Puck Soup - Shout at the Devils

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

The boys discusses the untimely demise of NJ Devils coach John Hynes, then figure out who coaches them next and where Taylor Hall will be traded. Plus, the "resignation" of Bill Peters, the investigation of Marc Crawford and Sean Avery's role in it, David Pastrnak, NHL vigilantes, Nicklas Backstrom as his own agent, a super tough "foundational players" test and a deep dive into the best and worst wrestling stables. Sponsored by Seat Geek!   

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Mishinsky of ESPN, the worldwide leader in Sprott. I'm Ryan Lambert from Yahoo. Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And you're in Puck Soup where once again, our timing is impeccable and we do the show after the devils fire their coach.

This doesn't always happen. There's a lot of times where we would have done this show and it would have been 45 minutes on, what should the devils do with John Hines? And then like the minute we stop, he gets fired. But this time we were ahead of the curve. The devils weren't, I don't think. head of the curve. No.

I think this probably should have happened months ago. Maybe like when they started the season with six straight games without a point. Yeah. But they fight. And also that how fucking weird was the timing overall on this where they, they get, they play that buffalo. So they lose the Rangers for nothing, which is embarrassing, but it happens. Then they lose what might be the single most uninspired, embarrassing effort since,

what do you think, Sean? since the Wayne Gretzky Mickey Mouse game in the 1980s. That's a good. That's a good poll. 7 to 1 loss of the Sabres. Then they have a game against Vegas on Tuesday night, and then they fire Heinz hours before that game. And I have to think, personally, based on what Ray Shiro said,

about trying to do the best thing for John in some ways, he knows what's happening. night. He knows it is a fucking Greek chorus of Fire Hines chance the entire game and probably just wants to headbet off with the pass. He didn't say as much, but I get the sense of that. And if you

remember, that was, remember when Randy Carlisle got did in? That was his reason he got did in, wasn't it? Well, that was that was Burke's, uh, version of it. I mean, Brian Burke is often going to say things that made Brian. Wasn't that Wilson and not Carlisle though? Yeah. It was, it was, it was the fire Wilson. Yeah, sorry about that.

You're welcome. But, yeah. So, Ryan Lambert. So, Heinz gets fired. And they lose anyway. What was your thoughts on the devil's coaching change, boys?

Yeah, I mean, I figured that if they weren't going to fire him after that horrible October, they just weren't going to fire him. I guess seeing, you know, the Saber's score a touchdown on you, you're always going to be like, shit, we're going to do something about this. But, you know, part of me is still saying, like, what was he supposed to do with this roster

and specifically this goaltending? Yeah, I mean, it's, as with just about any coaching change, it's not all about the coach, but this clearly wasn't working. And you hate to say that players have quit on a coach, because that implies that they're actively going out there going, screw this guy. Like, yeah, I'm going to let this guy escape by me and I'll let us get lit up. And I think that happens very, very rarely. But sometimes a team is just done for a coach. And that doesn't necessarily mean they dislike the guy.

It doesn't necessarily mean they want them fired. But just the words aren't registered. discering anymore. And it's done. And I think part of the reason of the weird timing is after that Sabres game, it was over. And I don't think there was any coming back from that. And then you just go, well, you know what, do we try to fire them before the day of a game, which is relatively rare? Or do we let them go out there and maybe they play well or maybe the goalie stands in his head and they get a win. And now what do we do? Do we have, you know, do we fire him after a win against a good team? or do you, I mean, at some point, we talked about this with, you know, with Bapcock, I think.

When it's done, it's done. And you just got to do it. And I think at 7 to 1, I mean, 11 to 1 combined against two bad teams and the Rangers and Sabres, it was done. How dare you? It was done. The Sabres are a playoff contender, sir. Right, I forgot. I mean, yeah, I guess the Rangers are right now, too.

Yeah. I think of it. No, the whole metro division that isn't the devils is just like right in the thick of it. That's a sad, sad state of a fair. It's true, though. The weird thing about John Hines is that, and I don't know if it's just because, as we've seen recently, and we'll get into in a few minutes, that the game is bereft of good people. I've never heard more people behind the scenes defend this guy than any other coach that had fewer results. the ratio is all out of whack as far as like the number of people that are like john hines

really knows what he's doing good dude great coach should be successful versus had five seasons and had and became a playoff contender once when the team went like a billion and one down the stretch and taylor hall won the heart trophy based on that stretch like and keith kinkade turned into fucking brador for like three weeks um i have met so many people that like will will go to the mattresses over John Hines being a really good coach, but the results weren't there. So I guess it comes back to the classic debate whenever a coach is fired. Coaching versus construction, boys. I think he would be more successful in the construction business.

Okay. That's brilliant. God his ass. He's finished. That was the worst thing to happen to him all week. It was brilliant. Ryan, to go back to it, though, like you mentioned the goaltending. They had sub-replacement goaltending this season.

Last season, it could be argued much the same. I mean, I tend to believe that there are pieces here that should, in theory, add up to a successful team. But the goaltending would subvert all of that for almost any team. And so on that aspect, I think it's construction, but maybe not the overall roster, agree or disagree. Well, I mean, you know, the thing I said last year was, or, you know, coming into this season, I guess, was that, you know, this is a team with some good players on it, but probably not enough. I mean, I don't think anybody could be pleased with how that defense looks. And that was even with saying, well, maybe P.K. Suban bounces back, which he mostly hasn't, I think. there are some good players on the defense but not anybody where you're like oh yeah we're all set if you know if this is our if this is our group um i really don't care much for the forward group once hall comes off the ice you know again there are good players

Kyle Palmary is a good player um jack hughes obviously figuring it out Niko Hesier, you know, very underrated, but they're just, you know, they're a lot like the oilers and that they are not super deep anywhere and they don't have dry sidler McDavid. They don't. They don't even have Taylor Hall this year, for God's sakes. Yeah. He hasn't been particularly great. And then, yeah, like you said, the goaltending was always a dicey bet.

but, you know, it didn't come out for him at all. So here we are. So Elaine Nazra-Dene takes over, a guy that has been, you know, on the lips of everybody when talking about hot coaching candidates for at least a decade. I'm surprised the wild didn't fire Boudreau and jump on this guy when he was still available. Yeah, it must be, they must have been worried about Ray Shear letting him out from under contract. Must have been in all the teams that were refusing to knock on the. the devil's door for the Elaine Nazardine Derby. What I like about this hiring on an interim

basis is that he was in charge of the devil's defense and their defense wasn't good. Although, I guess from an expected goals against perspective, they were actually okay in the last two seasons. A total band-aid, a total placeholder, who do you think is going to be the next devil's coach, and is it Dan Bilesma? I hope it's not for their sake. You know, I, it's one of those things where I could see them going the more traditional route of a guy who has, you know, plenty of experience in the league, or they could do the thing of going and getting like a Jim Montgomery type out of college hockey or something

like that. And, you know, there is, this is, this is interesting because you, I mean, Ray Shiro is obviously the guy that's still going to make this call. And your point is well taken because there is nobody more old school thinking, I think, when it comes to hiring practices than Ray Shiro. I also think that Ray Shiro has a real nepotism problem. Witness, you know, the Peter was a horticcheck that dude that used to coach the fucking Leafies, becoming an assistant coach for the Devils, based on the fact that Shiro hired him to coach the Milwaukee Admirals with the Nashville Predators

when he was assistant GM there. I mean, that's the only reason he's there. He did a due to favor. So it wouldn't shock me to see a retread that somehow has ties to Ray Shiro, which means you're Dan Baezma, your Todd Richards types, maybe even a Mike Yo, right? Because he was born from the Penguins coaching tree. But at the same time, Ray Shiro is Mr. USA hockey.

So it wouldn't shock me to see them maybe dabble a few layers down to get to find the next coach. and go off the grid a little bit. So that's a good bit of handicapping for you, though. But I think old school is probably the smarter bet with Shiro. Yeah. Yeah, but what is this group need? You know, like, it's such a, I wrote about it this week where, you know, they're in a position where almost every veteran on the roster has a deal expiring this year next.

Right. You know, with the exception of like Heeshire, Severson and Suban, who, you know, you know, they'd probably be wise to get out from under that deal. There aren't too many guys who are like over, I don't think there are any guys, actually, who are like over 25, 26 years old who are locked in long term here. And if that's the case, you know, this could be a team with maybe a longer runway on a rebuild. And do you want to bring in a Dan Bilesma type to guide you through that? I don't know.

I don't think so. I mean, in theory, you want to bring it a John Heinz type for a long rebuild. That's the issue. But I don't know. What do you think, Sean? Who's the next coach of the Devils? First of all, I wouldn't be shocked at Basma is the next coach of the Red Wings and potentially before the devils get a shot at them. So, you know, it's going to be interesting because it'll tell us a lot about what Ray Shiro thinks of this group.

If you're looking at this group going, okay, we had the wrong coach, we need goal 10. but the pieces are there. And plus, you know, we're in that window of Jack Hughes's entry-level deal where he's going to be cheap for a little while. If he becomes an elite player, we want to strike while there, and's hot. Let's go and get a veteran voice who's going to come in and get this team back to the playoffs. Or is he looking at it going, you know what?

These pieces didn't fit. I thought I had something. I didn't. I need to tear it down and start over again, in which case, maybe the younger, newer voice. it makes more sense. And it's like, that's not a hard and fast rule. It's not like if you think you're a contender, you hire an old guy.

And if you think you're not, you hire the young guy. Like we just saw the Leaf Spring and Sheldon Keith as an example. Like sometimes it makes sense to go in one direction or the other. But I do think certainly when we see the candidates that they're talking to, that's going to tell us something about where Shiro thinks this is headed in the short term. Man, that's a real tough. I mean, I don't know what kind of sell that is for like the Devils fans, right? in theory, yeah, a continued rebuild makes sense.

Your best player was just drafted. I mean, in theory, what should be your best player in a few years was just drafted first overall. He's a kid. You'll get another kid in the draft. You'll get some kids back when you inevitably trade Taylor Hall, which we'll talk about in a second. On the one hand, the continuing rebuild makes sense. On the other hand, it's real kicking the balls

because this was a year where they went a little bit all in to take advantage of Hall's final year, Yeah, but they shouldn't have. Yeah, maybe that was the fuck up. Is that they, he misjudged the roster as it stands and thought by augmenting it with a few guys, they were going to be a playoff team. I will say, by the way, you know, you know who's turned out to be a pretty good little player for them?

Nikita Goosev. Well, he. On one side of, one, on one side of the ice. Well, yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't get them because you're like, I think this guy plays 200 feet. You get him because you're like, I need somebody. you can put the puck in the net, and this is one of the few guys available for cheap who can do it. No, I understand that, but I think that, you know, when you're looking at the overall symptoms of this team and the fact that they, you know, have blown more fucking two-goal leads on Holmeist and one, in two months than most teams have done in a season, you look at the fact that three of their top six guys can't defend on an NHL level right now.

You also maybe look at their team eight, 12, save percentage, but. Well, that too. I mean, but, and you're right, because like, 10th and expected goal goals against and I think third from the bottom and say percentage right now. So I don't know. It fucking sucks to be a devil's fan right now. And it'll suck even more when the inevitable Taylor Hall trade happens. So that ball got rolling in the last week, even before the coaching change, Pierre LeBrun saying, The Devils are listening, which, of course, they've been listening for months.

but they're also actively scouting other teams, Colorado being one of them. If you had to guess where Taylor Hall ends up via trade, where do you think it's going to be? Yeah, I think Colorado is a destination that makes a little bit of sense on the surface because, you know, they need a number two left wing. but at the same time it's like they don't really have the resources to keep him around long term just because you know, Rantin McKinnon, Landisg, Eric Johnson signed for like three or four more years, Sam Gerard's contract kicks in next year, they're going to need to re-sign, Cale McCarr in two seasons. And those are a bunch of guys who are going to be,

costing you a lot of money. And I don't know, someone asked me in the mailbag this week, like, is Taylor Hall like a $10 million player? I mean, probably he is. And do they have $10 million to spend? No, probably not. And if that's the case, do you give up a first round pick, a good prospect or two, maybe a roster player to acquire him? That starts to be a tough sell, I think. Yeah, as far as is he a $10 million player, his agent is Darren Ferris. So, yes, he is going to be a $10 million player, whether he is or not. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Ryan. I think Colorado is a possible destination.

St. Louis maybe has a shorter term option. But the problem is, and Ryan hit on this, is there's basically three types of teams. There's teams that are already very good right now and are probably capped out and can't really afford to bring him in. there's teams that are good right now, but also young and maybe not capped out, but have got these young guys that are going to need new deal soon. So if they're thinking a few years ahead, might not be able to afford them. And then there's teams that don't have any of those problems because they're bad and they don't have any good players who are going to earn a lot of money.

And why would those teams be out there trying to bring Taylor Hall in? So it, you know. And yeah, and Taylor Hall wouldn't resign there, obviously. Exactly. He wouldn't be interested. I don't think he's going to resign anywhere that like trades for him. I think you'd have to really. Which is a very big problem if you're Ray Shiro trying to get maximum value for this guy. Because you want to trade him somewhere that's making an eight-year commitment. The price to acquire a guy for eight years versus the price to acquire a guy for eight weeks is vastly different. And this is why I like, like I had a tweet this week. where I said, I said, here's my Taylor Hall hot take. And I was being a little bit tongue in cheek on when I said hot take.

But I thought it was at least a medium spicy take. And what I said was that I think it's crazy that some team is going to give a bunch of assets and then throw eight years and 80 million plus at Taylor Hall. And then in two years, we're all going to act surprised that the guy's on the wrong side of 30 and he's not the same player he was. And we're all going to look at that and go, that was a bad deal. And I, you know, that I just think it's nuts that some team out there is going to do that. And like I said, I thought it was, you know, that's not the craziest thing I've ever said,

but I thought I'd get some pushback. And instead, what I got was overwhelmingly people agreeing with me. And then the second category was people pushing back going, dude, that's not even an interesting observation. That is, you've just stayed at something so obvious. Yeah, that's objective facts. That, I mean, you didn't even need to tweet that. Which did surprise. Like, I'm not sure that I even had one single person come back and be like, no, man, Taylor Hall is great.

He's, he's worth it. You know, the devils are going to get a ton for him. Man, I don't know. There's 30 other teams out there. I don't think there's 30 smart teams out there. So, yeah, is somebody going to talk themselves into it? Maybe. Can you maybe wrap your head?

Like, is Edmonton a special case because he's been there already and the fans already have a relationship? And plus they're a top heavy team, so maybe it makes more sense for them because they've already got their two key guys locked up. And maybe. But like I said to a few people, I really think that the play here, if you're another team out there, is to go to Ray Shiro, negotiate a deal where you give up something of value to get Taylor Hall now. And then there's conditionals on it where if you resign him, the price goes way up. The Matthew Shane. Yeah. The Matthew Shane.

Something like that. And then make no effort to re-sign him. Like, don't even start the conversation. Bring him in just as a rental. Try to win a Stanley Cup with the guy and then let him walk because I don't want any, like, if this guy is a free agent and you have a shot at going and getting him without giving up any assets, but you have to overpay to do it. And it's like the John Tavares situation, I think for some teams that'll make sense.

But to give up assets and then, like a market. Stone, Eric Carlson type of situation. Man, I just, I am not going to be at all surprised in a couple of years when some team does go ahead and do this and we're looking back at it going, that was a really bad move. I don't know if the money can work. They might have to figure out a couple things on their roster. But based on previous trade deadline history and based on stated goals this season, season, Boston Bruins. Hell yeah, let's go.

Take the David Backus contract back the other way. Ooh, baby. He'd have to waive it to do it, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, I think. And I also think that, like, all due respect to Jake DeBruscoe, I think, is a really good player. I mean, they've been looking for that fucking role for how long. I mean, the Nash trade and, you know, everything else. Yeah. I mean, that is just like, if you're talking about all in, let's fucking go, Stanley

Cup champion, you know, get the fucking duckboats ready. Like the Taylor Hall trade seems like it'd be something that Cam Neely is already written on the back of the cocktail napkin, you know, to figure out, right? Like, I think that's, that's to me outside of Colorado who probably has sexier assets for the devils if you're looking to really maximize your return. I think Boston's the team that makes all the sense. As a short term, though, right? Like, yeah, for the short term.

Oh, yeah, they can't. Yeah. Fuck, no. They can't. They can't sign them long term. I'm a big believer that, you know, flags fly forever. And if you've got a show, especially Boston is like, they're not a team whose window is slamming shut, but it's, it's on the way down. It's, yeah, take a swing.

Get that, go and get it. Now, could, does, does Hall want to play in Boston? Absolutely. And he would sign there if they could work it. But, and the only way you could work it is if you find someone to take Crachia, off your hands and and then you know they have their own i mean the problem with that is they have to they have to re-sign krug though that's what i was going to say yeah like and the other thing is the bruin have one of i i can't remember what everybody's rankings were at the start of the

season but one of the worst farm systems in the league right and like they don't i can't think of anybody they have where you're like oh yeah like that guy is a grade a problem Like is Jack Stoedniker or Hovacanin? Like John Beecher is having an okay year at Michigan, but not particularly great. And that was a bit of a weird pick for them. Maybe Kyle Keiser is a good goalie prospect, but, and I guess the devils would want them. But these are just like off the top of my head. I can't think of anybody else where the devils would be like, oh, yeah, let's go.

Anders Bjork. Trent Frederick, let's fucking go. Many will be calling it the par Lindholm trade. Yeah, exactly. Like, you're just, you know, there are some good players, you know, like solid prospects in their system, but nobody. And, you know, if they get Taylor Hall, they're basically going where this first round pick we're giving you is like 28th or later. Right. That's the other issue, too.

I'd put it at 65% that he goes back to Edmonton this summer. What do you think? No. That seems high. Why would he do that to himself? Well, on the one hand, why would he do it to himself? Because we know his thoughts about the fucking market as far as the media. And why would you put yourself back?

It's like dipping yourself in acid, right? Like you climbed out of the acid vat, and now you're like, you know what? I missed the acid. I'm going to just dip myself back in. On the other hand, you can't underestimate unfinished business. You can't underestimate his affinity for the city itself. And you can't underestimate the potential to play with McDavid and Drysiddle for a few years. Where do they get the money to do this, by the way?

And also, you can't underestimate the fact that it's a completely different team than what he left as far as the managerial staff. Where do the oilers get the money to make that happen? They got to re-sign. Who are there? Well, like, they're losing half their team to UFA status, which this summer, which helps. but like they have to resign uh darnel nurse even bear needs a new contract and they like both of those guys um they still have chris russell who i think has no mover some kind of no trade protection um james neal's not going anywhere you know like they have to they have to build

rebuild this roster from the ground up and having another 10 million dollar player see kind of hamper's that. What you're forgetting is that Ken Holland is the GM there now? Hello. Here's how they resign everybody. They overpay them and give them trade protection. Come on. That's how they do it.

And it's going to work out great for them, you know. It's going to be a fucking, it's going to be McDavid, dry sidel hall, and then a team of abulcators and helms. Yeah. And all of whom make 5.75 million. So basically what they have now, except with Taylor Hall. That's the first place team, my friend. You just hate it all over the place.

You hate on the playoff-bound Rangers. You hate on the division champion Oilers. For God's sakes. I say 65% Taylor Hall is Edmonton Oiler in opening night, which means you better get your tickets now. And the best way to do that is through our friends, it's pretty good. With millions of live event tickets from sports and live music to comedy and more,

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It was fun. Fun movie. I've got the Seek app my phone. It's the easiest way I find to get tickets. Obviously, we are around the holiday shopping season. and what better way to make your loved ones feel loved than to go get some premium seats to an NHL game and stuff them in that stocking. Did you do stockings when you're growing up? Yeah.

A little Christmas. What would be in it? Candy. You know, like a small Lego set, that kind of thing. Nothing. Oh, like the little tiny boxes where you're just building like a fucking moon buggy kind of size. I was going to say a moon. buggy, yeah.

And like the occasional, like, copy of Mad magazine or, you know, pro wrestling illustrated. What about you, Sean? Did you have a stockings when you were good? I actually kind of, there was part of me that liked the stockings more than the actual gifts. And, yeah, just full of various stuff that, you know, it later became apparent had just been purchased the night before at the drugstore.

But there'd be like a copy of it. the hockey news and a couple of chocolate bars and that sort of thing. It was, yeah, stockings all the way. Also a huge stocking guy, Dr. Frankenfooter. But in my stockings, I used to have lottery scratch-off tickets. That was a big thing for my parents, is to buy me. And then you grew up to host a gambling show on a major thing. I did.

This origin story is, I don't know, we might get to flesh it out a little bit. Weird how, like, one of the first two games we got for the. Atari 2,600 was casino as well. Weird. Weird how my family used to sit around and play roulette together on an actual, like, roulette wheel that my parents had. Very strange. Also, we had a bingo. Fuck. Wait a second. And also, also my dad would break my thumbs whenever I just, oh, yeah. Whenever I try to steal. Yeah. That's right. Yes. It's weird. Whenever I would sit down at the dinner, table, my dad would take my membership card and then bring it back to me at some point.

You had to calculate the Vig on your allowance. My mom would be walking around with a tray going, hi, see. Comp you a-or-Orenjina. Comp you a ride to swimming lessons. I used, you know, when I would see people in, in like, CVS or the drugstore on Christmas Eve frantically, like, collecting things for their child for Christmas morning, I would always get a little sad, obviously, because that means that their kids are getting toys from the drugstore. But on the other hand, I was always like, you know what? Better than nothing. At least you're making a

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So get them. Or whatever. The Great Reckoning continues, boys, in the National Hockey League. Bill Peters, obviously, resign a fired last week. He was fired. Did we do a show before that, I think? It was, we did one as it was, yeah, he hadn't been fired yet. It was, I think, we recorded on the Tuesday, so the, the accusations had just come out, but we didn't, we didn't go in super deep on it because we knew that it was a developing story.

And it was probably going to be, we were worried our takes were going to be out of date a few hours later. Which they, they almost were. But, so the two things about that, that, that, that, that, that, uh, Arizona firing that I didn't like were one. I'm sure there's some legal reason for it, but Brad True Living could have found a way to signal to his audience that, yeah, Peters would have been fired a little bit more effectively than he did. I mean, he really kind of fucking punted on it. And that came off much more as, I don't want to embarrass my friend than, yes, we would have fucking fired this guy, which is sort of the signal that you should send. And that moment where someone asked him about not using the word racist and then he doesn't use the word racist was, woof. Yeah.

I mean, that is fucking hockey culture problems in a fucking box right there. Like, it was a really bad moment. I know the guy is in an enviable position. He mentioned it enough in the press conference that we know he's in one. But yeah, those two moments really stuck out for me. But at the end of the day, the right thing was done. And Bill Peters isn't coaching the Calgary Flames anymore. And I think that's the key.

I do agree. appreciate the fact that a lot of this wasn't done in the ideal way and a lot of that has to do with lawyers and some of it has to do with the kind of hockey culture stuff. But I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that big picture, they did the right thing. He's gone. He's resigned, but we know that he was. I mean, that's not a resignation. That's the team saying we're going to give you the option to resign or fire you. And even with, like, with Peter's statement, I wouldn't even necessarily call it an apology, but the statement he put out that I know a lot of people, well, a lot of people

didn't like it. And there was, and a lot of the criticisms were very valid. But I feel like it, there was such a race to criticize what he said and didn't say that we kind of overlooked the fact that he acknowledged that it happened, which I think is actually really important. He wasn't vague. He didn't say, you know, oh, you know, I don't really remember something might have got said. He basically, you know, and this is, there wasn't a ton of this, but there was some out there in the days in between where people were saying, oh, Kima Lou probably made this up. He probably, you know, this didn't happen. This is, he's exaggerating. And to have Bill Peters say, not in so many words, but basically say, yeah, it happened. It happened the way he said it happened. That I think was was really important. And I don't. I'm not going to give Bill Peters credit for that. I'm not going to like applaud a guy for doing something terrible. Yeah.

But at the very like I was not expecting that. I was expecting something much more wishy-washy. And so at the very least, I will give credit if not to Bill Peters to whoever in his circle was like, you know what? Just let's just acknowledge what happened and not try to try to run circles around this. At the very least, I was, I appreciated that that got done. Yeah, exactly. So we have that. Then Mark Crawford happened.

It's funny, when all of this stuff started to come out about Babcock and then Peters, I had at least three people reach out to me and be like, Mark Crawford's next. Now, I wasn't privy to any of the stuff outside of what had already been said about him by Brent Sopal about a year ago. And I know that, you know, Patrick O'Sullivan had his issues with him, too. But then this all came to light, and the Blackhawks put him on administrative leave. Also, the inevitable entrance of Sean Avery into the controversy. Yeah. It happened this week with Mark Crawford in which Sean Avery tells his press secretary, Larry Brooks,

that Crawford kicked him rather hard on the bench, left a mark on him. and immediately people were split into two camps. They were like, boy, what a hero Mark Crawford is for kicking Sean Avery. And then the other camp was, boy, who knew that Sean Avery would be the hero that we need? You know, to come forth with these accusations. That lasted approximately two days because then Sean Avery put out a video that literally said that Mark Crawford is the second best coach he ever had, he deserved to get kicked, and he wished, quote, that Mark Crawford had spanked him harder.

So for all of us fitting Sean Avery for the superhero cape, he's still Sean Avery, folks. He's cool, actually. I'm against kicking NHL players except if they're shot, no. Don't kick shy. But it was a weird story because even the Larry Brooks story was, like, you didn't get the sense that this was Sean Avery describing something that particularly bothered him. It kind of came across more like, hey, yeah, here's a story about getting kicked on the bench. Yeah, this happened to me. Isn't that fun? Yeah, it really did see, like, because they, even in that story, they were like, oh, is that why you got traded? And he goes, no, it's because I tried to fight an assistant coach in practice, like a week later.

It was like, cool, man. So everybody read the headline. They're like, oh, my God, a yet another accusation, love it against Mark Crawford. And meanwhile, inside the story, it's like, kicking is fun. Yeah, it's played out as a funny anecdote. from yeah which i mean does illustrate that there is a socialist nihilist who harasses homeless people yeah there there there there is a range of kind of reactions out there right now in in the hockey world and i'm talking about the actual hockey world not just the fans who are sitting on the outside but you know there there are a lot of people saying this is great this is all coming up we needed

this reckoning for a while there are other people going you know what this is this is old school hockey whatever it was this is how it uh how it used to go um and then there's i don't know Sean Avery isn't old school, but I don't know, maybe he's his own, his own category. Oh, and by people, you mean, uh, Adrian Dater, uh, everybody's favorite theater. Yeah, having a fucking normal one every day. That's who wrote, who tweeted twice from a, well, one coach to me on latest developments, quote, most of the issues are all from X players, malcontents. I wish some of the sensible players would speak. up again noted malcontent johan franzin you know what a fucking pain in the ass johan franzin was always

carousing and you know fucking fuck fuck you and then uh adair also writes most long time pepocky people are saying that's it will become the NBA and MLB no where players run the sport oh no not those far more successful sports global sports yeah oh my god like has there any anything more celebrated in fucking sports in the last decade than the NBA players taking the NBA over? And, you know, there are some people that are like, oh, it sucks. Like, all these guys figure out where they want to play and, you know, the teams that get group players and teams. But the fucking league is the most popular sports entity on the planet. On a global scale, it is more popular than the NFL, right? And you can make the argument because of its popularity

the U.S., it's more popular than soccer on a global scale. So I would say in like China and India is why. Like those are two countries that don't really. Right. But in Japan too. Like the NBA is huge in Japan. So like, God, what a fucking sin it would be if the players took some agency and not only were like, you know what, we're tired of getting kicked by old men on the bench that have an inbound power dynamic with us.

We're afraid to do anything because he can send. of the fucking ECHL. Not only that, but then take ownership of the shitty league and are like, you know what, we can do it better. Oh my God. What a horrible fucking tragedy that would be. That is an all-time bad take that, oh, no, we're going to be like two sports that have just left us in their dust in terms of popularity.

And is Mitchell League baseball really that much of a fucking players league? Well, maybe I don't watch enough baseball, but like has the same sort of. It certainly has the strongest players union in any of the major sports. Right, but it's not as if, like, guys are, it's not the NBA, is it? No, yeah. I mean, like, in Major League Baseball, you can't even look at your home run for too long. Like, so, like, the idea that that's where this is all going, you know, I don't know, but. Yeah, so that's Mark Crawford.

But I would say this, though, like, the idea that if an NBA coach, ever tried to put his hands on a, like, get physical with an NBA player, that guy's leaving in a fucking body bag. Like, the whole team is just going to get the shit out of him. And that's, and that's the one thing that, and I mean, I'm stating the obvious here, but there is this, this take that I've seen it out there. I've had people send it to me. I've seen it sent to other people that of like a certain segment of hockey fans who are like,

this is just the, it's the wimpification of hockey. they probably don't use that word, but they're, you know, this is just hockey getting, you know, hockey used to be tough and now it's just getting all, but there's nothing tough about a coach or anyone physically or verbally or emotionally abusing someone who cannot fight back. Like somebody who, you know, you know, if you're a coach, you know, you go down and like, you put your hands on a player, that player can't do anything. That player turns around. You can, their career is over.

So they have to, like there's nothing tough about that. There's nothing tough about throwing slurs at somebody who you know cannot do, cannot stand up, cannot say, do anything other than sit there and take it because you control their whole career. Like this idea that this, even if you want to be one of those old school types who celebrates toughness and celebrates all this stuff, like this isn't it. This has nothing to do with being tough and being like, oh yeah, I'm going to let somebody. kick me in the ribs and I'm just going to sit there because I have to. Like, there's nothing tough about this. It's just such a, like, it's such a mind-bogglingly dumb take. And to see people out there, you know, throwing this out, like, I, dude, like, I know,

I know you're a real tough guy on your beer league hockey team, but this is, like, this isn't, this isn't the angle you want to take on this. Like, like, sign up to let their bosses beat the shit, like, kick them if they fuck up a TPS report or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, none of those people are down with that. But, like, when, you know, coddled baby millionaires, hockey players, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, that's what they're signing up for. Okay, fuck off.

In other more inspiring news, speaking of players having agency, Mark Borvetsky is now a vigilante crime fighter. That's a very exciting development, I think, in the NHL. Yeah. that was I tweeted this but like I when you first saw that story

and it was like senators defenseman Mark Borroski is going to be contacting the police and you're just like oh no here we go what does the senators do now

and then the story it just took a turn and you're like oh wow and I like that's kind of where I've wound up on this because normally I don't know I there's this part of me

that kind of just gets cynical about this stuff and it's like, oh, geez, now we're going to get the fluffed up version of the story and it's going to turn. But, like, the senators have had so many crappy stories in the last couple years on and off the ice. I'm like, you know what, just let them have this. Let them do the Boro cop videos. Let them play into it. I mean, this guy had to do the stupid video with Melnick. Like, he gets to be, you know, he didn't immediately, like, quit and go play in the KHL after that. Let's let's let him have his moment. I'm just going to. Because, you know, there's a, there's a 50-50 chance being an

Ottawa senator that he like hired an actor to try to steal someone's bag and then took him out. It could be. Yeah. Put himself over. Like at least 50-50 being an Ottawa senator. I mean, it's possible that he saw someone like snatching someone's purse for a couple of bucks and just assumed it was Melnick and got his tried to get a shot in that way. He comes around the corner. He sees it happening and he's like, and he, you know, does his like superhero quip and he's like,

so what's the plan here? Right. exactly he he foiled a robbery by clotheslining a guy on a bike who had stolen a bag which is fucking phenomenal because you know exactly what that looked like

like how awesome is that like clothes lining a guy standing up pretty impressive clothes lining a guy on a bike that bike went flying that dude went flying it must have been a bag goes up in the air and and Boriaski catches it

you know as it goes down to the ground it's fucking phenomenal right yeah well I mean it's the thing of we all think of Batman as a super as a hero but it's like well he's just a really rich guy beating up a poor person and that that's kind of my feeling on this it's like you know I don't feel like you had to close line the guy off the bike I'll just say that like hardened criminal riding a bicycle is a very Vancouver like that's very on brand like whenever like you know there's a criminal on a bicycle it happened in you're like no no Vancouver I know you don't have to you don't have to you don't have to you don't have to you don't have to have to go any further. We can all picture it. Now, did the victim offer to pay Borvierski's player's safety fine for a shot, a headshot? Or no? It's a bad joke. I'm sorry. Have we ever had another situation where a player saved a day like this? I feel like we have.

You would know that, Sean? You know what? Nothing is coming to mind, but yeah, this does sound like... I don't think there's ever been anything necessarily this extreme. But, yeah, I don't think there's ever been anything necessarily this extreme. but yeah, I imagine there's probably some stories floating around. We've had like good moments of like players being nice randomly to the normies, like when Oveshkin bought that dude a coat. But I don't know if you've ever had like a full-on vigilante crime fighter moment like this. We've had players smack cops on the ass, which is not necessarily, you know, in keeping with crime fighting.

No, but it's, you know, crime. Police tapping. Yeah. Helping law enforcement. Like you said, very good to hear some good news emerge from Ottawa. And this was a good one. I don't know. I mean, I had heard as recently as like a week ago.

You know, these senators, they're really starting to turn it around. They might have something here. No, come on, guys. You know. Because they were covering on the puck line a lot. They've been better than. They've been better than I thought they were going to be. I thought they were going to be historically bad, and they haven't been.

Yeah, exactly. Instead, that's the Red Wings, right, that are historically bad? Yes. The Red Wings may actually be the worst team. They may be the worst team of the Cap era, which is just, it just reminds me of the fact that the current reigning champion for worst team of the Cap era is not the Sabers when they were tanking. It's not the coyotes when they're.

It's not any number of teams that were intentionally trying to lose. It's the Colorado Avalanche who had 48 points, which is unfathomably bad, almost impossibly bad in the loser point era, and then just became awesome again overnight. Like just, we're like, yeah, we're just not really going to make any major changes and we're just going to be super good again. And it just reminds me that this league makes no sense. And if you're a Red Wings fan, you're probably just going to be like a 96 point playoff team next year for no reason other than this stupid league doesn't make one. bit of sense. And Steve Eisenman, that too. Steve Iserman.

Turn the team around real quick. I didn't mean to offend any Red Wings fans by comparing them to the avalanche. I know that that may still be a thing. Oh, come on. None of them remember that. Nick Baxter is repping himself in contract negotiations with Washington Capitals. I had forgotten that when OV signed the, was it 12 or 13 years, I forget. I think it was 12.

12 year, 12 year, 120 some odd million dollar. contract that he reped himself and then bought in his parents to kind of like look over the details at the end. And so the grand tradition of that Nick Baxter representing himself, I talked to him this week in San Jose when they came through and like I got the sense that he was sort of cheesed off that he didn't get a contract before the season done. And maybe that's why he decided to part ways with his agent. But yeah, repping himself.

I don't know. I feel like that's. work for Drew. Oh, wait. No, I didn't. Oh, there it is. Not a great idea. I really, I know you don't, you might feel like you're kind of just given the 3% away or whatever it is. I, I would, if I'm doing like a eight-figure contract, I probably would like to have an expert involved on my side of that. Maybe that's just me being cautious, but yeah. I don't, I don't have an eight-figure contract.

No. But I will say that, you know, I don't have an agent. And I have, you know, lawyer friends look over contracts that I've signed in my career. But I know that, like, if I had an agent, that there's probably a fuck ton of things I probably could have gotten in my contracts that I don't even know about, like, that I don't even know are available to me. Yeah. So it's a little bit weird for me, like, because you're right. like based on scale, like what Nick Baxter is negotiating at this point is maybe more than I'll ever make in my life, right?

And so... I would imagine so, yeah. Yeah. If you ever in your life get up to what Nick Baxter makes in two seasons, I think you'd be doing pretty well for yourself. Look, all I'm saying is that the Patreon is thriving. But I will also say that, you know, there's a lot of things that he probably could get out of the capitals that maybe maybe he's not even interested in it maybe he's just like fucking

i don't care like i'm happy here i don't want to deal with all this bullshit with an agent trying to get all this shit like it's called a standard player contract for a reason there really isn't a lot of that stuff that you can slide into it but i will have to see when the deal gets signed but if it's like the drew doughty situation where you see it and it's like oh it's just like a flat contract with basically no buyout protection or in a lot like oh that probably maybe he's learned maybe he's put a lot more thought into this than other guys seem to have in the past, but we've seen it in other sports too where guys have done their own deals. And a few years later, you're looking back going, oh, he got screwed hard.

Which is, it's just not good for the player and also potentially not good for the team either because that creates bad feelings where a player sort of realizes, oh, yeah, I put myself in this situation, but I kind of ended up getting taken advantage of it could go poorly. But we'll see. I'm just interested to see what he gets as far as a deal because that's that's another one that kind of falls into that category of how long term do you go on a guy who's in this case already well past. 31. Like he's old. I think if he's negotiating it, it's to be his last contract, don't you think?

For sure. For sure. Yeah. Here's the question. How much of this is endorphins? If the capitals don't win the cup two years ago, is nymphs. McBachshram reppering himself in a contract negotiation. Is he super eager to resign in Washington?

Is he super trustful of management? Yeah. Like, there's a certain amount of love for this team that I'm sure is coursing through his veins still after having won the cup, right? There might be lots of stuff coursing through his veins after they won that cup still, even a year and a half later. That's, they had a good party, so I don't know. They certainly did.

All right. I believe it was Ryan wanted to talk about David Pasternak. I mean, I just more broadly wanted to talk about, I think, like, we haven't really seen a guy score like this in quite a while. You know, he's not on like the pace for whatever, 50 goals and 50 games or whatever, but he's pretty fucking close. And that in this day and age is insane, given how much better. or goaltending and defenses are than they were in the 80s and 90s when that was more of a, not common thing, but like a thing that was more feasible. Right, yeah.

I think I saw a list where it's names like Yager and Mario as far as like what he's accomplishing in scoring, was it 20, was he up to like 25 goals now? Yeah, he's got 25 and 27, I want to say. Yeah, that's insane. That's a remarkable run. I did the awards watch this week, and I am marveling at the fact that right now, for me, the top three are McDavid, Pasternak, and McKinnon. But you could easily make the argument that it should be dry-sidal, Marchand, and McCar. Like, I don't think I've ever seen a situation like that where all three top candidates right now have.

a doppelkonger on their team that could easily just be that guy too as far as a Hart Trophy candidate. I love the fact that Connor McDavid for years was easily the best player in the league but couldn't win the MVP because of some dumb you have to be in the playoffs rule. And now that he's going to get his team into the playoffs. Now that his team is going to be in the playoffs, he's going to be like, all right, now I can be MVP, right? We'll be like, actually, there's another rule, which is that if you have another good player

on your team, then we give the award to Nathan McKinnon instead. I think it was Pierre LeBron who tweeted, like, you know, a lot of the guys who would normally be MVP candidates like a McDavid or a Pasternak, because of how good their linemates are, they're not going to get that consideration. And that might open the window for McKinnon. And I was like, McKinnon who has Kail McCar and Miko Ranton on the ice with him at all times, is that this is the same guy we're talking. But that to me was just the signal, like, no, we as the. Canadian hockey media have decided it's Nathan McKinnon this year. And just like Drew, like he's due, just like Drew Dowdy was due. So that's it.

Like, as far as I'm concerned, Nathan McKinnon, unless he gets hurt, is winning the MVP. And like, right at that. Wow. Because it's been decided. But he also, but yeah, but he also has that, those two classic, uh, attributes for an MVP candidate, which is he's done a lot of shit while his, his linemates are hurt. that's what happened when I think Sadiin won, right? And then he also has a huge gap in points between himself and the next highest score on the team.

Sure. Which is how Taylor Hall won it. Right. But, like, you know, David Pastoran has been pretty good since Patrice Bergeron got hurt. You know, like, you can do this with anybody. Like, all, like, these are all very, very good players. I'm not trying to take anything away from Nathan McKinnon, obviously. but it's like, nope, the decision has been made.

It's going to be Nathan McKinnon. We'll see you in June. The really interesting reputation-based one is an oris. Like, I think Carlson's running away with it probably right now. I mean, obviously, with the point total and not playing bad hockey either. But, like, reputation-wise, Roman Yossi is probably going to get a nomination, but it's probably Ryan Ellis's nomination to be had. It should be Ryan Ellis over Roman Yossi for sure.

But it won't be. No. And, you know, like I said before, it should be Cal McCar. And it's also probably should be Jacob Slavon's nomination instead of Dougie Hamilton. But if you took a poll today, I bet Dougie Hamilton gets in a good fucking season, man. I don't know. So is Slavin? Oh, for sure. But, yeah, I mean, like that's one where I think it's at least a much closer argument between, like, again, if we're doing teammates. as how we're talking about it.

Like, choosing between the two is a lot tougher than it is for Nashville. Have we ever talked about the sort of Rod Langway Award notion of there being won for best defensive defensemen? Because there's two schools of thought on that that I always found very interesting, which is one. Obviously, there should be one because these guys are never winning the Norris without it. But then two, it's... Right, but who in 2019 is a defense, a purely defensive? defensive defenseman. That's a good point. But also there has been a ghettoization, I think, aspect of the award where they're like, well, then that's kind of like the sub-Norris.

Like, these guys aren't considered, they're considered to be the best defenseman, but only of a certain kind. Right. Well, like with Yosi specifically, I think he has an unearned reputation of being, like, a pure, like, he's a really good offensive player to the extent that I think it, like people, he's so good at it that people attribute it. to his being good defensively, because he doesn't put up, like, huge point totals, like an Eric Carlson or a Brent Burns or something like that. And it's like...

Yeah, that's a good point. No, I think he just doesn't have the kind of help in front of him that a lot of those Carlson and Burns and even John Carlson do, you know? He certainly benefited from some time with Ryan Ellis and Matthias, that call him in his career, hadn't I? Yeah. Yeah. Two good fucking players.

What about you, Sean? Do you like the defensive defenseman award aspect? I mean, it makes sense in, it makes sense because we already do that for forwards. And it is weird that we have a defensive forward award, but not a defensive defenseman award. I just know that, like, they've, when we do our PHWA midseason awards voting, they've kind of snuck that award in there. Like, they created a couple of new ones just to, to, add a little element of novelty to it. And I never have any idea what to do with that award. Like I'm just always sitting there looking at it going, like,

am I looking for like a Rod Langway type, like somebody who doesn't score a lot? Or is it like, do I treat it like the Selkie? And I'm looking for someone who does score a lot, but is good in their own end as opposed to. And then, well, but what does that mean? Should you even be in your own end? And I think a couple years ago, they just, people just voted for Charra. But I had no idea.

what to do with it. And I still don't. So I'm not against the idea, but I'd want more guidance than just best defensive defenseman because I'm not really sure what to do with that. I appreciate the sort of superlative NHL awards by the PHWA, although I have to admit that best reporter named Frank at TSN was a little bit unexpected. Yeah, that was a surprise. And also when we got confused and voted for guys who weren't named Frank because we forgot to double checked the list and it was just, yeah, that was embarrassing. Sarah Velley opens up his email. He's like, Frank Brown, how the fuck did he win?

What is this? He's even work here. Someone named Nuck's Place, aka Van Prospects on Twitter, had a one of those deals where you're given a bunch of players and ask which one is the core that you would build around. I find this particular exercise to be. excruciating often, but this one really struck me as interesting. Here are your four groups. Okay, ready?

Connor McDavid, Jack Hughes, Miro Heiskin, that's group one. All right. Group two, Nathan McKinnon, Sasha Barkoff, Quinn Hughes. Group three, Eichel Matthews McCarr. Group four, Pedersen, Drysidl, and Dahlene. So that's like your fucking foreigner group, I guess. So McDavid-Hughes-Hiskinnan-Barkoff Hughes, Eichael Matthews-McCarr, Pedersen, Drysidlidl-Dalene. Right. Of those four groups, which one would you build around?

And the question is just... Well-constructed groups, by the way. Yeah, the question is just build around, but I'm assuming that we're meant to incorporate cap-hit into this. Like, because otherwise the McKinnon-Barkov-Quinn-Hugh's group doesn't really... like I don't think that that fits unless you're talking about two of the how much incredibly extra caper of you would have to go out and get other people. I don't know. I am torn between.

Let me argue for that one for a second. Okay. Quinn Hughes is going to end up being a phenomenal defenseman. Right. Potentially a Niedermeyer level defenseman. McKinnon already is one of the top maybe. top five players in hockey, maybe top three. As far as forwards.

As far as centers. Barcloth is of the players that are listed here, by far the best defensive player, no? Forward? Of the eight other guys here? Yeah, sure. Okay. But you would need that guy to win, wouldn't you? No.

I would. I can get defensive forwards if I'm building around like elite. offensive talent, I feel like I can, and I love, I love Barkoff. Like, if you can get pulled. Like an 80 to 90 point defensive forward, though? Those are great to have. But if, if I don't, I don't feel like I need that in order to win if I can pick Connor McDavid to, you know, lead my team, I feel like I can, I can go get a third

line center to be my defensive guy. Process of elimination. Pedersen Drys-Sidel Deline. Is anybody picking that group? No. No. No. Okay.

Eichel Matthews McCar That's the one that's the one that's That's the one that's tempting me My first instinct is to go with the McDavid group Just on the like I think he's head and shoulders Above anyone else As far as young players And just grab the elite talent

And then you know roll the dice on Hughes And Heisen is great already So I'm leaning towards A But that C group, the Eichle Matthews McCar Like that's the one that's tempting me to to go there instead. I'm torn between that and the McKinnon group, honestly.

I agree. I'm much higher on the McKinning group, too, than Sean is for some reason. I mean, I like Quinn Hughes a lot, but compared to the other three guys on the young defense, like he isn't there yet. So you're already. And I think Quinn Hughes as far as what he's done in the NHL. You know, and I think the fact that this question was. created by somebody named Van Prospects maybe gives you a sense of why Quinn Hughes is being

elevated a little bit beyond what. Look no further than the defense within Group D who had an amazing rookie season and has not repeated those results quite yet. I mean, he'll be fine, but is there something to be said for trusting Matthews and Ikel as your pillars of a team? Well, I mean, Christ, look what Eichael's doing this year. Like, he's been fucking unbelievable. Like, true.

Just phenomenal. And then, you know, maybe the best pure goal scorer in the NHL, you know, with apologies to David Pasternak in Austin Matthews. And a 20-year-old rookie, I think he just turned 21, so 21-year-old rookie defensemen who, by the way, might already be one of the five best defensemen in the league. So group A, hold on. Group A. So, McDavid's a fucking God. He's Dr. Manhattan of the NHL. Yeah, he lives in Tulsa.

He lives in Tulsa and inside the body of Leon Drysville. Stupid fucking show the worst thing in the world. Jack, see, here's the thing with Jack Hughes. Like, I think there's a better than good chance that if you picked Group A, Jack Hughes becomes dry-sidal. Like, Jack Hughes will move to the wing and play with Connor, and then you don't have a second-line center. You're in the same fucking boat. But he's going, it's great. I just, I can't get down with group A.

Do you like group A, Sean? Is that your group? I mean, I like group A in the kind of old school, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the side with the best player wins the trade. Yeah. And it's kind of the same sort of like. I really, I, there's a ton of young talent in the NHL. We've talked about this.

It's phenomenal. I still think Connor McDavid is head and shoulders above everyone. Uh, so the, the argument there is not, oh, one through three. It's, I want. very best player and I'll figure the rest of it out is the argument from Group A for me. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, Hughes started out slowly. I think, you know, I wouldn't say he's like anything like a generational talent or anything like that.

But, you know, does he look like he's a guy who's going to be an all-star ten times in his career? Yeah, he certainly does. Heiskenen, obviously, very good defenseman. but maybe not the ceiling that, say, a McCar or a Dahlene has. So he's more like the reliable, like, oh, yeah, he's going to be really good, but guy. I think, Eileen, as much as I love B, and I'm actually stunned that Barkoff is only 24. I just had to look that up. I, for some reason, thought he was older.

I think I have to go see. Like, those two guys are just so fucking dynamic, right? like it's it's like who do you who do you defend the Mario line or the Ron Francis line right you know yeah and plus I mean that that one is definitely the of the four options the solid like the most solid one through three like I don't even know how you rank those three guys as far as who you'd want to build around so yeah I don't know I'm almost there mm-hmm um I'm trying to think uh What side, Matthews is a right shot? No, he's a left shot, right?

Because Eichol's a right shot. And so if you have those three guys on your PP one, fucking forget about it. See you later. You're like, you're like filling out the roster now. It's impressive. Well, you got to think about these things. Yeah, but you really should put both those guys at the top of the surface. I think we'd give him about 18 minutes a night and that's, that'd be fun.

Maybe scream at him a lot, make his friend fill out a test. Yeah, that sounds great. Let's rank all of these players in terms of, no. Oh, man. All right, that's a very good exercise. I appreciate that. Thank you, Van Prospects, aka Nuck's Place. Good job.

All right, we're going to end the show. We promised that we would do a, overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite, which is something that we typically do on the Patreon, but that we would do it here, and we said that we would crowdsource it. If it sounds like I'm vamping, I am, because I need to find out who actually sent this in. Here we go. Rob Viper, a dedicated listener of the program, had a very good, there was a lot of good suggestions, but this is the one that we all kind of liked.

Overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite wrestling stables. Now, for those who don't know, a wrestling stable is a group of wrestlers that all exist under the one banner. The four horsemen would be the classic examples. Yes. Right. A wrestling stable. So we're going to figure out right now which ones are overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite. wrestling stables.

Who wants to go first? What is the most overrated wrestling stable of all time? Degeneration X. Now what incarnation? Either one, but I guess I'll go with the more famous with the New Age outlaws

Xbox China. The ones that hang out in the parking lot of other company shows and like film themselves pointing at their dicks and that sort of thing. That's a very good pick. I would actually argue that...

They wrote in a tank, though. In a tank, yeah. It was totally a tank. I would actually argue that, like, the Triple H. Sean Michaels version was just a tag team that had, like, China as a manager. It wasn't really a stable. But, yeah, that was... I'm glad you said that because I was...

I had two candidates and I wasn't sure which one to go with and you covered one of them. And also, you know, which is just pointed like Sean Michaels of that era, one of the worst human beings in the history of the world. So, and that's, and this is in like an industry filled with, like the worst human beings imaginable. And he stood out. You're A.J. Stiles types. Yeah. And he stood out as being the very worst.

Yes. Oh, come on. Isn't he a Christian? He's a QAnon guy, I'm pretty sure. Or Pizza Gate maybe? I can't remember. It's one of those. Flat Earther.

Yeah, he's, he's like a just really gullible redneck guy. Like just not good. So I'll throw mine out there, which is overrated stable. Every version of the NWO after the original three guys. Every one they added, when they split it into Wolfpack, black and white, like all the offshoots. Basically everything from the moment when, who was the fourth guy? Was it like, didn't like Ted DiBiase show up like two weeks later? And like, you were like, I think Rick.

Rood was their enforcer for a little while. And then... That's right, because that was when he showed up as the... Both shows on one night sort of deal. But yeah, like, it just... Any iteration of that other than the original three, which just got increasingly awful. When they got...

When they flipped Lex Lugar, who was Mr. WCW to join the NWO, that was fucking so cool. That was so cool. But I actually have written down NWO Wolfpack. The red and black. Yeah. I fucking, that's when the whole shit started getting dumb. And, you know, as cool as it was for Lex Lugar to flip, don't forget, NWO Wolfpack was also the group that Sting joined.

Sting joined it. What a bunch of bullshit that was. The guy who was battling these motherfuckers for like four years or 83 weeks or whatever that shit was. Like, now he's part of the NWO in some way. Because him and Lugar were the same. It was like, for two years, it was like, would you put on this black? and white shirt and they're like, no, I would never do that. And then one week, they're like, what if it was red and black? And they're like, yeah, I'll take that. And then they're just...

You know, you know who else was really good one after he joined the NWO? The giant, because he would come to the ring smoking, uh, not with his... He would squash some jobber in like eight seconds and never have me put his cigarette out. Again, just so fucking cool. What a great gimmick. There was some awesome, awesome smoking in WCW at that point where, like, the giant would smoke cigarettes. Remember, when DDP used to come out smoking a cigar in WCW. It was a big thing. We'd be smoking shit there. So was Wolfpack your choice as overrated?

Yeah. All right. Yeah, I hated. I think that is properly rated, though, as bad. I don't think anybody's, like, you know, yearning for the glory days of the NWO Wolfpack. But maybe they were. I don't know. People wore the gear, though.

They liked it. At the time, it was, yeah, people like, that was the cool version. The black and white NWO that we were also fucking sick of. So, like, I definitely owned a, now here's one for you. Do you remember the silver NWO? No. Oh, yeah, Jeff Jarrett. NWO Japan, I remember.

Yeah. Well, that was, like, just as part of their deal with, like, New Japan at the time. Marketing. But, no, there was a, there was a silver NWO. well that I know for sure Jeff Jarrett was in, but I can't remember who else. And that was like, oh, this really sucks. Well, Jeff Jarrett's in it. Yeah.

It's, yeah. All right. The underrated. The 90s Heart Foundation with Brian Pillman. Oh, fucking phenomenal. Incredible. Do you mean the hateful Canadian one? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No. Like, because, yeah, like, people just attribute that now, I think, largely to Brett only, but it was Nighthart, Owen, British Bulldog, and Brian Pilman. And like Brian Pilman doing maybe his most unhinged gimmick of all time.

Well, okay, maybe I respect you Booker Man's ahead of that. Right. But up there anyway. And yeah, like that was so, like you couldn't, you couldn't make a heel stable more white hot than those guys. and I'm including the NWO. So that is my, I have that on my list as the favorite. Just point blank.

That's to me, you know, other than the horsemen, which, you know, I'm sure we'll get to, that's my favorite wrestling table of all time. That would, like that one summer, it only ran for the one, the one summer. Just like the perfect, first of all, the perfect, like origin story, the way that they developed that because most stables just like six guys just walk out together one night and they're all wearing the same t-shirt and you're like oh they're a stable they have a name and some different music I guess they're all together now and this was like beautifully like week by week like adding a guy each week it all made sense they were heels and yet you know they weren't just being it for the

for the sake of it like they were saying stuff that they have legitimate gripes yeah and and then and you know culminating in the that uh I remember what the what the show was called, but there was a pay-per-view in Calgary, where it was the Calgary stampede in your house. So yeah, it was those five guys against five against like Austin and I'm assuming five Americans, but maybe it wasn't the Undertaker I'm sure was in there, yeah. The craziest crowd that you will ever hear, like even for that era where the crowds were actually like much better than there today, it just like go back and watch that just for the crowd reaction. It's absolutely insanity. That's the other thing I was going to say is like the

second they went over the Canadian border, they went from like the biggest pieces of shit in the world that everybody hated to the faces. National fucking heroes. Simultaneously the top baby faces and the top heels in the business. Incredible. Just amazing. Yeah. Just perfection.

I was, that was, so that's, I have that as my favorite because it was. And also because of circumstances ended soon enough before it like became some stupid thing adding like, you know, every, every, almost every other one of these, they add. too many people or they take it and this one because of Montreal just had a finish line and that was it. Lance Storm would have been a member of that fucking group at some point, you know. Yeah. Oh yeah.

And Chris Benoit. Like they would have just taken every Canadian. Yeah. Like furnace and LaFond. Like you're in this now. Furnace of LaFond. All right. Who was your underrated, Sean?

My underrated was I went with the, the Wyatt family from a few years ago. Just, you know, because to me, not one of the all-time greats, but I think just especially these days, the WWE, like everything is the same. Everybody looks the same. Everyone's got the same theme music, the same catchphrases.

They all sound the same. And the fact that they just did something this weird with those, at the time, three guys. And it worked. Like the brief program that they had with the Shield was like one of the few actual memorable things about the last few years of of WWE.

It's, you know, where they at one point had the crowd going crazy just by having three guys on each side stand there and look at each other. Right. But it worked so perfectly. And then, you know, they blew it and took in weird directions. But I think at the time when it was relatively new, like the first year or two,

I think it was underrated in the sense that it probably doesn't show up on a lot of people's lists of top stables. But for what they were doing at the time, I thought it was really well done. And, you know, obviously it also spawned like a lot of, or at least two major star his careers. Yeah, right.

Bray Wyatt is now one of the, like, you can talk about how weird the gimmick is or whatever, but like he's one of the biggest stars in the company all of a sudden. Yep. And obviously, Braun Strowman, who now looks like not only a star in the promotion, but also just like a crossover star. He's been in multiple movies already. And I think the most important thing is that Luke Harper once tweeted about my book. Oh, did he really? Wow.

That is absolutely true. And I was very excited. I like emailed it to like the guys at the publishing house. I'm like, look what just happened. And they had, they're like, I had to explain to them what was going on. And I just felt increasingly dumb. Wasn't Eric Rowan in the Wyatt family for a while too? He was.

He was the other guy. Yep. And Daniel Bryan briefly. Right? Very briefly. Underrated for me. I want to give a shout. This isn't my choice, but I wanted to give a shout out to the first non-horseman wrestling stable that I remember as a kid.

NWA, Kevin Sullivan's varsity club. Do you remember this group? Yeah, I was going to say, yeah. I didn't watch it at the time, but that's a pretty well-known one. It's Mike Rotunda, Mr. Perfect. From Syracuse, Rick Steiner from Michigan, and eventually Dr. that's Steve Williams from Oklahoma. And it was Kevin Sullivan, who would go on to be the head of one of the single worst fucking factions in the history of wrestling.

The aforementioned Booker Man, by the way. This was just like a bunch of guys who wrestled in college, and they all wore varsity jackets, and they would just go and beat the shit of people. And for some reason, it worked. And I think part of it was that each of their theme songs was their college fight song, which I thought was really cool at the time. You know what? But my underrated choice, though, you got to go with the brood, baby. The single greatest, uh, opening,

the root entrance theme song of the attitude era. That was. And the idea that at the time, ladies and gentlemen, the WWE, or F at the time in 1998 was like, you know what's going to get over? Fucking vampires. Yeah. Like a literal vampire and two guys that. may also be vampires, and they're going to, like, pour blood on people and shit.

The fucking brood, man. Definitely, if you were to rank, like, quality of entrance and entrance music versus, like, quality of actual faction, that, that would rank near the top. Because, like, the entrance was amazing, and then you're like, oh. Edge Christian at least went on to, like, really good. Really good. But gangrel, not so much. Not so much. The fact that he was the leader is like just, I kind of, yeah, that's a solid pick.

That's a solid pick. He did. Do you understand how hard it is to have vampires in your federation where they can't do afternoon house shows because of the sun? Like, that's a real challenge. That is difficult, yeah. What was your favorite faction or stable there, Ryan? The OG New World Order. Um, like, you know, Hulk, you get Hulk Hogan to turn heel and just like, again, watch that bash at the beach and like the amount of garbage being thrown in the ring.

Oh, yeah. Because people were so legitimately upset that Hulk Hogan had turned on WCW and had joined these two men, as me, Gene O'Galin said. incredible just like you could like an unthinkable turn that that happened and they legitimately ran WCW like every broadcast not only like was about them because of you know their power backstage but had to be about them because they were three of the maybe six biggest stars in the world at that time like you know you just couldn't they spent however long teasing like oh we have a third man we have a third man uh the outsiders hall and nash um and they were like oh who is it who is it and you know the only thing that that kind of ruined it was bobby hean saying whose side is he on as as as hulkeogan marches to the ring like you know in in such a way that like it looks like oh he's coming to save the day because the outsiders are kicking the shit out of the three best wrestlers in wcw and heenan

goes, but whose side is he on? And it's like, fuck, Bobby. Yeah. And also the, the great thing about that, and, you know, and this is the sort of thing you could never explain to somebody who's not, who doesn't follow professional wrestling, is that they bring in the first guy, he says, I've got somebody with me. They bring in the second guy, and then it becomes all about who is the third guy, and they're building up to this big pay-per-view, and there's going to be a third guy, and we don't know who it is. And literally, meanwhile, WCW does not know who the third guy. is. Like, they are still trying to figure it out. Right.

Up until the day of the show, who they're actually good. Like, it would be like if you were watching Game of Thrones and like the finale was airing that night and they hadn't finished writing it yet and they weren't sure like what characters were going to like it's just to the point where they literally had a backup plan in the match because they didn't trust Hogan to actually do it and he might screw off and just leave halfway through and they like it's just the craziness of this like stupid business that something that is correctly viewed as this amazing success was like still so chaotic in the background.

A dragon, but whose side is it on? So your favorite was Canadian Heart Foundation, correct? Yep. My favorite, I'm going to go away from the big two for a second. Man, I love the fucking Dudley family in ECW. Yeah, sure. All right. The Dudley's, so not only because it was hockey adjacent.

with the fucking Hansen brothers sort of aesthetic. But this was the backstory of the Dudley family, according to pro wrestling wiki. The main gimmick of the group was that, despite their obvious physical appearances in differing races, they were all said to be sons of the fictional Willie Loman-esque Big Daddy Dudley, who had traveled America as a salesman through the 1960s and 70s.

So they were all the bastard children of a Willie Lomene-esque, salesman. I did not know that backstory. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's... And so you had fucking, obviously you had, you know, the Dudley's... Bavaray and Devon.

Spike Dudley, Big Dick Dudley. Big Dick Dudley. You had Sign Guy Dudley. Oh, I forgot about the sign guy is canonically a Dudley. Right. I don't remember. That's right. It was just...

ECW had two different things back in the day. They had the absolute abject fucking brutality of, of, you know, barbed wire matches and people get hit in the head with fucking Kendo sticks. And then it had goofy shit, like the Blue World Order and the Dudley's and the job squad. I was all about, um, uh, the Dudley boys. And also, I'm also reading this on, on the wrestling wiki right now. Big Dick Dudley, his, his origin story, uh, was that, um, Dudley-Dudley once claimed that Big Dick Dudley was the result of Big Daddy's fornication with the Holland Tunnel.

I mean, how do you beat that? I will say, not for me the best stable in ECW history, though. Raven's Nest. Yeah, right. The long-standing feud with Tommy Dreamer and Sandman. Like, you want to talk about brutal. As somebody who didn't follow ECW is Stevie Richards, the Blue Meanie. Is that distinct from the flock?

The WCW version? So the flock was the WCW version of it. Yeah, when all those guys migrated there, like Ravens. A few of them did, yeah. But yeah, there were some really good matches with those guys. I want to say they had an alliance with the Dudleys at one point as well. Was it a dangerous alliance? Yeah, I think it was.

Finally, least favorite, Ryan. Fuck the shield, dude. The Shield sucks. All three of those guys are overrated at best. Like, and I know, like, we're supposed to, like, you know, John Moxley now because he's just, like, willing to die for wrestling. And I do respect that. But, like, Dean Ambrose as a character sucked shit. He was bad.

And he, like, in WWE, he felt like he had to do the, like, you know, five moves and get out of their kind of matches. that he did all the time. Roman Reins, I don't think anybody needs the explanation of why Roman Reins is not a good wrestler or interesting in any way. And Seth Rollins, I think, is intensely overrated. I tend to agree. Yeah, that's a good pick. What about you, Sean? My least favorite, and we've already mentioned them, and I say this, I want to preface this by saying I say it with,

some degree of affection because of just how god-awful they were. But the Dungeon of Doom, mid-90s, as I mentioned to you guys, I ended up going back and watching a couple of those pay-per-views that just kind of showed up on the feed. And I mean, incomprehensibly bad. And I say this as somebody who believes that between 90 and 99% of pro wrestling is terrible. If this was just another level. of awful. It was so stupid and so it just, but it was so stupid that it's, it ate its way through to the other side and became like somehow endearing because it was just, it gave us, it gave us Hugh, Hugh Morris, it gave us the yette. Like they were just, the zodiac. And were they, now,

were they involved in the thing where like Robocop at one point showed up or was that like a different level of stupid? That might have been post-dungeon of doom. I think that had to do with Lex Lugar, if I'm not mistaken. But it just, I mean, the absolute in a form of entertainment where everything is so stupid to be head and shoulders, dumber than everything else is in some way worthy of, I think, some affection. It was, it was, um, sting. He was friends with, Robocom was friends with sting. Sure. Right. But whose side is.

Well, the prime directive brain says that Robocop is on the side of the Detroit Police Department. My least favorite faction is maybe the single most blown opportunity in wrestling history. Many people might believe I'm going to say the Nexus here, but I'm not, although I did consider that. Let me give you some names, and you tell me if you can remember the stable. Eddie Guerrero, Chris Ben-Wan. Are you going to say the Latino World Order? Dean Malenko. Fuck, the radicals?

Perry Saturn, managed by Terry Runnels, the radicals with a Z. Yeah. What a fuck. Like, you are gifted four of the greatest wrestlers to fucking business, and the faction was atrociously. And they came over all at the same. Like, this is all four guys jumped from WCW.

It's kind of the last four guys where that mattered, jumping from one to the other. Yeah. So they came in Red Hawk. In fact, didn't Benoit, like, win the WCW title, like, the night before and then just jump anyways? Like, it was, it was, yeah, can't miss. And, like, they came in through the crowd. Right.

And they were already a faction in WCW. Like, they were the revolution there. They were, like, aligned with Shane Douglas, who didn't make the jump. Then they go to WWF, same group, and just, like, a wet fart. Like, like, four generational talents in the ring. Refresh my memory, but wasn't? They had no idea what to do with them. Wasn't that one of those, wasn't that back when like Triple H was like the big behind the scenes politician?

And I think there was a thing where like they came in and almost immediately like within two weeks, he was beating either Ben Y, it's probably Ben Y because he was the main guy like beating him on TV. And it was like that's what cut them. It was like it was the politics of somebody recognized, oh, these guys are coming in with some momentum. I got to cut him off at the knees right away. And it was sort of that, I know we all love Triple H now, but like back then he was. What do you'll remember this? Who was called the Vanilla Midget at one point? Was it Melancho or was it Benoit?

I think it was Benoit. And it was. I think it was Benoit specifically. And then like Dean got lumped in with that. It was a Kevin Nash thing, I think. The radicals were like I was, I mean, the entire sort of like invasion aspect of all that stuff was just mishandled. incredibly poorly when all the WCW people came over eventually. But like

the radicals in particular, I mean incredible assemblage of talent, endless potential to be awesome. And also Perry Saturn. And also Perry Saturn. Yeah, without Kronos, he's nothing. But also the fucking faction was spelled with a Z for

God's sake. If you're the Hardy Boys, that's fine. If you're the radicals. Well, I mean, that was there was Z and the Dudley boys as well. So it's just, this is This is the mid to late 90s in professional wrestling. I think what we're saying is boys okay, anything else with a Z. You're basically a man to do commercial.

All right. Well, that was a very spirited topic that you gave us, Ross. By the way, we didn't mention the Bullet Club. Yeah, well. Maybe one of the most influential and important modern wrestling factions. Like every big WWE wrestler now was in it at some point if they came, if they're not American. Honestly, I almost listed them as my overrated, just because I, I still don't understand.

As someone who doesn't watch, like, Japan or anything like that, I don't know who's in it. All I know is there's a bunch of guys, and occasionally they make the same hand sign that the NWO used to do 25 years ago. And I'm supposed to get excited for that. And I, yeah, I just don't understand. I'm going to read for you a list of former members, Adam Cole, AJ Stiles, Gallows, Cody Rhodes, Hangman Page, Jeff Jarrett, Anderson, Kenny Omega. What's his name? He was Prince Devet in Japan.

Now I can't think of... Finn Baller. Finn Baller. Those are just former members. Yeah, it was an incredible function. Those are some pretty big guys. I can't wait for five years from now when we're all talking about our favorite stable being the inner circle from AEW. Chris Jericho's

Fat Chris Jericho's faction in AEW We're not allowed to say bad things about Chris Jericho No no but Chris Jericho being fat is Part of the gimmick like he said this is Stan Hanson years Like he's his whole thing is he's a sloppy Like sort of out of shape rock star

That refers to himself as LaShaamp Beyond That is also my gimmick to watch it I'm uh I didn't even know I was doing a wrestling gimmick Oh man someone sell Jericho We've got gimmick infringement All right, that's the show for this week. Thanks to Rob for the question.

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