the GM calls you. And he says, we'll do one for one, our roster for yours, including the coaches.

For the eight teams still in the playoffs, how many say, we're good. Thanks. I mean, yeah, a few of them certainly do. But I'm trying to think who would not, who would take that in a world where anyone would actually have the guts to do it. I think Washington doesn't. I feel like Winnipeg would take that deal? Yeah.

You might be right. Yeah. You're not going to like to hear this. I think Toronto should really think about it. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of teams that would, I don't, Hang up the phone immediately.

Dallas. We're good. We might be the only one. We just beat your asses. And I think you would say Edmonton. Edmonton just for the McDavid factor. That's exactly right. Everybody else, I feel like, like even Vegas, you'd be like,

give me 15 minutes. I'll call you back. Let me think about this. And yet everybody's like, we got to fucking get this roster out of here. These guys are losers. What? anyway. Any other thoughts on the blues from you?

Offer sheets work. Everybody else. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a great lesson. Yeah, I don't, you know, I'd love to see a full season of Jimmy Snuggarood and Jake Neighbors. I think those guys are good.

But other than that, Yeah. Maybe I circle back to this trading Braden Shen thing. Yeah. They got a lot of guys who it's like, oh, he makes that much. Do you know Matthew Joseph makes almost $3 million against the cap? Huh? Yeah. The other thing is that this is, remember, the interesting transition year,

previously announced Doug Armstrong to Alex Steen as G. happens next summer, which means... Next summer, that's what I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the, what does that look like? You're assuming Doug Armstrong isn't just making moves without Steen being right by his side, but how does all that work? To be determined. Yep.

Tampa, they are, they did the thing where they're like, here's the list of all the guys that are injured. And it's like, oh, this guy got hit by a bus before game four. Yeah. Like, just everybody on the team was hurt in that series. And it's the same thing with Colorado for me where people are like, oh, maybe they need to make changes. To me, it's like maybe they lost to the fucking best team in the league. I think you can make the argument, you know? So, like in much the same way, I felt like Dallas and Colorado was the equivalent of a Western Conference final.

I felt like Tampa and Florida was the equivalent of an Eastern Conference final. Yeah, I was surprised at, and we talked about this last week, how many people were picking Tampa, not just to win the series, but to be the best team in the East. Yeah, again, Basilowski just didn't have the juice. I picked Florida to beat Tampa, but that was because of Florida. Not because I thought Tampa was overrated, you know, or they just didn't, yeah, between injuries. Two of the five best teams in the league.

Yeah. Right? I don't know if I'd say five best. Five, six? Like how low could you go on one of these two teams? I feel like you could maybe get to eight, but. Okay. Even still, that's tougher than a normal first round matchup.

Tough bounce for them. But I think we're both in agreement. There's not really a lot to change here. No. Like, I mean, Nikita Kutrov didn't score. Yeah. What do you want to do? You want to go take.

And again, Vasselowski wasn't particularly. particularly good. Change one of those two things and they win the series probably. So, you know, the odds are good that one of, that next year, exact same situation, you're like, okay, well, one of them is going to do that. One of them's going to turn it around because they're both really fucking good. That's like another. More than two points.

And Florida is a great team. Nobody's saying, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So what I would not have done is make a coaching. change. Great news. They're not. Yeah.

Which is, I mean, it's news only because John Cooper's been around forever. And, you know. I understand your coach in the league by a mile. Yeah. Yeah. I would personally, I would not fire the best coach in the league. Yep. And they said they're not.

But it did bubble up. Cooper to Utah was like a thing that people were talking. about. So I went back and I looked at because I was like, that, that's ringing a very faint bell. Cooper to Utah. That's so weird. Why, why am I? And I Googled it and, and like, poked around for a little while. And basically when, apparently everybody but me knew that John Cooper and Ryan Smith are buddies, like golf and buddies or whatever. and John Cooper had come in to talk to like the Utah Jazz coaches and players about like what it takes to win in the playoffs and leadership and all this kind of stuff. Just like came in as like a favor to his buddy and just like talked about, oh, this is what our experience is like, blah, blah, blah. And so people took that that when Tampa was in Utah earlier this season, I want to say in like February,

they just like straight up asked John Cooper like would you ever coach here and he's like well I like it here it's beautiful out here but you know yeah let's leave it at that and we we should like I'm framing this as they didn't fire him there's an element of this that sort of like if John Cooper at any point says you know what I feel like I've I've done what I can do my race has been run here in Tampa it's time to move on then he moves on so it's a bit on him as well, but... I agree, but... No... No change in coming. No... Well, so, okay, to that point, when that series ended,

I saw a couple of people be like, keep an eye, insidery people, not just like some random fucking guy. Like, insidery people, keep an eye. Cooper, Utah, might happen. I think it was Larry Brooks's

and Greg and Jeff Merrick had like talked about it and all this kind of stuff, but like, there was just like this kind of ambient, this could happen thing. And I was like, but the part of all of that reporting is John Cooper has one year left on his contract. Now,

maybe he's earned the right in Tampa's mind to go to them and say, like you said, it feels like we're done here, doesn't it? And maybe Tampa agrees, maybe they don't. But, like, I just never thought there was,

a scenario where they were like, and of course, you can just feel free to just step right over to Utah, go, you know, we're going to rip up this last year of your contract, all this kind of stuff. I never thought that was like a thing that was going to happen. And the only path forward that I saw for that, again, just like in my own mind, I guess, is like if Utah made him the GM or the president of hockey operations or how, you know, whatever, like, they gave him a promotion. NHL teams will generally let guys go if they're getting a promotion. We think you're a great assistant coach, but this team is offering you a head coaching job. Have fun out there. You know, we're proud of you. I could have seen that, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. And in fact, Julian Breezebaugh in his like end of season press conference was like, and not only is he going to be back next year, we hope he's back for many years to come. So there you have it. they are not dissatisfied with John Cooper, nor should they be.

Anything else on Tampa? They'll be back next year. Tampa is a team that is much closer than Colorado to falling off that cliff, but I don't think it happens. For sure, yeah. I wouldn't be completely blown away if it did, but I don't think it happens. Yeah, and they just have basically the entire roster signed for next year. I'm going to give you a list of their UFAs.

Yanny Gord probably can't come back unless he takes like cheap money, which he might because he's a Tampa guy, you know? Cam Atkinson, Luke Lindening, Nick Purbix, Yonis Johansson. That's it. Everybody else is signed for next year. So these guys aren't going anywhere for me. Minnesota. Nothing really, I don't think anybody thought like, oh, they should have,

they should have won their series or anything like that. I don't, you know, nothing really to say here for me, except Carol Caprizov seems very amenable to signing what would be a monster extension. I'm looking forward to this one. Yep.

And they seem very amenable as well. Like this. Oh, they've already said, we will make him the highest paid player in the league or something like that. Does feel like a little. Or no, we'll give him a bigger,

we'll give him a bigger contract than literally anybody. else in the league would, is basically what they said. You think he gets to the dry saddle number? I think he might even surpass it, yeah. Yeah, that's a, I think he might as well. I mean, he's, he can enjoy having the biggest contract in the league right up until whenever Connor McDavid wants to sign his extension, but. Yeah.

Yeah, that's. So what's the dry sidle number again? Is it 14? 14, I think. 14, even, maybe, or? Let's see. Well, I can just look it up. I'm on the fucking website right now. Here we go.

14 even. Here's 14 and a quarter for you, Carol. Thank you. Time's eight. You go? Yeah, sure. Why not? If you're them, you can't afford to lose this player.

I wouldn't, I'm never going to feel great about giving how old is Caprizo I'm going to be at the end of next season. 29. I'm not going to feel great about it giving a guy whose game is like that, eight years at age 29. Yeah. But.

you don't really have a choice. Because if you're letting him walk, you're fucked. You're just saying, well, we're like, no one's going to come here and let us, you know, be worth this kind of money. So I don't, you know, I just, I just think that if you're, if you're letting him walk or he's deciding he's walking, you have way bigger problems than what he looks, what he might look like in, in 2020 or 2033 or whatever. You know. Any thoughts on this is it for Mark Andre Fleury. You care?

I mean, great player, great career is going to be in the Hall of Fame. Yes. By all accounts, a cool, nice guy, happy trails to him. Yeah. And I enjoyed all eight of his farewell games. Mm-hmm. That's right. Yep.

I, you know, I don't really. Oh, he's playing at the World Championships. Isn't that crazy? Not really. I don't know. I just can't care about who is or isn't at the world championships. I do not care about the world championships at all right up until Canada's in the final, in which case I will. Oh, yeah.

And Canada with Sidney Crosby, Nathan McKinnon, yeah, those guys are going to fucking annihilate the checks, you know? Like that's whatever. I just, I can't get up for it. I got bigger hockey games to watch over here. It is cool that Crosby McKinnon like there was clearly a text chain there. Yeah.

You know, like text him Sunday morning. Like, hey, man, I know you're a little ticked off about game seven, but you want to take a roadie? How'd you like to get one step closer to the triple goal club, my friend? Dude, like, what do you do, right? When you might already be. When your buddies going through a tough time, Let's go, man.

Come on a little road to you and me. Let's go ahead for fun. Let's see. You just lost game seven? You want to go over to Europe and just absolutely destroy some... He already has World Championship gold, this McKinnon guy. Yeah, there you go. I wouldn't have guessed.

So I guess we just need to get him an Olympic gold medal then, it seems like, for him to be triple gold. Well, there you have it. The New Jersey Devils. Any takes? Any thoughts? We've, geez, it feels like we did the post-mortem on them last week. It does. It feels like we kind of did the post-mortem on them, maybe even before the playoff started. Look, I'm not saying you just write off this season and this postseason because Jack Hughes wasn't there, but I don't think you make a bunch of big decisions.

based on outcomes when your franchise player wasn't available. Yeah, there's nothing to really do. The only thing is, don't you at least call Vancouver and say, hey, what's this about Luke Hughes wanting to play here? Or Quinn Hughes, I mean? Luke Hughes does probably want to play there. He's already...

You probably would like to. But, yeah, I'm calling up, Jim. Here's what we do, man. Let's just put Jim Rutherford and is still Tom Fisherald in New Jersey? Yeah. It is, right? That's right.

Put him in a room. You guys do not come out until you have a trade that has all the Pughes brothers on the same team. Figure it out. One way or another. And to me, that kind of trade is like when you're going to bring like the wolf and the sheep and the bag of grain across the river and you only have space for one in the boat, you know what I'm talking about? Yep, that's exactly what you do. So, but yeah, to me, if you're in New Jersey, that's all, it might be priority number one. Just like, let's see if we can make this happen.

Everybody would fucking love it, except Vancouver fans, but we'll talk about them in a bit. They're not officially part of Loser Corner. No. Although, you know. They wish. Yeah. The other thing with New Jersey is you just go, if, if. If this playoffs accomplished anything, it did make you feel good about Jacob Markstrom as your guy that you invested in.

Yeah, and Simone Nemich, quite frankly. Yep. It also makes you feel a little bit bad in the sense that you, when got a 34-year-old goalie hoping he could stand on his head in the playoffs, and he did, and it didn't matter. But I think you focus on the positive and you go, you know what? We got the right guy. Let's get healthy. and see where it goes. Yep.

I kind of feel like it's the same for Montreal. Yeah, I mean, Montreal, they don't have, like, the injury to blame it on, but, yeah, Montreal. Well, they got the goaltending injury. Yeah, I guess. Montreal, you're never just happy to be there in the playoffs, but they should have been just happy to be there. They were. Learned a lot of lessons. You know, certainly didn't get rolled, didn't get smoked.

They gave the caps a series. And in theory, better days ahead. We've seen lots of teams get to this point. And then when everyone's like, oh, okay, we'll just write them into the playoffs for the next 10 years, they take a step back. That's not rare. But if I'm a Habs fan, I'm finishing this season with a smile on my face. Sure. Yeah. I think they've got to make some upgrades to the roster a little bit.

But other than that, I'm not, I'm not getting too worked up about any of this if I'm them. Kind of the same thing with Ottawa. Apparently we're doing more of the soft tampering. I saw a thing where it was like Brady Kachuk's like, no, I want to be in Ottawa. I guess we're going to do this every six months now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I mean, I guess that's just going to be an ongoing thing. But he's been really clear.

What were your thoughts? as a neutral observer on Ottawa in the playoffs. Like how did you feel about their... They did a little better than I thought they'd do. Okay. I am a little bit surprised, not even surprised, because we all love a storyline, but like how many people are like,

oh, Brady Kachok was fantastic in the playoffs. He was fine. Yeah. He had, you know, he had one goal the Leafs kicked into their own net. He had a couple of assists on empty netters. He had the one really nice goal to tie the game that was like, you know. But he was, he was fine, but I didn't, if I was looking for like, oh man, once playoff Brady gets unleashed, I was kind of let down by, I thought to be honest with you, like not.

It's like I said last week, like the reason I thought the Leafs were going to win that. series was that they just have guys who can like pull incredible plays out of their asses, you know, and, and Ottawa kind of didn't. And Brady Kachuk is like, the A number one, like, that's a really good player. I like Brady Kachuk a lot, but like his style of game just doesn't lend itself to. And here's the spectacular. Nobody could make this kind of a play play that like Matthews or Marner or Willie Nealander can. that's just not how Brady Kachukh plays the game, and that's fine.

But you do kind of need a guy who can do that, and I don't know if Ottawa has that. I'm a little concerned about Linus L. Mark having a not great playoffs, although he certainly was better as the series went on. But yeah, and I would also say that, you know, if we're talking about them in Montreal, I feel much, much, much more confident penciling the senators into a playoff spot next year than Montreal. Yeah, not even close for me. Yeah. I wonder how much of a step back Montreal takes.

I don't know that they're getting this kind of season out of Sam Montaubo and Jacob Dobish again. You know? But, hey, good for them. Good for both teams. Like, nice to have one of them, let alone both of them, weasel their way past the Bruins and the Rangers for, for a wild card spot, you know? Mm-hmm. All right, that's it for loser teams.

Let's let's... Now we go to the mega losers. Yeah, that's right. The teams that aspire to be loser teams. Do you want to do draft lottery, or do you want to do coaches? Let's do the coaches first. Great, okay.

Because the lottery is kind of more of a good news. We can work our way down to the depths of misery and then bounce back up and get out of here. Mike Sullivan hired with the New York Rangers. Shocking. Yeah, nobody saw this coming. I don't know if he fixes what's wrong with the Rangers. I think he's a good coach,

and I think he's a better coach than Peter Lavie-Aulet. But what's wrong with the Rangers this past year? Really low power play shooting percentage. Couldn't get an Igor Shisterkin-like performance from Piggy-Yigie. Yeah. But both of those things had been okay a year before, and are likely to rebound, which means Mike Sullivan is

likely to get credit for... Like, if he's a better coach than Peter Lavillette, and I agree with you, I'd have him higher on my rankings, I... The Rangers weren't that far away from being back in the playoffs,

even in a season where everything went wrong. So this is to me... This is still a front office issue. Yep, a million percent. this is okay. They went and got the coach, which who they needed to,

good Lord, if they had not managed to close that deal. Yeah, that's right. Look out. But now how big are the changes? How much more can they do to this roster versus just Chris Sturie just go, okay, you got your new coach,

now we move on. I don't know. That's going to be the, I was going to say the million dollar question, but it's a bigger number than that. Yeah. Well, and the other thing too is, Like, okay, they get back into the playoffs next year.

Is that what the aspiration is now if you're the Rangers? We're just going to get back in. Maybe we get to like 98 points. Like, to me, that's who gives a shit territory if I'm a, if I'm a Reigning fan. I'm like. Yes, except then you're in the playoffs with Igor Shisterkin as your goalie. I guess. But I just, obviously we don't know what, what's going to happen this summer with player movement and stuff like that.

But I wasn't like. super high on this Rangers team coming into this year. Now everybody's a year older. And otherwise we're not making a ton of changes? I don't know. You know?

That's just kind of my like if you want to tell them, like if you came back in a time machine and you were like, you're never going to believe it. The Rangers were the fifth best team in the Eastern Conference next season. I go, I totally believe that.

Is that all we're aspiring to now for the Rangers? We want to be like fourth or fifth best in the East. Mm-hmm. That's not good enough for me, if I'm a Ranger fan. No, shouldn't be. But you got to get there, you got to get back to that before you can get back to where you were, you would think.

You would, you would think, but famously, these guys just won the President's trophy last year. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I'm kind of meeting in the middle on, and, you know, best team in the league versus whatever they were from the bottom this year, 10th worst or whatever. I don't know. Okay, they're the fifth best team in the east. Great. That's awesome, man.

At that point, trade everybody. I don't know. Like, I'd rather blow it up quite frankly. They wouldn't do it, but, like, I'd rather blow it up at that point. Yeah. Hey, we had another coaching change. This was a classic puck soup curse. I think this was announced, like, two hours after we stopped recording.

Rick Tockeet didn't want to come back to Vancouver after all. Even though, I don't know if you heard, Sean, they actually made him a fabulous offer, one of the most outstanding offers that you're ever going to see. They should put that out there to the media in some way. Yeah, I mean, we fuck soup curse, but we had sort of discussed it already. It really felt like that writing was on the wall. It did. You know, as soon as they didn't exercise the option, you kind of felt like there was a very,

very, very good chance that this is where it was going. And some people would say even before that, when the Philadelphia job opened up, but it's worth noting, it's, you know, we're a week later and he hasn't gone to Philadelphia yet. Yet, yeah. Yeah. Again, I think he's just kind of going, hey, the Flyers, I don't know if you know this. I used to play for the Penguins too. Just something for you to think about maybe tack an extra 80 grand on every, uh, you know, on every year of that A-AV for me.

What do you say, you know? All X-Fliers, man. It's so crazy how all the best candidates for jobs in Philadelphia are always X-Fliers. Yep. But this creates a really interesting situation in Vancouver because to me, if you had said, hey, whose side is Rick Tocke on in the Pedersen-Miller situation? I think his postseason comments kind of, you know, if everything else, you know, being equal, his postseason comments where he talked about, Patterson's going to do a lot to get better and, you know, stay competitive and all this. And he's like, and I'm a J.T. Miller fan. You know?

So to me, that's always kind of like, oh, the team picked the wrong guy if they wanted to keep Rick Tockett. I think ultimately I would say they picked the right guy for like financial, whatever. Anyway, but I just wonder who is, like, psyched to be, you know, there's only 32 of these, from what I understand. But who's psyched to be taking this Vancouver job? Like, of the current job openings in the NHL, what number would you rank the Vancouver job right now? Well, let's, okay, so let's do that. We've got seven job openings, I believe. Yes.

Counting the interim guys in Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston that are not. that in theory could come back. I would put Vancouver ahead of Seattle, and I would put it ahead of Pittsburgh, even though obviously the chance to coach Sidney Crosby would feel very cool. I think you can make a pretty good argument that Boston is as well. Yep. But the fact that we're...

The fourth and fifth, I would say. Well, okay. So, I mean, is it worse than... Philadelphia? I would say it probably is worse than Philadelphia. Philadelphia, you can say, well, I mean, Matt Veimichkov. Anaheim and Chicago, I think, are clearly ahead. Yeah, I think that's probably right.

And again, it depends on the coach, right? Obviously, there's any coach who doesn't want to be part of a rebuild, blah, blah, blah. Well, and again, to me, to me, I say this all the time. The big thing that I'm worried about if I'm the coach or the GM or whoever is like how much am I going to have to talk to the guy who owns the team? And it seems like in Vancouver, the guy who owns the team really has your ass on speed dial, you know? And they don't have a practice rank. This is apparently another huge problem for Rick Talk. They're the only team in the league that doesn't have a practice rank, which is,

insane, you know? And to me, at a certain point, I'm just like, you know what? I know the Bruins job is like, quote unquote, worse than this. But the expectations in Vancouver are we need to be in the playoffs. And I don't know, because if I'm the coach coming in and I can't get this team into the playoffs next season because of like how the team is run from the top down, I'm feeling like the GMs. on his ass. And then I'm feeling like my job security is not in particularly good shape either. Like, if you get hired in Boston, it's maybe the same situation. I think it is. I think one year away from. Yeah. But I don't know.

I guess maybe I just kind of feel like Boston has a better chance. Like this was kind of a, like an unbelievable fluke bad year for the Bruins. Like everybody had the Bruins in the playoffs this year pretty much. much, right? Like, nobody saw this coming. Yep. And so you're just like, I don't know, Jeremy Swimming Bounces back. And we have a full season of McAvoy and maybe Lynn Holm.

We're not having this conversation. In Vancouver, it's like, yep, Thadger Demko couldn't play this year, but we got actually kind of like unbelievable goaltending room, Kevin Lankinen. And all I'm going to do, if I'm coming in and taking the Vancouver job, I just got to fix Elias Pedersen. Oh, fuck. That's bad. I've got to do that. $70 million question.

And the Quinn Hughes thing is hanging over the whole scene. Like, I think this is, like, a low-key who would want to take this job job. Okay. Might be right. Is that crazy? Like, you know, you tell me, but. And I haven't heard, like, a bunch of names associated with it. No.

No, no, no. Sort of strange. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. If I'm Vancouver, I'm. well, I'll tell you this. I know who I'm not signing.

David Carl, he's not going to be available to you. Just signed a big extension yesterday to stay in Denver. And like, the details of this are really like, I'm going to see if I can pull this up here. Denver is not a public institution so they don't have to like reveal the salaries or whatever. But this is the press release on Denver, the university. of Denver's website. Denver, comma, David Carl,

further commitment to future excellence of pioneers hockey. Multi-year contract extension furthering his commitment to the program's success in the near and long-term future, terms not disclosed of the deal.

But, along with the extension, Carl is also committing to a multi-year major gift pledge to support current and new initiatives within the hockey program. Carl will be the first member I'm sorry, Carl will be the first Denver head coach to join the department's Gold Standard Society.

His gift will directly support the Murray Armstrong Hockey Student Athletic Enhancement Fund and Athletics Excellence Fund. And I'm going to look up how much money you're going to give Denver to, for the Gold Standard Society. We could throw some of the Patreon money on that and get our name.

Let's see here. The gold standard, a philanthropic giving society to benefit all 18, donors that pledge a minimum of $50,000 to DU Athletics across a maximum four-year period with at least 10,000 of that allocated to the Athletics Excellent Fund will receive a four-year membership to the gold standard. Maybe that's not as much money as you would think, honestly. I got to think David Carl is not just like cutting up $150,000 check and saying, okay, you know, off we go. But this is him saying you give to me, I give back to you. This is a symbiotic relationship.

And hopefully that just gets everybody to stop fucking talking about David Carl signing with the Seattle Cracken or whatever. For a couple of years at least, yeah. Let's fingers cross this thing because like I'm sick of hearing about it. And I'm sure you want to talk about someone who's sick of it, him. Apparently. Well, it doesn't have to hear about it now. Hopefully now. Let's just real quick. Yeah.

Almost even just yes or no. Somebody hiring Joel Cuenville this summer? Oh, I think so, yeah. Mm-hmm. His name's really coming up a lot in Anaheim, which feels a bit... It is. I mean, I guess it feels a bit weird because my initial thought is an older coach like that with the cup rings is going to go somewhere that's a little more ready to win right now.

Mm-hmm. But, I mean, you look at the Chicago team he took over. That was almost 20 years ago, but that was a young team ready to take the step. If Patverbeek thinks that's where Anaheim's at. I think he has some misapprehension about that for sure. But yeah, I think he probably does end up in Anaheim to answer your question. Okay. Do you also think that or no?

I mean, I think it only because the whole where there's smoke, there's fire thing, there does feel like a lot of smoke. Hey, he could be the next pope speaking of. Oh, wow. Good for him. I don't know. He might not be Catholic. That feels, well, I mean.

It's not stopping some people, I guess. Hey, man, I've seen, I saw the movie. I know that you can surprise people. Yeah. Twist ending. Finally, I couldn't believe that this didn't get hyped up. well in advance. But like late last week, the NHL's like, oh, by the way, we're like pulling all the lottery balls live on national TV in two countries.

I was like, this should have gotten hype for weeks. What are we doing here, guys? I will say this. And, I mean, they, they, it seems as if they didn't, they didn't do it because they didn't make the decision. I was a little bit. Classic NHL. I was a little bit surprised, and maybe I shouldn't have been at the number of people because I tweeted about this and basically said, I thought it was great.

I thought they knew it. I thought it was fantastic. The fact that they did it, because even when they said we're going to do it live, I went into this 80% expecting they were just going to draw four balls and then turn to Bill Daly, and he would say this team is won. The fact that they did it. one at a time and then They told you the combos

With three, once they had three down They showed you like that was just a plus Awesome You and I are on the same page We spend how much time crapping on this league For never getting anything right? I thought that was, I thought it was great I thought awesome

I could have tweeted, I could have done without You know, you pick the last ball And then there was like this weird pause While Bill Daley double checks things And then you say who won but that's minor. But I was surprised at the number of people who were like, I did not understand what was going on.

I didn't get it with the, you know, I do think even though the league has been pretty transparent on how this works, there are still people expecting that it's just going to be some ping pong balls with logos on them. And we're going to do that. Well, so, yeah, I mean, Sean, like, you got to understand that, like, you can go on the website or on any website that, that does movies and they'll just be like conclave ending explained.

Yes. It's like a movie that couldn't have a more straightforward plot and ending is just like, let me break down for you why they didn't pick Cardinal Adiamy or whatever. One of my favorite, you're gonna be fucking dumb with the dog shit. Ads and it was like a social media thing was like when cocaine bear came out. And the guy was like, I promise you will not be Googling cocaine bear ending explained on the way out of this.

And I was like, boom, I'm in. I love it. And I didn't, I, I, I wanted cocaine bear. It wasn't as fun as you would think a movie called cocaine bear would be. It was just, it was weird when the whole thing ended up being a dream. And he was actually a heroin mongoose. Did, well, did you see, did you actually see cocaine bear or no? Of course I did.

Ryan. I mean, I, just because I only see one movie every three months. Yes, we saw cocaine bear. Okay. I didn't like it very much. I was, I was expecting a way more fun time at the movies. Okay. here and or there for the, I think,

2023 film Cocaine Bear, an August dump, if I remember right. But yeah, to me, like... The draft lottery to cocaine bear in like two steps. Hell yeah. To me, I just... I'm never surprised when someone's like, I didn't get this. It's like, yeah, man.

You have... It is pretty complicated, too. You have no object permanence, that's why, you know? Other than that, hey, chef's kiss, man. Yes, they nailed it. It was sick. Absolutely crushed it.

When they went to commercial for the final lottery ball, I just started laughing. I was like, this is good shit. The only way could have been better is when you get to the last number, now you go elimination style. Whatever the last ball left here is the one. But you know what? You save that for the Connor McDavid years. By the way, speaking of dumb people, the joke I made was that when they were just showing you the lottery balls being fed into the hopper in like sequential order, the joke I made on the Puck Soup Discord was all the CHL players are like, oh, I wonder what's going to happen next.

That was very, I mean, I get why they have to do it, but like the guy showing it to Gary Batman and Gary Batman is like. I agree. That's an eight on that ball. Awesome. I'm going to go four on that one, Big Dot. All right. But yeah, I thought it was great. I loved them just like cutting to everybody.

Do we know why Kyle Dubas is in Budapest right now? Is there like a big hockey tournament in Budapest right now that I don't know about? Kyle Dubas low-key seems like the sort of guy who would go on a retreat with Aaron Rogers. go sit in the dark for Yeah, because isn't, like the world championships aren't in Budapest, are they? No, they're in the Chetia. Yeah, so why's this guy in fucking Budapest?

Dude, have you never seen a Disney movie? Like, these got, there's a, he has found a talent. They just got to teach this kid to skate and, uh, look out. That's cool. So the Islanders win. Oh, no, it's in Stockholm this year. That's right. Because there was a Swedish player who wanted to play.

It was a goalie, and they were like, how we're actually going in a different direction, Big Dog. I found that very, like, all the exit things where it's like, you know, this guy's not going to the world championships. He's hurt. This guy's not going to the world championships. He wants to spend, you know, some time recuperating. Not going to the world championships. He's getting married. And then, like, some of the guys were like, yeah, I wasn't invited.

But thanks for bringing it up. you know, yes, I would love to go, but they said no. Islanders get the number one pick. They do. Do they... Well, Sean, can I say this first? Yeah, yeah. Fucking fix is in, man.

The governor sends you one letter and you're like, okay, okay, you can have the number one pick in the draft. Don't yell at us anymore. Do you see this? That's right. Yeah. About the governor of New York? I didn't see. Was this about the All-Star stuff?

Yeah, Kathy Hockle, I believe, is... I don't know. Hockel, however you pronounce her name. She was like, hey, I thought we had an agreement that there was going to be an all-star game here. And then like three paragraphs down, she's like, I'll tell you this, better be something at 2027. And it's like great news. They already said there's going to be something in 2027. And that's something rhymes with small star game.

Don't worry about it, you know. But yeah, the governor sends one letter. They win the fucking, they win the draft lottery. The fix is in. Fixes in. Is James Hagan's on the here, either as a first overall pick or as a potential trade down a couple spots, seeing as he's a local kid grew up an Islanders fan. Yeah. Probably has a few photos of him with some Islanders bed sheets.

Yeah, you got to get the assurances that not, like, even if you're trading down to two, you're going to be like, and you're not taking Hagan's, right? and they're like, no, we're taking Schaefer. Okay, then we're fine here. So you got to like Brian Burke with the Siddines sort of deal? A million percent, yes. You have to. That's the only, because if you, because if you, I'm just, I don't know the, you know, the, prospects in general, but like, is, this guy, this guy was mentioned as a first overall

pick for much of the year. And then now he seems to be fourth and fifth on a lot of list. Yeah. So he, it seems like there's not a huge amount of separation. There's, I think, some question as to whether he's going to be a center in the NHL. He might end up being a winger. But he was a center for Boston College, probably the best October to April team in the country this past season. And look, he played next to Gabe Perrault and Ryan Leonard for a lot of that.

So that obviously is going to help you look good. But he, as a 17-year-old, certainly didn't look out of place. centering the top line for BC this year. But he had a huge stretch of the season where like the puck just wasn't going in the net form. He was shooting like 4% or something like that. And so I think that along with he, you know, he didn't, he didn't look like Macklin Celebrini.

Let's put it that way. I just think he didn't blow team like NHL teams away as much as you would have wanted him to if you thought he was going to be a number one pick. And with Schaefer, obviously he's a defenseman who scored a lot. you know, limited to, limited by injuries for his appearances. I don't know how much I think any of these, like, top three, four, five picks are going to be in the NHL next season.

I'll tell you this. I think if Higgins goes back to BC, I didn't watch Mesa or any, like I don't watch the OHL, you know. But if Higgins goes back to the NCAA next season, this feels like a Hobie Baker candidate to me. Okay. Obviously, you'd need to see who else BC has in the hopper here, you know, but. So this is the other thing, though.

Rumors of your Michael Meese is also going to the N.A. next year if he's not in the NHL. A little bit of news yesterday. It's announced that his brother is going to play for Penn State. And Penn State, you might, you might know. recognize them as a team that has a shitload of money to throw around. So it's just something to think about for old Michael Mesa as well. Yep.

And the Penn State just went to the Frozen Four. They got a really good transfer for their blue line. There's going to be some opportunities there, I think. So I don't, again, maybe Michael Mesa is just playing in the NHL next year and you're happy to have them or whatever if you're, if you're. Maybe he goes to Buffalo and they're both getting that Terry Pagula money. Wow. Where's Buffalo picking? They would

They're not that high. They're like, no, not that high. They're like, no, not that high or something, I think. But yeah, so to me, um,

I just don't know that any of these guys is like a franchise changing pick. But Schaefer, it seems to be the guy where it's like, he's going to be a number one defenseman in the league this year, or not this year, but like in the future. And so I just feel like,

if you're the islanders, to circle it all back to your question here, if you're the islanders, you can't not take James Hagan's kind of. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if that's the case, then I, frankly, you'd probably rather trade down. You know what you need to do first? What's that? Hire a GM.

Oh, yeah. Oops. Oops. Just a phone ringing unanswered in a Islander's office right now. Yeah. Anyways, great job by the NHL. Yeah. Honestly, I won't say no notes, but.

Well, I got another, I got another thing I got to bring up here, Sean. The fucking fix is in. You give us, you buy the Arizona coyotes from us and you win the draft lottery second. Come on. Fixes in. Fixed. Simply put the fixes in. And, you know, people are like, well, if they were going to fix it, they'd fix it for,

Chicago. Well, if they fixed it for Chicago, then Chicago can't get McKenna next year. That's right. They fix it for Pittsburgh. It's too obvious. Like, they're going to, they did it this way to show you the fix wasn't in. Yeah, the fix isn't in for Arizona, or Utah, rather, because they only, they only, they only won the second one. Yeah. I'm just saying next year. And the fix isn't in for the Islanders, because like, if you were fixing it for a New York team, you would fix it for the, Rangers, right? Wink. Wink.

I'm just saying when they do this next year, just keep an eye on how many fingers Gary Bettman has when he's going to think bong balls out

because the fix is in. No. And we all agree that the fix is in. You got any plugs for our show? If I'm at the athletic,

I'll be on with Sean Gentilly tomorrow. I don't think we have Frankie, but we will be probably talking about

Sam Bennett I guess Wow And you can find my work there I think it looks like We're going to bring back An old favorite that I haven't done in a few years Which is games

That single-handedly determined The lottery outcome Cool I love it And we're also doing a rules court Later in the week And if that's not enough Me for you

And it absolutely should be Because it's way more than enough Yeah, people just don't have enough access to your opinions. Get on the Red Light Newsletter. Go find it. Subscribe. Maybe I'm getting out over my skis here, but are you bringing back the commercials that are annoying thing? We're hoping to.

We usually do that later in the playoffs. I'm about to... I think some people say that they're not as annoying this... Those people are fucking insane. Good. There is a... Okay. This is going to be my...

my place to air this out. Everybody's complaining about the Jennifer Coolidge, Wayne Gretzky commercial. Do you know about this? I have heard something about this, yes. Okay. I haven't seen it, but I've heard. I don't want to steal your bit.

I know that somebody else on this podcast's bit to steal your bit. But the Liberty Mutual commercial that I know you haven't seen, I am going to parody in Minecraft, everybody involved in this commercial. And it's mostly because... So the premise of the commercial is this show. There's a guy who has been in previous Liberty Mutual ads, and he like...

How do you want to say this? He can't get his line right. He keeps saying Liberty Bibbriety instead of Liberty Mutual. It doesn't make any fucking sense. No. In this commercial, he is arguing with a baby who her first word is Liberty. and this guy is arguing with the baby

that it's actually pronounced Biberty and it's like, I've seen you say Liberty in a different commercial. You know that it's Liberty. What the fuck are you talking about? It's fired up, folks. I hate this commercial and it's, I'm going to say twice an ad break.

It's insane. The guy knows how to say Liberty. I've seen him do it. Piss me off. Everybody tuned into this podcast expecting one of us to be really fired. up and angry. They got what they were looking for. And this isn't even me getting into the horrible writing of hitting the joke that he's arguing with a baby three times in the last

five seconds of this commercial. He says, you're acting really immature and she's like, or no, the woman says, you're acting really immature. And he said, she's the one acting like a baby. And the woman says she's two. And it's like, no, I got that it was a baby. It's in a stroller for fuck's sake. the worst The worst commercial I'd rather see a thousand tarotara Look at her goes Wow

Oh that's how much I hate this fucking commercial Damn That ain't good No I'm nothing to say about Limu-emu though He's fine still Anyway

Patreon.com slash fuck soup We got all kinds of bonus episodes over there We're gonna be doing a A call-in show on the Discord that we do every month with the listeners in the next little while here. Tough to nail down people's schedules this time of year, folks. I don't know what you want me to say to you.

But yeah, so keep an eye out for that. And then I head over to elite prospects.com. Sign up for, you know, all the different tiers of content because we got the draft guide coming very soon. And you're going to want to have that hot off the presses, the PDF presses. So I know that is coming in the very near future. So keep an eye out for that. And that's it.

Thanks so much for listening. And we will be back next week. And that's that. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Bye-bye.