Puck Soup - Sports G.O.A.T. Debate

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

The boys discuss the hiring of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke in Pittsburgh, and how to fix the Penguins; the drama surrounding the Blue Jackets, from replay controversies to Mikko Koivu retiring to Patrik Laine being benched; NHL COVID worries; the Blackhawks are up again; the sad state of Bell Media; M. Night Shyamalan movies; and an epic O/U/F/LF on sports G.O.A.T.s. 

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 in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Brian Burke, President of Hockey Operations for the Pittsburgh Penguins, a team of pugnacity and tenacity. I missed down on Sidney Crosby and the dropped lottery, but I got them now, you sons and bitches.

It's crazy. Nobody has brought that up. Sidney Crosby thing. That's crazy. I'm Ryan Lambert from elite prospects. Sean McHugh from The Athletic. Well, in fairness, Burke bought it up. Like, he's the one who bought it up. No, no. The second, they were like, oh,

Brian Burks, they had, hey, wait a second. Sidney Crosby, he almost drafted him. Isn't that crazy? And then he was like, you know, I did, I did do that almost, but then I didn't. And every time I see him, I remind him. No, we know. We're familiar.

Anyone talk to Bobby Ryan about any of this? I mean, I figured that would be the next step in the evolution of the story, right? You're not allowed to bring him. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, so Brian Burke is the new president of, the first, I guess, president of hockey operations to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ron Hextollers is a new general manager. Textile was the one that we kind of saw coming.

I mean, it became pretty obvious, I think, as the interview process went on, that he was the frontrunner. I do find it funny, like, the whole, a flyer takes over the penguins thing has become such a thing when, like, he's, yeah, the flyers fired him. Like, he doesn't really like the flyers anymore. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit. Like, did they make a bit? You used to work for Yahoo! You used to work for Yahoo Sports. Can you even do that?

Well, sure, there is no Yahoo Sports. now. No. So, so the, what do you call it? So, yeah, I mean, like, it was like when Lamerillo took over the Islanders. It's like, look at the devil? No, it's just fucking, he wants to beat the shit out of the devils. He fucking hates the devils now. So the Hextall thing was not a big surprise. I guess to be the surprise is that they hired a guy who's leading attribute is building the farm system and drafting well and being patient to a fault. with his teams, which is the reason he got fired in Philadelphia. But I guess to counterbalance that, they hire Rootin-Tooten-Chutin-Cowboy

Brian Burke, who never saw a big trade he couldn't make. And maybe that's the alchemy of this relationship, is you have patient-building guy, and then you have, like, Pronger trade, Kessel trade guy. But the Burke thing was a huge surprise. I guess Ryan will start with you. What was your reaction when you saw the Burke part of this equation? Why the fuck is Brian Burke getting this job? job. It doesn't make any sense.

Well, like I said, a surprise. It was a surprise. It really, like, I get it. He's been around for a million years. And, you know, for all the things negative, you can say about him. The one thing that people have always rightly identified as, like, his whole deal is that he goes, well, you need fucking star players, you know? He always goes out and gets star players. And in this situation, he already has at least one. It depends on how you feel about how Malkin and Latang have played this year. I would say not very well. But the thing that makes it really insane is that interview he did a few weeks ago with a freaking Barstool where he was like, yeah, I think their windows closed. I think they're cooked.

This group is done. And now he's coming in. and he's like, we're going to make the playoffs this year. Okay. All right. You hear the sound? Hear that sound?

That's the sound of me patting myself on the back for being the only person yesterday to ask him about that quote. Everybody else is just like, oh, is it, oh, is it way of Sidney Crosby? No, fucking ask the guy who said they can't win why he took a job to help them try to win. That's the thing you should be. That'd be the first fucking question of Brian first.

Let's just say their offer moved him to a bigger member from the Simpsons. Yes. Sean, describe this loss for the Canadian media to not have Brian Burke on track to be the new Don Cherry. You know, Brian Burke was good on Hockey Night in Canada. I enjoyed him. He wasn't there yet as far as being like a finished media product, but he was pretty good.

That said, I don't think this is a huge loss on balance for the media because now we get to cover a team that has Brian Burke in a prominent role. Like this, I have no idea if this is going to work for the Penguins. I have no idea if this is going to turn out to be the right move. But just as a fan, this is great. Because hockey's more fun when Brian Burke is involved in running a hockey team. He's just one of the great characters in the game. He's one of the just entertaining guys.

and I think this is going to be a lot of fun to watch from a distance. If I'm a Penguins fan, maybe not. Maybe it will be. I don't know. But if you're neutral and you're just looking for entertainment, I mean, Brian Burke getting parachuted into a top hockey ops role is pretty much perfect. Well, on the will this work front, let's break it down. See, you got a 34-year-old Malkin.

I think Sid's like 33. Yeah. And Latangian 33. Okay. So you got a core that is clearly on the other side of the mountain. You have an ownership, and by that I mean, Mary Lemieux, who steadfastly believes that two of those guys are going to retire as penguins and Sidney Crosby and Yivgeny Malkin.

I heard a really interesting thing about Malkin and trades too this week and calling around, which is that... He's going to the king finally, a tablin? Yes. Straight up for Dustin Brown. No. They, uh,

I, there's a, there's at least this sense that Mario, part of the reason Mario was gun shy about ever dealing Malkin was the auger trade. And, and what a disaster that was for the penguins, which I don't know if that's true or false,

but I find that I want, it's one of those I want it to be true things that like, he's so, he's so triggered by Chris Beach that, uh, he's never going to trade Malkin for anything. Um, so they don't have a,

a first this year. That's Minnesota's for Jason Zilker. They don't have a third or a fourth or a sixth. They have the 31st ranked pipeline for prospects in the National Hockey League courtesy of Chris Peters. They don't have a lot to deal with. And they're also up against the ceiling, which means that, and they're going to be up against the ceiling next year too, which means that many of the deals that they would have to make are money in, money out. And, like, well over half the league is capped out. Yeah. So it's, I don't, I mean, I'm with you, man.

Like, I don't think this is, like, the worst spot to be in if you're Brian Burke and Ron Hextall as far as, like, a landing place because the penguins are a great organization. And, and obviously, like, there's a lot of people that really like the penguins more than, I think, the three of us do as far as, the way they're built this season. But, I mean, for materially changing the roster, this is a big ass uphill climb. Yeah, and I mean, that is the real problem, right? Like, anybody who makes a substantial enough amount of money that you would be able to move them for, like, a money and money out deal where somebody's actually, like, good, you know what I mean? Yeah. is either not a guy you want to trade like your Crosby's, your Latangs, even your like Jake Genssel's, right, or Brian Rust, or a guy nobody wants to trade for, like Mike Matheson.

You know what I mean? Like, there's either money that's being spent fairly well or money that's being spent poorly and everybody else is on like a $1.2 million deal. And the other thing is, like, I think it's all but five or six guys on the team are signed this year and next year. Yeah. And so, like, two years from now, you'll have, you know, the full ability to turn over the roster. But the guys that are pending UFAs for that are, include anyway, Evgeny Balkan and Chris Lick-Tang. Right, which is the problem. But the problem is, even if you keep them, well, now they're like 35, 36 years old.

Right. So what would be the point? Which is why the biggest challenge for Burke and Hextall is to convince Mario to trade Malcolm, I think. I mean, from where I'm sitting. Am I right, Sean? I mean, that would be the big move. Whether ownership would let you do it, whether the fan base would, would let you do it. I don't know. I thought it was interesting that Hextel didn't completely

slam the door on it when it came up yesterday. He basically said, look, I'm not making any promises when it would have been very easy to just say, no, that's completely off the table. You know, go ahead and lie. You just make it so that that's not part of the story. It's what makes this so interesting, right? Because virtually any time a team hires a new GM, it's one of three situations. It's a team that's on the way up and you've got the runway ahead of you. It's a team where the window is open right now to do whatever that team is going to do, whether it's win the Stanley Cup or you're just trying to make the playoffs, but you feel like that we're at the plateau, or it's a team on the way down and you're bringing in somebody to blow it up and rebuild it.

And I can't off the top of my head remember too many situations where a new front office was brought in in a situation where it's very clear that they're in win now mode right now, but if Hexel and Burke stick around for the five or six years that a GM normally gets, they're going to have to do the rebuild in that window somewhere. Like they come in knowing they have to do it. It's just a question of when does it start and how do you pull it off.

And like that's kind of fascinating to me. I think, and I get the sense that Hextel certainly knows that. It's going to be real interesting to see how Burke, in whatever his role is, however hands-on he is on hockey decisions, it's going to be interesting to see how he deals with it, because this is a guy that 10 years ago in Toronto didn't want to do a rebuild. And he literally said at one point, I'm impatient, I'm too old to do a rebuild.

I want to see this team win now. It's 10 years later now. Chris, you did. Are you willing to do a full-on rebuild with a team like the Penguins? Yeah, I mean, I would assume he is because I would assume that was, part of the job qualifications is that you have to understand that in one or two or three or four years, this is what's going to happen. But that's going to be really interesting because usually when it's time to tear it all down,

you might as well bring in a new group with fresh eyes and do it that way. And they're presumably not going to do that. Yeah. The issue is that they're going, we're the Pittsburgh Penguins. We're here to win, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, but again, the guy you just hired. as your president of hockey office doesn't think that, thinks that you either have to get real good, real fast,

or real bad real fast, given the current makeup of the roster. And we just said, how do you get real good, real fast, given the way Jim Rutherford managed his cap the last few years? It's real tricky. And, like, yeah, Hextall has a really good record at the draft. and that includes picking everywhere from like in the top five or six, I think, to like, you know, late in the first round.

And he got players everywhere. So that's not the issue. The issue is they have two picks this year and the odds that they're going to be able to, you know, these aren't guys you trade for a pick and a prospect, the guys that they want to get rid of. Right. If you look at Hextall's trade history, he did a really good job of getting fucking dead weight off the Flyers roster, but he didn't get anything back for it. He just got the flexibility. And I don't know how you do that. Well, I mean, one way you could do it is you let Brian Burke handle that side of it.

Because as I've said, this is the case in Toronto, but it's the case everywhere else as well. Brian Burke doesn't draft well. He does not do free agency well. He has a bad habit of overrating his own roster and therefore not doing the things that he needs to do to make it better. And obviously, goaltending has been his Achilles heel for going back to at least the Vancouver days. And now Brian Burke is really, really, really good at trading. Brian Burke's trade record is phenomenal. It's right up there at the top of any GM.

out there and he's not the GM here. But at the very least, I would, that's the one thing. You know, when it's time to do the draft board, send him out for coffee, send him out to do something else. But when it's time to sit down and make a deal, for whatever reason, I don't know if it's a personality thing, if it's his connections, he's really good at getting deals done.

That's what I would want Brian Burke involved in. And, and it, but is Ron Hextel going to want to let him be hands on in that? Or is he going to say, this is, this is a GM's job. Get out of it. Well, as I said, like, Hextol, those trades are mostly, you know, leaving aside the Yori-Latera deal, which didn't really work out. Except to say, I guess, he got the Flyers two first-round picks for Brayden Chen. Yeah.

But, you know, Latera was a bit of a bust, to say the least. And got busted. And got busted. So there you go. Yeah, but I'm just going to look at the list of guys he got off the Flyers roster. Scott Hartnell, Kimo, Teamingin, and Braden-Coburn, Nicholas Grossman, and Chris Pronger. Vinnie La Cavillier and Luke Shen, Mark Strait, like, those are all guys you don't want around, you know? And he was just like, oh yeah, in the course of like three years, I got rid of probably $25 million worth of dead weight, maybe even more than that, just like guys who aren't good or literally weren't playing anymore.

and they didn't take back a lot of bad stuff in return. So, I mean, we're talking around it here, but it sounds like they hired two guys that know how to make a trade, and they hired one guy who has a proven track record of finding really good players deep in a draft no matter where the draft position is for that team. I mean, it does sound like we're saying that they hired two pretty good guys to turn this shit around. But they have to win now. that's the problem. Like all the stuff we're talking about making trades, drafting well, managing the cap, that's all good in a rebuild.

I don't know how you apply those skills effectively given the current state of the Penguins roster. I don't know how you do it. And that's what I don't get about the hires is it's like almost antithetical to, you know, it's certainly at all. with the stated goal what these two guys bring to the table. Right. Three predictions for this new leadership group in Pittsburgh. One, Brian Burke makes a trade for a player that's like a Chris Kreider-esque type, and immediately people say that the DNA of the penguins are changing into a Brian Burke team.

Two, they trade for a goalie, because as Ryan sort of mentioned, I think while Sean was talking, they have the worst save percentage as a team right now in the league with DeSmith and Jari, which is, I mean, the alternative would have been to keep Matt Murray, who's an object to answer to. Matt Murray is probably available if they want to. I mean, I say, I've said this very podcast. They should have traded for Flurry. Like, they should have brought him back. And so far so good for him in Vegas. And then the third prediction, obviously, is that things go poorly.

They fire Mike Sullivan and Ron Hextall, hires a guy named Schmextall. as the new head coach as is his does he have any other kids who play college hockey that's going to be the big that's the real key yeah

that's the real key I don't know I mean like Sean said I mean it's fun it's a fun thing that's happened it's gonna it's gonna be it makes the penguins

infinitely more interesting than they would have been otherwise where it just felt like if Jim Rutherford had to remain there they were sort of just dying on the vine

now there's gonna be you know there's going to be some fun ass Kessel adjacent trade that Brian Burke's going to make at least once to try to turn this team around in the short term. And it's going to be exciting to see what happens. Oh, and by that, of course, I mean, Ron Hextall will make that trade. By no means, I mean Brian Burke is actually running hockey ops, except he is.

Do you think they're a playoff team this year based on what you've seen? I guess it's the last thing. Based on what I've seen? No. Could, you know, could things improve? Yeah, but like their numbers aren't. very good, like, I think across the board. Basically, it's very similar to Edmonton insofar as when Sidney Crosby's off the ice,

they look like absolute shit. And when he's on the ice, they look like the best team in the league. Yeah, there are shade over 50% expected goals at five on five. But, like, they can't get a save. And I don't see that turning around anytime soon, given who these two guys are. Yeah. I mean, I think the way it's shaping up, it comes down to them in the Islanders. I don't completely buy into Jersey yet.

Buffalo Rangers are in the mix, too. So it's, you know, I don't want to say Boston, Philly, Washington are locks, obviously, but it kind of does look like it's going to be five teams fighting for the one spot. And, you know, could they beat out the Islanders? It's interesting. It's interesting that the first game of this new front office is, against the Islanders on the 10-year anniversary of that big gong show brawl game in which the Islanders attack the Penguins goalie

and so the Penguins two days before that go out and hire Ron Hextel. Hmm. There you go. I'm just saying if you're the Islanders and if the goalie looks a little weird early on in that Penguins game, maybe don't go near him. Or go out and get Billy Smith and see what he's up to because it may be a trap. The bottom line for me is kind of like what Ryan was getting at,

which is, one, the goaltending is dog shit right now, and you're never going to be anything in that division if you're bottom five and say a percentage. And two, I don't know, again, I don't like judging a lot of these guys this season because it's such a fucked up season and there's no preseason and all this shit's going on. But Malkins looked terrible.

And if you're a one-line team and you can't get him going, to Malkin levels. And I mean, offensively, he's shit. He's been shit for years defensively, but offensively he's been completely invisible. And like,

you can't have Yoganie Malken out there looking like, you know, his controller has been unplugged. Speaking of unplugged, today's episode of PugSoup is sponsored by Raycon. You know, that's pretty good. Raycon is pretty good. Thank you.

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It's buy raycon dot com slash buck. Cannot, cannot, cannot endorse this product enough. It is a life-changing kind of deal for somebody who likes to put in a pair of earbuds and walk around the house or go running and listen to their favorite podcast that have nothing to do with hockey. Okay, so much to my chagrin, there is a new top ratings getter for hockey, soap operas, as the puck turns of Vegas has been surpassed by the Columbus Blue Jackets, who have been just an absolute fucking joy this season.

I think they can't, I think COVID counts for like 50% of my content. And then like Columbus is like 20% at this point. Yeah, easy. Easy. All right. Where should we start? Patrick Lina, Miko Koev, or the Offside Review. Which one do you want to hit first?

Let's build up. Let's, let's, I mean, we start with Koebu. I was going to say the same thing. Kauivu is, this is an easy one, right? Yeah. It's, it's, uh, this is a great underrated player, uh, who had a long career as, as a guy that partly because of the market he played and partly because of his style of play, partly because of the lack of team success, didn't maybe get as much, uh, love as he should have.

But, uh, it's sad to see it in this way, but also. So, you know, I respect it. If he feels like he doesn't have it, he wants to go out on his terms and not kind of sleepwalk through a whole season that he's not going to be proud of. Getting yelled at by John Tororella fucking benched. Yeah. That's when he made this announcement, I thought this was a, I'm simply just going to bench myself for the rest of my career proclamation. He's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it. Right.

He's like, Yarmo, you were supposed to protect us. What happened by countrymen? Do you think Biko Kwev is one of those guys that, and there's been a ton of guys in the last like 20 years that had to deal with this, who just happened to be the best defensive center at a time when, or I shouldn't say the best, but a really good defensive center at a time when there's just a guy running the fucking table on the Selke. Like, would he have had one right now if it was it for Bergeron? I mean, he was only a finalist once. You didn't score enough, right?

Like, that's ultimately what it boils down to. Right. Is that a fair way to assess whether it? Of course not. Or it's defensively competent. No. But that's how it's assessed. Oh, I always wanted to ask Sean this about the Selkie.

Do you think Peter Zezl should have won a Selke? I mean, the Selke back in those days was all over the map. it was as weird as it is that we've sort of settled into this it's got to be a two-way player almost always a center who scores at least 60 points groove over the last decade or two like back then anybody could win like there was like some guy won he was like 22 was his second year in the league and they're like yeah you're the best

defensive forward it was not even a guy you'd even have heard of Peter Zezel I got to watch him in the least I loved Peter Zezel he was he was that that checking line for the Leafs was amazing with Osborne and Berg. He was fantastic on face-offs. You know, you've always heard about him being the soccer guy and, you know, he would use his feet on the face-offs. I wouldn't have objected to him winning, but, I mean, it would have just been, you would

have needed the ping pong balls to bounce in whatever way they needed to that particular year based on how the Selke was handed out. But I love Peter Sesson. He was great to watch. And he's not a penguin or a ranger, so obviously he's not. getting any friendly bounces from ping pong balls. But there it is. I was trying to remember, as you were talking about, Zezel, like, when was the first

time I remembered thinking of a center or hearing about a center that was like a dominant defensive center, like, you know, more known for their defense and their offense. And I think of two when I was a kid. One was Joel Otto, just because, like, he was kind of portrayed at times as, you know, like the Gretzky antidote, you know, in the, in the, in the, claims Edmonton rivalry. That was the first time I ever was cognizant of there being centers that were there just to play defense. And then as a devil's fan, the first time I ever thought about it was Lori Boschman. Remember Lori Boschman?

Yep. Lori Boschman was a guy who was strictly your defensive center. And I remember them acquiring him. And I'm like, who the fuck's this guy? And you're like, he's really good defensively. I'm like, all right, I guess we need that. And then, you know, as time went on, you had your John Baddons and other guys like that. Do you remember the first guy, Ryan, that you remember knowing a guy just because of his defense at center? I feel like the answer, what's his name? The guy who was just like, oh, you put him out there and you're going to win the face off.

Was it, Janick Perrault maybe? Oh, yeah. Perrault was one of those guys, yeah. Perrault was up. But he was pure faceoff. He was a guy, like, you would put him out there in the final minute. And he was, he was like the first, the first Fogo guy, right? the first face-off get-off.

And I remember the Leafs, again, picking them up a bunch of times. I think he had three stints there. But they were like, well, you got to put him on the penalty kill. And they're like, yeah, but the problem is once he wins the face-off, he has to get off the ice. Because if the other team gets the pot, you now have Yanik Perot killing a penalty. He's terrible. But, yeah, that was, there was some face-off guys. Guy Carbino was the other one that, like, as he sort of took over.

Hall of Famer. is the, yes, Hall of Famer, Guy Carbino. And how's this for a segue? Because I was just looking at the Selkewaters. The guy I was talking about the 20-year-old who won, Steve Casper, won with the Bruins, probably best known to this day as being the coach who torpedoed his own career by benching Cam Neely on hockey night Canada in Toronto. Hey, speaking of coaches that like to bench guys. All right, let's go.

It directs the conversation back on topic. I thought offside review is going to be the next. Let's say, Linae, because your segues was too good. Yeah, that's true. What the fuck? Again, there's so much to unpack here. Let's start with the first layer of this parfe, which is that the Columbus Blue Jackets traded a guy that John Totorella was benching for a guy that John Totorella then benched four games into his Columbus career. Which is fucking amazing.

And while he had like three goals. And in a tie game against obviously a division rival that you're going to have to compete against her playoff spot in Carolina. Like you need offense. Their offense as a team had been fucking back shit in the time that Linae had been there. Like the three games he had been there, they scored like 12 goals. And he keeps them on the pine for like half the game for reasons. I guess the Aaron Portsline reported today that it was something shitty that Linae said to a coach or something. I don't know.

but it was also him kind of like sleepwalking through a defensive assignment or seemingly so in a goal. We all thought that's what it was, but apparently, at least according to the sources, it was based on him saying something inappropriate to an assistant coach. Like in that moment? Presumably in the heat of the game. Yeah. Yeah, like I bet the coach said, what the fuck were you doing on that play? And he said, fuck off or something like that. You know, and like, I guess the big takeaway for me is, boy, if you didn't see this coming, you are a fucking sucker.

There is no, there is no universe in which this wasn't going to be a thing that happened. Just like, that's how Patrick Lianney plays the game and you put up with it because he scores, I don't know, three goals and three games for you. But not John Tortorella, baby. Well, yeah, and here's, so here's my thing on this. And I'll take the reports at their word that this was mostly about him saying something to a coach. And look, you've got to have some form of structure and discipline. You don't want the coaches are getting screamed at by players. But that's the sort of thing.

That happens in sports a lot. It can be handled in a way that the public doesn't know about. Like, that can be handled internally behind the scenes in the room, however you want to put it. And none of us will ever know about it. And the fact that they didn't do it that way, I mean, I can only think of three reasons. The first reason is that John Tortorella is just dumb and doesn't realize how this is going to look with a guy that just got brought in in a trade for a disgruntal player and you're already singling them out. And I don't think that's an option because John Tortarillo, whatever you think of it. is not a dumb guy.

Option two is that this is, they've tried to handle it internally, and this is an ongoing issue, and they had to take it to the next level. But Patrick Kleiny's been there for like two weeks. Yeah. I mean, if it's that bad, it's really bad if it's already escalated to that. That doesn't seem to make sense. So the only other option I have, the only other thing I can think of is that John Tororelli just likes this.

Like, he likes to have this controversy. he likes to be the center of attention as much as he says, the last thing I want to do is bench someone, that he kind of likes this, feels it helps the team. I don't know if he thinks he's taking the spotlight off of guys or whatever it is, but it has to be intentional at this point, that this is to do it to this player under these circumstances. Unless there is some other piece of this story that we don't know about,

all I can think of is that in John Tortorella's, mind, this is actually a good thing that once again, everyone's talking about John Tortorella and player discipline and all the rest of it. Now, the other thing to say about that is, I'm trying to find it now. Stu Cowen yesterday tweeted Aaron Portsline, who covers the blue jackets for the athletic, telling Tony Marinero on TSN 690 a minute ago, he thinks John Tortorella might want out of Columbus himself, which could be why he benched Patrick Linae last night for the entire third period. Now that made me fucking laugh. Yeah. It made me laugh, but, but I mean, listen,

Portsline knows more about the blue jackets than I'll ever know the span of my life. So I'm not going to say that there's not something to it. But first of all, like Torderella owns like a ranch around Columbus. Like he's pretty set up there, like lifewise. And the other thing is, why the fuck would you ever want to leave that job if you're John Totorella? Like there is, You're in a market where there's no expectation. You're in a market where you could do this bullshit thing that he does all the time, which is just coached to the bubble. He's been coaching the bubble every year for the last decade. He's been a head coach.

You know, him and Yarmot get along pretty well, apparently, unless there's some schism now with the Sline stuff. Like, it is a very, very – he could coach there for the next six years. There's no expectation for the Blue Jackets to be anything but this team. And I'd be shocked if he wanted to get out of there. unless he wants to go to Seattle. I mean, Seattle didn't have a coach yet, did they? Maybe he wants that challenge. Who's to say?

Seattle can't be that fucking. You can't have John Tortorella be the first coach of a team. The face of your team, the first guy is somebody who's 10 second press conference. He's like, it's like, my job is to bring this team together as a team. So I benched the entire team in the second period. Nobody's on the ice. We lost 25 to nothing because there was nobody on the ice.

The benching thing's hilarious because as Torrello is like, the last thing I don't like benching guys. The last thing I want to do is bench somebody. You had fucking Cam Atkinson right before him saying, hey, we've all been benched. We've all been that guy before. Everybody gets benched at some point. It's just like a right of passage. It's just beautiful. Like how little self-awareness do you think he has that he's like, I hate benching guys.

It's the worst part of my job. Well, it's like the only shit he does. Outside of the lawyer who forgot his cat filter was on during that Zoom call, the biggest joy I had on the internet this week was the memes that came out of the Torrella I don't like benching guys thing I think my favorite was I don't like eating giant jugs of honey said

Winnie the poo. Yeah. It's just great fucking shit. Yeah, as the torts turns continues, again, I cannot get over the fact that they traded a guy that he was benching for a guy that he is now benching. This is impossible symmetry. Again,

how did you not see it coming? Yeah. Just given who the player is and who the coach is and what their reputation are. How do you not have the voice in the back of your head going, you know what, let's not bench this guy over this. Because the other thing is, you know, there's a part of it that

says, hey, the new guy has to play by the same rules. You can't have him come in and you know, be treated different. Players notice when a somebody is half-assing it out there or not you know, covering their assignments or whatever it is that happens on the ice.

And maybe you were that if that's happening and you don't take action that you lose the rest of the team, players don't care that you swore to coach. Unless he said something really awful, like, there's no player who's going to be like, I can't believe coach didn't step in and do something about that. So unless, you know.

It's Patrick Lainey. Like, what did he say? You're a noob. I mean, like, what the fuck is Patrick Liding going to say? You use A-Bod. I do not use A-Bod. That was a good. No.

I mean, maybe he had a heated gamer moment. You know. Exactly. That's all. I don't want to guess with those. A throw the controller level of anger in that moment. Oh, no. I'm talking about when, uh...

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You're talking about a cancellation level moment. Is that you're talking about? Heated gaming moment, folks. The delete the Twitch stream moment. That's right. So, I don't know. Like, I got asked on the radio the other day this question.

And I said, I said the answer is line eight, but I'll ask you, Who's there longer? Or who's there in like five years? Linae or Tordorella? Well, here's the interesting thing. The answer seems like it's going to be neither of them, right? Because they're both out of contract at the end of this year. And if I'm Patrick Liney and I'm getting benched three games into my fucking career on this new team, I'm like, get me the fuck out of Columbus immediately.

And then obviously with Torderella, it's like if they don't make the playoffs this year or even come particularly close, Do you want to re-up that whole deal and, you know, know that you're maybe going to lose one or two other guys, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, when in doubt, always pick the player over the coach. Yeah. Especially when it's a young player who's, you've just gone out and made a big trade for. But who knows? You're right.

this is there's no guarantee he has to stick around much longer if he were to decide that this isn't where he wanted to be, although we always expect that to happen in the NHL and it almost never does. All right. And then finally, and come to think of it, benchings happen so frequently in Columbus. This might be the most interesting story that's happened to the Blue Jackets this week. The, if you missed it on Sunday, Carolina. scores a goal that on review looked clearly like Vincent Trochec was offside.

And so the Blue Jackets challenge it. And then according to, again, Aaron Portsling, because he talked to Colin Campbell, took a bullet for the team, as it were, talked to Colin Campbell. According to that conversation, the linesmen come over, they're reviewing the play. the war room is reviewing the play with the NHL. And then somebody, I guess it was somebody inside the arena, said that's a good goal. Yeah.

Apparently they've got a new person being, there's the process involves the officials on the ice and the war room in Toronto, and then there is like an in between that's in the arena whose job is just to coordinate and make sure everyone can hear each other and see the same things. And apparently they're training a new person.

And that person at some point chips in their opinion and says, oh, that's a good goal. At which point the officials hear that and go, okay, got it. Take off the headsets and skate away, which that on its own is, I mean, I understand that people are really mad and Blue Jackets fans are furious. But this for the rest of us, this is hilarious. Like, it's a Benny Hill sketch. Because then apparently what happens is the officials go, okay, thanks guys, put the headsets down and leave. The war room realizes what just happened and starts desperately screaming for the officials to

come back. And normally what would happen is after the officials are done on their headsets, they give it back to an official who's in the penalty box and he puts the headsets on. And so the league is expecting that guy to hear them saying, no, no, bring them back. bring him back, but because of COVID, that guy has to clean the headset before he can put it back on. So he's sanitizing, like, I'm sorry, man. I just pictured this guy sanitizing a headset unaware that Colin Campbell is screaming to bring the officials back and they go and they drop the puck and play goes on.

And then where it gets really weird is, you know, the league does the review and realizes they screwed up. It's too late. It's ruled a good goal. Columbus gets a penalty because they challenged, and they didn't win the challenge. So that's two minutes against them. And then the puck drops,

and once the puck drops, that's it. That's it. That's in any sport. Once the next play starts, that's it. You can't go back. You can't have a redo. It was a screw up. Everyone admits it's a screw up,

But you can't go back and say, you know what, we changed their mind. It's no goal or whatever. Except that the league then does exactly that for the penalty. During intermission, because this all happened like a minute left in a period. During intermission, the league calls down and says, we screwed up. We can't go back and make it no goal, but we're going to take the penalty off the board, which there is nothing in the rulebook that allows anybody to do that. There is no, like, I'm the obscure rule.

book guy. There is nothing in there that says in the event of whatever, you can just go and take a penalty off the board. But they did that, which of course has Columbus fans saying, well, if you could do that, why not just take the goal off the board? Since there's no precedent for that either. Well, the reason that was, well, there's no precedent for it. Right. But there was no precedent for the other thing. Well, there was no precedent for the thing of the other thing. So we could incredible thing about that was Colin Campbell saying, we can't take the goal off the board because there's no precedent for it, even though they took the penalty off the board to make a precedent to do that. Yeah.

And the entire time, I'm just screaming, what the fuck do you think precedent is? Do you think there's a judge who's like, I don't know if I can rule on this? Joe Biden is president. Anyways, but you're right. Yeah. So the officials came to the two teams locker rooms during intermission and said, hey, just want to let you know. Conversation. Yeah, it wasn't us or the war room.

It was Skippy the intern who said that it was a good goal. And then we just took it at face and we fucked out. God damn. It's such a perfect story. And by the way, like, they shouldn't think that precedent is there for a reason. Like, it shouldn't be possible to go back. And I know there's, again, this is once again, a weird once in a decade thing happens in the NHL. And immediately everyone's like, we've got to change the rules because we have to just get it right and blah, blah, blah.

Like, no, like once the play started, you shouldn't be. able to go back and change things. What they should have done is they should have called the referees and said, the first Carolina hurricane who breathes on anyone gets a two-minute minor. Like if you haven't called a penalty on the hurricanes within five seconds, you're all fired because we're going to even it up that way. That's the way that stuff is supposed to be evened up. Yeah, that's hockey.

Yeah, that's hockey, baby. That's the Chicago way. And make sure both teams have the exact same number of power play opportunities. But this is, the whole thing is so dumb and so ridiculous and so funny as long as you didn't have a rooting interest in the game itself. I just really hope that NHL doesn't do the NHL thing here and be like, we need all new rules for this thing that has never happened before. Yeah. Well, the other thing I liked was that, because Columbus got screwed by like the clock ticking weird. in L.A.

In L.A. And there was another thing that happened that was, you know, and someone was like, is the league conspiring again? Like, the league is so unfair to the Columbus Blue Jackets? Yeah. The team nobody fucking thinks about. Them and the Minnesota Wilder, the two biggest targets of the league's attempts to, like, fix the results of a given game. Come on. Like the most, the simplest explanation, I guess, is that everybody who is in charge of the league is incompetent.

And they prove that, I don't know, five or six times in season. I love that this happened. And somebody in the league was like, you know who needs to be our public face of this explanation? Who's got a lot of credit. I know. Cole and Campbell. It's fantastic. If Gregory was still playing for the Blue Jackets.

It's a whole different story. Oh, and to answer your question, because I was curious because I didn't know the answer, the next penalty in the game was on Patrick Line. Got to bench him for that shit. Can't let him get away with that. So that is as the Blue Jackets turn. What a fantastic soap opera? What's next?

I didn't even check this morning. Did they accidentally shoot Max Domi out of the cannon? Like, what happened today? Oh, that's the other thing. There was an, I think, I think Portsline wrote it was like, this Max Domi at Center thing isn't working out. It's like, no shit. Wasn't that the joke for three fucking years in Montreal? No shit, it didn't work out.

Come on, man. I guess that's another thing that happened in this year is they have, they traded for Max Domi. He's not working at Center. And Josh Anderson's going to win the fucking Rocket Richard. So things are going great. Things are fantastic. I guess our next segment It's fucking rocks, man.

I love it, though. Isn't it great? Who doesn't love it, kids? Our next segment is called COVID-O-Novid, in which we discuss all the problems the league is having existing this year. As of right now, the New Jersey Devils, Minnesota Wild, Colorado Avalanche, And Buffalo Sabres all have their games canceled in perpetuity, I guess, or postponed. And then the Flyers had to postpone their game against Washington this week.

By the way, I'm working on an SI cover-esque curse now where I wrote about Jack Hughes last week. Devils got canceled out. Wrote about JVR this week. Flyers got canceled out. So taking nominations for who you want me to apply the hex on next. How are we feeling about things, boys? We're going to get this rickety bus over the finish line, or no? No, absolutely not.

This is a disaster, and it seems to only be getting worse. You know, like, there was a real problem in the NBA for a little while, and a few teams had a few games canceled. But they, like, figured it out on the fly, kind of. And the most recent thing I saw from the NBA, which I bring up only because. they're the other fucking league playing right now, um, is that, uh,

they had no positive tests in whatever the last week. They released the info for. So that's great news. It's wild. Do I think the NHL can do the same thing? For a lot of reasons? No, I don't. Yeah.

I mean, get across the finish line as in finish a season. I still think they will because they seem very motivated to, that. And when I say they, I mean the league and the players. Well, I was talking about in terms of everybody gets to 56 games. Everyone gets to 56, I do not think is going to happen at this point. That's why I think, you know, I had somebody tweet or email me or something saying like, should they just switch the standings to points percentage now? Of course. Start getting people's head around

the fact that, you know, this is how it's going to, it's going to happen because, yeah, I don't think we're getting a 56 and you know the big thing right now is a key pillar of the league's plans all along has been that they didn't believe that there was significant risk of in-game transmission they were concerned about the teams themselves and and you know that's why you had people sitting six feet apart in dressing rooms and you couldn't go to Alex Ovechkin's hotel room to watch a movie and all of this stuff um But they felt or chose to believe that in-game transmission wouldn't be a big issue, but now it looks like it is. Because we've got situations where not only are teams who happen to have played each other, both seeing outbreaks, but we've even got officials from the same games.

I mean, at this point, we don't have to, you know, we don't have to be dumb and pretend that we don't know what's happening there. So that's where it gets fair. Hold on. It's not dumb. I mean, like, they're all sharing the same. facility. And they're all walking through the same hallways. Like, I don't think it's dumb to to question whether it's an on-ice transmission or if it's just... Well, no, but if it's, if both teams and the officials from the same game can infect each other, then whether it's happening

on the ice or in the facilities is, is completely meaningless. It's a distinction. Sure. No, I agree. That is in-game transmission, even if it's not happening on the ice. That, that, that means that. Well, I think I think the difference though, Sean, is that, like, you can still do XYZ inside the building to try to make sure that you separate all parties better, but you can't do that on the ice. So I am curious what the official, what they think happened, especially with Buffalo and Jersey, because you're right. Like, once you start talking about the officials getting infected, now you're talking about a whole different level of concern. And actually, the whole different level of concern I'm getting from from talking to some people is, you know, they did all this shit before the season to try to make it as safe as possible. The thing they didn't know about before the season were these new variants that are apparently a lot more, you can get affected a lot easier, you know, and, and they're, you know, people are, it's just jumping from person to person in a way that the OG COVID didn't, which is why, you know, there's like, there's like,

now scuttle butt about, should we do more genetic testing? You know, should we understand what the stuff is? Because COVID tests check to see if you have COVID. They don't check to see what variant you have of it. So it may be just simply like they didn't, they didn't budget for this in talking about what they thought they could do for the season.

They plan for one thing and now it's something else. And this is why I've been saying all along, the NHL should get rid of the pregame tradition where everybody kisses each other. It's just, it's ridiculous. But it's my favorite part of the pregame. I like watching NBC. It's one of hockey's grandest traditions, Greg.

I understand. I love seeing guys smooch while Babcock's telling me about, you know, something that happened on the 2009 Red Wings. Like, it's the best part of the broadcast. I agree with Sean. Like, they're going to finish this season in some way, shape, or form. Yes, of course they are. I do wonder if, too much money, but I do wonder if, like,

at some point, they start talking. about bubbling up at all? Or, you know, is the plan still since things are, look, all this shit in the NHL is happening at a time when COVID rates around the country are dropping. Like, things are getting better. Now, we'll see what happens after the Super Bowl, but things are getting better. And the plan was always like, we're not going to need a bubble by the time we get to the postseason because we're going to get fans back in buildings and start making money again. And I wonder where we are on that now. I'm genuinely curious about what those conversations are behind the scenes. The vaccine rollout's been such a fucking disaster

in most of the big states, which is to say most of the states where NHL teams are, I guess. California in the house over here just want to mention what a fucking disaster it's been here. Massachusetts bottom six in the country in percentage of the population vaccinated. Famously, a state with a lot of hospitals, and they always talk about,

oh, you know, we're one of the global leaders in health care and all that shit. Yeah, it's going really bad, but they did announce today that if you bring somebody 75 plus to get vaccinated, it doesn't, they will also vaccinate you. So, like, I just figure the Bruins are going to have like Pastornak and Marshand driving around with a big net looking for elderly people. Do you need a, do you need a like a QR code for that or like a coupon or anything for that? Or does it just happen? Because that sounds like a pretty good deal. Yeah, no, it just got announced today.

I have no idea what the, but I, too. have a big net and a car. Yeah, here it's just the disaster. Like, I mean, I, I, it's amazing to me how California was like the, the standard bearer for a long time of, like, how to handle this shit. And, you know, the lockdowns and we were way ahead of the curve. And then ever since that point, it's just been fuck up after fuck up after fuck up to the point where, like, you got Gavin Newsom standing before the state being like, we've got to be more vigilant and lock down the restaurants and shit while the same time he's eating dinner at fucking French laundry with a bunch of people in the... I don't even, you know, honestly, that's, that's not even the issue to me. The issue, like, like, individuals can make individual choices, even if they're the

fucking leaders of the state, you know, rules don't apply to the elites, and we all should understand that. But what, what the problem is. No reason to bring the young bucks into this. Sorry. What the problem is, is that, like, the state is going, well, you got to go to fucking work. And then people are like, well, if I got to go to fucking work. Well, if I got to go to fucking work, I'm going to go to the bar after.

You know, and I'm going to go to a restaurant and unwind. Because if I'm seeing people at work all the time, then I might as well, I'm just going to fucking get it anyway, you know? And so, like, the idea of Massachusetts, like, last week was like, you know what? Let's get restaurants back up to 40% capacity. And the numbers are doing better. And it's like, but you're just, just tell everybody to stay home. That's the single most Bostonian thing you've ever said in this podcast. It's like, you're going to work.

You obviously have to go to the bar afterwards. Well, no, I'm saying that's just what people feel like. It's true, though. Yeah, I completely agree. I work from home. I don't give a shit. I don't know anyway. It's a return to the sense of normalcy is what you're saying, and I completely understand what you're saying.

All right, back on the hockey thing. I think they're going to get through the season. I do, I am, the other thing I'm curious about with the NHL, and I'm trying to get somebody to talk about this. But what was their internal projection or their internal, like, threshold for what this season would look like right now? Like, what I'm trying to say is, so we've got four teams that are that are off the grid for like a week. We've got another team in the flyers that might be there. You have an entire division that hasn't been impacted by this at all. And you have a number of teams that if they have been impacted, have simply been impacted because they had to.

have travel quarantines or what have you and haven't had like outbreaks of COVID within their dressing rooms. So I genuinely am curious whether they're looking at this and side-eyeing it and being like, oh, shit, fuck, we might be heading into NWHL territory here. Or are they looking at it and being like, actually, this is going better than we thought it would? I don't know the answer. Like, do you guys think, have any thoughts on how they feel about it? I don't know how you can feel good about half the teams in the league have played eight games and the other half have played 15. I don't think they were hoping to have, I mean, five teams and counting, well, it's been more than that. But we've got to include Dallas in there.

And by the way, we should, you know, we should point this out. As we're recording this, we don't know exactly what happened last night with Vegas and Anaheim. Right, right. There could be, by the time you hear this, you may already know that those teams are on the sidelines, too. I can't imagine that that's what they were hoping for, but it would be nice to know. It would be nice if there was some sort of communication about that and some kind of leveling with your fans about what the expectations are. But that's not how this league ever works. So I don't see why it would.

There's no precedent for them telling us. No precedent. Yeah, something's got no precedent that you need to skip you the intern to be like, actually, COVID's real bad. So I agree. I can't imagine the disparity in games played is something that they're pretty happy about right now. But, you know, the other thing I wanted to mention is that I went through the list and there are five teams that have not had a single person on the COVID lists this season. and the only American team from that group is the St. Louis Blues, which probably not coincidentally, is the team that got hit by COVID and, you know,

around the bubble last year. Right. So it kind of makes you wonder about the herd immunity aspect of this thing, in particular about some of the teams, like the devils and the stars, for example. Well, remember last year, everybody was like, what if a bunch of guys on a team get COVID and then they're really good in the playoffs? Maybe it makes them insanely talented. Right.

Oh, okay. It's super soldier zero. And look, the other thing with this is like it's getting to the point where there's, there's so many names going on and out the list. And yes, we all know by this point, just because you're on the list does not mean you have a positive test, et cetera, et cetera. It can be any number of things. But there's so many names being associated with this. So far, we haven't had a situation where any.

anybody got seriously sick that we know of. We had the, there's the Marco Rossi thing, which where he was, that was before the season that he tested positive, but we're only finding out now. But beyond that, like,

we haven't had a situation really publicized where a player or a coach or whoever, like, was not okay after a couple of weeks. And once that happens and starts, it, because it will, we've seen it in the NBA,

we saw it in the NFL, that's going to change the discussion too. That's going to get some because right now it feels like even even the pessimists are kind of operating under this assumption that if you test positive, you quarantine and then in 10 days you're fine because you're a young professional athlete. Don't know that for sure. And that's going to be maybe the next, you know, that shouldn't change any public opinion because it won't be new information when it happens. But it will feel that way. Yeah. And there's so much we don't know about this shit and it's scary.

and I don't like it. I mean, let alone 10 years from now what it's going on. We have no way of knowing. Alexis LaFranier has one goal in 11 games, discuss. I mean, you know, not everybody should be in the NHL at 18, even if they're really fucking good. It's true. He also didn't have an option to play many other places this season. That's it, right?

And it's, you know, for him to go back to. to junior wouldn't have been, even in regular times wouldn't really have been an option because he's too good for junior, too young to play in the HL. And that's the real problem, right? Like the transfer agreement between the NHL and the CHL does not allow for guys to be 18-year-olds in the AHL. Which it should. But it's, I don't know, I mean, look, we're seeing in Jersey, like Jack Hughes, did nothing last year, he looks good this year.

Sometimes it takes a year or two. There's a long list of, you know, we all remember the guys like Connor McDavid and Austin Matthews who come in and look like stars right away, but there's lots of guys who, like Joe Thornton had seven points in his first season. Vinila Cavillet is another one.

Yeah, the Cidines took like three years to be more than 30-point guys. So it does take time. Like nobody should be saying I use a bust or anything, but if I'm the Rangers, then I'm going to do it anyway. I'm hoping to make. If I'm the Rangers, I'm trying to make the playoffs this year, this is obviously not what you wanted from a guy that you were kind of fingers crossed might come in and really give you a boost.

Capocaco, three points in ten games, LaFranier, one point in 11 games. Yeah. I'm more probably worried about Capoacaaco at this point. But he looked good to start the year and just dropped off immediately. I really wonder, you know, if it's just. a case where there's just not really a good supporting cast for all these guys to, you know, put them in a position to succeed where... You mean like centers, especially when Zabandajad's not been all that great this year.

Like, they're really hurting at center of the Rangers of the season. But fuck, man, like, you know, even as we talk about these two young players and their struggles, I would give anything to have the Rangers roster right now, like if I was a fan in the NHL. fucking you're going to have Adam Fox and Kiantry Miller on your back end for the next 10 years. Jack Johnson. All right. You take the good, you take the bad. You take them both.

And there you have Jack Johnson. Right. So the issue is, are the Rangers a playoff team this year? So it's starting to look like the answers. No. It looked at the beginning of the year like a soft maybe. You know what I mean? And when they signed, when they signed Panarin, I figured it was going to be like by year three of Panarin that they were going to be a contender.

So I think they're still on track. I think that's about right, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But, yeah, the decisions they've made personnel-wise, like last summer even, you were just like, okay. I mean, I thought you guys wanted to be in the playoffs, but. And the thing that worries me a little bit if I'm a Rangers fan is there's not really anyone in this roster anymore who's like an old guy that you're going to flip for future assets. you're at that stage where barring another lottery win,

you're not going to be picking top five. You're not going to expect to finish bottom five of the league and get a real high pick. So yes, there's still opportunity to bring in more talent and reinforcements that way. But you're kind of looking at the roster going, this is maybe what we've got as the core going forward. Their players are going to get better as they get older,

but this is pretty much most of it is here. Is it good enough? Do we actually see this being something that's going to be the core of a championship caliber team? Or is, you know, sometimes you get to a rebuild, you get to the other side of it, and you look and you go, we still got a few missing pieces. And now how do we go out and get those? Right. Well, I mean, obviously what you do is you trade Tony DeAngelo for Sam Bennett, right? That's what they were going to do this week?

Yeah. That's it. If somebody tweeted at me, the Tony Bennett trade, we need to make this happen. That's the tops. The Blackhawks are good again. Ryan, this must be very difficult for you. It's not. They're not good.

They have a goalie who, if I'm looking at this right, is like 930 plus here and his career average, like his highest average save percentage and it was in the Finnish league is 919. And that's a good number, you know. But does that make Kevin Lankinen? a fucking Dominic Hachick type? I'm going to go out on a limit. He's in 933 and his career average in the NHL is, oh yeah, 933 because he's played nine games. He's the Calder leader at this point, the best goalie. We were all on Shurkin's tip.

It turned out to be Kevin Lincoln. We all looked at the Blackhawks and we were like, the goaltending is what's going to carry them. Yeah. Yeah, no, they're not good. They're better than anything than anybody thought they would be, just like even in terms of they don't look whole. horrible every single night, you know? And now they're just getting insane goal tending that is in a short season, maybe you only need 10 games of insane goal tending.

If they make the playoffs, what does that say for Jonathan Taves' legacy as a leader? Yeah. Overrated. He's out. Makes you think, doesn't it? Trade his ass. You don't need him. By the way, I hope he's okay.

We haven't heard anything about Taves in a while. Yeah, we haven't, and that's concerning. That is concerning. League is a better place with our stoic leader in it. Yeah, Lankinen is leaps and bounds better than any other rookie goalie right now. It's pretty incredible. And he had your Cherkin. He's at 916.

And then you had, you know, Sorokin with the Islanders. He's at 871 for save percentage. And he was going to be the guy. on the island, you know. And then your boy, Jake Ottinger, is doing pretty good. He's got a 9-19 behind the Dallas Stars with Bishop Bean out. Yeah. So good times for rookie goalies.

We might make, I still think it's going to be a forward, a defenseman and a goalie in your final three for the Calder this year. That's all that feels like it's just how it's going to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But good stuff for the goalie so far. All right.

Moving on. A couple more topics to hit. Sean, what was your reaction to all of the TSN shit this week? I mean, obviously we have our own reaction to our sweet friends, the curtain bloggers, getting spiked at the TSN station in Vancouver as Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton's TSN stations are now flipping to an all-comedy format. They're just going to play stand-up. I think one of them is, and one of them's going to like a Bloomberg news. Yeah.

Okay. They're shifting to formats where they won't have to pay anyone to actually broadcast. It's brutal. It's brutal that the, because this is goes back to last week, right? We've seen a lot of cuts at TSN and media properties across the board. You know, Brent Wallace, Dan O'Toole, go on down the list. And it's, you know, and behind the scenes too. Obviously, the people who are on camera or on the air are the ones that you may know by name, but there's a lot of people behind that.

It's awful. And it's awful that this is coming obviously in a brutal media environment, but also from a company in Bell that is a huge multi-billion dollar conglomerate and is still counting relative pennies. to put really good people out of work and doing it all two weeks after their big let's-talk PR campaign about the importance of mental health. And then not only do they go and do this, but the way it's been handled has just been completely unforgivable the way that they've treated people. And it's awful. Do you mean playing a pre-recorded message during somebody's show and then following it

with a song called Good Written's? People finding out on Twitter that the radio station they work for doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's such a mess. And it's, it's terrible. There's, there's no other spin to put on it. And it's, it's awful as a person, but even if you want to put that aside just as a sports fan. Like we've lost a ton of good voices that we needed.

And I don't know where it stops. I don't, we've seen SportsNET go through it. Now it's TSN's turn. Who knows where it goes next? It's really an ugly situation all the way around. And I don't think it's all that much different down where you guys are. Yeah, we've known Mike and Jason for a really long time. I mean, like I remember, you know, we used to, Lambert, we used to like have them on Puck Daddy all the time because they were our favorite Kinnock's

people, they were doing an incredible blog before they went to NBC and then they got this radio gig. And it's the worst part about this is when you know something is successful and then it gets shoved to the side because of corporate budget bullshit. And there's no doubt that their shit was successful. There's no doubt that they rated well. There's no doubt they put on an amazing product that they had a following that the show meant something to people. And then just to have it destroyed, by big name big nameless corporation who went so far as to record the

thank you for listening to the Vancouver radio station announcement in Toronto by some rando it fucking sucks those guys are great and I really I know they're going to be okay because they're incredibly talented but fuck man

I loved doing that show every week I used to do it every Wednesday morning I would talk to them for like 25 minutes on the radio just about stuff and I know that show meant a lot to people and those guys are two of my favorite people in the business. Not to say everybody else, I mean, there's a lot of really good people that lost their gigs,

but fuck, man. Mike and Jason losing their gig really, really struck me as just being one of those, like, what the fuck are they doing kind of moments. Yeah, especially because they took hundreds of millions of dollars, if I'm not mistaken, in, certainly a lot of money in government, like wage relief.

and it's weird they cut all their like shareholders bigger dividends of late that's crazy that that happened not to get to I mean listen every year the Bell Let's Talk thing happens I find it inspiring

because it does allow people to open up about their own personal struggles it does at the end of the day raise money for a cause that's in need I get all that but I don't choose to participate in it and I get I've gotten shamed for it

in the past But this is exactly why. Because, like, at the end of the day, it's an advertisement. And it's a tax rate off. I'll say right now, I'm done with it. Not with the conversation. We can still do that. I'm done with the conversation.

People can still share their stories. This has soured me. I'm done with the hashtag is what I'm done with. Like, I'm done with providing corporate cover for a company that clearly does not give a crap about this stuff when it comes to their actual decisions. And, you know, I can picture in my head. I'm sure it happened. There was a meeting somewhere where they had to decide how many days after the hashtag could they do this to people. Yeah, it's goolish.

Yeah, it would be long enough that it would be okay. And I guess they settled on two weeks or 10 days or whatever it was. Yeah. And the other thing to say is like this, Bell is not alone in this, right? Like the supermarket that throws out food that's like one second past its expiration date instead of giving it to, you know, food banks or whatever. They're also now going, hey, you want to chip in it? Like, your total came to $43.20.

You want to chip in an extra 80 cents and we'll donate that on your behalf? Like, it's all fucking, it's all bullshit. And it's all, you know, a way to a, you know, burnish their image, right? But also to get a tax write off. Because that's their money that they then donate. They're adding a middleman to it. Like Sean said, like, the hardest thing about this whole thing when it comes to that hashtag is just like you have this hashtag about mental health and depression and all this other stuff. And then, you know, a week later, it's like, Bell, let's talk about you packing up your desk in the next 30 minutes.

Like, fucking, I mean, you are. Literal people who as part of that hashtag shared personal stories of struggles they've gone through a week later get to find out. from that company through Twitter that their job doesn't exist anymore because they can't even bother to pick up the phone and have a face-to-face conversation with somebody. It's a brutal industry. Speaking of that, I know this was actually something

in the mailbag. It sounded like an ad transition. No, no. Speaking of brutal industries. Brutal industry. LinkedIn. Salt mine. Rich Cook wrote,

Sean, as a Canadian, what are your thoughts on the layoff of Dan O'T and the breakup of Sports Center with Jay and Dan? I guess I could also ask you about the breakup of Tim and Sid, too. Like, those are two iconic duos of the last, like, 15 years in Canadian media, and both have been broken up in the last, like, month. Yeah, and, you know, Sid and Tim by choice, as far as we know, with Sid going and taking a different job.

And, yeah, Jay and Dan were part of, for the last decade, certainly. They were a great Canadian media story, because it's, again, like, it resonates with me a little bit because these are two guys who didn't fit the criteria and the view of what you were supposed to do in that sort of job, but they came along and found a different voice and it caught on with people and it turned into something. And the fact that that's not going to be part of it anymore, their producer as well, and others who worked on the show to just have it all broken up like that, it's ugly. And it's going to be, you know, again, if you want to be completely heartless and just put all of your actual human empathy aside

and just purely be selfish on this and say, what does this mean for me as a fan? It sucks. Like that's two great combos who did great work that aren't going to be part of the landscape going forward. And, you know, what's going to move in and replace them? Maybe it'll be someone else who's great, but maybe it'll just be more cookie cutter,

cut and paste stuff grabbed from some other source. And, you know, here we keep on going down the spiral. of what sports media looks like these days. I would have rather seen Tim take the morning show gig. Like the weird IT guy on the morning show strikes me as being more interesting than sit on the morning show for being honest. I love those guys. I worked with them at the score. Remember the score?

Sure. I work there. I mean, they still do. I mean, they still make content. They have actually a couple of good writers there. But back in the day, that was like the birthplace of Elliot Friedman. They did wrestling. A lot of people got their start there

And Yeah Yeah Did Skeets get a start there? Or did those boys just did the show there? That sounds right. Actually, I actually remember where they start. I think at one point, like they did the score had like a blog and network that they had

Started up that that I was a part of in the very very beginning of things. Wow. In the beginning times. Ryan didn't watch the Super Bowl, as you know. He's not a football guy. Sean, did you watch the Super Bowl? I did. Bad game.

I mean. Terrible game. Unfortunate. Horrible game. You know, even if you, whether you're rooting for Brady or Mahomes or whatever, we didn't get the game that we were hoping to get, unfortunately. I don't know if you can count this as part of Brady's legacy, but how many times have we've seen situations where people just lose their

fucking minds when they play a Brady team. And don't, like the Rams did. And like the Chiefs did. And they just play horribly in that spot. I guess it's, I guess you could say it's part of Brady's legacy that he's, he's such a cool as a cucumber in the pressure situations that he keeps his team from doing dumb shit. But I feel like he's been the beneficiary of teams absolutely imploding in the Super Bowl. Yeah.

I think the, the one that everybody brings up is the Seahawks Super Bowl, where they were just like, oh yeah, we're going to throw it on fourth and one or whatever. I don't remember the down situation, but, uh, and then that got picked off and run all the way back and, and that was the end of the game. And it's just like you had the win and you fucking over, like you

overthought it. You overthought it. And on the Chiefs one, like, they didn't have an answer for the, for the front four for the bucks and and then, you know, they made so many fucking mistakes defensively during the game as far as as penalties go. I mean, like being offside on a, on a, on a, on a, a, on a, a, uh,

goal attempt and shit like that. It's just unconscionably bad decisions. So, yeah, the game sucked. It was such a disappointment. The commercials or whatever. It was, I do like the idea, the notion that because of COVID, more famous people made commercials this year than ever before, like Matthew McConaughey and Will Ferrell and people like that were making commercials because they didn't have anything else to do. I think there's probably something to that theory. Commercials were whatever and they weren't all that good either. So it was just a big, big bummer, the Super Bowl, on top of not being able to, like, get with people and watch it together.

Unless you were at the Super Bowl, in which case you had all the opportunity that you wanted. Or you're the Tampa Bay Lightning in a socially distant masks up hotel ballroom. Yeah, totally believable. That was the case. We should also mention, because, you know, this show is such a big fan. there is a new Ed Night Chambalon movie where it's a spooky beach where people age. And it's called Old. It's just called Old. That's fucking incredible.

Remember when he made a movie about a mermaid living in a motel pool? Yeah, and it's not even his stupidest concept. That would be when the trees attacked people through the wind. Would that be the stupidest movie? You know, Greg, I think it would be. I don't know. Although the part where the guy walks into the lion cage or whatever and the lions just rip him apart, that rocked. There was some cool, like, real, just gruesome shit in that movie that gives me, allows me to give it at least a little.

Like, the people just kind of, like, falling off of buildings and stuff was really, it was like gruesome. I, for me, as a big fan of Unbreakable, I'm like a huge Unbreakable fan. Yeah, can you should be so funny. No, that's not what I'm talking about. And I like Split. The one that the third one, what was it, glass was it? Glass. Did you see it? Yeah, kind of a dud.

Terrible movie. Bruce Willis got killed in the puddle. Yeah, I saw the movie. I know. Yeah, it's fucking terrible. Yeah. And then like the big, the big promised boss fight that everybody was so excited about, the whole movie didn't happen because he got fucking drowned in a big puddle. Well, it happened for two seconds And somebody got thrown against a van

And it dented the door And that was the end of the point No, I thought it was a thing See, now I saw it once, I don't fucking remember But wasn't it a thing where they were like, uh-oh, something bad is brewing down at this skyscraper And then it was just like you can see the skycraper in the background They didn't get to the skyscraper

No, that's right. Yeah, it's like Mario and Bowser fault Before we get into the castle Right. It's completely true. Sean, do you avoid Shyamalan movies because they're spooky? Uh, no. I've seen a few of them, but not... I mean, I kind of went six cents unbreakable...

What was it? Signs. And then I saw the... I guess the village. And that was the first one where I was like, oh, this isn't... This isn't good. Like, signs, I kind of retroactively go back and I'm like, yeah, a lot of that didn't work. But when I watched it, I was like, yeah, so this is a good movie. It's a really gripping movie while you're watching it, but just don't think about it. And also, and also, the fucking...

The performances in that movie are great. Mel Gibson is so underrated as an actor. He is. I think he's great. And obviously, you know, Joaquin became what he became, but at the time, nobody was like,

oh, Joaquin Phoenix, one of the greatest actors of our generation. But that scene where he's, uh, in the closet watching the video of the Brazilian birthday party or whatever. The vomitos children vominoes scene. It's fucking tremendous.

That scene is incredible. Yeah. But anyway, I think I, I've told this story before, but like, when the village came out, my girlfriend at the time and her parents and I all went to see it. And we all walked out of the theater going, you know, it was whatever. And on the way home, everybody was just getting progressively madder about various parts of the movie. The thing that, two things.

First of all, I'm an unabashed science fan. I don't know why signs became aligned. I know people make fun of like the water or like, oh, the aliens come to a planet full with water. that well no i mean that's that's not that's not like a minor plot hole that kind of proves the whole premise of the but they didn't know about the water that's like if we went to place we didn't know about the water it's the big fucking thing it's the blue thing gregg they think they're like they're like hey why is everyone dying we can't quite put her finger on it they didn't watch for years is the fuck water is the fucking movie and then they get down there and they're like the raincoats fuck yeah well maybe

it's like going on vacation near the equator you're like i could probably hand the heat of the beach is nice, that thought they'd be all right with the water. They have invisible spaceships. This is, this shouldn't be fucking hard for them. Anyway, now, now that I'm screaming about plot holes in a fucking 20-year-old movie. And a Shabalon movie, no less. The village, the fuck up of the village was instead, they should have done a smash cut reveal that it was modern times. Instead, they did sort of like, remember they did like the slow burn of like, there's a time capsule.

that they're opening. Well, again, that was a twist I figured out eight minutes into the movie. You know, like, there's no... And I did, too, and I never figure stuff out in movies. Like, I consider myself a relatively smart person, but I am a utter drooling moron when it comes to movies. I get confused super easily, and you can misdirect me with anything in a movie. So when I am like 10 minutes into the movie being like, I bet I know what's going to happen, that's not good.

That's not good. It's a bad sign. All right. In honor of Tom Brady winning another Super Bowl, I figured we'd do an overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite on a topic that has been covered incessantly in the last week, including in an upcoming column for me, goats, greatests of all time in sports.

And I wanted to get your sense of the most overrated, underrated favorite in least three. favorite consensus goats for each sport. Like, who is the most overrated? Like, for example, for me, obviously, Brady's the most overrated goat. I mean... I think that's a good point, yeah. Football is a tremendous team sport.

And Brady, I mean, you're hearing it more and more. Not to sleep, not to slate Brady. Brady's great. It's a fantastic player and, you know, what have you. Probably the best quarterback of all time. Yeah. But, I mean, the thing with Brady is it's the whole, like, now he's the greatest athlete of all time. And it's like somebody said on Twitter, like two countries in the entire world play this sport with any level of seriousness.

You can't be the greatest athlete in the history of the world when 90% of the planet would have never even tried. Yeah, I do want to be like the guy who's like, you know, like, LeBron couldn't be the best. because Jordan was the best. It was so much, but, but for, like, the ancient Olympics, like, Lephtherios of, of Florida is the greatest athlete of all time. Well, like, have you ever seen those lists of, like, highest paid athletes ever?

And there is, like, a guy like that is number one, because, like, back then he was given a gold bar, which was actually worth more than the entire kid. So it's like, they always put him and then Michael Jordan, and you're like, we could probably do two lists. It might be okay. You know what? If he predates the birth of Christ, I think we can...

Underrated. I'm going to go Gretzky. I am stunned by how Gretzky, because he's a hockey player, has been left out of a lot of these conversations this week about Brady. On this podcast, we talk all the time about how he's probably not the greatest hockey player of all time. So I don't know how he can be underrated in that. But in the goat conversation, he's clearly our nominee. Like, we all know Mario's better.

I mean, Mario's a better player than him. We all know this. But, oh, Jesus Christ. So actually, it's funny, I read a Boston Herald column about Tom Brady and it bought a Bobby or not Gretzky, which is, again, stunning to me. But again, I just feel like our sweet hockey boy, and this is all please like my sport, I understand this, doesn't get top of the, you get like Ali, you get Brady, you get Jordan, and then Gretzky's never like right in that mix in a lot of these.

analyses of goats and it bums me out. So I'm going to say Gretzky's underrated. I said it on Twitter kind of half joking, but then I really thought about it and it's true. Secretariat is an all-time great athlete. Like, if you look at the picture of when Secretariat won the Belmont stakes, like the next horse is a dot on the horizon. And like, you know, obviously is a horse an athlete is the big question, but like, I don't know, people, people watch that shit every fucking year. So I, I'm a huge horse racing fan, and I never had a problem with them putting Secretariat on the best athletes of the century list that SI did.

Because then when it happened, people were like, well, why don't you put Dealer and Hart's car on the list? Like, because the fucking car is inanimate. Of horses, an athlete, because it's a living thing. So it's okay to say that the horse is an athlete. Yeah. But for underrated human athletes, I think Bill Russell is a guy who doesn't get enough credit for completely changing the sport of basketball. You know, like, if you look at, it's not just the fact that they won what he won like 17 titles or whatever the number is.

It's between the NBA and college, that is. But it's more the fact that they play basketball one way before Bill Russell played it, and then Bill Russell played it, and they were like, we can't play basketball the old way anymore. He's too good at that. Which CFL player are you going to choose? Rocket Ismail, Donovan Nab, which one? Doug Flewting. Come on.

Yeah, clearly. Yeah, the pinball Clemens is my pick. No, you know, I just as far as, underrated. I mean, this guy's not underrated. But Babe Ruth, the fact that he was dominant in two different facets of a game where that never happens. I mean, it would be like the equivalent of like Connor McDavid just playing goal for the Oilers at like a Vezina level every few games and then switching back out front and playing forward and dominating that. It's, and, and, and, and, and, and, And, like, you see it, like, there's some comparisons where, like, you know, in football, they used to play both sides of the ball, yeah.

But everybody did, because that's what the sport was. Like, even a century ago in baseball, there was nobody else who was pitching and hitting at that level. It was such an anomaly. It's kind of, you know, it's one of those things where, yeah, I mean, if you go back in time and kidnap Babe Ruth and drop him into today's league, he's not going to be the best player. But it's, it's the relative to what anyone else has ever done as far as both positions. Just another guy who changed the way the sport got played. I mean, he's, he changed the way the sport got played offensively as far as being the first, like, real home run slugger. But, like, he didn't even change the game as far as other players being like, I'll pitch and hit because nobody could do it.

It was like, oh, well, okay, I guess we're, we're all. Right. No, it's, it's, um, it's that probably apocryful story about Ty Cobb where, uh, you know, the, the media. is like, you know, Babe Ruth's hitting a lot of home runs, and he's like, hitting home runs is for losers. Anybody can hit a home run. And they were like, come on. And he was like, I'll do it right now. And then, like, in a double header, he had like four doubles and two home runs or something like that.

And then the next day he had like, you know, two bunt singles and a double. But like, yeah, after Babe Ruth, everybody was like, oh, I guess it is easier if you just hit the ball so far, they can't fucking get it. Huh. Also, also he was built like a latter day Orson Wells, so I think there's something admirable about that too. Yeah. Um, favorite Serena Williams without question. And I know the goat conversation gets a little weird when it comes to individual athletes like, you know, Michael Phelps or Serena or Muhammad Ali. Well, yeah.

And so, yeah, Roger Federer. So like it's, I find that that sort of juxtaposition between those athletes and Brady to be interesting. But I don't think it's disqualifying. think Serena has been so incredibly good for a couple decades now that she's been my favorite. Also, I've gotten to see her play a few times at the U.S. Open. And it really is sort of just like a rock star experience to watch someone has dominated. Did you see that video like from last week where she's giving basically like an MTV cribs of her house? And she's in her trophy room.

And she's like, I think this is a second. No, this is the first place, Wimbledon Trophy. Yeah. Um, this is the old one. It used to be a lot smaller. Now it's bigger. I have like three of each. Um, ooh, this is, this is a second place one. I have to put this in the garbage. Uh, like, that's, that was so fucking good. Yeah. This is an ashtray. It's, and like, and like, I'm old enough to remember when, you know, Venus was having her moment and she was dominant. And it was like, your thought was, oh, this is going to, this is going to be the goat. Like it. And then Serena just blew past her. And, and, you know, kind of redefined the sport for like two decades. She's a fucking phenomenal. I love Serene Williams. She's my favorite goat.

My favorite goat is the homerang king Barry Bonds. Now, uh, excuse me, sir. Um, uh, I don't care. I don't care about any of it. He hit the ball fucking 500 feet 700,000 times. He, he fucking, again, it's the thing of there, there was, there were multiple seasons where he would come up to bat with the bases loaded and they would go, let's just put him on because, well, it's better to take the run, the one run against instead of the four,

he is undoubtedly going to serve up into the fucking bleachers. So, like, I just think it's, you know, he complete, another guy, he completely changed his game. He used to be like a 40-40 guy and then he was like, yeah, I'm just going to get insanely good at, like, knowing where the ball is going to go before it leaves the pitcher's hand. and walking constantly. I've always felt like in the, and I don't know, I mean,

I'm sure we covered this when we talked about the Hall of Fame, but like I always felt like him and Clemens had Hall of Fame career as well before you assume they started using performance enhancing drugs. So I never really understood why, why Bonds was, I mean,

I guess it's just because if you cheat, you cheat or whatever. Well, it's because he was an asshole to the media. Yeah. And so was Clemens. And I'm fat. fascinated to see what happens in a year when all of these soapbox holier than now writers get to vote on David Ortiz, who everybody loves, but who also shows up on, you know, failed test lists and in the Mitchell report and all of that.

And suddenly I have a feeling a lot of people aren't going to feel as strongly about this when it's a lovable Boston athlete who is, who is in the running. That's going to be interesting. Love it. My favorite is Muhammad Ali for obvious reasons, not just everything that he meant outside of the sport, although he was really one of, if not the first athletes to transcend sports and try to be more than that. It's just also the nature of boxing. Like when he was the heavyweight champion of the world, boxing was a huge sport. The sport, yeah.

This isn't Tom Brady in two countries. This is like every country in the world. world had people trying to beat Muhammad Ali and they couldn't do it. Whereas now it's, it's fallen off so much that boxing's one of the few sports where I think you actually could go back to somebody from the 60s and 70s and say they might actually be the best ever. Like, they maybe could beat guys from today as opposed to most other sports where you're like, yeah, they would just get destroyed. And, you know, also he's just, just watch the guys. It's so fascinating to watch in the ring, out of the ring, everything. Just my favorite.

athlete ever. That's the one thing that I feel like Brady doesn't have is that sort of like iconic, you know, generation defining gravitas. No, Tom Brady is, Tom Brady is a got a hockey player personality. Yeah. He's, or maybe that's part of the appeal, but I mean, he's a hockey player personality and the most famous thing about him is like his diet beyond the winning. And he's got a supermodel wife and he thinks that if you drink 900. gallons of water a day, you won't get sick because he didn't. So clearly that's how it works for everybody.

Least favorite for me, huh. Hmm. You know what? To kind of piggyback off of Ryan's choice for favorite, I think for me it had to be Lance Armstrong because he ruined the sport. Yeah, he's the worst coat. Yeah. Absolutely ruin the sport.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are certainly people who still are big cycling enthusiasts or whatever, but yeah, that's a tough sell. I mean, he redefined the sport, much like Muhammad Ali did, but in the worst possible way, in the way where you're just like, I don't give a shit about the sport anymore. But before that, he redefined, he made you care about the sport where you're like, holy fuck, this guy's so good at. But my answer, not really similar lines, Tiger Woods. I never, you know, whatever. It's hitting a fucking ball in a hole. Who gives a thing?

I agree on Tyre. Like, Ty, I was thinking about Tiger for this answer. And that's a tough one for me because I do love the fucking sort of insurrectionist thing that happened when he became a star and took over the sport. And all of a sudden, a bunch of guys who looked like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicholas were watching this young buck come through their sport and just dominate and fucking set records left and right. Like, there's something. beautiful about that, but I agree, like, as a person. Nah. I don't even care about that. I just don't care about golf as, as a, like, as a sporting in Denver. I'm just like, whatever, you know, as you know, as you know what, Jack Nicholas?

I don't know, probably, but it doesn't matter. Here's the thing. Did he invent a delicious drink that everybody enjoys to this day? No, so fuck off. Get out of here. And by that, you mean the Chi Chi-Chi-Rodriguez, correct? I, yeah, I don't know. Okay. As you know, I'm assuming he's a professional golfer, but. He is. I played golf. I played golf, and he is. I played golf, I played golf, for the first time, as you know, recently. So I am now a golfer. So I can say that... You've played the sport.

Yeah, I've played the game. So I completely understand everything about Tiger Woods in a completely different way now. I haven't watched that documentary, though. Maybe I watched that documentary, and it all changes for me. I got to get through that Britney documentary before he hit the Tiger documentary. So priorities. Oh, it's... I've seen the first episode or whatever, and it's a tough watch, but it's also an incredible watch.

Hey, anything that maligns the reputation of that squeaky clean Justin Timberlake is okay by me. Who's your least favorite goat, Sean? This is maybe a slight reach and that you don't see this guy mentioned as often anymore, but there certainly was a time when he was. Carl Lewis. Oh, wow. And kind of related to what you guys are saying. This guy was obviously a legendary track star in an era where everybody was cheating,

and everybody was on drugs and he talked a lot of trash about how he was going to win gold and he went out there and he got his ass kick by a Canadian named Ben Johnson who was on drugs and Carl Lewis cried about it about how unfair it was that he got beat by a guy who was on drugs and guess what? Turns out Carl Lewis was on drugs too

just like everybody else in that race was and everybody in that sport was. And yeah, Carl Lewis. Carl Lewis cheating in a sport, which is fine because everybody else was cheating to and got his ass kicked in the biggest race of his life. And the only pushback I would give now is that, of course, nobody considers Carl Lewis the greatest of all time because Hussein Bolt exists. Yeah.

Well, the thing with Carl Lewis is he also did the long jump. So it was kind of like the track star. As a, but yes, you're right. I mean, anybody from that era would just get, I mean, washed. You same bulk could run backwards and beat all of them. Yeah, I remember there was some article on Deadspin a million years ago that was like, we're reaching like the human physiological limit of how fast we can run. That was so fucking good.

I don't know if you can seek it out anymore. I don't know, you know, like if it got wiped off Deadspin servers or whatever. But like it was one of. the most fascinating articles I ever read where they were like, yeah, look at these marathon times. Like a marathon 20 years ago wouldn't, like a win, a world record 20 years ago in a marathon wouldn't put you in like the top 50 of any major marathon anymore. That's how fucking much it's progressed and it will continue to progress along a similar trajectory for a little while longer.

But then there will just be a point where the human body physically can't run 26.2 miles any more faster than that. That was, I remember reading that. And it was like, this wasn't like, oh, without steroids. This was like, this is physically how fast a human body can go. And I think at the time it was, they thought 9.6 was the limit. And then Yusain Bolt runs at 9.58. So, I mean, it shows you how ridiculous he is.

But yeah, I just, I just remember as a Canadian, it was infuriating, listening to Americans cry about Carl Lewis and how he was clean. And you're sitting there going, look at the guy. Like, no, clearly he's not. And then we found out that he wasn't. And everyone stopped talking about steroids. And you guys all went to cheer for Lance Armstrong and talk about how he was. Oh, man. Canada will have its revenge.

Yeah. All right. Well, that was a robust conversation, a very good one. And a good show. We had a lot to work with this week, which is always good. Our thanks to the penguins and the blue jackets for that. All right. That's the show for this week.

You can read me at ESPN. Many of my things are on ESPN plus. My news stories are not. And wrote about JVR this week, which was a fun piece. And you got some other stuff cooking here and there. So do check that out. Yes, sign up for E.P.Rinkside.com. We have a whole big group of new writers over there, including me, of course.

and yeah, we're doing all kinds of covering the NHL stuff. It's not just prospects anymore. From what I understand, there is a whole bunch of new people signing up, so that's great. Let's keep it going. And while you're at it, hey, why don't you sign up for the Puck Soup Patreon as well? Oh, yeah, for sure. Good deals.

Yeah, you can find me at The Athletic. My writing is there. I have a piece this week where I put together a Team Canada Olympic B team and to figure out how many countries they would beat. And you can also listen to me there on my new-ish podcast on the Athletic Hockey Show Thursdays with Ian Mendez. Check that out. Go drop a rating wherever you listen to your podcast. And let me know what you think.

I would welcome the feedback. Well, there you go. So that's exciting. Thanks, somebody for listening to the show. Do check out the Patreon. As the Patreon subscribers know, I dropped a video there last week that I made on my home computer. Great is pivoted to video. Yes, about Bill Simmons claiming that Terminator 2 invented the summer blockbuster,

which is demonstrably false. That's a take, all right. It is a take, defined as a take. And then, of course, check out the mailbag. And also a bonus episode coming your way this week, which is a really fun one, that I think you'll enjoy and all that more obviously on the Patreon at all times. Thanks everybody

for listening and we'll talk you soon. Bye. See you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.