Puck Soup - Sean Is Upset!

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Sean and Ryan try to wrap their heads around the Matt Murray trade, then talk about the draft, the goalie carousel, the free agent market and more.   Sponsored by Athletic Greens (athleticgreens.com/puck)

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And I just want to say, for everybody who's like, oh, Ryan just goes on big long rants and Sean just sit there.

there. He's the rational one. He says two things. And we love Sean and we hate Ryan. I'm just going to say three words. I'm going to activate Sean like a Manchurian candidate. And then I'm going to go, like I'll take a walk, come back in 45 minutes. Matt Murray trade. Oh, Christ. Yeah, this is, with the obvious caveat that you never know with goaltenders. And yes, Kyle Dubus and everyone who works at the Leafs are smarter than me and all of that stuff. Oh, dude, like, explain this to me. Explain how... This trade is putting the M in Kyle Dubus. Let's put it that way.

Yeah. It doesn't make sense, really. Because, you know, anytime you're making trades and acquiring trades, players, whether you're drafting them, trading for them, signing them as free agents, whatever, you are taking on an inherent risk, right? Is this draft pick going to be a bust? Is this signing going to look bad in three years? Is the guy I traded away?

Is this guy going to come back and, like, haunt me because he, you know, the change of scenery work now for him, whatever, right? And so really it's about taking on risk and finding ways to mitigate. the risk. This is a trade that seems to me to be insanely high risk in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah. And maybe the best way for me to describe my apprehension on this deal is to, I'll sort of

frame a couple of the arguments in favor of it and why I'll, and why I'll, I don't find those convincing. Like, first of all, the worst sign of this is that, you know, whenever a deal gets out, and we'd known for a couple days this seemed like it was coming, certain types of fans just start talking themselves into it. That's what fans do. That's fine. And then they will go looking for people who have not been talked into it and try to spread the good word.

And the number one argument in favor of Matt Murray that I heard was, Well, goaltending's crazy, so who knows? Exactly, yeah. Which is maybe a reason not to be completely fatalistic, but it's not a reason to go and get a guy at 4. Whatever million. Seven, I believe. When you just gave up a first round pick to get away from a guy

who was pretty similar on the surface at 3.8 million. The other arguments that I've heard well, the Leafs have a connection with this. Well, hold on. Can we say about Peter Mazzaric, as Commissioner Jerry Bevan said multiple times. The Miss. The thing that I would say, again, like playing devil's advocate here, they tried it with him, but didn't fucking work.

Yeah. You know? Like, that's a devil you know thing. We know this guy is the devil. Yeah. You know who tried it with Matt Murray? He gives up a lot of them. One of the worst teams in the league tried it with Matt Murray.

And after two years, they were like, this is our third best goalie. Let's use assets to give him away. And the Leafs who consider themselves a Stanley Cup contender were like, that's probably our guy right there. The guy who can't crack the top two for what has been a bottom feeder team. So, yeah, the connections like, you know, oh, Kyle Dubos had him in Suez-A-Marie, the Leaf's new goaltending guru, not the coach, but like their development guy,

coached him as a kid. I don't care. I don't care who knew him when he was nine years old. Like, what are we doing here? That is classic shit. Like, it really... That's parody-level hockey-man thinking. That's what I was going to say.

Because it's one of those things where, you know, these guys played together when they were 12 years old. And so that's why this UFA is going to sign in this place because he really wants to play with the guy he knew when he was in sixth grade or whatever. And like you would say that as a joke. You would say that. But then Kyle Dewas actually did it. Yeah. It's crazy. I don't care what type of guy he was.

when he was nine this is when he was 17 he's 28 now like I'm much more concerned with what he can do as a goalie now so I you know

I don't I don't buy that argument I don't I don't completely although I don't completely dismiss I don't completely buy the argument that hey if as long as you take out his worst games he's pretty good

you know if true of literally every player that ever played a professional sport. Look, if you just take out the guys like, whatever, a quarter of the guy's worst games, it's a borderline all-star, well, no shit. If you only count the games where he was good, he was really pretty good.

Now, the reason I say I don't completely discount that is that in Murray's case, just looking at last year, he started the season, he wasn't great, then he went down, came back, up. Nice. And yeah, you got sent down to the miners by a terrible team, which is always a good sign. Came back, played pretty well for a decent stretch. And the other thing is that if you look at his numbers for last year, yeah, it's ridiculous

to just take away the bad games. But if you just take away the last game where he got absolutely shelled by Arizona of all teams, they lost eight to one, he got hurt in that game. didn't play again the rest of the year. If you just take out that single game, his numbers for the season are actually decent, not amazing, and it still would be like 19 games a sample,

but they'd be okay. So, you know, and when it's the obviously tanking Arizona Coyotes putting up eight goals, maybe that's the one you just write off as an all-time outlier and, you know, whatever. Okay, but he's, But here's the thing with that. Ryan, I'm trying to be optimistic here.

Please don't. Hold on. Hold on. All right. You know what other game he was really bad in? The game immediately before that Arizona game, he gave up five on 22 to Tampa. Yeah. Now, granted, that's Tampa Bay Light.

Went to the Stanley Cup final. They won the previous two Stanley Cups. I get that. But if you, hell, if you take those two games out, he's a 920 goalie in the 18 games he played last season. So now we're taking out like 10% of his. worst. That's right. The last argument in favor of this that I

adamantly reject that I've been hearing a lot of is well what were they supposed to do? Who else is available? Who's there right now on the market? It's this.

It's Jack Campbell, which sounds like it probably cost you five years and five million. Or it's Darcy Kemper who costs you more than that. and that's it. You know, the other guys were all gone. You know, other guys have all been traded. Other guys have all been locked up.

So, you know what? There's nobody else. Kyle Dubas didn't become the GM three days ago. Like, he didn't get dropped off a helicopter into this situation, surveyed the landscape and go, oh, crap, there's no goalies. He's been the GM for four years. Certainly been the GM all of this offseason. So if the goal,

goalie market dried up, if he was missing out on better options, then that's on him. You don't get to turn around now and go, well, there was nobody else. So if this is the best they could do, and, you know, the thing is, even if you have completely convinced yourself that we can fix this guy, we've got the connections, we know them, we like them, we've got the right system in place. Yes, the senators were a tire fire defensively last year. You know, you've convinced yourself everything, it's moving up. I'm looking at this going, who else

was bidding on Matt Murray? We know the Sabres were interested. There was a deal. He didn't waive as no trade, so that fell apart. Who else out there was looking for Matt Murray? The senators are a broke team with no money, like no cash.

Lots of cap space, but a cash poor organization. This guy's about to make $8 million a year. There was no way the senators could keep him. the senators had to buy him out or trade him. How is it possible that at the very least, you're not calling up the senator saying, the conversation starts at 50% retained?

Do not call us with any offer that isn't 50%. I was listening to 32 thoughts yesterday, and Elliott said, hey, you know, there might be a third team involved here. And it's like, oh, if you can get Matt Murray at 25%, it's a risk, but like it makes some amount of sense. Look, I know people say, well, it's, you know, ultimately it's the same goalie. And it is, but we said it on the show last night. Every player's value is seen directly through the lens of their cap hit.

Matt Murray, at 1.6 or whatever it would be, is absolutely. Absolutely a gamble worth taking because you've got, that's backup money. He has the potential to be more. And you've got yourself room to go and get a veteran that you're going to have some trust in. At 50%, at 3.5, that value starts to take a turn down because now you're not leaving yourself very much. And you're paying him, if he ends up being your backup, you're overpaying him for a backup. And if he, you know, so you're gambling that he's going to be at least a 1A starter. to do it at 4.7, he needs to be your starter now.

Has to be, yeah. And who the hell else are you going to go get? Like, I know there's a handful of guys, like James Reimer is cheap. There's a few. We're going to do a goalie roundup. It is kind of crazy what the market looks like right now. But can I say two more factors that are arguments in favor of Matt Murray that you haven't brought up? I would love to hear.

They're stupid. No. They're dumb. Both of them are dumb. One, hey, this guy, if you really look at like the proprietary data, there's actually a lot to indicate that he's good. I have heard that. I should say, I have said that. Yeah, everybody said that.

Everybody got a memo from Kyle Dubus over the last couple of days. I heard from two very smart people who work for NHL teams, neither of which was the Leaves. when I was having like kind of my initial mini meltdown about how this trade was going to happen. One of whom told me pretty much exactly that, that hey, we, you know, their team wasn't in on him, but they've got some numbers that indicate that this guy is better than people think and that he's worth a risk. And then, and then I heard from another, I heard from another smart person who was like, no. No, no. Right.

We have numbers too and we don't, we don't. believe that. Yeah, I, of course, understand that, like, the proprietary, like, they have puck tracking data. We don't have puck tracking data. So, like, that alone makes me go, okay, yeah, maybe. But again, it's the, it's the huge risk that you take on. And this isn't even to get into his injury history, right? Because, like, what happens if Matt Murray gets hurt October 15th? I don't know if they're, whatever, like five games in the season. Yeah. He gets hurt 10 games in the season, 20 games. Like, this is a guy who gets hurt a lot.

That's just how it is, right? Like, that's not a deniable thing. And so that alone makes it like a kind of an iffy proposition if you're the Leafs because you're just like, oh, what if this guy gets hurt? Even if you gave up nothing for him, he's eating up ultra-valuble cap space of which you have almost not. That's it. I mean, I'd. And these stupid sweet, oh, well,

they got a third and a seventh. Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Well, Henrik Zetterberg was the seventh round pick, so, you know, you never, this could work out great.

I agree with that, obviously. But the other thing that I have heard people say, which blows by fucking mind, I don't know what universities people are living in, is the Leafs,

look, they play a more defensively structured way than the Ottawa senators. And so, they're confident that Matt Murray can turn it around behind the Leafs defense. Now, do you want to guess what the Toronto Maple Leafs team save percentage was last year across the five fucking goalies they used?

Yeah, it wasn't great. 9-04. That's worse than Matt Murray put up last year. And where everybody's like, oh, he's not very good. Yeah. But that's safe. I mean, the Leafs are not a great defense. team by any stretch, but also this idea that they're, this fire wagon, like, just go up and down

the ice, ignore their own end sort of team is also non-s. Like, they were like 10th or 12th in defensive metrics last year. They were fine. Yeah. They were better than Ottawa. So, yes, I mean. Well, what I'm saying is they're not, this isn't Colorado, right? Right?

Where it's like, we can plug any one B goalie into this system and be pretty confident that we're going to get a guy, well, we can maybe win us a Stanley Cup. Yeah. This is not that. This is, as you say, they're pretty good. And if you're a pretty good, pretty competent defensive team. And look, if you're a, if you really believe that you're a good defensive team and so therefore you can, you just need an okay goalie, you don't pay $4.7 million for an okay

goalie. Bingo. You go and get, you know, you go and get James. or you go and get any number of other cheap guys and drop them in there. But they chose not to do that. And I guess we should say the one other argument that people will bring up, and you'll hear it a lot because it's Toronto is this guy has won. He's won two cups.

He knows how to win. Certainly has. I guess all the other guys just don't know how. I guess like Jack Campbell was in the net. So wait a second. Do we want more on our side of the scoreboard than the other team? or do they, do we let them get? I got confused, sorry.

Well, he's, he knows how to win, and he's going to just lean into Kyle Dubus at the introductory press conference and go, here's the secret. Play with Sidney Crosby. And Kyle Dubus writes that down. Okay, got it. No problem. We're on that for sure. It's, and look, that part, that's one of those things where does, does knowing how to win

matter? and it's kind of like if it doesn't, but if you believe it does, then it does. And if, if, especially for the players in front, look, if they get to another game seven and they've got Matt Murray back there and they, instead of hearing about how they always lose game seven,

they're hearing that and the fact that Matt Murray is like two and oh or whatever it is in game sevens, maybe that helps. You know what? Maybe, maybe that helps. But I don't think it helps 4.7 million worth. So, yeah, and the thing with that is, what, what, am I, am I wrong in remembering that, like, Jack Campbell would give up a bad goal and all you'd hear about is all the Leafs, uh, deflated.

Oh, they gave up. They were like, here we go again. And it's like, oh, what's Matt Murray been known for the last few years? Uh, stankers. Real, real, real bad performances. Mm-hmm. So, like, are the Leafs going to, are the Leafs going to be, uh, oh, I, I, I actually feel very good because he won a stand.

cup four years ago. They might. Who knows, hockey players are weird. Yeah. Maybe that is, maybe that's the thing. And it was six years ago, wasn't it? It wasn't it actually six years ago? It was 16 and 17.

So five years ago. Five years. Okay. But like, yeah. I'm, you know, hey, it's two more cups than most guys have won. But also, 2000, like his, his last cup was closer to the lockout than to the present day. And the lockout feels like it was.

million years ago. So here's the two things that bothers me about this deal. Number one, this deal. Oh, that's it. Matt Murray. Matt Murray is the starting goalie for my Toronto Maple Leafs in this seeming make or break year as cup contenders. That's number one.

But number two is this really feels like the first time in the Kyle Dubus era where as a Leafs fan and maybe even as an outside observer, you can tell me, you're sort of like, oh, maybe this guy isn't one of the smarter, like smarter guys in the room. Like you always had this kind of confidence in Toronto and maybe it was an overreaction to like the Burke and especially Dave Nonas era where it was like the Leafs were proud to be the dumbest team.

They're like, we don't do analytics. We just go by gut and we've got, you know, the eye test and all the and they were just getting absolutely destroyed in every move they made. And they were proud of it. Dave Nones who said about, like, the problem with hockey helmets is they heat your brain up and make you more susceptible to concussion. Was that Dave Nones or was that Randy Carly? I think that might have been Randy Carly.

Yeah. Damn it. But, yeah, it was. Anyway. Look, like, that's who they were. And then Shanahan comes in, brings in Dubas, brings in a lot of smart people under Lamarillo. And then the smart people take over. And you're like, okay, they're not, every move isn't going to be a home run, obviously.

a lot of them weren't, but that's the nature of the business. But there's, in general, you're like, at the very least, so much managing a pro sports team is just not doing the stupid thing, right? Like, yes, you can take risks and some risks don't turn out. And then people like me point and go, that was a bad trait. But you made a calculated decision. And, you know, we always joke about how every team should have a consultant. They pay a million bucks a year whose job is just to say, don't do that. a few times a year.

This is one of those moves where it feels like the consultant would be putting their hand up going, guys, don't do that. Don't be the team that gambles everything on being able to fix Matt Murray with potentially not even any other decent options as a plan B. And they went ahead and did it. And now, again, I would love it. I would love it so much if 10 months from now, it's all worked. Matt Murray's been great.

They're in the middle of a playoff run. Three times Stanley Cup champion. And people are sending me these clips. Like, is this you the heck? Hey, at Coltakes Exposed? Great. I'll be happy if that happens because as a fan, that'll mean it worked out. But if it doesn't work out, like this is now, like, I don't want to get dramatic and be like,

Kyle Dubes has bet his job on this move. But this will be the kind of signature. Like he has, right? This will be the move that gets, like, this will be Exhibit A in the trial of Kyle Dubas if they, they don't go on a run this year. Yeah. And I,

that's going to be some tough evidence to, uh, to wiggle out from under if it goes bad. Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I guess the point is for me, uh,

that, when you're again, you're just talking about this purely from like looking at the risk, right? And what percentage chance do we want to say this has to actually work?

You can't feel like it's more than 50. No. Oh, no, no. I mean, I would say And so, yeah, go ahead. 20% chance that Matt Murray is good. He he plays well, he's the starter, plays his 50 games, whatever, goes into the playoffs and plays well.

I mean, we forget about whether they win the playoffs or not. That Marie hasn't played 50 games in four years, by the way, I think. I looked this up last night. This guy doesn't play a lot of hockey. 20%, I would say. And then, you know, Kyle Lubas gets to take the victory lap, and like I said, all the people who are probably with me on hating this deal now show up and tell me they always knew it was going to work.

I would say 20% of that, I would say 20% that he is maybe good when he plays but doesn't play as much as they're hoping, either because of injury or fatigue or whatever else. 20% that he's okay, better than the cry babies like me are saying, but not as good as the team needs, which ends up being kind of unsatisfactory, but we land in the middle, and then the other 40% that this is a bust and cost people jobs. You can't go, you can't, you can't,

take on this contract and this player, knowing what we know about him, with the idea that, well, look, he could be pretty average for us. He has to be more than that for $4.7 million. And, you know, as you say, like letting Jack Campbell go and opening yourself up to this level of risk. I don't want to say this has to be a home run. This has to be a two-bagger. You got to put this one in the gap at the very least.

And they're not swinging at a good... Get to second standing. No, no, no. They're sure not. So... And one more thing that I have... It's tough. That I have heard.

And, you know, I'm sympathetic to is... And again, it gets to this argument that starts in a bad place, which is, okay, what were the options? As of Monday, what were they supposed to do? Like I say, they... If they didn't have any good options, then that's on them. But at the same time, okay. So it is Monday. and you've got to make a decision, that it's better to go to gamble on Matt Murray at two years than Jack Campbell or Darcy Kemper, who we're going to cost you five years or maybe even six years.

And it's especially because if you go five years on a goaltender, that takes you into the territory where guys like Austin Matthews contracts are coming up. and you obviously want to have all the cap flexibility in the world to make sure that you're in a good place for that. I get that. I get that there has to be a little bit of long-term thinking here. But how much long-term thinking can you have? Because, I mean, if Austin Matthews is a free agent two years and you've gone out in the first round twice more

because yet again, your goaltending stinks, is that put you in a better situation than having less cap room to sign a guy who's happy? because he's gone on a couple of playoff runs. I don't know. To me, like, I'm, you and me are mostly on the same page. We almost always prefer to think longer term than NHLGM seem to. But if there's any team in the league that could use a little bit of short-term thinking,

you think it might be Toronto. It's the Ottawa, the Ottawa Senator. No, no, no, right. And I'll tell you, like, maybe in some sense, I'll finish this. this off with like something that's maybe a kind of a pro Kyle Dubeb. He knows that his, that the seat is getting hot. How could he not? He has to.

I mean, so. Yeah, absolutely. It would have been a very typical NHLGM thing to do to say, you know what? Give Jack Campbell eight years. And, you know, just at a reasonable cap hit to get me through the next couple of years. And if it doesn't work, who cares? It's someone else's problem. And if it does work, it works.

And if he honestly said, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to saddle the team with something like that. I'll take a shorter term risk, even if it's a little less likely to work out, then I guess that's good for the team, even if it's not good for him personally. And a lot of teams probably wish their GM's thought like that. I just really wish I could talk myself into anything that looks like a best case scenario here being likely. I just don't. And we got to wait and see who they can go out and get as, I guess, the backup now. But, you know, they don't have cap space now. That's the thing.

They made the Morazic move last week, and we all went, oh, that wasn't too bad to, but let's see what they do with the cap space. Well, they went and got a guy who might not be much better, might also be worse, and cost more. That's, yeah, that's, uh, so. It's all working how great. Yeah, it's fantastic. All right. Why don't we take a break and then we'll get back and do the entire rest of the show I had planned.

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and the last week. Pretty fun draft, I thought. You were there, I wasn't. Very fun draft, especially to be there. The drafts themselves are usually, they're usually a pretty fun week. And then you get to the actual draft, And it's fun at the start.

And then by like midway through the first round, you're like, oh, this is getting, this is starting to take forever. And then day two is always very weird because it just moves so quick. But this one was more fun than most. I mean, I've been to four, so I don't have a huge sample. But this would certainly be number one with a bullet on my list. Yeah. And, you know, we'll get into why the picks made it fun. but also, of course, the crowd.

Crowd was so good. Yeah. You know, that's very excited. But the other thing I did want to highlight very quickly is that Bruce Boudreau finally got to meet Kevin Owens' favorite wrestler. And we're going to use an industry term here. Bruce Boudreau marked out for Kevin Owens. He did.

No question about. That was a funny clip. And I was kicking myself because I, the NHL network was right at the front of the wall there where the reporters can mill around and I'd seen Jackie Redmond's tweet where she was like oh something cool is about to happen you may want to watch and

okay interviewed some prospect or whatever and then I saw that it was that and I was like oh I could have been like you know if that had only been one of the times I decided to wander out there and like seen that with my own eyes But, yeah, a very, very cool moment. And that was a very good job by them putting that together.

And good long-term booking because they've been teasing the Boogh Oins face-to-face for months now. Yeah. And it worked out great. It would, for those who didn't see it, Bruce Boudreau was basically like, when you fall down and you get body slaved, does that hurt? It was like almost that level of. Of just like he's so excited to meet a professional wrestler.

It rocked. Yeah, I mean, look, Kevin Owens. Here's the thing. Here's what made me like that clip a lot was knowing that Kevin Owens was at day two of the draft. Yeah. What a fucking sicko. K.O. is. Seriously.

Like, I got to see where this guy from the Medits and Hat Tigers goes in the fourth round or whatever. Absolutely. Absolutely. K.O. rocks. one of the best WWE guy, him and Sammy Zane. It's crazy that those two guys are the best and also

hockey fans and also just like best friends in real life. How great would it have been if he went up to surprise Bruce Brudrow and Brudrow was like, you know, common mistake, I'm actually Randy Carlisle

and everyone just played along with it and Owens is like, no, you're not. Could have happened. It would have been, even better if K.O. turned on him. Powerbom them through. I mean, that's clearly going to happen the next time, right?

Like, they'll set it up again and then... Yeah. Bruce Boudreau will pull out a clipboard or something. Bruce did tease that he will be at SummerSlam in K.O.'s corner. So... I will watch. Or at least he pitched that. We'll see if it actually comes through.

But anyway, yeah, the big story of the draft, obviously, Shane Wright dropped a fourth, which is crazy that that has. happened. And a classic case, I feel like, of everybody just being like, a galaxy brain. We can't take this guy number one. We need a defenseman.

We need, you know, we need a guy who's a little bigger, whatever. And then the guy who was the number one, the consensus number one pick for the three years leading up to the two weeks before the draft drops to four. Wild. Yeah. Like, I was there, obviously, with the athletic. They brought us all into town. And I think it was the day before the draft.

Corey Pranman puts out his mock draft, which is not his list, but this is how he sees the first round going. And he had it as Montreal takes Slavkowski, Devils go defenseman, then Arizona takes Cooley and right drops all the way to four. And this is in a world where every other mock draft has right going one or two. Like there's not even a thought that he will drop past that.

And I love Corey. He's a good dude, but I'm reading that going, oh, man, like talk about putting yourself out there. And even like the NHL network, I think it was, like had this kind of snarky tweet where they're like, they showed four mock drafts and like three of them were identical with right going number one and then ours. And they're like, oh, hmm, one of these seems a little. little different.

And then he freaking nails it. He was right, pretty much. Yeah, he didn't, I don't think he was like pick for pick.

He had the wrong defenseman for the devils. He had them with the two guys and he was like, this could go either way, but I'm leaning towards

and then they took the other guy. That's why Cory doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah. Smart enough, Corey. Yeah, get a fucking clue.

So, I mean, Utah is the elite prospect guy. Because I don't, I mean, I don't know anything about prospects other than what I,

learn a week before the draft. Sure. Is this, first of all, it was Montreal, were, did they make the right call? Did they make a defensible call? Like, what's? I think you can make an argument that Slavkovsky was the best player available. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I think you can make that argument.

And you have to say that what Shane Wright faced that I don't think anybody else in the, in the top three. did is that he didn't play for a year. Like he just fully didn't play for a year. Try to remember. I think Logan Coley played at least some in the COVID year, right? I'm going to look it up real now. Yeah, he played a bunch of games in the COVID year. So, yeah, I'm a little surprised that everybody was like,

I don't want to say willing to discount that. but like it certainly feels like something that got overlooked that like hey maybe he didn't have a good like an incredible season last year because he he didn't play the year before that at all and the other thing that that I think hurt him is the world juniors was like going to be his showcase yeah and that's the other thing right like he he was supposed to have that was supposed to be his opportunity and he didn't get to play in it. He'll get to play in it. Probably he'll get to play in it in August. And boy, stay tuned for our in-depth summer coverage of the August World Juniors that's coming up. But yeah, like, I think it's defensible to take Sofkowski. I think

it is, if you're going to draft, if you're going to go, look, how many centers could we possibly use as the New Jersey doubt. And it seems like the answer should be more than two. But fair enough, whatever. You got to take the defenseman. Believe me, I've seen New Jersey's blue line. I get it. And Arizona, you know, isn't the whole thing with Logan Cooley that he, or was it

Cooley was like an Arizona guy? Am I remembering that right? Probably. Yeah, this is, and now this is one of those things. that I'm not going to be able to Google because, you know, they just kick them. While you Google that, I will say that I did hear from a couple of people at the draft that there were rumors, and I underline rumors,

but just, you know, some whispers, some rumblings, that during the season when Arizona was pretty blatantly tanking, that maybe Shane Wright wasn't thrilled with the idea of Arizona getting the number one pick, and that given what they're, where they're read as an organization and everything, that he was maybe a little dicey on them, not that he had said he wouldn't play for them or anything like that, but that there was some hesitancy.

So you wonder if either that played into it or maybe even just potentially soured a relationship or maybe there was just some spite. You know, this guy doesn't like us. Yeah. Screw it. We'll pick the other guy. You know what? I just remembered.

It's Cutter Gautier, who is this Scottsdale guy. Logan Coley's from like Pittsburgh or something. But anyway, that one, I think that's a little bit of an if-year call, Logan Coolly. But as you say, if there were other reasons, fair enough. But I guess I was just really surprised to see how active, like the trades were for picks. I feel like we saw a lot of them, obviously. Alex De Brinkett, we'll talk about that in a minute. Like the Canadians traded Romanov and then used that pick to get Kirby Doc.

You know, there were other first round pick, less consequential first round pick trades as well. But it was just like, oh, damn, like people are really going forward again. I feel like that wasn't the case the last draft. Maybe I'm wrong. In my mind, this was a much busier trade-related draft than I'm used to. I wonder if that was more going forward or if it was the fact that it was viewed as a somewhat weaker draft, if this was just a case where teams were more willing to give up those picks. Rather have Kirby Docs than roll the dice on whoever's available at 13 or whatever that number was.

Which, by the way, can I just say that the absolute best moment of Thursday night, of the first round of the draft was when Kent Hughes gets up and makes the first overall pick because there's genuine intrigue around who he was going to pick there's like I was sitting up in the stands there's all these like Habs fans around with like make the right choice t-shirts

and everything and when he gets up and he says you know from Slovakia and like the place like pro wrestling reaction like just awesome mix of like disbelief and some people are cheering and some people are cheering and some people are booing and some people have got their head in their hands.

It was just an awesome, awesome, awesome moment. But the second best moment was after picks two and three, both got a big reaction because Shane Wright wasn't getting taken. Yeah. And Arizona's or, sorry, Seattle's on the clock at four. So Gary Bettman comes out, gets booed, of course, does his whole, I have a trade to announce and they, okay, everyone shuts up for a second.

And he then announces to have the, of trade roaming up to New York for the 13th overall pick. Okay, that gets a big reaction. And then he goes, and the second trade is that Montreal trades the 13th overall pit. And as he did that, you could just feel this ripple go through the crowd. It was only for a few seconds.

But all of us thought, holy crap, is Montreal trading up to fourth? And they're going to get Shane Wright, too. Yeah, that would have been so sick. That would have just, that would have been an all-time great like sports moment. Forget like NHL drama. Oh yeah. That would have

absolutely and then you know it's like he announced it was Shaka and that still got a really big reaction but there was like that one moment and you know I was kind of sitting in the media area and there were a few of us and we were just looking at each other we all had like this same like oh boy like is this actually going to happen look and it just lasted a few seconds but oh it just felt like it hung there for a while, man, that would have been unbelievable. Yeah, and, and, you know, you could really tell that we were in the, the throes of trying to gin up

interest for the draft because everybody's like, now look, New Jersey, they might trade the number one picking. You never know. Montreal could be the team that trades for that number two pick or what. Like, everybody was just like, hey, this number two pick is moving. And then, of course, it didn't move at all. but, you know, the idea, just the mere idea that Montreal might somehow trade for the number two pick and take both Slavkovsky and right. I was like, let's fucking do this.

This is a great idea. And then someone pointed out that the number two pick hasn't been traded in like 35 years or something like that. And it's like, well, I guess that's probably not going to happen. And it didn't. But yeah, like I say, it was a very fun draft. And you could feel the, even on TV, you could feel the kind of ripples going through the building of like, damn, something crazy is about to happen every time something crazy was about to happen. Yep. And so, yeah, let's talk about the Chicago Fire Sale, because I think that is probably the craziest thing that happened just because you, you.

rarely see teams so plainly go, we're going to have zero NHL players on our roster next year. This is a full-fledged, full-fledged tank that is like, this is 2014 Sabres level at this point. Yeah. And look, I'm in the Dubringen. He's a new GM. He knows how to lower expectations. But yeah, go ahead. Let's start with the Brinkin.

What was your reaction? to the de brinket trade. Not surprised at who was traded, not surprised that he went to Ottawa, thought the return would be better. Yes, that's... All of which is correct. Yeah.

Yeah, I never understood the argument for trading him. Okay, that's interesting. I think the argument makes perfect fucking sense to me. So go ahead. Like, I just want to stay around that idea. Okay.

And to me, the argument where it made sense was if you said, you know, you laid out, hey, here's where our window is, here's what we're planning to do, here's how old he's going to be and how much he's going to cost by that point. Dot, dot, dot. And if we trade him right now, we can get a windfall that really jumpstarts the rebuild. That's where I went, okay, you know what? I always say nobody should be untouchable. GM should be listening on everybody. And he's your best player, your best trade asset right now. Yes, absolutely.

Be listening if somebody blows you away, then you have to consider it. But this offer clearly couldn't have blown them away because it wasn't very much. And yeah, my reaction was for a couple days, I was like, ha ha, who gets ripped off in a trade by Peer Dorian? Couldn't be my team. Yeah. I think what was so interesting to me is the lead up to it was you couldn't possibly trade Alex to Brinkett. He's 24. He's going to be your best player as you go through a rebuild.

You need good players on your team, even when you're rebuilding, blah, blah, blah. But the whole time I was going, right, but like, you could get two first round picks for this guy. you could get a first round pick and a good prospect, like a very good prospect for this guy. And then, yeah, Kyle Davidson was just like, what if I got all very little for this guy? Yeah. And then what if, you know, then the pick they made, like, Kurchinski is going to be probably a good NHL player, probably, you know, that kind of thing. But like multiple people said to me, terrible pick at seven. Insane.

Oh, really? Ridiculous. Yeah. I think elite prospects had him 19, if I'm remembering right. Certainly a guy that was, you know, you got the seventh overall pick, but it felt like, at least on the consensus, he was a guy you could have got a few picks later than that. Right, like they traded for the 13th pick. That's where you take Kortinski.

Maybe. But they didn't do it. Anyway. I did like their other two moves. Yeah, they were fine. Whatever. Like, I think they made the right picks on the right spots for the most part. Maybe they reached a little.

But I just, like, the local media in particular is so fucking melodramatic about, like, what kind of message is this sending? If you're trading Alex. The message is, we're trying to be bad. and we're going to succeed at being insanely bad. Now, I get the argument, they were going to be bad with or without Alex to break it. But again, this is about getting multiple draft picks, picking a prospect, that kind of thing. Anyway, like, I just never understand when people, Larry Brooks, I think, did it over the weekend, too, of like, you know, tanking teams never win anything. And it's like, they fucking don't.

Pittsburgh Penguins want a bunch of stuff by getting guys that they got when they got when they're they tanked. You know? I looked this up over the weekend. The Lightning picked first, second, sixth, tenth, and third from 2008 to 2013. 2013. The Colorado picked in the top ten seven times in a decade. Yeah, Washington tanked in the Ovechkin year.

I mean, that's my, it's tanking works in the NHL. Now, it doesn't guarantee anything. And I do think there's an argument to be said that, like, how blatantly are you willing to embarrass yourself for a 20% chance at Connor Midard? Well, you also get Michigov and you also get Adam Fantilli. Like those three guys, those are... Is Fantilian enough to... If any of those guys were in this year's draft, clear number one.

Oh, really? If any one of them was, yes. Okay. Fantilli I didn't know that about. Wow. Okay. Well, that changes the equation because as we saw with the reason the tank battle was so epic in the McDavid year was not just because it was Connor McDavid, but because Jack Eichel was number two. And back then, there was only one spot for the lottery, which meant if you finished dead last, you were guaranteed one of those two guys.

So now we changed it to three spots, but then we changed it back to two. Way to go NHL. So now maybe we've got the same situation where. that just changed the equation. The tipping point from two elite prospects to three at the top of the draft is... But even if it's two, what's... I don't know off the top of my head. What's the percent chance that the worst team in the league gets one or two?

Not, I think it's less than 50 percent. It was less, yeah, it must be, because it was less than 50 percent. Right. When it was three spots, you finished last because we saw it with Colorado and Detroit. there was a 50% chance you would drop to four. So it's got to be higher than that. It's got to be 60 or 65. Right.

So now, again, if Connor Bedard's going to be the next McDavid, maybe it's worth it. And certainly if you hit on it, then you're... I think it's certainly... Well, let me put it this way. And I made this point in my column this week. The time to, like, rebuild on the fly or whatever if you're Chicago was like five years ago.

the fucking horses are out of the barn. They're bad. They're really bad. Now, that doesn't obviously, Stan Bowman didn't think. So he gave a first round pick last year to get, Seth Jones, and a good-ish young defenseman, right?

And that's also acknowledging they kind of wasted the Kirby Doc pick if we're being fucking honest, right? Like, obviously they traded him away, but even before they traded him away, he was just not very good. Now, maybe nobody's good on... Yeah, maybe nobody's good on Chicago. They're not putting anyone in a position to succeed, really.

But, like, in particular, Kirby Doc just feels like he's probably not worth the three, even if he was maybe the consensus three at the time or whatever. I don't think he was. That was a mild surprise, I think, that they... Was it? I don't remember now. There was Turcotte and who's a defenseman? I can't remember, but I think it was a...

A mild reach. Like a, hey, we had this guy five or six and somebody took him. Okay. Sort of deal. Yeah. Let's see here. Turcotte, Bowen Byram went right after him. And Moritz cider went six.

Although cider was like, that was considered a surprise. That was definitely a surprise, yeah. But yeah, that was like a two-guy draft the whole time. And then, you know, they basically, I think it was more of a thing that it felt like, oh, take your pick. Byram, Doc, Turcott, cousins, whoever, like take your pick. Anyway, point being, though, like, Chicago has been accidentally tanking, and you might as well, if you're going to accidentally tank, purposefully tank. Right?

Like, the idea that you're sending a bad message to the fans or whatever, you're sending a bad message to the fans by keeping all these fucking bums around for long than you should have. And trading for Seth Jones and all this shit. And nobody talks about like the lightning tanking or even the avalanche tanking, really. And part of that was they accidentally tanked a few times. They were accidentally insanely bad for a few years. But this is extreme what we're seeing. Oh, of course it is. But like I'm saying the extremity, and again, I'm not justifying the

the return for the trade or the or taking Kortinski. What I'm saying is the idea that they shouldn't do it has always been like, where are you fucking talking about? You know? Yeah. And look, I mean, this is the league we've got, right? There's other ways to do it and we don't do it that way. So the thing that I'm not getting it into like the sanctity of whatever and the ethics of tanking, but every team that tanks, and I'm not talking about a team that, like, gets halfway through the season and it's not going well, so, you know, suddenly you're shut down the starting

goalie. And, like, I'm talking about what we're seeing here, like a team in advance saying, we're going to be terrible next year. Yeah. Deciding that months in advance. You can always tell yourself that, hey, we're going to do this for a year, two years, whatever it takes, but then we'll be able to, like, shed the stink, really. quick. We'll flip the switch.

We'll have the good players by then and it'll be fine. And we will reemerge. And, you know, the teams that you've mentioned like Pittsburgh pretty much did that. You know, nobody's looking back at that crappy 2006 Penguins team and remembering any of those guys pretty much. Right. It was Mario

and then New Corps and a bunch of disposable guys. I don't know if Ramsey Abed was on that team anymore. But then yet, that's like an early 2000s penguin guy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But then you look at the sabers and they're the example of, you know what, sometimes it just does, like they can't seem to get out of that mode to the point where they're on now, like, I think rebuild version three. Yeah, for sure. It's, it's so.

You definitely have to be, you definitely have to be confident. And as you say, like, there is a risk inherent that like this five-year rebuild turns into a 12-year rebuild, right? Like that. but I think if you're looking at, as you say, potential next Connor McDavid in Connor Bidard or Metfay Michakov. And Michkov obviously, like, I think he's in the KHL for another two or three years after the draft regardless of where he gets picked and who takes him. So that probably hurts his draft stock quite a bit. But like the idea that, you know, he could come in and be even better than, than Caprizov has been for the wild.

Like, what team that's bad wouldn't take that promise three years from now? You know? But, you know, I guess the thing that I don't understand is, look, you got to sell tickets. You're going to get people to tune into this team. Did Chicago not put enough money in the bank the last fucking decade? That this was going to always make sense? Did they not sell enough Patrick Kane jerseys for you? You might think.

You might think, but remember, like, I guarantee there's some, you know, newer fans kind of rolling their eyes going, ah, Chicago. They're going to say, Chicago, when the last time they were truly bad, maybe even tanking in like the, around the time of the full season lockup, they had terrible attendance. They were below, like that building was, yeah, of course. We're talking like. At best. Atlanta was beating them. The Panthers were beating them. It was terrible.

So maybe it'll be interesting to see. Like if they just put absolute junk out there. And the other piece of this that obviously we have to talk about is, you know, what message are you sending? The message is, hey, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Taves, please wave your no trade clauses so that we can move you guys too. Because it's not a real rebuild until you've done that. And they don't want to go. So you can't do it. except you can if you make it so clear that, like, hey, guys, enjoy getting 40 points.

Yeah, I believe the athletic report last night was basically like, I talked to friends of Patrick Kane, and they all said, he's not going to want to put up with this shit. And it's like, yeah, that's the idea. We don't want you to want to put up with this. This is the comparison that got used a few times at the draft was, like, it's like a breakup where like you want to break up but you don't want to be the one who breaks up so you just act like a jerk so that they break up with you right sure kind of what the hawks are

doing to their two franchise players yeah um all right let's uh let's move on from chicago let's talk about the edmonton oilers they uh they were very active as well uh they they traded down three spots plus a second and a third to get Arizona to take Zach Cassian off their hands, boy, who could have seen that contract not working out for them. And then Duncan Keith retired. Yep. And gave them a whole shitload of Capspace. Let me pull this up really quickly.

Right now, it looks like they have about $16 million in Capspace as we record this. And that obviously they got to resign Kyler Yamamoto. They got to figure out what they're doing with Yassapoli, R.V. Ryan McLeod obviously needs a new contract. So there's like stuff they got to do. And I should say that $16 million in cap space doesn't include Mike Smith or Oscar Clefbaum. So that it's probably more like $22 million in cap space before they resign their RFAs. But here's the interesting part.

they, uh, doesn't, doesn't look like they're going to be able to re-sign a van der Kaine, or at least he's going to go to market. Yeah, I mean, I guess they had offered him, the last report was like something with like four and a half or five million. Yeah, crazy. Which, I don't know. If that's the offer, then, yeah, he should go to market and see what else is out there. Yeah. Let me say, I, I don't know what they were thinking if they thought that was going to get the job done.

No. And they probably, I mean, he's all the other stuff aside, which is a very hard list of things to put aside. But, you know, he was a good player for them. But, you know, you got him cheap for a year for a playoff run. He performed the way you were hoping. That doesn't mean you have to get silly and decide that this is your guy for the next six or seven years. And so... For sure.

We will see. But, yeah, the only has got a decent amount of cap room. And, we assume that they basically have to replace most of their forward group and maybe a couple defensemen i think i think greg coolack is a guy they're going to want to retain of course they need a goalie but everybody's already decided jack hamble is going which is so weird because right i don't know if you know this but like they can't even talk to him until tomorrow like that's right legal for them to even pick up the phone so i mean it's frankly i think all of this speculation with exact term and exact dollars is very irresponsible of all of us and reflects poorly

on both the Oilers organization and the NHL as a whole to suggest that there has been any contact whatsoever. Yeah, you know, I love the artifice of that at least. Like, again, we're talking about pro wrestling. This is K-Fabe, you know? K-Fave, baby. And I love cave. It rocks.

But yeah, I'm really curious to see what they do because, like, if they're not bringing back a van der Kaine, like, I don't really know who the big target is for them, you know? Believe me, I'd love it if they went out and got Johnny Godreau or something like that. That would be so funny. But, like, do you see? I don't know that I really see a whole lot of, like, huge difference make. on the wing that are that are really available in free agents. No, I did. Like, the big difference for them is in goal, you know, hopefully,

wherever they go and spend their $5 million on will be an upgrade, maybe a significant one. And then it, you know, if they can bring back cane, great. Maybe this, maybe they can keep Yamamoto and pull Yardby, although it sounds like they already made their mind up to move the latter. Yeah, and they'll keep Yamamoto, obviously. They'll give him what he wants. He's not going to cost an arm and a leg for sure.

Yeah. And then frankly, I think the Oilers are one of those teams that the smart thing for them to do in free agency is, I mean, sure, call the big names. But assuming that doesn't happen, then you sit and you wait. And in three or four days, when most of the most but not all of the good fruit has been picked, you call up some people and say, I know the market isn't shaping up the way you want it. Want to come play with Connor McDavid? Want to come play on your siddle? And suddenly people are going, you know what?

If it's either that or who else is calling? Arizona, Columbus? Yeah, you know what? I'll go to Emmington and go have the best career or the best year of my career and then we'll try again in a year or two. Because that was always the pitch. Remember when they signed Luchich, they were like, oh, he took a discount.

He wants to play with Connor McDavid. And it's like, first of all, he didn't take a discount. And second of all, that's probably true. They probably did say, you want to play with Carmen McDavid? And he was like, yeah, that sounds awesome. It wasn't awesome for him. But like the idea that, you know, it's like the old Sydney Crosby of Gennie Malkin thing, and we'll get to Malkin and the Penguins in a minute.

But it's like, you could put some third line stiff next to this guy. He's going to put up 60 points. They're like accidentally, like the puck goes in off his ass 25 times next season. and that's just how it is with McDavid and Drysidal as well. And I don't want to say like Evander Kane isn't like a 30-gold guy on his own because he's shown that he is. But like that was like a perfect marriage. I wonder what the market for Evander Kane looks like. And then maybe he comes crawling back to the oilers going, you know what, I will stick around.

It makes perfect. What a fit for a team and player alike. But, yeah, I just look at this class of wingers and go, I mean, Riley Smith, he's pretty good. Do I want to be the team that signs Riley Smith? Probably not, but he's good. I guess the answer would be Burakovsky, right? Like, there's a good player. Did he not re-upers?

I don't think he has yet. No, I think it may be the indications were that they were trending that way. But, like, obviously, their priority was Nchuschen, and they resigned him. We'll talk about that. That's who I was thinking about it. Again, in a second. Okay, yeah. There you go.

But, like, I don't know, do they get, like, Nazim Qadry to play the way? How many centers do you want in Edmond? Again, you can never have too many, I guess. But, like, there's only so many power play minutes to go around. It'll be interesting. They're a team that I'm fascinated by now. Okay, let's do the Penguins. They're bringing back Chris LaTang 6X6.6.1.

Not a fan of that contract personally, but I guess it doesn't really matter. You're only trying to be good for as long as Crosby's still around. So there you go. Right. Which, of course, means you have to bring back Malkin. Right. Well, oops. They kind of feel like maybe not because they go out and they give Ricard Raquel what everybody would have thought was Malkin money. What was it? Six years five. Now I don't have it in front of me. Or five years six. Now I can't remember one.

Raquel. Sorry, Raquel was six years. Six years five. Yeah. Okay. And maybe you say that was Malkin money. And what's the first? really funny about that to me is this is the guy you brought it oh he's going to be really good next to Malkin

well now who is it going to be good next to like this feels like we're not being crazy here right like this slams the door you know I think I feel like I saw somebody say that's not true I can't imagine how it's not true

I don't know I don't remember who said it but it was like a peer run type or somebody like that. I mean, there's always, you know, there's always a way, but, and he had said that he, he was going to go to the market and see what was there, but it, it does. Yeah, that is the other thing. Yeah, no, I mean, the Rob Rossi piece about, like, Malkin just being like, they don't think

I'm good anymore, like big puppy dog eyes on Gino Malkin. Like, yeah, it's, it's weird to me. I, I guess if you feel like he priced himself out or you don't want to take on the, the risk with the injury and that kind of stuff, I get it. But, like, if he's, if he, if, you know, the reports in the press kind of indicate he's, like, kind of shocked at what's going on here. And if that's true, like, it feels like they just maybe didn't take it all that seriously in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's accurate. It's very strange, very, very strange. Let's stay in the Keystone State. Let's talk about the Philadelphia Flyers. What are they doing? What is the plan in Philadelphia for next year?

I have no idea. We know what the plan is. They are not rebuilding. The boss thinks that they can get back to the playoffs, and so that is the plan. Yeah, but like, I don't know. It feels like the Tony D. We're talking, of course, about the Tony D'Angelo trade. You never want to have to, every time you move.

move jobs, you never want to have to be like, by the way, I'm not racist. That's not ideal. Yeah. You don't want to have that t-shirt on at the press conference. Right. Yeah. Guys. But it feels like this is a prelude to something because you don't go get Tony DeAngelo

without saying like, oh, we're going to move on from one of our younger defensemen. Right? Like, does that, does that not feel like what they're setting themselves up to do? I mean, maybe, like, the Ryan Ellis thing doesn't sound like it's going that well. No, it sure doesn't. I mean, I certainly didn't look at the flyers prior to this deal and go, you know what they've got too much of is defensemen. So, for sure. The argument for them would be this is a guy who is a, again, on the ice, everything else aside is a, has been a good player.

Uh, good offense only defenseman. Like one of the, actually one of the best offense only defensemen in the league. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, which, which we can fit into our lineup. Uh, and the contract will be reasonable both in dollars and term. The acquisition cost to get them was not cheap, but it wasn't, you know, maybe you're sitting there going, hey, all the other stuff that goes around this guy.

of being a bad teammate, being a bad human being, all of that drives his cost down and turns him into a market efficiency that we can exploit and get into our lineup. And of course, we'll be the team that can sort this guy out. Yeah. And we'll only get the good stuff and none of the bad stuff. But yeah, I'm looking at their defense right now.

Proverov, Ristolinan, DeAngelo, Sanheim. And then like Ronnie Addered, Cam York, Kevin Kinnaten maybe. It's a big no thanks for me, man. That is not a playoff worthy defense corps is what I think is the thing you want to say there. Up front, they have some options, I guess. They have some good players, but it seems like they maybe want to try to trade James Van Riemsdike or maybe not. like got a lot of mixed signals around that.

I don't, I just, I, I, I, I don't know how you look at this team if you're the Philadelphia Flyers. Even if, even if you're like kidding yourself, right? And you're, or you're trying to tell ownership, no, no, no, we're going to, we're going to compete. And like, I guess the thing to say about the DeAngelo contract, it is only two years, which, if it doesn't work, You can probably offload him somewhere. He doesn't have any movement protection that I remember. So, yeah, I'm looking at the cat-friendly page. He does not.

He's probably too young to have any, so. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's not a killer contract. It's just one of those ones where it's like, why did they do that yet? As you say, the cost to just get his RFA right seemed weirdly high. But hey, sure, go nuts, whatever. I don't know. I just, it's hard for me to see them as any kind of a playoff team.

Nashville, they re-signed Phil Forsberg. What did you think? To the exact contract that everybody had been talking about for three months. Yeah, that's exactly right. What were your thoughts on that, though? I wouldn't be given out eight-year contracts to pretty much anyone who wasn't like a Crosby-McDavid-level elite player. I was going to say 24, but okay, yeah, sure. Or that too, yeah.

I get why David Poyle probably doesn't care too much about that aspect of it. Sure. Yeah. I felt nothing because literally when I saw that, I was like, that happened two months ago because. It was, we'd have heard so much about it. Yeah, I guess my thing with it is like, what does keeping Philip Foresburt, where does that get you as a franchise, you know? In the middle, which.

But in the middle at best, like the thing that people forget is, oh, everybody thought they'd be bad last year and they made the playoffs, right? Remember all that? Mississippi Sorrows was unbelievable for a huge chunk of the year, and he played like 70 games, right? So the idea that he's going to do that again, either stay healthy enough to play, it says here 67 games he got into last year. That's a crazy number in 2022. And he was 9-18.

The idea that he's going to do both of those things, that's a tough one for me to swallow, right? especially he couldn't play in the playoffs last year. That's why they got destroyed. But like they were going to get destroyed anyway. So like if you're going, hey look, we got into the playoffs last year. That was great. We got, we had two home games in the playoffs. We loved those gate revenues.

And all it took was our goalie being a borderline Vesna candidate for 67 games to get there. And also like Philip Forsberg shot like 19% last year. And I love Philip Forsberg. He's an unbelievable player. But the idea that like any of this is fucking repeatable is wild to me. I don't get it. And so you're like, hey, we got to keep the band together. Yeah.

Oh, it's that. Okay, sure. It's that hockey NHL mentality. You can't lose a guy for nothing. And they, if they had missed the playoffs the way that most of us thought, they probably trade them at the deadline for a bunch and happily move on. Yeah. But they didn't.

And so now you can't let them walk for nothing because... But here's the thing. Look what the RFA rights for Tony DeAngelog. No one likes. Look what he got. A guy who only does one thing. But those are RFA rights. Sure.

But you could get something back for Philip Ford. If you called L.A. and said, will you give us for Philip Forsberg's rights? Maybe LA is not a good example because they just traded a bunch of stuff for a guy who's ostensibly a goal scoring winger's rights, right? But, like, yeah, those are RFA rights. But if you called any team that's looking for a winger and said, you want to talk to Philip Forsberg before anybody else can,

you're getting something back for him. Maybe it's not something great, but, like, Yeah. It's not nothing. I don't know. I just, could Nashville make the playoffs next year? Absolutely. What percent chance do I assign that?

15? You know? It's a lot of things would have to go extremely right for Nashville. And that's next year. That's not talking about two, three, four years from now when all these guys were like 34 years old. Like when Roman Yose is. he's not a Norris candidate. When Matt Dushan's not having,

hey, look, well, Matt Dushan was actually pretty good this year, kind of a season. Yeah. I don't know, man. They traded Luke Cunning to free up that cap room, by the way. Doesn't matter. Who cares? Luke Cunning, barely an NHL player.

We've got 900 things to talk about on this podcast. That's right. That's one of them. Yeah, Adrian Kempi, did you, how'd you feel about that deal for 5.5 million? Sure. Yeah, again, I don't know that he's going to score 35 goals next year or whatever that number was. It seems a bit rich for me, but they have Caprum. I guess it doesn't really matter.

Okay, let's get to, oh, you know what? We can't get to the goal of Carousel just yet because we have to talk about Carol Caprizov. Can't get back into the United States. Seems like that's bad. This is a scary situation. Yeah. Yeah. So for those who aren't keeping up, the Flyers had a guy they signed to be their backup goalie this year, get arrested for having forged draft papers or something like that.

I'm not exactly sure. That was the story. That was the story, right. And then there was a rumor that Carol Caprizov also, like, might have gone through this guy or something like that. It's all, it's all very, like, cloak and dagger kind of fishy stuff. Yeah, with the idea being that in Russia, you owe them at least a year of military service, all adult men, between 18 and whatever the age is, you have to serve a year. And that's not uncommon, by the way. Like, I think Norway does that, like maybe Finland.

Many European countries do that. But, you know. And that part of it was that for professional athletes, often their athletic service gets rolled into counting for their military, but they have to be at home to do it. And that there may have been people selling essentially the, the papers that would say I've completed my service when somebody hasn't.

Right. And this is again all alleged and all based on reports and who knows what's actually true coming out of there. Right. But what we do know is that Carol Caprizov tried to come into the U.S. twice.

I believe once via Russia and once via a different country and both times was told, you're going to allow to do that. Because of like work visa, issues. So you would think that like this guy being like a famous athlete. So was he blocked by the United States or was he blocked leaving Russia?

I believe it was blocked by the United States. Okay. Now let me let me. It could be a case of Russia not letting him leave, which would be again a far more concerning situation. Yeah. And and again, obviously this gets to all the political unrest over there. Okay, this is the Rousseau story.

Caprizov is caught up in a chilling political situation regarding his military requirements. It's still in Russia and, according to Lee's sources, was turned away from returning to the United States, something that is privately sending shivers down the spines of everybody in the wild organization, even if they're publicly saying otherwise. Let's see. So I think the idea here is not that, you know, this is the U.S. saying. that this was Russia saying you can't leave, either because we're investigating or whatever it is. But obviously the concern is that this is a... Oh, no, here it is.

I found it. According to League sources, Caprizov left Russia recently for Dubai and tried to return to the United States. He couldn't clear into the U.S., though, perhaps because he doesn't currently have a work visa despite signing a five-year contract last September. As the athletic report reported July 1, several Europeans, not just Russians, were given exceptions to play last season without visas because U.S. consulates were inundated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaprizov's sources say tried to cross the ocean by way of Caribbean islands after not succeeding in the Dubai route. Again, he wasn't permitted. Kaprizov then returned to Russia where he remained.

Okay. All right. Well, then that is less ominous sounding than. I mean, certainly not great if you're, you're fragile. player doesn't have a work visa, but that is less ominous than it had sounded when it seemed as if he was prevented from leaving it all.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess the issue is I don't know what the status of like the ability of Russian players to get a visa is right now because of the whole Ukraine thing. You know, like

are tensions sufficiently bad that like we're not granting work visas to Russia. And I know, like, there was talk that the CHL was going to ban Russian and Belarusian players for next season and this kind of stuff. I don't know if this is the same thing. Like, but it's all crazy to me that this is happening, that he doesn't have a work visa despite being a famous guy who has a five-year contract to play in the United States. It's wild.

But, yeah, not off to a good start in Minnesota. And now we'll get to the goalie carousel. which will stay with Minnesota because Mark Andre Fleury is staying with Minnesota. And apparently Camp Talbot is like not happy about this. No. And which led to it one of the all-time great GM quotes ever? I have it right here in front of me. Quote, this is from Bill Garron, GM of the Minnesota.

Okay, well, first of all, we, before we do the Bulgarian quote, we have to preface it by saying Talbot's unhappy, his agent. meets with Bill Garon, they have a conversation, and then his agent, I think it says to Pierre LeBrun, essentially says, Talbot's not happy and Bill Garon has a lot to think about.

Basically saying the ball's in his court, but we told this and that. And at which point Bill Garen replies, quote, I don't have shit to do. Camp Talbot's under contract. The agent can say whatever the hell he wants. My team's set right now, and that's the way it goes. We can have all the discussions we want.

Cam's a member of our team. We really like Cam. All we're trying to do is win. I don't have to do shit. Or I don't have shit to do, Red. Yeah. That's very funny. Yeah, I guess is it good to have your team's best player not able to get into the country

and also your backup goalie basically saying, I don't want to get involved in all this. This sucks. It's probably not great. As long as you don't have like 14 million in dead cap space, you're fine. Yeah, that was the other thing I was going to say. What if also you can't sign anybody, really? What if you had to trade a guy you really like who's pretty good for not nothing, but pretty close to nothing?

Nothing that helps you right now, certainly, because you couldn't afford to sign it because of all that dead cab space. Would that be good? Also, on top of everything else? It feels like that would be bad, but I'm not, I'm not an NHLGM, so I'm speculating. So, yeah, be interesting to see where it goes from Minnesota, for sure. Billy Huso, traded to Detroit. They immediately signed him three years, $4.75 million. Cost him a third round pick.

So, I feel like they tried this. $4.7 million goalie with upside. Well, it feels like they tried this last year, and it didn't maybe work. out so good. Yeah, it worked very badly, which is why they're doing it. But Detroit has a ton of cap space and they are the sort of team that should be rolling the dice on guys like this. Sure. Yeah, I just thought it was interesting that they did it for a second summer in a row and they were like, this time it'll work though, because Vili Huso had like 20 good games earlier. I mean, you remember this? You know, honestly, obviously there's they're signing these guys to

contracts and there's capital implications and all that. But Isn't this kind of what you should do with how weird goaltending is? It's just every year get like a young guy who showed some ability and cough up a third round pick to get him. Like, I mean, if you hit on one out of every five years, that's, it actually works okay. Now, you'd also have five goalies and you'd be spending 20 million of your cap on them. So that's a little flawed. But I don't hate the idea. No, I don't disagree with you, honestly.

And, like, Huso is a guy where if you're giving them only three years, I get it. That's fine. And, again, like, is Detroit going to be a playoff team next year? No. Are they going to be better than they were last year? Probably. And, like, does Huso, you know, potentially help you a decent amount? Yeah.

And if he doesn't, does Nadelcovic maybe bounce back a little bit? Also, maybe, yeah. So, like, I think that this is a totally defensible. trade. I just thought it was funny that they were like, I'll just do the same thing again. Yep. Take two. That rocks. Now here is a trade for a guy's RFA rights that I do not get it.

New Jersey trades down their second and a third round pick for Vtec Vanichick. And then Tom Fitzgerald says, our plan next year is Van derichick and Blackwood platoon. by the way we're trying to be better oh oh that when he said that it probably sent shivers down the black hawks spine oh no

yeah it's always interesting when you need a goalie and so you call up a team that needs a goalie even more than you do and say could we have your goalie and they didn't even qualify their other goalie absolutely yes you can qualify Samsonov which I mean I know we're not doing

too much of a UFA well we'll do it later but like we everyone assumes Darcy Kemper to Washington right that is

that is everybody's thought yeah like there's no teen there's no contender left that has cap space that

I mean that that feels and there's not really anyone left for for Washington and as we've learned if there's no one

left you just do whatever and it's fine so that has to be the fit Yeah. But we don't know because they haven't talked to each other. They've had no con.

No, well, when would they have done so? The window to do so hasn't opened yet. Well, it won't open for another like 24 hours as we record this. But yeah, I just, boy, this trade for New Jersey, didn't they feel like the team that was going to get Kemper? Right? Like we're trying to be relevant again. And they were like, what if we take the guy nobody, like the team that doesn't have a goalie doesn't want?

And we stick him with this guy who we pretty much have already said, like, this guy sucks. Let's put it this way. You don't go out and trade for a goalie who sucks if you're confident your other goalie isn't bad. Right? Like, you're hoping at least one of them's good. How quickly McKenzie Blackwood fell from, like, good young future goalie to guy that everyone agrees is total garbage. is still a little jarring to me. But, well, we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, his career save percentage is now 907, which is like a little below average for an NHL goalie, I think. But like it, you know, like you say, he just like went in the toilet. It wasn't to do with like, oh, you know, the team in front. front of him got worse and so he did too. See, in front of them, like, stayed bad, but,

I don't, I don't, I don't, boy, I don't, I don't like what New Jersey's doing here, unless they're trying to get Matt Veemichkov, in which case, salute, respect. Yeah, Maraziz, sorry to bring this up again, Marazic to Ottawa, Toronto trades down 13 spots, totally reasonable. Totally, totally makes sense. Yeah. Everything that happened after that. Not so much.

Yeah. And then here another goalie trade at the draft. Colorado traded for Georgiev, two-thirds and a fifth, and then they extend them three years, 3.4. Which is, I mean, that's cheap if it works, and if it doesn't, you can get out of it. And this is, and we alluded to it with the Leafs, but this is a team that believes it can win with C-plus goaltending.

And is probably right. In fact, some would argue, just did exactly that. So they don't get silly on going out for guys. And this will be interesting because, you know, and it's true for Huso and maybe even Vanichick as well, but especially this move, this will be the one that if it works and he plays well, everybody who got one of the other goalies will be like, why don't we get that guy? You know, we had two third-round picks. We had $3 million in cap space.

how come Joe Sackick got the guy and none of the RGM didn't. Yeah, and I think this is pretty risky, honestly. He was outright bad last year, and he wasn't particularly good, albeit in a lockout shortened or a COVID shortened season. Isn't it funny how when a season is shortened in the NHL, you just kind of go, oh, there must have been a lockout. Yeah, that's right. Um,

anyhow, uh, yeah, like, I, I think this is a risky trade. Like you say, like if this works out,

then great. And if it doesn't, maybe, maybe the contract's easy to move. First of all, I'm not sure that it is. And second of all, um,

this feels like the, the, the last, uh, the last chance to really, again, like the, the,

uh, McKinnon contracts up after this season. Yeah, which is why you don't want to be spending a lot on goaltending if you can avoid it. Yeah, sure. The odds that the odds that is terrible are low. Yeah, for sure. But what I'm saying is 3.4 kind of feels like a lot for a guy who over the last two years is like a 900 goalie. Yeah.

It's tough, though. You trade for a guy. You got to. Yeah, no, but like, again, this is to a lesser extent the Matt Murray thing, where you're like, this is the guy you wanted to go out and get. Like, I'd be a little more confident in a different reclamation project is all. Or I would wait around for James Reimer or whoever. Anyhow. Yeah, and then the last bit of goalie news here.

Braden Holby won't play next season might retire. I don't like to see that. Good goalie for a really long time. Cool. Cool guy. I'm trying to think. He was pretty good last year, right, in a limited role for Dallas. Very limited. Yeah, he's...

24 games, 913. Good goalie. Mm-hmm. Yep. You know, I'm curious to see what Dallas does with that, because obviously they're set for their star. Oh, no, they signed Scott Wedgwood, didn't they? So there you go. But, yeah, I hope you would have been a great option for any one of these teams, I think.

Like Colorado, Hope you would have been a great option. Toronto. Hope you would have been a great option. But anyway. Some other news here. No, we're out of the goalie carousel, I think. I don't know that we missed anybody at this point. Some other stuff.

Mike Rear, I think it hadn't happened when we recorded last. Mike Rear is officially the GM in San Jose. It has a lot of work to do. Hey, did you see this? Apparently, they're kicking the tires on trading Brent Burns? Yeah. Wow. And it was Carolina and Dallas, I think, have been mentioned so far.

Yeah. I mean, that's exactly the sort of move the shark should be. Gotta be making them. Yeah. Somebody who still likes Brent Burns, but I mean, how many years has he got left on that? I think three or four. Oh. It's not, it's not as many as you think, but it's a lot.

Three years and his 37. Yeah. So. But, yeah, I mean. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah. The sharks are, the sharks are in a, in a tough spot.

Here's the crazy part about this. So Brent Burns has a modified. no trade. He can and what it is, I believe, is that he can tell the sharks, here are the three teams you're allowed to trade me to. Oof.

Ooh, boy. Okay. Hurtle, full no move. Couture, same thing as Burns. You can trade me to one of these three teams. Alexander Barabanov has a 10-team no trade list. Why?

Nick Benino has a five-team no-trade list. Eric Carlson, full no-moove. Mark Edward Vlasic. Full no move, but also a three-team trade list. James Reimer, five-team, no trade. That's a lot of guys who have say over where they go. And if you're a team that's trying to, if you're a team that's trying to get out from under some of these contracts,

that sucks. I guess the other thing we should mention about the Sharks is a bad break for director of scouting Doug Wilson Jr. Apparently out of a job. I don't know what happened. How do you get that job do you think? I would assume through LinkedIn probably applied, sent his resume in and got it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, anytime I see something like that, especially when they're just tacking a junior on to the end of it.

I'm like, boy, this fucking league, huh, man. It rocks. It's so funny. Another GM move here. Chris McFarland is the GM of the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche. Joe Sackett, president of hockey ops. Am I right about what the title is? Yep, kicked upstairs.

McFarland, apparently, is a very, very well-regarded executive. Yep, he sure is. executive and other teams were circling and the abs made the decision to promote him. What was it? They said he couldn't talk to the sharks. Was that it? It was somebody they said, no, you're not allowed to talk to this guy. Get a grip.

When that happens, you have to make him your GM, basically. Sackick will still be involved, but not holding the actual title, which. Shout out to everyone in my prediction contest. who just got screwed again by having Joe Sackick listed as a guy who could not possibly lose his job. Just lost his job, technically. On a technicality, yeah. And then, as we mentioned, immediately they re-signed Bel Air-Nechukin, eight years, 6.125 million. You know, you're not happy with the term, I guess, but you're happy with the cap number.

and eight years from now, where is this team going to be anyway? Maybe it doesn't super matter. It's almost no eight-year deal is ever a good deal, but when you have like a wide open cup window in front of you, go for it, baby. Make hay while the sun shines. Yep. And hey, why don't we run down a list of UFAs here?

And we'll just, since this is, again, 24 hours before the UFA window opens. My prediction is that they all stay with the team that they are currently with. All right. Johnny Goddrault. What do you think? There was lots of positive chatter coming out of Montreal, like from the Calgary side. But, I mean, if he's going to hit the market, assuming, put it this way, if he gets to the market tomorrow,

so that takes the eighth year off the table, you assume he's going somewhere. I know a lot of people are saying Philadelphia, I'll say New Jersey. I'll say that's their move too. Yeah. I've seen a few people say the Islanders. And I've seen it suggested that the issue is the Calgary's at like 8x 9.5. And Johnny Godreau is like, okay, get that number up a little bit. Let's go into the double digits on that AAB, which I think is, I think it makes sense.

I think if you're Calgary, the difference in that 500 grand or even extra million, that should not be the thing that's stopping me from getting Godreau at the eight years, honestly. Again, as you say, I wouldn't personally want to get into the business of giving out eight-year contracts to every Tom Dick or Harry that comes down the street. But, like, Johnny Goddrow was part of arguably the best line in hockey last year. And yeah, you want to keep Kachuk, but like, there's some fucking awful contracts on the books for Calgary. They got to figure out something to do with them. And if that includes buying out Milan Luchich or or Sean Monaghan, make it happen. Now, maybe, oh, maybe Monaghan's not eligible because he's probably not cleared because of that shoulder.

But that's possible. But, yeah, yeah, I mean, the question is, can they keep Kuchuk too? Because there was a... And Montiopani. There was some trade. Well, Manjupani is a good player, but I don't. don't think you Oh,

those are the two, those are the two priorities is Kachuk and, and you draw, it's not even close. And, but, I mean,

it did, Manjiupani's a guy you've got to make space for. He's really good. Yeah, there was some chatter, trade chatter around Kachuk, definitely in Montreal.

So see, see if that goes anywhere. Yeah, I, I guess we'll see. Yeah. I'm going to say he stays with Calgary, I think that extra year is what makes it interesting.

Evgeny Malkin, what do you think? Not Pittsburgh. So now... Yeah, I agree. The thing with Malkin that's interesting is, look, he obviously... He obviously values his services at a certain level, and he was expecting a fair contract from Pittsburgh, and it didn't happen. now where does this go?

Because it could go one of two ways. He could say, you know what, now I want, I still want the same number somewhere else. I want even more. Or he could go, well, screw it. If I'm a free agent now, I'll go anywhere and maybe the price changes, you know, like maybe I'll go some contender and play cheap and just have a great time. I don't know. I feel like that one's pretty wide open. I know, I know the joke has been.

Washington. He goes to Washington. Yeah. You know who should sign him? Colorado Avalanche. Dude. Like, I'm saying if he just goes, fuck it, I'm going to a contender. How do you not go like one and a half million bucks to play for the Aves?

Because people, this is the interesting thing. The Aves do have a bit of cap space. And if they're not able to bring back Burkofsky, I'm pretty confident. We'll talk about it in a minute. I'm pretty confident they're not going to be able to bring back cadre. But like I've seen people say, well, Colorado, what about Claude Jureux? And if we're talking Clod Jureux to Colorado, which I think much like Malkin would be a great fit for a team and player alike, if the player is willing to take short money.

You know, I don't know how you go. I'd rather have Giroux than Malkin with the relative costs figured in. Yeah. But third line center in town. Oh, hell, yeah. What do I always say? I love a super team. Let's get every all-star on one team and see what happened.

Sounds fucking awesome. But yeah Okay, Nassum Cadry, what do you think? Philly has always just felt like a great fit there. I like that. I would have said, you know who's a guy who has a little bit of familiarity with Nassam Khadry?

Like guys who are like they do hitting and stuff like that. That's what Nassam Khadry does. Lou Lamarillo. Hmm. Yep. I can see that one happening. I thought you were going Brian Burke there. which would be, that would have been fun if they had Capspace too.

Yeah, that I just don't think can happen. Andrew Copp. Not New York. No, he's out in New York. Makes you think that maybe there are better or bigger options in play for New York. Maybe Malcon's a New York guy. Maybe. I don't know where he winds up.

I see this being, this is one of those things where it will probably be some surprise. and it'll be like a 6 million number that this is a bit high but yeah this is another possibility for the islanders i think that does andrew cop not seem like a fucking luke kind of a guy to you absolutely um this is a guy i think the oilers might be wise to target could be the guy i mean yeah he's a player man he's he's a player but like is anyone going in for agency with ander cop is like their first choice. Probably not. There are some good centers available.

Yeah. But, yeah. All right. Andre Palat. Seems like he's out in Tampa. Another one that I think will sort of wait. See, this is, and we haven't really mentioned him yet, but

this feels like maybe a Seattle play. I agree. He's already got lots of cups. So go someplace so you can play a little higher in the lineup, make good money. be happy.

And for as far as Seattle's concerned, he helps, but he's not a guy that, you're going to give him eight years or anything like that. He'll go like five, five and a half, something like that, like five years, five and a half million dollars. I bet. Five years, six million bucks. The money is kind of not the point for Seattle. So it's just a matter of getting guys in and making sure they're not signed forever. And I think Pallat's a great fit for that reason. Reunite them with Yanny Gord.

There you go. Everybody likes that. John Klingberg. Again, that's a Seattle one that I've heard. Okay. See, I heard Carolina. I don't know how they make that work financially, but like that, That seems like it would make sense.

They love a defenseman. So. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's an option. All right. Vince Trocheck.

Don't care. Okay. Sorry. I think that's totally, we're getting into the kind of don't care region. Yeah. It will be. What will it take to get Vince Trochechek to move from whichever team he is currently on to a new team.

Ryan Strom. That's, yeah, that is a little more interesting. I think they're equally interesting, but fair enough. Yeah. Again, not anyone's first choice, you wouldn't think. So it's sort of one where you sit down. Not even the first choice from the Rangers. No.

I would agree. Do you think the Strom brothers want to go play together somewhere? Oh, that's the other thing we forgot to talk about. but with Chicago, they refuse to qualify any of their restricted free agents, basically. Anyone who can play hockey is. Dylan, Dominic Kubolique, is also going to be available to anybody. Both those guys will be UFAs. Yeah, let's do the Strom brothers.

They're a traveling act, and in fact, all three Strom brothers are going to be available. Of course, one of them is not really an NHL. But Ryan and Dylan, let's see here. You know, speaking of Edmonton, if I'm Edmonton, I give Dylan a call for sure. He's not going to cost a lot of money. He's a guy who, here's the, I saw somebody make this point on Twitter. The thing about Dylan Strom is they let him go because the coach they already fired didn't like him. Yes.

Strange. There are like two coaches or one coach plus their current coach removed. from the coach that didn't like Dylan Strome. And they're like, yeah, fuck him. See you later. Weird to me. Seems healthy. Yeah.

So, yeah, like, I, Christ, half the teams in the league should be calling Dylan Stroh. Boston Bruins should be calling Dylan Strom. But the ruins are a team I like for your Vince Trochecks, your Ryan Stromes, even your Nino-Nita writers. They just need top six. Should mention David Crachie, apparently. Yeah. Could be on the way back. Seems like he's coming back.

Seems like Berseran's coming back. you know, maybe you just can't fit all these guys in. Yeah, and hey, let's do a Vanderkane. Why not? If not Edmonton. If not Edmonton, yeah. And it seems like not Edmonton, so. Well, I'm still not completely sold that once he gets to market and back.

See, again, the thing with Kane is more so than any other player, given his circumstances, you kind of wonder, like, how much of it is about, fit or winning versus getting just the maximum possible value on a deal. In which case, who's got the space and is willing to risk it on this guy? I don't know. Everybody thinks it won't be their favorite team, but it's going to be, right, it's got to be someone's. I could see Ottawa doing it.

I know they have a lot of young guys and like, you don't maybe want a guy who's got a bit of a reputation as a shithead in the room to be your, around all your young players or whatever. But they also, I feel like maybe have enough veterans at this point that maybe you just don't care. Maybe, yeah. And they're trying to power up. They need, well, I guess the thing is they're kind of set on top six forwards now, aren't they? Or at least top six wages.

They don't have a ton of it. And the other problem, the thing that I would worry about if I was a Vanderkane is Ottawa is another small town. Sure. Right. Like in Winnipeg, yes, he screwed up a lot in Winnipeg, but also every screw up was like immediately known by everybody. Yeah. And Ottawa, I think would feel like the same thing, which, you know, obviously you sign him hoping that he's past that and he's not going to screw up anymore. but I don't know, we'll see.

It could go bad. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's a single team that could sign him, and I'd be like, and it'll go great for him there. You know what I mean? Good point. You know, and here's the other thing. I think there is a non-zero chance that he just has to go back to San Jose.

We find out August 14th. Yeah. Yeah, they just come in and say the contract is still valid, in which case. Who knows? Yeah. Anyway, I think that's about it. I think we're all taped out for this week. Unless you want to really dig into, like, where does Ilya Samsonov go or whatever.

Yeah, I'm really into that. Yeah, so hit us with some plugs. You can find me on The Athletic. I don't know if I'm even writing anything this week. We are doing a live blog tomorrow. Yeah. We'll be part of that. I also am doing a live blog tomorrow.

Competing live blogs, you need to choose. Ryan and I are standing on either side of you, telling you to run to the one you love most. Oh, boy, I wonder where everybody's going to go. This is a real fucking brain buster for all the listeners. Well, I wouldn't run towards me right now. I'd be, bad idea. I'd run toward you and then, like, right up until maybe about six feet away.

Yes. Yeah, that's about it Roughly one shopping cart length, I would say. Yes, well, it's a hockey stick up here is how we describe it. Hey, makes perfect sense. Yeah, and obviously, E.P.Rinkside.com, if you use the code, I Love E.P. When you sign up for an annual subscription, you'll get an extra three months tacked on to the end of it. And then check out the Puck Suit Patreon.

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