Puck Soup - Take the Week Off

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Sean and Ryan talk about the Cup Final, what the Rangers and Stars do next, and more. Sponsored by Gametime (download the Gametime app and use code PUCK for $20 off), Hatch (hatch.co/puck), Express VPN (expressvpn.com/puck) and AG1 (drinkag1.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McNeu from The Athletic. And I got two things right off the top I want to plug really quickly. Number one, the Elite Prospect's draft guide is out, came out yesterday. It's big, it's good. Well, I guess we can talk more about that later or whatever, but like that's the big thing everybody works on all the year, you know? So the culmination of many people's, you know, hard work over the course of a whole season

in PDF format. And then the other thing I want to plug, our newish theme music is by Dan from the band Joy Wave. And they have a new record out. It came out a week or two ago. I think I missed the official release date. But that's okay. It's called Permanent Pleasure.

It's good. Check it out. Those are the two things I want to plug. Cool. Right off the bat. And find me at The Athletic. Thanks for listening, everybody. Okay.

Have a good one, folks. No, I just wanted to get all that out there really quickly. And now we can talk about very important stuff. We have a beautiful Stanley Cup final lined up here. I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. Someone was on the mailbag said, like, what is the most entertaining possible final? And I think this was when there were like six or eight teams left.

And I think the one we both, landed on was Florida, Edmonton, right? I think that would certainly be up there. This is super good.

I know this is like usually the two Krusty dudes complain about hockey for an hour show. And we'll get there. Don't worry.

The final is scheduled to last for seven weeks, so we'll have plenty of time. And by the way, when Sean says Krusty, he means he's like a big fan of nausea, the band Naja.

That's exactly. Exactly what I meant. That and cartoon clowns. Amoebics. Yep, that's right. But this is, this matchup rocks, man. This is going to be so good. Yeah, it's going to be like, okay.

For example, right, one of the things that I saw the other day, is it the 2015 draft, the top four players taken in the 2014 draft? Top four players taken in the 2014 draft are all in this final. Two on each team. Awesome. That's sick. Connor McDavid, where he was drafted, the Florida Panthers Arena. Oh, I did know that. Yeah. Yeah.

I suppose, yeah. Okay. I believe the athletics preview had like a portrait of McDavid and Cichuck. And it's like, is Matt Cichick, even the biggest star on his own team? He's probably the biggest star, but he's certainly not the best. player at this point, you would say, I think. And it's just like the fact that like huge names like dry sidel and Kachuk were just like, yeah, I mean, that's not even the best guy though. You know what I mean?

Like that's sick. Like you've got the star power. You've got marketable stars. You've got the storylines, the Canada drought. I mean, other than it's not, I'm sure the dream matchup for like. ESPN or TNT, wherever's got it down there as far as the markets themselves. Well, we talk about Miami like at some small fucking market. You know what I mean?

For hockey it is. I mean, maybe, but like people are going ape shit down there. Let's put it this way. Anytime a team is into championship, people are like, this is fucking so sick. Let's go cheer for the guys. You know what I mean? Or the gals. Yep.

And so like, you know, the other thing is with the Panthers. in their fan base or whatever, when they have all this success year after year, which they've been having for, for I'd say three or four years now, right? People like naturally are going to care more. We used to say Carolina was a fucking, anybody say Carolina is a joke market now?

No, because they had a lot of success and now people care about them. So it's the same fucking thing. Yep. And penguins, they used to be a joke market. Remember that? That's what we always say when. when a market's not doing well, right?

If you go like, hey, maybe they should have more than 70 people showing up for the games. They always say, well, you can't judge a market until they win. It is chicken and egg, for sure. Winning fixes a lot. But at the same time, I mean, you know, this isn't like Rangers Blackhawks or something as far as... Oh, no, yeah.

But other than that... Remember what the Blackhawks were a joke franchise? No one cared about? Yeah. What are the Rangers? It's going to do Monster numbers in Canada. Oh, my God. Yeah, of course. If you can't, as the NHL, if you can't market Connor McDavid in the Stanley Cup final,

then I don't know what to tell. I talked about this on a show yesterday. I'm hosting three different podcasts this week, so I, myself, will be tired of hearing myself talk by tomorrow. But I made the point that, like, you know, people talk about why, you know, you can't market Connor McDavid because he's in Edmonton or whatever. Look, Brett Farrve was in Green Bay. That's the smallest market in the NFL. Peyton Manning was in Indianapolis.

And the NFL was like, guess what? You're going to be the biggest superstar in this league. Because we're going to just tell people that over and over again. And until they believe us. And it worked. And it can work, you know, who's the biggest, isn't there like a huge NBA star in like Milwaukee? Yeah. Yeah.

You can figure this stuff. San Antonio has Victor Wembenyama. San Antonio has had the best player in the league for like 40 straight years. You know, it's, it is. LeBron James was in Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah. You can do it. Like, yes, it would be easier if Connor McDavid played for the Rangers.

But he didn't. He wouldn't have survived that Panther series. If he played for the Rangers, he'd be dead in the ditch right now. Those choir boys from New York, man. I feel so terrible for them. We'll talk about that in a bit. But, yeah. Anyways, you're right.

You're right. Yeah, it's going to be fucking sick. You know what really sells it? I'll be honest with you. What really sells it is the fact that, like, the hockey is going to be really good. Right? Like, that's what you can sell to, like, oh, I don't give a fuck about the oilers or the Panthers. Well, do you like good hockey?

Yeah. You know, like it's that simple. Yeah. Absolutely. It's going to be, I'm very interested to see how it plays out because it is the number one offensive team pretty much against the number one defensive team. Like I don't think it's exactly works out that way as far as Goldscor scored and that. But the Oilers are the most dynamic, terrifying team when they're on. Totally.

And Florida has kind of transformed over the last. couple years from an offensive team to a defensive one, which I hate. I hate that in this league that can happen, that, you know, some team that like is near the top of the league in goal scoring says, oh, the only way we can win is to completely flip this around. But that's life. And they did. Uh, so how did it now, you know, let's see.

Paul Maurice, if he can take time out from writing jokes, what do you got, man? If, if he's, if he can figure out. had a shut down Connor McDavid in a Stanley Cuff final, he's punching his ticket to the Hall of Fame this week. Absolutely. But like you say, he's got to, you know, churn out another 30, 40 jokes for Bill Maher this week before he can. You know, he's got that too. So it's, it's busy. It's going to be a busy time.

Yeah. But no, it's like you say, if you can't sell this, don't sell anything. Just quit the sales business. That's what I would recommend, you know, Willie Lohman style, maybe. But I've never actually read Death of a Salesman. I had no idea what you were even talking about. I thought that was the raggedy guy from the Simpsons. So that's, you're ahead of me.

Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about how these two teams got this far. Well, cheating for the Panthers. Goes without saying, I think. both teams won in six games and I would say one in kind of convincing fashion and am I wrong that both teams were down to one after three games

isn't that right? I think so definitely Edmonton definitely was and yeah New York had won the two overtime games yeah so but I would say that you know kind of you can't dispute that they that they kind of really earned it

and showed like why they were just a cut better than their opponents. Do you want to do Florida or Edmonton first? I'll let you choose. Let's do Edmonton first. Okay. I don't like that angle on it at all, but okay. It's this simple.

The Edmonton Oilers penalty kill hasn't allowed a goal since like 1992. Yeah. Getting close to a record level of, well, I was going to say production, success, I guess. Yeah, production stoppage maybe, yeah. Yes. No, they just, they took a, I would say like a not insignificant number of penalties, let's say. and they just gave the stars nothing.

Just absolutely. You know what? I'll take that back. Five on four power play time for Dallas in the series. Only 14 and a half minutes. That's actually really good. But how about this? It's not just the goals thing, right?

It's, oh, you know what? I had that flipped. Dallas had 28 minutes of power play. That makes more sense. sense. That was what I remembered. But 28 minutes of power play, they only put 20 shots on net. They didn't score. They did give up a short-handed goal. If you can hold a team like Dallas to two and a quarter expected goals on the power play over the course of a six-game series, it's not just that like Stuart Skinner made all the saves. You know what I mean?

Or, you know, a couple of shots go wide. You're right. Because you could, like, could look at something and say, all right, 28 straight penalty kill. You know, maybe that's just a hot street. Maybe that's just a little bit of luck kicking in. At which point you go, you know, if that's what they wrote to get to the final, then maybe that's not a great sign because you'd like to be writing something more sustainable. But they did look, they looked stronger. Now, obviously- Four high danger chances. Four for Dallas, in 28 minutes on the power play. That's crazy. Now you go into, now you look at a matchup with a whole new team, right?

So that dynamic can certainly change. But it's, it was, yeah, apparently it's Mark Stewart who's running the penalty kill. Doing a great fucking job. Yeah, I didn't, I, you know, I don't, I'm not as up on my assistant coaches as maybe I should be. But yeah, like, Chris Knoblock was basically like, I have nothing to do with that. He said, I deserve credit for giving that. job to Brad Stewart and getting out of the way and that's... Mark Stewart.

Sorry, Mark Stewart, yeah. The other... Brad Stewart's a different... The other defensive defense. Two thousand Bruins defensemen, yeah. That's right. That's right. Thank you.

You're welcome. But that's going to be a big story. And then obviously the Edmonton PowerPlay, which we've been talking about all playoffs, at first because it was unstoppable, and then because it was stoppable and then towards the end of the series. like you kind of felt like in the Dallas series that all right the stars need to be the team to figure out the special teams first sure and they weren't Edmonton did and that was all she wrote

yeah four four goals for Edmonton and 14 minutes of power play time at five on five that'll do it you know that like you here's the thing I would say holding that power play to 10 high danger chances in 14 minutes is pretty good honestly, but also, uh, they don't need much more than 10 to score four times, you know? They're just like, yeah, we're going to effortlessly pass this into the fucking back of the net. Mm-hmm. And like you said, there were, there was a, there were some moments there earlier in the playoffs where it's like, uh-oh. If the power play's not going for these guys, what will, you know?

And they were like, oh, we're actually fine, you know. You want to talk about somebody got hot at the right time. There was a brief period where the penalty killing for Vancouver, I think, specifically got a little hot and then not so much after that. Yeah, the special teams was the difference in the series at five on five. It was probably a little in Edmonton's favor, but not hugely. And especially, well, like, it was probably more, but that last game, the game six was like, what did they have, like, 12 shots on goal in the game?

Yeah, it was even less than that. It might have been 10. Yeah, it was by far a record for a clinching game, which is kind of weird. It was. They got out shot 34 to 10 in game six. So. But they were also up to nothing basically right away. So they were just like, okay, we're not letting anybody anywhere near the, the net, you know, as best we can.

We're not playing offense anymore. Once they got up too well, they just said we're not playing. They did what everybody says you got to do. Even when you have the best offensive players in the world, shut down, stop playing offense, write it out. We all love that style right up until it doesn't work. And then we say, why didn't you try to score the third goal that would have put it out of reach? But it did work. And it has been working.

Like, this team has shown that they can play that defensive style when they need to. Yep. Where are we at on Stuart Skinner? He's adequate. He's been more than adequate since he got shut down for being terrible. Yeah, you're right about that. That's true. I'd say on the balance he's adequate.

Okay. Like he's been like 920 since then. Refocused or whatever for sure. You know, we're up to seven games. You're right. Eight games since then? Yep. I guess I don't think anybody's picking Edmonton is having the best goaltending in this series,

just like every other series they've played. I think it is at worst for Edmonton a push. If not, I would rather have Skinner than... Wow. Okay. Because again, I just think Bobrovsky is so insulated. You know what I mean? In a way that even Skinner often isn't, because...

they, he does play behind darn Elner sometimes, you know? I might give a very slight edge to Edmonton and, uh, mostly I'd call it a toss-up though. Okay.

Is that crazy? I mean... I don't think it's crazy. I think playoff Boebrofsky has been very good for two years now. Stuart Skinner, I just don't, man, I just, I don't know. But again, I mean, you don't. Absolutely did the job in Dallas.

Yeah, you don't want a goalie who loses his job for any amount of time in the playoffs. For sure. But I don't know, but I feel like Bobrovsky has the odd stinker where you're like, whoa, what just happened here mixed in? You know what I mean? In a way that I guess I don't. Like I said, I guess I think it's a toss-up. Because, like, I think both goalies are capable of having bad games, really bad games, you know? So, yeah, I don't know.

Like, I think they're both very good when they're on and not so much, like, when they're bad, they're really bad, and when they're on, they're tough to beat. I mean, that's true of, I guess, any fucking goalie on the planet. But, you know, I don't, I don't see either one as being, like, particularly that guy, there's a guy that can steal a game for you. I guess is my point. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, it's, I guess the way I would look at it, I wouldn't say Emmington's got an edge, but I would say if I'm Emmington, I'm not worried about goaltending in this series. Yeah.

Beyond the fact that, yes, any goalie can just go on a heater for four to seven games and end your whole season. That's, and, you know, we saw, we've seen Bobrovsky do it to teams. But I'm looking at this going, we have never asked Stuart Skinner to be the best goalie in any series. We've asked him to be good enough. Lately, he's been more than that. We should be okay. I guess that's. Yeah, like I say, I think both teams are going to be like, oh, we're confident in our goalie and they're right to have that opinion.

but not in the way that like the Rangers or even the stars you would have gone into that their respective conference finals going those guys have a lot of reason to be very confident in their goal tent yeah you know yep i think is fair yeah uh anything else with the oilers obviously like mac david is just going psycho right now and and um you know they just have so many weapons. And I, I don't know that, like, they are as deep as Florida. Like, I don't know that I could say they have three lines that can score like Florida does. But I don't know. I, I just, the high end is so high that how do you? The high end is so high. And it's, I mean, the days of this being like two guys and then 10 bums is, is long, long path. Oh, for sure. Yes.

Absolutely. In fact, it was a, you know, it was. good towards the end of the Dallas series where Ryan Newget Hopkins scores two goals and you're like, oh right. They have a guy who had 100 points last year and is probably like the fifth most important forward on the team right now. That's pretty,

pretty good. Yeah, and obviously, like Zach Hyman is, we've said before, like he's a really good player. He's not as a effect, like he's just the perfect compliment to Connor McDavid. You know?

and like even he like he shot that puck from my by by relative standards like he he shot that puck from distance it wasn't from the blue line obviously but he's a guy where it's like all his goals come from some part of him or his stick or whatever is touching the blue paint and um you know if that guy is shooting the puck too that's that's a real that's a real problem for any for any defense. But to your point earlier, it does feel like Florida could be able to, you know, get a rope around these guys and maybe, you know,

wrestle them to a draw or that kind of thing. And if that happens, you can probably put Paul Maurice in the Hall of Fame because probably Florida wins the cup. If they can, again, not even shut down McDavid. I don't think that's a real thing that you can do. Shutting down McDavid is like a point of game you hold. them too. That's exactly what I mean.

Like, you're not going to keep him from scoring. What you need to do is keep him from scoring twice in a game, you know, which isn't fucking easy as the Dallas stars, a very, very good team who McDavid, I think scored 10 points in six games. A great team and a very well coached team that I'm sure had a million different angles and approaches on how to stop Connor McDavid. And then, like, you know, you saw in the clinching game. He's just like, I'm just going to go through the entire.

Bye, bye. See you later. Like, you go back to the bench on that and, you know, you're looking at the iPads. It's like, what did we do wrong? Nothing. We played that absolutely perfectly. And the best player in the world was like, it doesn't matter. It's going to score anyways.

Yep. Let's do the Florida side. Let's do the Florida side. They kind of did to the Rangers what we all thought they would do to the Rangers, which is, put them in the meat grinder and just, you know, grind out grind isn't the right term, I guess, because that kind of implies like

you're doing what Edmonton did in game six and just like getting outshot by a wide margin and still finding a way to win a 2-1 game or something like that. That's not what the, I mean, it was a lot of one-go games. It was a low-scoring series, other than that one game three. But it was a low-scoring series because they played Igor Shisterkin. You know what I mean? Like, all things being equal, average goal-tending, Florida scores three or four goals a game.

Shisterkin was, God, what was he in that series? He was unbelievable, right? I've got it right in front of me. It was 930. And they, and they, they, let's just. just say it. Six games. What do I always say?

It means you get your ass kicked. Sorry. You're going to try to tell me the Rangers didn't get their ass kicked, you know? There were three overtime games and what were basically three other one goal games. Obviously, game one was

a three-nothing one, I want to say. But honestly, game one was a three-nothing one goal game. That's what I mean. Like it was the late-owned goal in an empty netter. And we'll talk about the Rangers later in the show, but like this is absolutely one of those

series where you look back and go we needed one more goal to really maybe change the whole thing and why didn't we get it given the guys that we have. But the reality is that other than those two overtime wins by the Rangers, it was the Panthers

who kept finding ways to get those the Rangers zero regulation wins in the conference final. That's not a thing. Stop doing that. People I'm just saying. I saw somebody say that the stars had three regulation losses. That's,

it's the beauty of the playoffs is we just, we don't have to talk about that stuff. Wins and losses, man. Because in the playoffs, in the playoffs, in the playoffs, overtime is real hockey.

Sure, no, I totally, what, all I'm saying is, there was not really a point where after 60 minutes you were like, Rangers are really running the show here. You know what I mean? There was never a point in that whole,

series where you felt like the Rangers might be a better team by any kind of margin. Yeah, that's right. So, it's the Matthew Kachuk show because we've all decided that. Sam Reinhardt continues to make himself a lot of money. Yep. Or at least a lot of theoretical money before he signs in Florida for $9 million. I don't know if you've heard about this. they actually don't even, they pay you taxes when you live.

Wow. Okay. Is that how that works? Yeah. Because that's, yeah. Got to change the salary cap. So that my personal favorite team has an advantage. I think that's, that would make the league better.

Yeah. Let me say this, by the way. Florida Panthers held the New York Rangers high flying power play to one goal. So the two teams coming into the conference, or the Stanley Cup final. have allowed one power play goal in their last combined 12 games or whatever. So, I mean, if you're the Panthers, that's, you're feeling, I don't, you're not, you're never feeling good about facing the Oilers power play. No, you are not, brother.

Who are the two teams in the league that everybody says are, you know, especially driven by the power play, Rangers and Oilers? All right, well, one down, bring on the other one. So, and Sergey Barowski, we already talked about, but he was 921 in that series. So he wasn't Ivor Shisterkin, but he was more than good enough to match Igor Shestirken as far as giving his team a chance to win. Totally. Beyond that, I don't know.

Sasha Barkov's almost been quiet-ish in the playoffs, like just for a guy who could be, you know, who probably is the best player on that team hasn't been, phenomenal. Some point again. Yeah. I was thinking about this. You talk about Paul Maurice if he shuts down Connor McDavid. I don't know if we'll get the Barkov-McDavid matchup. But if we do and Barkov can hold his own, that moves him into like well and truly this generation's Patrice Bergeron.

Instead of the guy who was just available to fill that role. when it came up. For sure. I'll say this. I think it's very obvious who's winning the Kahn Smythe if the Edmonton Oilers win the Stanley Cup. It's the Canadian guy, you know? Probably, yeah. The fast one.

Zach Hyman, yeah. That lightning quick, Zach Hyman. If the Panthers win the Stanley Cup, I do not know who is going to win the Konsmite, which is like probably speaks well for them and like, why. They're here. Matthew Kachuk's their leading score, but he has only five goals in three series. You could argue Matthew Kachuk. You could argue Carter Hagee.

You could argue Sasha Barkov. You could maybe argue Sergei Babrowski, especially if he stands on his head in this series. And everybody, Gus Forsling is the guy that is like, I'm not sure I've ever seen somebody have a trajectory quite like this. where they've gone from the so underrated he's overrated. Like, that usually takes two years. I feel like this guy's done it in two months. Totally, yeah. And even, you know, Sam Reinhardt would not get a lot of consideration today,

but he's a few big goal. Like, if the Panthers win, it's going to come down to who does what in the final. Sure, yeah. So he's got eight goals this this postseason. That's a good number. You know? Yeah, I look at, that's what I'm saying, though, is like they've got like four or five guys where you could make at least some kind of a serious Conn Smythe case. And that is, I would say, to their benefit.

I think the fact that you can look at three different forwards, one defenseman, one goal. and go, that guy's been their best player. You know, again, we'll see what happens in the cup final. But, like, that's why they got this far. And that's why they're having, like, so much success is. Like, you can shut down Barkoff, even though he's probably on paper their best player. You can shut down their biggest star in Matthew. could chuck. And it's like, okay,

some other guy's just going to score like three goals on you pretty easily, it turns out. You know, like, it's really impressive how much they have, I guess, like, you would have said, you know, everybody needs depth at this time of year or whatever, but like,

you would have said their strength is their depth and that has fully come through in a way, I would say it probably didn't even last year when they went to a cup final. So, the less said about what happened when they got to the cup final last year, the better, as far as they're concerned. Yeah. And by the way, I, can you remember, do you know the last team in the NHL to lose

back-to-back cup finals? I guess I do not. Because I'll tell you, I didn't. I sat down, I was like, yeah, I wonder who that is. And I started going backwards in my head. And I just kept going and going. And I was like, what that? Like, it, it, it's probably a long time ago now. The, the 1970s Bruins. 77 and 78, I want to say.

Which is, yeah, anything that happened before you were born doesn't count as a real thing. Absolutely. Beyond that, the number of teams that have come back to the final, obviously we've seen a few teams win back to back. Teams that have lost and then come back the following year, the penguins to win in 2009. Yep, for sure. The Oilers in 83, and there's one more. between that I'm missing, I think. But not a lot.

And then, you know, obviously the teams like Tampa have won and then lost the following year. But to lose back to back would basically be something that we have not seen in this era. Yeah. Which is my way of saying if they don't win the cup, they're huge losers. Yeah, pathetic. One of the worst teams in the league. Like, why are they wasting everyone's time? Just lose early.

Get it out of the way like a good, polite, efficient Toronto team would do. I was thinking about this, though, in terms of it does feel like we're getting to the point where like, you know, what Gary Bettman would call parity is kind of in terms of who's going to like deep playoff runs is kind of like way less of a thing now than it. was like 10 years. Well, this year, you know, maybe feels like an outlier, but yeah, this year has been pretty close to Chuck as far as certainly for the first two rounds. You could make the case that the favorite won every single series. Totally. Because the home team won every series other than Colorado beating Winnipeg, which I don't

think shocked a lot of people. And then Eminton beating Vancouver with the Conutcheventeen. down to their third string goalie, I don't think was a huge upset. And then by the time you got to the final four, it was, you know, arguably the four best teams in the league left. So I don't know that there's any surprises left to behead. It was a especially predictable year in that sense, which made it unpredictable, said the guy who likes to pick underdogs and is getting slaughtered in the athletics pick competition.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is, like, that's everything you said is, of course, true. But I'm talking about, like, Florida back-to-back cup finals. Before that, Tampa, three cup finals in a row. The Rangers have been to two of the last three conference championships. The Penguins won two Stanley Cups in a row seven, eight, nine years ago. However, you know, I guess I'm doing the math right on that one. even like Chicago winning three and five years, the King's winning two and three years.

Am I crazy that this is like more of a thing in the past decade than it used to be? I mean, I guess Pittsburgh and Detroit was the Cup final, like you said, back-to-back years. But for a while there, it just felt like things were at least a little more. I mean, really since the money. Since the Montreal run, it's been pretty, I wouldn't say expected, but you couldn't look at any of the, like there hasn't been a great Cinderella run since. And I know Florida last year, they were the eighth seed.

So, I mean, maybe we're sleeping on that. Yeah, I think that's probably. The fact that they had won the president's trophy the year before. I think we can like, and then you look at this year. I think we can clearly look at the Panthers and say, the rate. regular season was the outlier there, that it took them so long to figure it out and get going under Paul Marais. Yeah, I think that's probably true. And the other thing is that that Canadians run totally fake, not real.

Yeah, I agree. So. Lots of people are saying this. Yeah. You got anything else to say about the Panthers? I just think, you know. Just how dirty can they be, man? That's what it's going to come down to.

Yeah, it's, okay. You know what? How about this? Let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about that. Can't wait. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Hatch and folks, I talk about this all the time, don't I? I always say I'm not the best guy when it comes to, you know, going to bed on time and that kind of thing. I stay up too late watching movies and TV shows and playing video games and stuff like that. I'm basically a child in a lot of ways. That's how it goes. But Hatch is helping me because Hatch allows me to use my alarm clock, which I normally use to wait. wake up in the mornings. But also, it has features that allow you to, like, unwind. You can listen to calming sounds, guided meditations, things like that. And it's just a nice way to get yourself into the right, like, headspace to get a good night's sleep. So in that way, you're kind of, like, creating good habits around bedtime, because especially if you're like me, you don't have good habits around bedtime. And the hatch restore helps you do that. And then, like I said, I use it in the mornings to wake

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first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account, redeem the code Puck, PUCK for $20 off your first purchase. Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest prices guaranteed. All right, we're back. Let's talk about those. Rangers. I have written down here, what went wrong? And, well, our good friend Larry Brooks

let us know what went wrong. I love Larry, man. Let's preface this by saying I'm a big fan. I like when he's not writing about how the Rangers have been cheated at every turn. I have told the story before of one of my favorite Stanley Cup memories was sitting next to him in the press box of Madison Square Gardens during the, I guess it would have been what, the 2014 final? 14 final, yeah. With my, what I didn't realize at the time, but now understand in retrospect, was a gigantic laptop.

And, you know, they squish us in there. And he sat down next to me and I was like, oh, cool, that's Larry Brooks. And for three hours, did not say one word to me other than like grunting in annoyance to indicate that my laptop was taking up too much space. And at the end, it was like, that's exactly. the experience I wanted. Hell yeah. Yeah. That was great. Like, if he had been like a super

nice, polite dude, I would have been like, eh. Sure. Don't meet your heroes, you know. But he did have a tweet. Yeah, so... And it was a journey, that tweet. It's... Multi-layered, for sure. Let me see if I can

pull it up very quickly here. I've read books that didn't have as many twists and turns and character development. That's exactly right. Let me keep scrolling up here. Hold on one second. Okay. This is a tweet from Larry Brooks.

Yesterday, 5.12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Or is it daylight saving? I never know which one. Nobody knows. I wonder how the final is going to be officiated. Will the Panthers be allowed to headhunt the way they were in the first three games of the Rangers series? Will the officials attempt to protect Caitlin Clark? I mean, Connor McDavid.

So let's not read into it. that he's being sexist. Let's not read into that. I'll take it as a given that he is. Let's hope that he's not doing the Katie Perry, Cory Perry thing here. Well, what I'm saying is let's just put aside that aspect of it on a day where somebody else said something,

I would say, worse about Caitlin Clark. Let's instead just imagine that he's talking about the league overly protects its stars. You know what I mean? Like, let's give it that read. Good. The league should protect it stars. That is fucking baseline.

Again, marketing the game thing. That is just how it ought to be. Yes. And if people don't know, Caitlin Clark, obviously the now WNBA star, there was like a controversy because she took a hard foul and there's, that's a lot of it.

So there is a read of, like, if you're like, why did he randomly compare Connor McDavid to a female athlete, because that female athlete is currently embroiled in the how do you protect your stars debate? Is the charitable way

to look at it from... Yes. Right. I don't think this tweet earns being charitable, but I'm saying like even if we're taking it on its face, like as a, he's just talking about the thing that Sean just said. It's still fucking a stupid point.

That's my point. Well, even beyond the sexism. I think his point here, though, maybe is less about they shouldn't protect Carter McDavid, but the implication being that the league did not do this for the Rangers. They did not seek to protect the Rangers stars from the head hunting Panthers in the first three games of the series, which is kind of a weird. I wonder what happened. I wonder what happened.

What happened in game four where the three? thing about head hunting might have gone out the window a little bit. Is there anything that might have happened in game four where the thing about head hunting couldn't be considered anymore? Maybe Larry's just like TiVo, the series and he's only three, you know, when you get three episodes in, you're like, no spoiler. Yeah. Hey, look, I haven't finished Shogun yet, you know, I got two episodes left.

So as you can imagine, this is, uh, the tweet did great numbers. Lots of engagement. for Larry. And it is just, most of those numbers are just people replying with various Jacob Truba screencaps. Yeah, that's right. Animated Gifts. And the occasional Matt Rempe, just to mix it out. Sure.

Hey, you get a variety is the spice of life, as they say, you know? Yes. And I will say that there is nothing directly in this tweet that he is trying to claim that the Rangers are choir boys. that the Rangers don't also, you know, like, a lot of people are like, does this guy not realize that Jacob Trubin and Matt Rampere on his team? And I imagine he probably does know that. But he's talking about the Panthers.

And look, man, the Panthers are a dirty team. They just are. Yeah. But I don't know that the head hunting, like, what did the Panthers do to head hunt? So that's kind of my thing with it, where I'm like, I watched this series. Yeah.

I don't remember. And so I went back and looked. They're generally dirt. Like, there are a bunch of scumbags, but did they go back and? I went back and looked at Larry's writing and tweets about this because I'm like, you know, maybe I missed something. This is a guy who watches the Rangers a lot more closely than I do, just by the nature of his job, right? So maybe I missed something. And he didn't, the only thing I could find that like kind of even alluded to the Panthers or

taking liberties or whatever, was that, uh, that, Mikaa hit at the end of game one. Was that on Hegel or, it was, it was on one of their skill guys,

what, or whatever you would want to say. And the thing Larry wrote about that was like, well, look, he was just playing to the whistle. Like, why was that? Literally he wrote in the column,

why was he out there at that point in the game? It doesn't make a lot of sense because like, he could get hit because there might be shenanigans at the end of a close and hotly contested game or whatever you want to say. And so Larry's conclusion there was that's why they should dress Matt Rempey, which they did immediately. And look, they won the next two games. So Matt Rempe, you know, it worked right up until it didn't. But it was just like that you didn't have a problem with this. Mm-hmm.

Until... I just went back and look, the Panthers took seven minor penalties in the first three games that were not offsetting. So seven power plays, which is not a lot, but also not ridiculous. So, I mean, maybe you would say it is just because the sheer volume of hockey they played in the first three games, you know, they played, what, like 10 and a half, 11 periods of hockey? Yeah. But overtime doesn't count. far as penalties. Sure.

Yeah. But like my point is I didn't see him complaining about this. I will say though, in scrolling back through this, I saw a tweet that I guess I had missed, which was Angel Hernandez, the horrible major league baseball empire, was like, I quit. I can't do this shit anymore. Everybody's mean to me all the time. You know, that kind of thing? And Larry, I don't have the tweet in front of me now, but Larry said something about like,

let's hope Kelly Sutherland is next. And I was like, big salute, brother. That's a good tweet. All right. Very good. Although, it turns out, he was mad that Kelly Sutherland called Jacob Truba for the elbow. Right. Because he was the ref in game four, I think.

I'm pretty sure. He's mad that he called the elbow that was an elbow. Yeah, well, because he's saying like it wasn't a headshot. So what are we getting mad about? That was Larry's argument. The, I will say this. And then we can we can move on too. more of the Rangers autopsy.

His larger point is absolutely valid. It is going to be interesting to see how this series is officiated. Because like I said, the Panthers are scumbags. I've been saying it.

I would say this isn't his larger point. This is kind of the point he's like, you know, like he's using that, he's using it as like a Trojan horse. The stepping stone point that he uses to then complain about, yeah. Okay, fair enough. But, I mean, we talked about how scary that Edmonton power play is.

Yeah, I think the difference of the series could be, do the dirty scumbag panthers take four penalties a game or two? And the answer is it'll probably be four in games one and two, and then two the rest of the way, and then zero in game seven. Yeah, if they make it that far, given Edmonton, you know, four power plays a game at any point, really. probably not a good recipe. Oh, I forgot to mention this.

They were talking about Matias Ekholm. I can't remember where I heard this, but Matias Ekholm was like, they were like, what's your big message to your team since you've been through, you're the only, you know, you're one of the only guys on this team that's been to a cup final before.

Don't ask Cory Perry how the last few he's gone to have gone. And Matias Ekholm was like, I would tell them like, we didn't start on time against Pittsburgh. Like we were down 2-0 in the series and it's impossible to come back from that. And it's like, is that like wisdom, do you think? Yeah. You know what I mean?

Where it's like, it's true that you don't want to be down to nothing in a series against anybody. You know, whether- Do you think like Chris Knoblock had go behind 2-0 in series written on the whiteboard? Well, I don't think, I don't think that's the strategy. I don't think like the strategy is, let's, rope-adope them and hand them two games. But I do wonder where, like, again, just who needs to be told, like, boys, I got, I got a good one for you here.

Try to win the first two games. What do you think? Yeah. That time, man, this guy's got a career in coaching after it finishes. That's right. So the Rangers, what happened to the stars? That is the big, that seems to be the big. Well, we'll get to those guys when we talk about the other, the Western Con.

I knew it. Swish, baby. Yeah. All cut across the blue line with your head down, Sean. What happened to their star players? Because that feels like, to me, and, you know, we will get into this with Dallas as well. There seems to be a level of dissatisfaction with the conference final losers that feels higher to me than most years. Yeah, I think.

You've won two rounds. Obviously, it's disappointing and you're going to be frustrated in the aftermath. But it feels like both New York and Dallas feel like teams. where at least a large chunk of the fan base feels like there's a mini crisis happening here. Yeah, so I think what happened with them is that, like, I don't think they've done like their getaway day or whatever you want to call it. Like, I don't think they've gone through like, oh, it turns out, you know, Jacob Truba, his ankle's been broken for six months. Like, I don't think we're getting that yet, right? That's probably today, as a matter of fact.

Um, but I think that's got to be part of it that like Panarin was playing hurt or Zabana. Zabanajad, I guess, would be in particular the guy where you're like, what the fuck happened with that, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, all of it. Like, or Timmy Pinaran had one goal. Yeah. In the, in the series. I mean, I really feel like the, uh, Miga Zabandje had only three goals in the playoffs.

That seems to be the one that people are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's getting a lot of, you know, and it's that sort of like question that, you know, to be honest, you've kind of had about the Rangers for a few years now, which is Mika Zabange's a great player, is he a number one center on a cup winning team? Right. The only, like the Rangers, Adam Fox was not good really the whole way. Jacob Trubo was really not good, even to the extent that Ranger fans are.

They want them gone. Like, I read multiple articles about the Rangers post. their loss that were like, feels like there's going to be a lot of buyers for Jacob Trouba, which makes sense because, like, he won the Mark Messier leadership award and he hits people. These are the two most important things any GM is looking for in a guy that they're

trading for, you know? Like, it makes sense that you would trade him because he's expensive. He's not as, he's not nearly as good as the fucking reputation, you know? No.

And, um, he's only got two years left. So he's, like, tradeable. Does he only have two years? Okay, I was going to ask. I was like, that he's got an great big contract.

And crucially, his full no move clause drops to either a 15 or 16 team no trade. Which is, you know, if you're looking for someone to offload, you're possibly fourth or fifth best defenseman who makes eight million bucks. I know he's your captain. I know he's in the commercial about going to the doctor. Do you have that commercial up in Canada? Yeah. Don't spoil it. Gentilly might be showing it to me this afternoon.

It's not, I talked extensively with Gentilly about this. Oh, okay. Were you part of the planning committee? Yeah, I like to think so. I like to think I put him on one or two that he was, that weren't really as on his radar. But he's like, yeah, that is an annoying fucking commercial. I guess we'll see when the article comes out if he takes any of my suggestions. But yeah, anyway, I don't consider that to be a.

super annoying, but like the guy's in commercials, the guy's the captain of the New York Rangers, he makes a lot of money, but also he has, again, he's like maybe their fourth or fifth best defenseman in that. And it didn't, it's going to be tough to square. Didn't have great numbers as far as, you know, but it was more, this was kind of one of those I test things where there were, I know a lot of Rangers fans, and you got to be careful with this because especially with defensemen fan bases have a tendency to

zone in on one guy and suddenly, you know, confirmation bias kicks in where you're like, oh, he's on the ice again for this guy. But there were a lot where I, you know, I saw Rangers fans going like, what the hell is he doing? What is he trying to cover here? What's going through?

I can't remember if it was the first or second Panthers goal in game six, but they, but like I saw multiple people just be like, watch Truba on this play. He, goes to the, like he tries to check the guy who doesn't have the puck. Yeah. I think if you're the Rangers, the only two guys, it's a little, it's a little unusual that

very often when a team goes deep in the playoffs, there's usually a lot of like positive stories where you look and say, this guy outperformed, this guy showed us something. And I really feel like with the Rangers, there were guys certainly Shisterkin among them that, that were good. Lefrenier, yeah, absolutely. But Lefrenier kind of had the continued. the coming out story of like this guy's a legitimate number one pick. He can play.

This guy's scary. And the other one is Vincent Trojit, who was very good all season long. Sure. Probably didn't get enough attention. But in the playoffs was probably their best player, or at least their best forward. Their best forward. I'd say they're best skater for sure, yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Non-goly department, who had a better playoff? Chris Kreider was a weird one. Because he did have, you know, he had the one big game, shorthand goal, like he's, but then also stretches where you're like, right, yeah, Chris Carger's on this team, finishes with 12 points in 16 games.

Which is like a respectable number, but not like, again, is he, is he the number one winger, or number two winger, I guess, on a cup winning team? You look back at their trade deadline where they kind of were rumored to be in on some of the big names.

Should have got Gensel. Didn't get Gensel. Ended up getting Alex Wendberg. Who had the one goal for them? Two points, one goal and two points in 16. Big goal, though. Now, the goal was an overtime goal. Yeah.

So. What's that worth? I'd say that's worth whatever they traded for them, like a third round pick or whatever. I'd say they'd take that again. You know, they didn't get Jake Gunzel, but they beat Jake Gonsel. So, you know, but I think there will be some fair questions to, you know, Chris Drury, as far as like, hey, you had the President's Trophy winning team, did you do enough? Especially since the only championship that any of these fans remember, the 94 team,

famously had maybe the most aggressive deadline of any champion ever. They just went, not. They just said, we'll take half the Oilers, please. Yeah. They just were like, we're going to make. make we're going to trade half our roster for a completely new half. So I don't know, man. And I don't know if this is resonating with you at all or if this is a location thing for me.

Seem to be a lot of Brady Kachuk rumors around the Rangers or a lot of the Rangers need to go and get Brady Kachuk and here's what that trade would look like. And then a lot of Ottawa fans, as you can probably imagine, not taking very kindly to that. because if people don't know there was a Jeremy Rutherford from the Athletic who is a St. Louis guy was on some radio show and they were like, hey, any truth that, you know,

we're hearing that Brady Kachuk wants out. And he was like, oh, I don't know about that. I mean, I don't know if the blues would even have enough to get them. And people ran with that as Jeremy Rutherford confirms Brady Kachuk wants out. Here's what he thinks about the blues. and he was like, no, no, no, I didn't do that. You know, I was asked a question on the spot, and I said I hadn't heard anything.

So that seems like one of those things where there isn't any smoke to or any fire to the smoke, but that has a smoke. Well, every Ranger fan from trading Capocaco, Kianre Miller, three draft picks, and one miscellaneous player for Brady Kachuk. Yeah, so I, I don't know if people know this. At the end of my column, what we learned every week. I go and I look for like the silliest trade proposal on HF. Oh, it's so good. My favorite feature.

Well, I would I would hope you would like all the good takes I write, you know? No, but yeah. Don't like those. But on there, it was traded, like, basically it was the Rangers fans trading like every, this is on Sunday after they get eliminated. Just like, oh, let's do Zabanajad for Shane Wright. Let's do this overpaid guy who underperformed in the, not even necessarily overpaid. Let's do this guy who's a veteran who underperformed in the conference final. Let's trade him for like a 22-year-old superstar in the making.

Every single one, Brady Chuk, obviously, not really 22, not really a superstar, but same idea, right? Where it's like, let's just magically upgrade and give up, you know, the classic thing of, you know, like, calling into sports radio, you know, what do you think? A second round pick for LeBron James. You think that'll work? Go to the Celtics? And the guy's like, yeah, baby, I don't know. It's that kind of shit, which is why HF boards is still a good website after all these years.

Many people are saying the greatest website. They do have one of those fucking very annoying, like, oh, we notice you're using an ad blocker. Yeah. to go to HF boards you're going to do this to me. Look, I, I don't, I don't like it when it's the local newspaper or whatever. That is annoying. Fuck you. Get lost.

Again, I, I've never, I've never, yeah, but like, don't do it in a way. Again, like, you go to fucking the New York Post website and there's 14 pop-ups that are like, do you want to get notifications? Do you want this? Do you want that? Like, I just want to read this Larry Brooks call. You know what drives me crazy is when they, it pops up with the, hey, you're using an ad blocker.

Would you please fit? Like, I like that they give you the option. They kind of guilt-trip you, but then they still let you in. I think I said this before. There are very few buttons I click on the internet more than continue without supporting. Yeah. No thanks. Well, here's the thing.

It's when instead of that, it's, I'll fix it next time. I'll fix it next time. And I'm like, don't play your little psychology games on me. I'm not, like, I'm going to click that. And then later that day, I'll be like, did I tell somebody I was going to do something? I did, you know what, I made a commitment. Yeah, I'll fix it next time. It's legally binding.

Yeah. They send a cease and desist. Stop going to our website without fixing it. That is like among the least followed rules. That is right up there with like you must have a full shower before going in this hotel swimming pool. I don't get around to that, brother. Oh, I forgot to say this about Larry Brooks too. anybody who puts that they won the Elmer Ferguson and are in the Hall of Fame in their Twitter bio,

which there are some writers who do that, instant red flag for bad takes ahead, turn back now, you know. Come on, man. Hey, shut up to Scotty Burnside. Did he put it in his Twitter bio? If he did, I'm concerned about it. But Sky rolls. Congratulations. One of the nicest guys.

Super good dude. Thrilled for him. Let's have a look, see. We might have to walk all everything we just said back. Hockey writer, broadcaster, podcaster. Big salute, brother. Don't put it in there. Honestly, putting podcaster in your bio is a bigger red flag for me.

You aren't lying, brother. You aren't, you aren't kidding at all. But yeah, so I'm looking at this. And again, this is just what Larry Brooks says. But it's, well, basically what Larry's call. said was like they need to get tougher as though that was the fucking impediment to beating the Panthers right like the not that their star players got fucking eaten alive swallowed whole you know that's not what happened here they they just didn't they just didn't

have enough Matt Rempey in the lineup you know if he did any game in one it wouldn't have gone down like that etc but the guys who said like understanding that you can't just fix the depth here, that there are bigger problems. He said the guys he would expect, and again, I'm paraphrasing, but like, the names he put out there are Truba, Kreider's Zabandajad. Those are the three.

So like, big names, man. Like those are huge names. You very rarely see. He had that, he had that Atric game. Ranger. Everybody's like, this is one of the great Ranger performances of all time. They're going to retire his number. A week and a half later,

we got to trade this fucking guy. What happened? You played a team that was so much better than you. And to your point earlier, what happened was all the stuff that I wrote about this in like November, like the Rangers are going to do the Rangers thing where they're like a 48% expected goals team at five on five,

but they ride the power play and the goaltending. That's what happened in this series. Tell me I'm fucking wrong, you know? And again, the thought is, What if we traded one of the big name guys who's like, again, like you said, is the bandage ad like a number one center on a cup winner? Probably he's not. But like the thought here is get rid of the guy who would be a really good number two center on a cup winner.

Like you can't, if you're the Rangers, you can't go out and get a number one center in all likelihood, right? Like that just isn't how it works. It's hard. But I mean, that's what makes this interesting, though, is like, You know, I don't think, and Larry is certainly not the only one throwing some of these names out there. I don't think the idea is you've got to dump these guys addition by subtraction. It's the Rangers need a different mix. They need, you know, maybe some upgrades high end.

And they're going to make a hockey trade to do it. Which will be. You very rarely see this level of names, even in the rumor mill for a team that's not rebuilt. Okay, obviously if the Rangers are like, we're going to rebuild, then yes, you trade all the veteran guys on big contracts, but that's not this. This is, like, it almost feels kind of old school. Like, yeah, we didn't win, so we're going to trade our number one center and our number two defensemen and our best wingerers if we have to. You trade any of these guys. Do you get better from doing that?

I don't think you do. Why not? No, no. This is whatever. No, no. I'm saying, too. Like, you can absolutely get better. someone's going to get better.

I would say it's the teams that take that like look, the only way you get better lots of teams should be calling them if they're going to like you get better if it's a hockey trade. First of all, you can have a hockey trade that makes both teams better if it fits, you know, if it's moving

assets from from place to place in the lineup. Or if it just comes down to, you know, do we know our guys better than you and, you know, can we get better players? Do you trust your GM or not? Do you, like, if you, if you already think that Chris Durie can't trade Mika Zabanajad and get better doing it, then you don't have the right GM. I guess what I'm-

If he's preemptively losing, you know, again, hockey trades. Not because, you know, Truba, if you're trying to dump him for sale. Truba's the only guy where I think it's, I think it's like you could get better by trading him. But my, my, my, I guess my other point is you're selling these guys at the absolute, like, nadir of their value, right? Like, when is Chris Kreider's value ever going to be lower than it is this week? Zabanajad, same idea. Yeah.

Right? Like, Truba, you know, again, I'd be all in favor of trading an $8 million guy who's like a middle-payer defenseman for me. That makes perfect sense. Again, I know he's in all the commercials or whatever, but like, it makes perfect sense that, you know, his only real value is that he does seem to have the ability to elbow people in the head with relative impunity. Yes. Right? Like that is that is a character buff that like works.

It's demonstrable. It's got, it does have value to you in some ways where like people are afraid to come across the blue line because they know that if he elbows them, he might get a five minute major and he'll only get a fine out of it or whatever, you know? Yeah. But like, the problem.

this is the other thing. I don't think either Zabandajat or Crider are making like a crazy amount of money. So like trading them to get better, quote unquote, like you're, I kind of feel like it's at 8.5 and it's, oh yeah, I guess that's true. He's got a, his contract is a concern if you're not sold on him. Criter is 6.5 for three more years. So that's reasonable. That's, I think that's totally reasonable.

You can, yeah. But again, like the fact that it's reasonable means that you can trade him without. the other team going, ah, if we're taking this contract, we can't even give you anything. You're just going to have to dump them, right? The other thing is, Zabanajad has a full no-move clause, so good luck. And Kreider has a 15-team no trade list, which is, that's starting July 1. So if you want to, so if you're thinking they're going to trade him at the draft, no, they aren't. Like, that's just, he has a full no-move clause until July 1.

And Chris Kreider is also, you know, as I said he's 33, he's a lifetime ranger. So you could absolutely see him being like, no, don't even come to me with anything under no circumstances. Am I going to wave or, you know, do whatever? And here's my list, here's my no trade list, which contains every team that could reasonably go out and get me. The other thing to say, I feel like there's an obvious answer to this, but do you, is it time to trade Capocaco? while there's still some value potentially at 23? Again, I just feel like you're healthy scratching him in the playout. Like, I think that there's a very good reason to be like, yeah, we'll trade this guy.

It's not working. He needs a change of scenery. If he succeeds somewhere else, we'll just kind of accept that with the knowledge that he wasn't going to succeed here. That's all fine. But, like, again, I don't know that you're getting a game-changing, talent or anything close to it for him. I mean, it feels like he's an add-on to a trig. That's exactly right.

Some GM out there will be like, I can sell my fan base on former number two overall pick who hasn't done it in New York, but you know what? Change of scenery, blah, blah, blah. This is a guy that if I'm Utah, I'm like, you know what, I'll fucking take a flyer on this. Here's a third round pick and a seventh or something. something like that.

And, you know, the Rangers free up some money because he's a pending RFA with arbitration rights. Yeah. And I guess that's the other thing we should say on the Rangers is Lafrania's got one more year of the cheap deal. And so does Igor Scherkin. That's the real issue. That's going to be an eight-digit, I think, you know, with the cap going up and all that.

Both those guys are eligible to resign on July 1. I don't know about LaFranier. It's a UFO after Yeah. It's going to... It wouldn't be, but you would assume

that's going to be a situation where they're going to try to get them eight years and depending on, you know, if him being a hockey player, he'll probably take way, way,

way too little to lock in for eight years. Yeah, he'll take like six and a half or something like that. Well, they do. They have taxes in New York, so.

Oh, you might take 14 then, you know, because of all these taxes. But it's just, I think that's a number where it starts with a one, and it isn't followed immediately by a comma. Let's put it that way. Well, put it this way.

It's going to, if they don't get it done. And like, but at the same time, like, how many times do we see a goalie sign a big contract as an extension and then have a bad year? Sure. Before the extension even kicks in. Didn't happen with Connor Hallibuck, obviously. But yeah, it's... But yeah.

Okay, so they need to free up some money for down the line, at least. Yeah, because they don't have a lot coming off the books besides that. Yeah. Although our Timmy Panarin's only got two years left. And Keandre Miller also will need a new contract. And, you know, whether you like it or not, he's a top pair of defenseman for them. Which is why he's getting thrown into every trade that the fans are putting together. Yep. So it'll be interesting.

You know, again, like, I think the autopsy is that this team is what we thought they were. And cause of death being mid at five on five. Yep. I don't, you know, again, we were saying this in November or whatever. We were saying this two years ago. They didn't do anything to address it two years ago. Then they won the president's trophy by accident. you know, like let's be honest here.

I mean, they want the President's trophy. They're a really good team. Right, but like what I'm saying is, and again, we've had this discussion before. Teams with good goal tending and good power plays or whatever, like high-scale players can be PDO teams. That's like I'm not saying that's a knock against them. Like in the regular season, what I'm saying is that shit doesn't work in the postseason. Unless it's just the goalie, in which case, you know, kind of that's a different thing.

But like when that's the way you have success in the regular season, it's just not going to work in the playoffs once you get deep enough. And the other thing is, they went to the conference finals two years ago. They played a bunch of second and third string goalies and playoff Freddie Anderson then got their brains beat in, right? This year, fake opponent, which they get to play a fake opponent because they won the president's trophy. Again, I don't begrudge them that.

But then they played playoff Freddie Anderson again. and then they got their brains beaten by an actual good team. Happens two out of the last three years. Like, I don't know how you get to be surprised by that outcome, you know? Fair enough. What about Dallas? What about Dallas? Kind of the same thing happened with them.

Power play went cold. Star players didn't really show up except for that one game Jason Robertson and Rope Hints had. They didn't have Rope Hints for the first few games of the series. from first two or three maybe? Yeah, he came back in what I think was game three that they won. Yeah. Jason Robertson won nuts. Yeah.

But apart from that, they just didn't really get a lot going. And they were in a very similar situation to the Rangers where it's like, oh, they gave up the, they gave up that goal. Yeah. If they're trailing after one period, I'm not liking their chances, you know. I was surprised when they lost. I, you know, just tweeted something where I was like, you know, it's a tough loss, but this is a team that's really well set up for the future. And I got pushback on that. Then you look at their cap-friendly page and it's like, oh, maybe not.

Well, I got pushback on that from Dallas fans. That's what I mean. Like, Dallas fans are intimately familiar with the fact that their future cap situations, not that good. So let's get into it. A Tyler's against still, Jamie Ben's only got one year left. on that contract that we thought for years was bad. Tyler's against still got three more. And look, I mean, it wasn't a great contract at the time,

but injuries have done their thing, and that is part of why you don't sign guys into their 30s, but here you are. But I just look at this team, like Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnson, Logan Sancoven, Ottinger, Mira Heisken Inn, all under 25. Yeah, they have so many good U-25. players. It's crazy.

Like you, you, if you could go around the league and, you know, this is arbitrary, obviously, but if you just said, like, five guys under 25 to build around for the future, like, does anybody have a better mix than Dallas? Probably not, no. You know, maybe a few guys, but a few teams, but there's not a lot, you know, top to bottom. You know, maybe you just take Connor Bedard and whoever, but, and yet, they, they, they, They are, you know, they're, they had some older guys, but to me, the older guys weren't the key pieces. Even, you know, obviously Matt Duchyne was a really good addition. He's a UFA.

That was a one-year deal. Joe Pavelsky, we don't know if he's going to be back. He did not look good in the playoffs. It has to be said. He looked good right up until the playoffs, so. Like, he was really defying the age curves, and then it just. It caught up with them. Went off a cliff.

Or he had a cold streak. that happens to guys and because I think I don't think it was just he had a cold streak I think he was like actively not good I can pull up the numbers here really quickly but like I just think he didn't have a good playoff

like period not not like the puck wasn't going in for him you know what I mean yeah the thing with the stars that you look at is they have Merrill Heisken is signed through 2009 8.45 that's 204.5 that's

Totally reasonable. You're thrilled with that contract if you're Dallas. Still a good chance that in those remaining five years, you get a Norris trophy out of that deal. Sure. But from there, they have only two other defensemen signed each for one more year. Essel and Del and then Ryan Suter,

a guy that maybe, you know, he's rumored as a buyout. So you really wouldn't even want that. And then it's five guys who are free agents this year. Now, you know, you're Thomas Harley's not going anywhere. Niels Lundquist isn't going anywhere. But you've got to come up with new deals for those guys. And then obviously Chris Tannave, that was a rental, so who knows? I just, I get it.

I get that there's a lot of, yeah, they do, but, you know, it's going to be at a big number then. Because, I mean, this is like Tannav's at a guy, he's a guy who at 34, and especially with his style. Like, if I'm his agent, I'm saying, we're going to get your term. We're going to try. get you three or four years somewhere. It's going to be a contract somewhere that looks like a mistake and probably will be, but that's the beauty of a 32 team market. I get that there's a lot of issues here.

I'm just sitting here going, every team's got issues, every team's in flux. But as far as a core, those, you know, five, you know, I throw Harley into there as well. I'm sure. Five, six, seven guy core. I'll take it. I can still win with this. Totally. I agree.

Especially with Jim Nill, a guy who's a very, very good GM. I don't feel, I'm not overly concerned. And I, you know, I also get that some of the vibe from Dallas fans seems to be, this is two years in a row now. They got to the conference final, ran out of gas. Like, is this a team that's plateaued? Like, is this a team that has leveled out at, not quite good enough.

Maybe. But I'm not, I, it's weird for me to be more optimistic about a team than a fan base seems to be. I think you're also, it's the same thing with the Rangers. Like, you know, if they ran it back with this exact same group next year, they wouldn't win the president's trophy in all likelihood, but they'd be a good team, you know? They just wouldn't be necessarily cup competitive, barring Schisturkin going ape shit in the playoffs, which is always a possibility when you have a great goalie. But I want to say a theory that I have that I think really applies to Dallas.

And I've had this theory for a good long while now. I think that if you have like a huge age gap between, let's say, your stars of yesteryear who are making a lot of money and your stars of today who are just like really good youngish players, and very little in the middle. Not a lot of guys who were driving the bus who were like 27, 28 years old. I think you have a hard time winning in the playoffs. I'd be curious to see

if someone ran the numbers on this or whatever, this is not like a thing I feel like I could look up quickly and easily. But I just feel like a lot of the teams that win the cup have a lot of guys in the like 27 to 31 range that are making a big difference. for them. And I don't see Dallas is really having that, right? Like,

Marchment and hints are the only two forwards in that age group who you would say are like kind of needle movers. And they, they don't have anybody in that group on the blue line, um, unless you want to say yes, and Lendell, which like,

I, I would say you're stretching the definition a little bit, but sure. Um, I think having, those guys who are like more again like on the wrong what you'd say is the wrong side of the agent curve but also like they've played in the playoffs three four or five times

and I think that does matter you know that kind of thing is they're making their own guys who fit that description right so what I'm saying is the problem right now for this team is that enough time hasn't passed for Jason Robertson to reach that age range or Miro Heiskin well I guess they're basic the same age, but you know what I mean. And their older guy, like, their veteran guys who have been around the block of time or three,

those guys are like 32, 33, 33, 34, 35 years old. You know, do you see what I'm saying? Like, you know, especially on their blue line, it's like Essel Lindell is the only guy in that, in that range. And like all the other quote unquote name guys are. either like Thomas Harley style 22 year or 21 year olds,

whatever Thomas Harley is. And like Chris Hannev and Ryan Souter. And I don't think you can win with that mix personally. I'm sure there are like counter examples to this or whatever. But like for the most part, I think you need guys who are just on the wrong side

of that age and curve and not you know, Jamie Ben's age. Yeah. And the problem is a lot of those guys are signed for next year. Ryan Suter, I think they'll probably buy him out. That seems like an easy buyout decision there. But, you know, I don't know what it costs them to buy out Jamie Ben.

I don't know what his contract looks like for next year, but it probably isn't going to be. Well, he's at 9.95 or something, I think. Oh, he's not buyoutable. He's not buyoutable because he makes 5.5 million signing bonuses next summer or this summer. And realistically, you're not going to buy out your captain. No, no. But like I'm saying, you know, if they wanted to take a more extreme route, they just can't do that. It doesn't make financial sense for them to do that.

So, again, I really like this team. I like the core a ton, right? But, you know, you're going to re-sign Matt Dushain. That's the solution here. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, I don't know what their path forward looks like. It was pretty good. It was pretty good last year.

he's also like 30 let's see I can 33 and again this is a guy where like his agent's going to be like we got to get you that one big last contract brother you know he might be although remember he got bought out so he does have like kind of the steady stream of income already so maybe he's more willing to say hey this was a good fit in Dallas I like what we had going on here no like I'm just saying if you want to take a step and you don't you have kind of limited cap space. They have 13 guys signed and under 16 million in cap space. And they have to extend Stank, or not Stankovin, Thomas Harley. That's their big RFA name. And like, it's a tight squeeze. I guess what it comes down to is if you're Jim Nailed, do you look at this team and say, we're right there, we've got to keep it together.

Obviously, it's not, you know, and you're not going to bring back. the same 20 guys, but we've got to keep the same basic structure and we take another swing at it. Or do you say, we're not good enough, we need to get better, which is talking to do with this. I think they need to get better, for sure. Okay.

But again, I don't know how that works unless you do something drastic, like pay Jamie Ben the signing bonus and then trade him. You know what I mean? Yeah, which again, I just, I can't. No, I agree that they probably won't do that. But like if you want to, if you want to take a drastic step to be like more competitive, because this is the thing that doesn't get said a whole lot, right?

Is that if you lost in the conference finals, you only won two out of four rounds. You know what I mean? Like there is, there is a stratification there that kind of doesn't, I guess I'll put it this way. The New York Islanders a couple years ago made two conference finals in a row, right? Like, you don't have to be a great team to make the conference finals. It helps, obviously. But you... Islander's just catching strays here.

I love it. Tell me, I'm right. What happened since then? Yeah. Yeah. And again, fake playoffs. So, you know, take it all with a grain of salt. But, yeah, to me, like, I think that Dallas is on the cusp of being, like, one of the truly, like, potentially great teams of the era just because of the age and the quality of something.

some of their younger players, they're more impactful players. But those like mid-2010's decisions that they made really hurting them. That's fair. I like the team, but I'd like to see him get a little creative this summer. That's all. Okay. All right, why don't we take another break?

We'll come back and we'll wrap it up with some news and notes. This week's episode is brought to you by AG1. Folks, it's important to me that any supplements that I'm going to take have got to be highest quality. And that's part of the reason why for years now. We've been talking to you about AG1. Unlike many supplement brands out there, AG1 is known for conducting relentless testing to set the standards for purity and potency. It's researched and developed by an in-house team of scientists, doctors, and nutritionists

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All right, we're back. And it seems like Major League Hockey is, I mean, it seems like it's still fake, but it's in the news again this week because they launched a website, which famously you need to be a real league to be able to do. Yeah. They don't let you put things on the Internet that aren't true. The major league hockey.com says, Get ready to witness an exciting new era of professional hockey in North America, set to launch in fall 2024.

Now you click on Learn More. It scrolls you very slightly down the page. It says three on three hockey. It's overtime all the time. A unique three on three hockey format, I don't know what would be unique about it. featuring teams of professionals with a $30 million salary cap per team and a $100,000 victory bonus for each winning team. So does that mean every time you win,

they give you a check for $100,000 that you then split up between your... That would be the implication, yeah. Okay. Locations. Major League hockey has targeted franchises in 16 cities in the United States and Canada. along with a very cool map in which they've just cut off the top of Canada. Buzz sawed it right off. Well, they've also, this is the interesting thing to me,

where they're like saying they're going to have a team, that state or province is in white, not like where the city is. Okay, yeah. But just the state or province is in white. Yes. And then it gives you these examples, folks. New York, California, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Minnesota, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska. These are being presented in a very strange order, I would say.

New England, Oklahoma, Ontario, Texas, Florida. That's it. And when they say New England, the map shows both the state of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Okay. So that is definitely, that is a list that definitely was in alphabetical order at some point, and then they started cutting or subtracted. But then they were like, well, of course, you know, Quebec.

So it wasn't, okay, it starts with New York, then California, then British Columbia. That's reverse alphabetical order. But then Saskatchewan, which is after British Columbia. And so now we're back to a weird alphabetical order. Then Quebec, nope, we're back out, Minnesota. Okay, we're going backwards again. it seems like, then Arizona, then Missouri, then Nebraska. What?

Right. And then we hit the alphabetical order. So I feel like they had it and then they were like, well, put you in California first. And then they're like, now they're going to. Then Florida. Oh, and the other thing is like all the states are really big as you scroll past them, except Florida, which is so small you can barely see it behind the R in Florida. I don't know what's going on over there.

Web design is my passion. Yeah. Two 24-minute games per night with a short intermission. The games will be played with family-friendly admission prices will be played exclusively on Friday and Saturday nights. 14 roster players, 12 skaters, two goalies, three marquee players. And now people were dunking on, they were spelling marquee wrong. Oh, okay. They were spelling it like the Marquis de Saad.

Okay. Which I think you're allowed to do, but not, I mean, that's wrong, you know. MLH teams can sign three, and then this is in all capital letters. World class players. These can be free agents in North America, Europe, or Russia. Of course, Russia is not part of Europe, I guess. Well, you know what? Geopolitically, everything that's going on right now these days.

I've got some thoughts on that. So what I would. with major professional level experience, teams will then fill out their roster with talented players from the NCAA or Canadian U-Sports plus major junior players in Canada, the United States, and Europe. We're proud to announce that qualified female players will be considered equally.

Like I said, $30 million salary cap, a $100,000 win bonus for each game. You can buy merch. which they have a jersey, a hat, two different bottles of wine, it looks like, commemorative coins, t-shirts, hoodies. Yeah. All of which has logos on it already, but, you know. And if you zoom in, they're like Napa Valley or something like that.

Yeah. I don't know. Anyway. Then it says time to get involved. Scouting. Player scouting complete. MLH scouting staff has already completed. the 2024 player draft, which will be released shortly.

Oh, completed? That's what it says. Not completed the draft list. So they just secretly did a draft and they haven't told anyone? It seems like that's the case. And by the way, I should say, Elliot reported yesterday that there will be some kind of announcement probably during the cup final.

Sure. Again, do I believe any of this? Not really, folks. I sure don't. I mean, I believe that they did a draft. You know, I believe that they said, oh, this guy goes to this team. Do I think any of these teams are going to exist in the fall? Well, that's a different discussion.

How would you do a draft already? Like, you know, presumably you're going to try to pluck free agents, I guess, out of the NHL? Well, what Elliot said was that there is at least one player from the final four teams who has at least had his agent inquire as to what the deal with Major League hockey is. Like, he's just going to come out with the draft and say, like, yes, Sam Reinhardt was the number one overall pick. Yeah, Connor McDavid's going to play for the Massachusetts, New Hampshire Metro stars. Yeah. Okay, sure. Do they have any prominent professional level coaches and or management personnel?

I have great news. MLH has retained prominent professional level coaches and management personnel in many markets. It says here, markets almost full. Great news. Even better news, spots are still open. MLH is seeking experience professional executives and coaches for select markets. If you have a professional, if you have professional level experience and wish to be considered, send an email to this thing. End of website.

I can also read it to you in French, if you would like. Yeah, I think we would all enjoy that. Ah, Ciste, yeah. I, you know, a novelle. I'm running into words I don't know how to pronounce. And again, set to launch in fall of 2024. Yep, that's right. That's like three months.

Okay, just for what of everything we just read, what is the least believable aspect of this? 16 teams. Okay, I'm going to go with the $30 million salary cap. Here's the thing. I think, and I think Jeff Merrick brought this up on 32 thoughts yesterday. I think the important thing to say here is cap and not floor. Oh, yeah.

The salary cap here is $10 trillion. Turns out we're only going to spend $1 million on these guys, or whatever the number is, you know? Like, I think, you know, they would love to be able to, what's the word I'm looking for, like to have the coup of signing a prominent NHL free agent who, you know, let's say it's Joe Pavelsky. Getting up there in years, but like, yeah, as you said, he can still play at the NHL level, right? If they give him $4 million next year, he's probably not getting that in the NHL. in all likelihood, five million, whatever the number is, right? Like I think a guy like that,

they would be willing to spend that money for if they exist, which I, again, kind of don't think they do. But let's go with, again, go with the premise that this is, this is a real thing. I would,

I bet they would love to give Joe Pavelsky $7 million or whatever. It lends them legitimacy. Like, they're buying his legitimacy, right? Famously, the WHA, which is really the last

legitimate competitor to the NHL, gave Bobby Hall the first ever million dollar contract in sports history to sign with Winnipeg for that exact reason, to make a splash, to signal that they were a real league,

et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, famously the legend is that they were pestering Bobby Hall about signing and he in an attempt to get them to go away

said that he would only sign if they gave him a million bucks and they said okay and he was like crap now I gotta I should have asked for 10 million these guys yeah that's exactly right

I yeah because I mean there is no world in which this league can be financially viable no I wouldn't anywhere near these numbers and anywhere near this scope, anytime soon. Which means it is either the money is coming from someone who doesn't care if it makes money,

or there is a legitimate long-term plan and path to profitability here. Which I don't really think there is. Or it's fake and it's just not going to happen. Right. Like, okay, I'll just give the example I always love to give. Let's talk about professional wrestling, right? Why is AEW viable in a way, like long-term viable in a way that, you know, your impacts or your major league wrestlings really aren't as like true competitors to WWE? The reason why is, one, it's also owned by a legitimate real billionaire who actually his family has more money than the McMahon family.

So that's step one. And number two, and this is the important part, they were willing to lose money for the first five years. They just hit their fifth birthday or whatever you want to say, fifth anniversary, like last week. They were willing to lose money for the first five years with the idea that they could get a huge, national TV contract after their first five-year TV contract. And their contract is up sometime this year, maybe end of this year. And the thinking is that they are not profitable right now. But when they get this new deal, which will pay them however many million dollars per

episode of TV they produce 52 weeks a year, that will make them profitable. So, like, as you say, Major League hockey needs to. have a basically a TV partner that is willing to put them on national TV and pay them kind of a lot of money to do it.

It's not like AEW's like going on TNT for free. Which you're not going to get. That's what I'm saying. Like we've seen the other comparison would be the various football leagues that are constantly trying to start up

as spring leagues. Right. XFL, USFL, you know, different versions. They, for the most part, you don't get a great TV deal to start. In fact, if anything, you get a TV deal where the network is like, we will give you the time, we will sell ads, you're in charge of producing and, you know, filling the air time. Right. That's what AEW did. And it, you know, it mostly worked for them because they had the, the billionaire willing to lose a bunch of money

in the first five years. And I would say they probably over-performing. Partly because, you know, the billionaire gave it to his wrestling-obsessed son. and said, go, go play with this. And get out of my air, probably. You weirdo. But the point is, they had a path to viability because they could financially compete with WWE in terms of the contracts they gave out. Yeah. And we're willing to lose money for years to do it.

I don't know, man. I don't. Again, like, this could maybe work as like, uh, The fact that it's going head to head with the NHL, if it's running in the fall, is crazy to me. Like, I don't know what they're thinking there. It's like, oh, yeah, no, we're a professional football league. We're going to compete with the NFL, and all our games are Sundays at 1 and 4 p.m. Well, I got bad news for you about how that's going to go for you, Big Dog.

You know, it seems like, again, like if they're saying these are family-friendly prices or whatever, it seems like what they're really trying to do is compete with the AHL. which is, you know, maybe they could do that if they can get your, like, Joe Pavelskis or Ryan Souters or whatever, you know. Again, just to stick with Dallas Stars examples because I still have their cat-friendly page open. You know, like, if you can get, like, name brand NHL players, maybe you can compete with the AHL. I don't think you can, but maybe. And in a lot of the markets that they talked about, you're also competing with college hockey if it's Friday and Saturday nights. and people like college hockey in Massachusetts, Minnesota.

And you're competing with the NBA, the NFL, you know, all of this stuff. I got to tell you, man, since I was a kid, I've always wanted to see like a WHA spring up. I think that would be fascinating. I'm rooting for this in the sense. I think it would be fascinating to see a play out. I have zero confidence that this is going to ever get off the ground in a meaningful way. Well, again, it's the other thing about it is that Brad Schlossmann from the Grand Forks Herald, he covers college hockey mostly, North Dakota specifically, and you know, he's in Grand Forks, whatever. He wrote an article about like, oh yeah, no, people have talked to people associated with the league and they seem to think it's real.

but like the crucial thing is like, again, that like, oh, we're targeting a 16 team league. Well, I, you know, they say they want to have a team in Minnesota. I called every rink with more than like 2,000 seat capacity or whatever and said, like, have you heard about this? And they all said no. Every single rink in Minnesota. With over whatever the number was. So at that point, like the scale doesn't make sense.

Like if you're not trying to put at least 2,000 people in a rink, then the scale just is insane. Like you're having them play in like high school ranks? I don't understand, you know? So. Yeah. Like you say, I think it would be fun if it worked. I'm skeptical is kind of like being almost too generous with how I feel about how this is going to go. I agree.

I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to be like, oh, yeah, that was like a fun distraction, like, between games during Hockey Night in Canada or whatever, you know, I just don't see it. I'm with you. I mean, a cool idea, not going to happen. If we're wrong, we're wrong. But, yeah. Here's something that is going to happen.

Will Smith has signed with the San Jose Sharks. The rapper? Well, I think at this point he'd say he's a movie star. It's a fair point. Yeah. I wonder about the last time he put out an actual song. And this is, in fact, something I can look up very quickly. Might not be a rapper, but he's still a slapper.

Oh, come on, man. We've got to pause here while the listeners have a good, good hearty chortle. The last time he has been a featured artist on the, it seems like the last song he did was, he was a featured artist on the 2018 official theme song of the FIFA World Cup called Live It Up by Nikki Jam featuring Will Smith and ERA Estrefi, whoever that is. It seems like it's a Kosovo Albanian singer-songwriter, it says here. And the same year, he was on a non-album single by Mark Anthony featuring Will Smith and Bad Bunny called Estarico. Cool. Yep. Is he not making a song for the Bad Boys movie?

You know, it doesn't seem like he. Oh, and you know what? He also had a couple of hits with songs from the Lerner, live-action Aladdin. Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot about that. So he had two hits with that one,

friend like me and Prince Ali. By the way, shout out to Will Smith, the hockey player, who I'm sure has never heard this joke before. No, it's never come up. He's probably doing that like Mr. Smoke's too much thing where he's like, oh yeah, that never occurred to me.

That's good. Ha-ha-ha. Yeah. But anyway, you know, I... So this is a... I know Bad Boys 4 is out this week. This is a situation where Will Smith, it was, college was still an option, right?

Like this is... Yeah, he just finished his freshman year at Boston College. He was one of the best players in the country, on the best line in the country. And there was a thought that all three of him and his line mates who have been together since the U.S. National Development Team, they would, all of whom are first round, picks would stay one more year at BC, much like Cutter Gotea did. Go back for a second year, compete for a national championship, all that kind of stuff. Right.

And of course, they made the Frozen Four this year, so, you know, that kind of. And because it's San Jose, they're going to suck next year anyway. There's an element of it where we're going to stink. So is it better to, you know, is it better to maybe keep guys away, let them go to another year? but what's the development look like? Yeah, so like the thing I would say about that is like he is not, let's say,

what I would call a pro-ready defensive player, not even particularly close, quite frankly. But his offense is so good that you'll let the kid cook. You know, I get it from San Jose's point of view, I guess is my point, that they would want to get him out of college

and playing professional hockey. That makes sense. That being said, I am surprised just because, again, I kind of thought, hey, these guys suck. Like, what would be the point, like you said, of having him up with the big club to win 25 games next year or whatever?

That makes sense to me, that they would shy away, especially because I had heard, like, toward the end of the season, they hadn't even talked to him about an extension or a contract. They were just like, oh, we'll let him play, figure out what he wants to do and so on and so forth. Like they were kind of being hands off with it, which I thought, you know, again, kind of presaged. They're not going to really pressure him to sign, but maybe he signed because he wanted to sign.

Much like Cutter-Gotié tried to with the Flyers last year. And the sharks didn't want to have a Cutter-Gotier situation on their hands, perhaps. you know. So I'm a little surprised that they did this. But I'm also because they won the draft lottery, so they're going to get Macklin Celebrini. And again, there was a thought in college hockey of, well, I mean, you know, if they sign MacL or if they get the number one pick,

they're going to suck next year. They might not care if Macklin Celebrini goes back for one more year of college hockey. And, you know, that might have been wishful thinking on the part of college hockey people, you know. But again, you know, the same logic applies. Well, if we're going to suck anyway, let him who, he would, uh, Celebrini was the youngest player in college hockey last year. Let him have one more, he won the Hobie Baker. He would have been the first Hobie Baker winner to ever go back. I'm pretty sure.

So that, you know, the precedent. But now I, I'm kind of thinking, oh, maybe they're going to. try to speed this up a little bit. You know, they got a ton of money to spend this summer. They got assets to use to acquire good players, you know? Like, do they want to go get a Jacob Truber or Mika Zabanajad? It's interesting. It's interesting to consider.

Yeah. And they still don't have a coach either. That's weird. Right? Right. Yeah, that is. So I wonder what the direction there. Like, do they go get enough?

David Quinn type where it's like, yeah, we're really only getting him because we don't really feel like we need to be competitive anytime soon. Or do they go out? You get a development coach. Yeah. Or do they go out and get a guy who's going to help them win now is not the right terminology. Win as much as possible now.

Yeah. Try to be competitive. Probably not very much. This makes the sharks a very fascinating team to me this summer in a way that I, just straight up wasn't expecting. Speaking of bad teams and coaches, I had a very weird moment this week where I legitimately spent five minutes

racking my brain because I could not remember who the Blue Jackets hired as their new coach. They didn't hire a new coach, right? And then finally I was like, oh, that's because they didn't. Pascal Vincent is still the coach in Columbus. Yeah, for now anyway.

Of all the, well, I mean, for now, it's June. Like, you know, Don Waddell's there now. That's going to be. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I wonder if Don Waddell, like, a week from now is like, you know what? Let's start the search. Honestly, man. If I'm a Columbus fan, I'm watching that closely because I, look, I've been wrong on coaching stuff before.

We just talked about Paul Maurice. That'd be a day. But I don't see any scenario where Pascal Vincent is the long-term answer in Columbus. So if I'm a Columbus fan, I'm looking at Don Wadale coming in going, is this guy actually going to try to do the job or is he going to do the lazy, I need a year to watch? I, you know, I've never worked with the guy. I'm going to kick the can down the road a year and then do the coaching change,

which means writing off a whole extra season. I don't know. I guess we'll see. But yeah, that was just a little insight into how dumb I am that I was sitting there going Like, why do I not know this? Like, who was it? Was it like some college guy? I mean, I think you have the right instinct, which is like, surely they made a coaching.

That was it, yeah. They must have, right? But like, I got to the point where I was, I was, like, thinking, like, my brain was going, like, they didn't hire Bruce Boudreau. Did they before my brain would go, maybe they just still have the same guy. Yeah. So anyways, it's tough. Go blue jackets. It'd be a hell of a year.

Go them. Katie clip this for when Vincent wins the Jack Adams next year. Well, he might have the bright idea next year. He didn't think of it this year, but next year he might tell those guys, look, go out and shoot like 12, 13%. That's why you need an extra year, right? Like, now he's. It was his first year as a head coach.

He didn't know the secrets, such as have an elite goalie. That's just good business. Let's talk about the. the PWHL, the fix was in for that final game. Rigged, as rigged as I've ever seen it. Very unfair. We're hearing more and more. People are coming up to me.

They're crying. They're saying PWHL Boston should have won. It's not fair. What happened? I agree with them. The most handsome men you've ever seen are saying this. Congratulations to Minnesota winning twice in game four and then getting game five. Cheating was even more rampant than you.

Two championships in year one. That makes them the league leader, I believe. It's true. Now, it's called the Walter Cup. Do you know why it's called the Walter Cup? I'm legitimately asking. I'm not like doing a Tribunal. I don't.

I'm sure we could look that up, but... Let's see. Walter Cup Wiki. It's just occurring to me. I was like, oh, yeah, they won the Walter Cup. And I was like, wait a minute. I don't know what that is, actually. It does not really seem to say?

Well, this might be, this might be Mark Walter speaking on behalf. Yeah, yeah. I don't like this. I don't like that they're naming it after the guy who just owns the league. Well, you're a college guy. Like, that's, you should, putting names of rich people on things is. Do we think Hobie Baker was rich? Yes.

Oh, okay. There you go. Famously. A wealthy man. They should have called it the Wickenheiser Cup. Yeah, something like, that's what I mean. Like, just naming it after the guy that owns it when like there's such a rich and kind of like under, I don't want to say undercovered, but like underdiscust history of women's hockey. You know, I liked when they called it the Isabel Cup in whichever league that was because it's like, oh, that was Lord Stanley's daughter.

Good name. I get why you couldn't go back to that one in particular. But yeah, like the Wickenhizer Cup or, I don't know, I'm sure there's like even older. like pioneering women's hockey players that I'm not aware of that you could have name but you know hey when you pay the bills

you get to name the trophy after yourself a pretty solid opening season yeah as you know we've discussed it and it feels like during the final it sort of came up more was got to figure out a way to juice the offense a bit

but I mean I'm not trying to be a wise ass here but, you know, we were just talking about major league hockey, and it's hard to launch a league. The fact that they got to the finish line. Nobody folded. It seemed like they were a big financial success. Selling out buildings left and right.

A lot of tickets. I don't know what the financial plan was or, you know, whether it was ever possible for the league to make money year one. But I can't imagine you could look at the first year as anything other than a resounding success. Totally. now on to, you know, a second year where apparently the draft is quite strong. Yeah, and people think that will juice the offense a bit. Like, there was famously, like Montreal had a fourth line that they didn't play in like a triple overtime game, really.

You know, like just teams, the benches weren't as deep as you would like them to be is basically my understanding of. Yeah, more good goalies than good scores in the league. Yes, that's right. So, yeah, when I say juice the offense, I'm not necessarily saying anything radical, but you would like to see fewer three goal games, certainly. Right. No, because someone was like, because when we said that last week, someone on the Puck Soup Discord was like, they actually had pretty good offense.

And it's like, yeah, for like women's hockey, I think it was like 2.4 something goals per game. And for women's hockey, that is quite high in comparison with like, you know, your average U.S. Canada games. or whatever. But like 2.4, I think it was 2.44 for don't, you know, you can run the numbers yourself, I guess. But 2.44 goals per game, that including empty netters, by the way, was like, you know, way, like, you know, 20% worse than than the worst year of the dead puck era. When all anybody talked about was how nobody fucking could score goals.

So. I mean, offense is just fun. You're, that's, uh, but, yeah, like, they, they pulled it off. They did. They absolutely. I mean, it did far more success. I mean, if you're looking at the history of professional or even semi-professional hockey leagues, this is as strong a first year as, uh, as I can imagine.

Yeah. Pretty much any league. I, you know, KHL, I guess would be there. even the NHL was a disaster its first year. Yes, that's right. Yeah, good for them. And now you get into,

now you get into your first real offseason. Like your first, obviously last year, you know, was the birth of the league, but now you get that first year of kind of, that fun intrigue of, you know, who's staying and who's going and who gets picked and who gets fired and all of that stuff. So it's going to be cool.

The team names thing, part of that not a real off season that they had last year, where they were just like, oh, we're starting in like six weeks, see out there, where everybody's like, whoa, wait a second, hold on, man. But it seems like team names are going to get announced in the next week or two, which is cool. Let's hope they're better than the trial balloons they floated last year. I think they would probably have to be. Yeah, it couldn't be much worse. You know, we didn't talk about this. The people figured out what the logo is for the Utah's first season or whatever. The Utah hockey club is seemingly what they're going with in year one at least.

Yeah. And I'll say this. If their jerseys are that like powder blue that, that is in the logo, that rocks to me. I'd love to see a powder blue team in the league. I don't know if that's going to be the case, but that's what's up, you know?

But also, you know, do the logos suck and got made in Canva in 15 minutes? You bet. Yeah. I mean, you know, stuff is not easy. Barely stylized, I think, is how I would describe them. Fair, yeah.

Just very basic font. It says Utah Hockey Club. It's powder blue and black and white is basically what you're seeing with them. And like, you know, I get it. Much like the PWHL, they really didn't expect to have these teams ready to go so fast, I don't think. Yes. And that is in the Utah case. that is fair.

This did all come together very quickly. Yeah, but like, I don't know. I feel like if you just, like, found a graphic designer, they come up with, like, something a little better than that in five minutes flat. Yes. Just my opinion. Anyway, big shout out to the PWHL. I'm excited for next year.

I'm interested to see what they do with Boston. I don't know that they're going to stay in Lowell. So do they move into the city? don't know, but something to keep an eye on. CHL, the Memorial Cup also happened this past week. A weekend, rather. Saginaw Spirit, they win. Did you see how they won?

I saw there was a big London comeback and then Saginaw got the late goal. Yeah, they were, Saginaw was up 2-0, 3-0, something like that. It ends up 3-3, and then they score with 21.6 seconds left, I think it was, to win 4-3. On home ice, it's very rare that the host team actually wins the Memorial Cup, so that's very cool. But I didn't see a second of it because it was on basically at the same time as the Oilers Stars game. Yeah, that's it. It was sort of something I was aware of because it was like filtering through my social media feeds. But I did not watch and I typically do not watch prospects.

I have a website that I go to for all my prospect information. Hey, speaking of that, let's hit them with the plugs here. And let's start with me for a change because of what a good segue that was. The Elite Prospects draft guide is available right now. And if you want to be, I don't, you know, like if you want to be a draft sicko, hey, you're not going to find a better option in terms of. of in-depth coverage than the elite prospects draft guide. That just goes without saying thousands of, let's see if I can quickly look up how many pages this thing is.

Well, I can't quickly look it up, but the answer is over 1,000. I'll tell you that for sure. And, yeah, it's very good. It's in-depth on basically any guy your team is going to draft, there are like scouting reports, game reports, that kind of thing. The answer is 1904 pages. Okay. And so if you want to check that out and get access to all my beautiful takes and all the scouting stuff that happens over the course of the season with video breakdowns and ads taking care of and all that kind of stuff, you head over to Elite Prospects.

You sign up for an annual subscription using the code, I love EP. and they will give you 15 months for the price of 12. Unbelievable deal. And you will know when your friends in your group chat or whatever, like, oh, you know, do you know anything about this guy that got taken like 17th overall by our team that we like? You can go, yeah, I read 58 game reports about this guy. Or from this past season, I went on elite prospects, CP Rinkside, and I watched video of this guy. blah, blah, blah, you can be the genius of your draft buddies or your next fantasy hockey like

Keeper League or whatever you want to call it, you know? This is the time to get involved over the league prospects. That's what I say. 100%. There you go. And then also head over to patreon.com slash puck soup. All kinds of bonus stuff coming out in the next few weeks and basically for us. for as long as they let us keep doing it,

we're going to keep doing it. So there's that as well. Very cool. Find me at the Athletic. I have my annual Stanleyca Final Routing Guide has gone up today. That's where I tell you which team, which of these two teams to cheer for. It was close. I don't keep a running tally as I'm writing of which team I'm recommending.

But this one came right down to the wire. So check that out. and tomorrow it's happening. Wow. Me and Gentile watching each other's commercials. I have still to this day not watched or in any way spoiled the What a Pearl wants ad. That's happening to me this afternoon. So we will have that article up tomorrow and then we'll be talking about it on our podcast.

And I do think Frankie's joining us tomorrow as well. So check that out. and then I'll have more Stanley Cup Final stuff later in the week. You should make him watch shitty commercials. Maybe we might be in a few the way things are going. There you go. Yeah, that's it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody, as always, of course.

And we'll talk to you next week when there's an actual Stanley Cup Final going on. That's right. All right. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Bye.