Puck Soup - The Blame Game

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Sean and Ryan talk about another coach firing, the new Skills Competition format, hitting from behind, and more. Sponsored by Gametime (download the Gametime app and use code PUCK for $20 off), Nuts.com (nuts.com/puck), Bespoke Post (boxofawesome.com promo code puck20), Factor (factormeals.com/puck50) and AG1 (drinkAg1.com/puck) 

This bustling holiday season, get Factor and get nutritious, convenient meals to keep you energized on jam-packed days. No wonder it's America's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service. Get 50% off with code Puck-50 at FactorMeals.com slash Puck-50. I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And folks, you heard it at the top of the show. We have new theme music. That's from our buddy Dan from Joy Wave reached out.

He said, you guys want a new theme song? And I said, yep. And that was that. I didn't give him too many notes. He got it very quickly and easily, you know. And off we went. And I think what a two-week turnaround on this? Dan really, really got to work, you know?

This is why he's one of the, he's a hitmaker. Is he? Yeah. I got to, I have to start listening to this music now because now personal friends with the guy. But if you're a fan of Joy Wave and your life, like, hey man, how's the new album coming along? How come they haven't put out any?

Yeah, this is why. Working on more important things. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but he was like, yeah, I've got to get cracking on that new Joy Wave record soon. Yeah. Well, priorities. Yeah. Look, some things are more important.

So shout out to everyone who already started the podcast and then was like, oh, this is the wrong one and fiddled around with her phone for a while. Yeah. And, you know, people love change with their podcasts. Yeah, people, and they definitely don't get, like, super nostalgic for old stuff that they didn't like in the first place. So I'm, I can't wait to hear. That's why there's a, I was going to make a, I lost it. There's a movie coming out soon where it's like a remake, or maybe it's a TV show.

I straight up don't remember. But it's like a remake of something from when I was a kid that I was like, I'm pretty sure. everybody thought that sucked. And they were like, well, it's 20 years old. Well, God, for me, it's probably 40 years old. But that means it's good now. If it's old, it's good. Yeah.

I wish that thinking applied to people. Hey, look, we can do the 70 over 70 list. Like one guy wanted that one time. I don't know if people remember that. Anyway, we'll get to some NHL news right here. Turns out Craig Barubi got fired. Yeah. That's kind of a big.

I'm a big Craig Barube fan going way back to the day, so. Going way back to when he made fun of us for being afraid of the rain or whatever in St. Louis. Or on Nashville, I mean. Remember that? It was that. Yeah. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't try to big dog puck soup.

That's right. I totally forgot that happened. I totally for you and I were stuck in waiting. It was like thunder lightning downpour, insane, waiting for an Uber, I want to say. And Craig Barubi comes out. I think it's the second day of the draft. Craig Barubi's like, oh, is it raining pretty bad out there? We're like, yeah, man, he looks outside.

He's like, ah, walk, no big deal. Just straw. Not wearing a coat, nothing. Just wearing, I think, a polo shirt and like some slacks. see you later. And that was the moment when I realized maybe Craig Barabhi is tougher than me. Yeah, a slightly tougher guy, for sure. I moved him up the toughness rankings ahead of me and you. I don't know.

I'd still think I could take him. Do you think you and I together could do... No, like, could we... Like, okay, you and me versus Craig Barabuie in a fight. He leaves the fight. Can anybody tell that he has been in a fight? Well, I fight dirty. You know, I'm throwing sand in the eyes.

I'm going for the, I'm going for his knees. I feel like you know, that kind of thing. You would pull out the mist on him. So yeah, they would be able to tell. He'd have like green paint on his face. Craig, why is your face green? Some fucking guy I punched through a wall. Yeah.

He just, he misted me. I don't know. There was another guy, but he was just crying in the corner. He didn't make a movie. at all to help his friend. Oh, is that the guy that's, uh, you can see his legs dangling from the ceiling right now? Yeah, that's the one. That's the dude.

Uh, well, he, he got fired instead. You should, he should have tried that with Doug Armstrong. You're, I'm not fired, you're fired. Might have. Yeah. Um, all you need to know about this, this decision, I think, is it kind of came out of nowhere. It went from nobody's talking about this, kind of at all. We did a hot seat roundup a week or two ago, I feel like, and we didn't like go, oh, and of course, Craig Barubi's getting shit can next week for sure, you know?

And then, like, Drager on Tuesday afternoon was just like, oh, yeah, this is happening. Just you wait, and then they lost, and that was it. I believe they've lost four straight now. Yeah, they're not good. And I feel like. it happens sometimes that some news happens and then like all the takes feel unanimous and sometimes that holds up and sometimes it doesn't but it feels like absolutely everyone is like yeah this roster stinks and this is Doug Armstrong's fault not Craig Burubis's fault

yeah I was reading the uh the Jeremy Rutherford piece about this and I didn't I did not see this quote in October. Dog Armstrong, who when asked in October if this was a playoff team, replied quote, I'd love to get third place and he meant in the division. Cool man, loser think, see ya. You were dead in the

water. That's it. Yep. So. Specifically, the defense sucks and Jordan Kairu is shooting like 4% or something. Yeah. There's your two big problems. And the one thing is This has been happening, sorry, the blues thing is that this has been happening.

A little pun there for you. I got it. Yeah, that was good. This has been happening with like in the middle of like a, how many Jordan Biddington is back stories have you read this year? Yeah. So, I mean, this is one of those things we always say every time a coach gets fired. We're like, yeah, this, he should have told his goalie to be good. And instead he should have told his best forward to be good.

Yeah. He actually had a good goal. goalie, which, well, he had a better than expected goalie. He had a goalie who wasn't. Bittington's 907. Yeah. Now, the backup's 893, that's not helping. No.

So, yeah, I mean, tough one. Obviously, Rubet won the only cup in franchise history. He'll almost certainly coach again somewhere. Yeah. I don't know how high he moves up the league. list of available coaches. And obviously we don't know if he has any desire to coach imminently. But let's just say I own a Craig Barubei Toronto Maple Leafs jersey and

Dusted it off. Might be dusted off at some point soon. Yeah. Leaves pick up a big win last night, though. I don't know, man. They're all set. Just crush the Rangers. They fucking killed them.

Yep. Rangers in a little bit of trouble all of a sudden. Yeah. I've given up a lot of goals lately. Now, see, if I was a good coach, I would be saying to the goalie. Hey, aren't you one of the best in the world? Why don't you fucking try stopping a puck, big dog? Yeah.

What do you say? Good call. But anyway, yeah, like, I can't have a lot of Craig Barubi thoughts here other than if everybody is saying the roster's the problem, this is very obviously the GM going, well, I got to do something before I also get fired here. Yeah, I mean, this is a card to play. And look, they were very bad five years ago and fired their coach midseason, hired Craig Barrube, and then things went well.

Yeah, Craig Barrube had the bright idea to tell Jordan Binnington B930 for a while. It would be a huge favor. Jordan Bennington hadn't even arrived yet at that point. No, he was an HL call-up. Yeah. So, you know, you can understand them playing this card. And look, Craig Ruby's been near the top of the hot seat list for, I feel like, two years now. Yeah, but again, like, it kind of came out of nowhere, like, in the last 24 hours, though.

Like, you didn't hear very much about it at all. And I think part of that is, you know, they do a good job in St. Louis of being buddy, buddy with a lot of the insider types. Mm-hmm. Let's say. But, yeah, like, it felt like something was going to happen. just because the blues have been kind of shitty the last couple of years. Yeah. And that's not the, you know, that's not how you want to be in year three or four after winning a Stanley Cup.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Like, I'm being serious. When's the last time a team, like, went from, we won a Stanley Cup, we have some good, young-ish players, we have a good core to, we have a kind of, dog shit team and we're firing the coach in five years. It's very rare that it happens as quickly as it did. I mean, yeah. Well, I mean, the capitals have been in that situation as well.

Yeah, but I mean, they let that coach go immediately and that kind of felt like that coach was doing a lot of the heavy lifting for those guys. But even, I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, they've switched again since, but you're right, it wasn't. Right. That was sort of a weird. Well, that and also, like, they had a much, I feel like they had a much older team. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but my, my feeling about them is that Capitals team was the kind of at the end of something.

Like, they weren't open. They were squeezing, they were doing the Indiana Jones slide, reach back, grab the hat as the window was closing. Sure. You know? Whereas it felt like maybe with this Blues team, they were, they were cracking open a window that just like straight up didn't exist. They installed a window. and opened it. And then, you know, it didn't exist before Barubi showed up, basically.

And then they were like, oh, yeah, we won a Stanley Cup off that. Yeah. And it's interesting. I just looked at the last hot seat odds that I got was yesterday. I got them yesterday. I got them yesterday. Have you gone back and looked at them? They had Craig Barrubee.

Sixth on the list. at 14 to 1. That's what I mean. Like, this came out of kind of nowhere. 12 hours before he got fired. So, yeah, I don't know, man.

I hope if Dregor headed, hopefully, hopefully some people took him seriously because he was behind DJ Smith, Lane Lambert, Mike Sullivan, Don Granato,

and David Quinn. Yeah. It's interesting. If I remember, right, DJ Smith was one to one. One to one, yeah. In other words, 50-50.

Yeah. That's tough. man. That's really, that's really rough. New guy, I don't know. Like, he's the coach from Springfield in the H.L. His name is Drew Bannister. Yep.

If I'm remembering right, his first year, they went to a Calder Cup final. And I think they got waxed by Chicago, maybe. I don't remember now. But his first year, they went to a Calder Cup final. So, you know, in theory, this is a guy who can, ring a lot out of out of a roster and that kind of thing. But, you know, you look at it.

And especially, like I said, especially this defense, I think it's safe to say Tori Krug is by far their best defensemen. Yep. And, like, you look, I'm just looking at who their defensemen are.

Tori Krug, Colton Perrako, washed. Marco Scandella, a perfectly okay defenseman. I guess. Nick Letty, terrible decision on day one and Justin Falk. And then, like, they're switching between Tyler Tucker and Scott Perunovich as their sixth defenseman. Both of them are kind of okay only.

Yeah. I wouldn't even. Perunovic has been bad this year, I would say. But Tucker, I mean, who knows what he is. You know, he's young. Yeah. A lot of work to do. And I guess we should.

point out that Bannister comes in with the interim tag. Yeah. Unlike, you know, Chris Knoblock when he came in, Edmonton, this is... Manister should have thought of being like Jordan Thomas's agent. Then he'd get the gig for sure, yeah. So this, and I think, you know, not an, like there's kind of two types of interim tags, right?

There's the, we're just going to make the assistant coach the interim coach for like three games while we work on bringing in someone else. And then there's the kind of like audition for the job. Yeah. And this pretty clearly feels like the latter. Totally, yeah. Because typically you don't move a guy up from the HL to just hold the job for a couple of weeks. So you'll get first crack at it, but not a commitment from Armstrong and the Blues that he's the guy going

forward. For sure. I guess the other bit of blues news is the whole Yakovrana thing that's been going on. I don't know if you were tracking this at all this week. But he also is shooting like 5%. He's not playing very many minutes. He's a one-dimensional player and the one-dimension is shooting the puck. And when the puck doesn't go in for a guy who that's his whole thing, that's a problem, right?

And so they were like, okay, we're going to put them on waivers. And then apparently they got some calls and they were like, never mind. And then the next day they put them on waivers. Yeah. So it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of solutions there. Yeah, I mean, that's a situation where a guy's had a few chances now. Yep. Totally.

You're not part of the solution in a situation like that. Again, if you really only have one skill and you're not doing that, It's really easy for a coach or an organization to be like, yeah, we're all set done. Thank you, though. It's that simple. While we're on the subject of the hot seat, let's just hit the round up real quick.

Mike Sullivan got a vote of confidence from Kyle Dubus. Basically, if I'm remembering the wording right, it's like I think Sully's the guy to get us out of this, basically. Yeah, and also reportedly, has a very expensive contract extension in place that was signed by previous management, but for a couple of years. So that would give you some security. So, I mean, that, that would seem to move him down the list. And, well, I mean, Kyle Dubas is, you know, he doesn't have a ton of experience as a GM, but, you know, he's, he has not been, it's not like

with Mike Babcock, he was giving votes of confidence three days before and then right, and then firing him. So Sullivan's probably okay for a little while, even though just based on what's happening with the team, you would kind of think that that might be a card to play. Yeah. Hey, they won last night. They scored a power play goal. So no problem. All set. Everything's next. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, it's funny. I guess the one thing we didn't do, and this is a stat that everybody was bringing up because of what happened last night. I believe because of last night's game,

the Blues have now scored more shorthanded goals than power play goals this year. It's wild. Absolutely crazy. But anyway, yeah, you know, it's one of those things. Yeah, the Penguins had two power play goals last night. They have, yes, the Blues have eight short-handed goals and seven power play goals.

Pretty good. And they have three short-handed goals against, which means they're getting. getting 70% of the goals while they're on the power play. That's a rough one. Not fantastic. Nope, not at all. But yeah, the Penguins had two power play goals last night.

They snapped a four-game losing streak. They're back. They're back, baby. Yeah, no problem. Mike Sullivan was waiting until he got that vote of confidence to tell the power play to start scoring. Why do you guys get out there, put the puck in the net? They were like, can do, coach. No problem.

Why didn't you say so earlier? Know what their powerplay is running at right now, by the way? Have they gotten up to 10% now? Yeah, they're up to 11.4. Oh, well, I mean. All set, no problem. It's really, but with them, it really is as simple as if the power play is scoring, it doesn't have to be two goals in a game, certainly.

But if the power play is scoring at anything resembling a league average rate, they're going to be totally fine. Mm-hmm. Of course, they are still 500. So, and that's NHL 500. That's not even, you know, real 500. But, yep, you know, penguins, they have a good roster. So I'm not going to say they're capable of doing what the oilers are doing right now,

or it's just like not only are they winning eight games in a row, they're winning every game like six to two or whatever. But, you know, they have it in their power. to run down the mighty Washington capitals. You think they can catch the flyers? I think they can catch the flyers for sure, yeah. Yeah. The standings are still so funny, man. There are teams that have played 30 games in Ottawa's at 23.

What the fuck is going on, man? I mean, we talked about it last week, but it's still crazy. Anyway, yeah, speaking of Ottawa, but it feels like the clock's ticking on old DJ Smith, huh? Has been all season, but they've been pretty clear that they don't, they don't want to make a change because they want stability. But stability for them has been hovering around 500 all year long.

Below 500, I think. Last night was another chance to get over 500. I think they've had a few. Yeah, that's what I mean. When's the last time they were over 500? It has been a while. I think they started three and one or something. They did.

And then they immediately dropped a four and three, and I don't think they've been over 500 since. So another loss last night and another loss in regulation as all their losses have been, which is not great. Again, weirdly behind everyone else in games played. So never as bad as when you look at the standings and you're like, God, they're dead last in the division or whatever. They don't look that bad.

But I think, you know, it's going to be interesting because especially if you see what happens in St. Louis, like, we've seen three coaching changes now. The Oilers have flipped the switch. The Wild at least had a few wins early on. They sure did, yeah. Five of seven. We'll see what happens with the Blues. But if the Blues get off to any sort of decent start under Bannister, I mean, what, what, do you do if you're this new senator's ownership slash management and you're going, well, we

want stability and the fans are like, yeah, stability is we don't get to see meaningful hockey in January again. And all these other teams are at least getting short-term boosts out of making changes. So I don't know. To me, I just look at this team. And, you know, the thing that I was really laughing about was when I was doing what we learned on Sunday. Every article was like that was the best second period

we had all season. We suck in the second period. That second period was incredible. Whoa. Oh my God. We beat the brakes off Detroit in the second period. And then the quotes last night. That was the worst second period we had all season. Yeah.

That's not good, man. No. Like, if you're living and dying with like all we need is a good second period and you can't fucking put it together for more than one game like i don't know what else to say to you man you're a bad team that like the coach has no answers here and by the way the last time they were eight and seven as of a shootout win on november 18th so that's the last time they were above 500 um but yeah the you look you just watch this team and you're like, they don't have any answers here. Again, like when you're entering like the whole season going, well, look, it's just a matter of time till the coach gets fired.

Just fire the fucking coach then. Yeah. Do it or don't, like shit or get off the pot. And look, if I'm a sense fan too, I'm sitting there going, there are now three coaches on the market with reasonable success. track records that were not available in the offseason, right? Woodcroft Evans and Barube obviously. Yep. And yeah, I mean, and we got this new owner who says he's got money to spend.

So, I mean, maybe we don't always have to have the cheapest coach in the league. I don't know. I mean, you've seen it in Ottawa, right? They're chanting fire DJ at most home games. So I guess we'll see. Now, apparently, I mentioned it before. I think Elliot Freeman has been the one who's said it a few times that there were some meetings with players when the new management came in and the players are saying there's it's too much distraction, there's too many things changing. You know, we just want to have some stability for a while.

But I don't know, man. At some point I'm kind of going, like, is this okay with like the players who would rather go 500 with stability than? Have changed? I don't know, man. Yeah, it's really tough because they're wasting, like, important seasons. You know, Tim Stutzel's the guy we talked about a lot this summer, and he's having another good year, maybe, you know, not as good as, as he did last year. But he's having another good season.

Tim Stutzel is 23 years old already. Can you fucking believe that? Yeah. That's crazy to me, man. Or no, I'm sorry, 22. 22. He's good. Yeah, he's a good player.

Yeah, he's a very good player. He's a very good player. He's a very good player. Yeah, but like how Brady Kachuk's 24, Drake Batherson's 25. At some point, all these young guys that you're, that are like going to, the rising tide lifts all boats. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like what they are. They are what they are.

I mean, still in their peak. Well, I'm just saying, like, how much longer can you go like, well, I mean, the future? Yeah. If you look at the future, though. We got Judas Corpicello. Oh, awesome. Great shit, man. Vladimir Tarasenko, he's had six goals.

He's supposed to be excited about this. He's been having a bit of a, bit of a rough time. What's Dominic Kubolik up to? I haven't even heard his name in like a month. Kubelik. Has he? No. He has one goal, but...

Yeah. Is that it? No, he has five goals, one assist. Okay. There you go. Six big points and a minus 10 for the big man. Yeah. It's rough, man.

Chikrin hasn't been like the huge difference maker they need him to be. Like, again, he's been good, but like, you know, they gave up a lot to get... Look, I think they're better off having him, but you know what I mean? It's just... They are, they got rid of the GM. Whoever they make the full-time GM is going to make changes and it's probably going to start with the coach. Just rip the Band-Aid off, man. Mm-hmm.

Like, I'm not, I'm not advocating for DJ Smith to get fired, but it just feels like such a, like an eventuality, right? Like a foregone conclusion that this is happening. I, I just can't watch another TSN broadcast where they're like, you know, if they, if they can, uh, If they can put together two consecutive good periods, they could maybe get back to 500. Who cares? 500? This is what we're talking about. This scene was supposed to be in the playoff conversation.

Now we're like, look, a couple things go their way. They could have the same record as the extremely disappointing Pittsburgh Penguins. Awesome. I don't know what we're doing here, man. Stability. Stability. That's what it's all about. here's some instability for you and then we'll take a break after this.

The capitals are probably moving to the suburbs, seems like. Now that's like how, I'm not real good with my U.S. geography. How far a move is that? It's a crossing river. It's one of those things where it's like, you know, eight or nine miles, but it might as, but it might as well be 25,000. You know, like, the way in D.C. people are talking about it, like people that I follow who live in D.C., not just Capitals fans, but like Wizards fans are just like, move them to the fucking moon then. Who gives a shit? Like, apparently driving there is a nightmare. Like, getting, taking public transit out there is similarly nightmarish. It's just the thing of like someone told a billionaire they could have whatever it is, like, $2 billion worth of free construction.

I haven't looked at the framework of the deal, I think is what they said. I just haven't seen the details come across my feed here. So I don't know what they are, but like, you know, it's free money for a billionaire, basically. It's about time. They love that shit. out of break. So, I don't know. I mean, don't, don't give free money to billionaires, but also we know the deal. Well, so this is the other thing is the deal like, what do you want to say, gets kind of teased, like, hey.

Very sad for those capital fans who will now get to see Alex Androvich. Well, when will they get the new arena, I guess, would be the question. 2028, I think they said. Okay, well, at his current rate, that's about when Ovechkin will break the goals record. Pretty, pretty kind old Alex Ovechkin at this point. No, so this deal gets announced and, or again, teased last night, like, join us tomorrow for a very special announcement. Everybody knows what it means. And the DC, like, I think it's the city council, is like, here's $500 million to fix up

Capital One. Here it is. You can have it. And so, you know, I don't, I don't want to get too much into the Shoahe Otani thing. I don't want to hurt my friend Sean's feelings. But like, is this a stalking horse? I don't know. Like, did Leonces do all this or the Capitals, monument sports, whatever they're fucking called? Did they do all this to just get 500, million dollars out of the city. It's possible. I don't know. I don't know enough about D.C. local politics, I guess. But yeah. The, the speed with which they rushed out this money kind of implies that they think that'll fix it, I would say. Mm-hmm. But I don't know. Or was it something that was already in progress and they rushed to know. And they're a sort of say, like to sort of cut off the, the ability of the only instance to sit there. this morning and say, oh, well, you know, they didn't give us what we wanted. They didn't do this or that. Like, is it just a PR thing? I guess we'll find out. We'll find out.

But like I said, the reaction from all the DC sports fans I know or follow or whatever, we're all just like, well, this sucks. This is bad. So, yeah. What else can you say? Why don't we take a quick break? We'll be right back. If you're a long time listener to Puck Soup, you know that I've been a fan of AG1 for a while now. AG1 is a foundational nutrition supplement, supports your body's universal needs like gut optimization, stress management, and immunity support.

Not to mention a little bit of that energy boost that I'm guessing we could all probably use right around this time of year. Since 2010, AG1 has led the future of foundational nutrition. They've been continuously refining their formula over that time, creating smarter, better ways to elevate your baseline health. And you know my story by now. I want to be healthy. I want to do the right things for my body. I want to do the right things for my energy level. But I also know myself and I know I'm not going to do some big complicated routine.

I'm not going to be picking and choosing a whole bunch of different supplements and taking this on this day and that on that day and a couple of hours apart and timing everything out. No way. Not going to happen. Too complicated. So many of the systems that are out there, just way too complicated. Not AG1. It's one scoop of powder once a day at any point in the day you choose. Nice and simple. It's something that we can all do, we can all stick to. And it got lots of great health right in there. It can replace your entire multivitamin system, whatever it is that you're doing right now, or maybe not doing because you don't feel like you can stick with it.

AG1 solves that problem for you. AG1 is a supplement I trust to provide the support my body needs daily. That's why they've been a partner of this show for so long. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash puck. That's drinkag1.com slash puck and check it up.

This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Bespoke Post. And folks, this holiday season, don't just treat yourself to a one-time gift. Instead, you can give a gift that keeps giving all year long with a box of awesome subscription from Bespoke Post. Every month, the Box of Awesome is filled with carefully chosen gear from the best small brands around the world. This month, I got what they call the Scorch Box. Hey, you know me. I'm a guy. I like spicy food.

So this was good because it's hot sauces that are from small brands all over the country, including from Texas, Nevada, California, you know, go down the list. There's all kinds of good stuff in here. And they keep sending me the boxes. I haven't been disappointed with anything I've received yet. And there's great news for all you deal chasers out there because Bespoke Post is offering tons of discounts throughout the holiday season. So there's never been a better time to sign up.

to find what you're looking for to get started, you take the quiz at boxofawson.com, and your answers will help them pick the right box for you. They release new boxes every month across a ton of different categories. Each box is valued at around $70, but you pay a fraction of that. Plus, with each box of Awesome, you're supporting a small business, 90% of everything that comes into that box is from a small up-and-coming brand.

And the great news is it's free to sign up. You can skip a month. You can cancel anytime you want no problem. So here's what you're going to want to do. Get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at boxofofossom.com and enter code puck 20 at checkout. That's boxofossom.com code puck 20 for 20% off your first box. Box of Awesome.com code puck 20. All right, we're back.

And, well, let's just get into the other big piece of news that came out last night. The NHL is changing its All-Star Skills. format again, but this time there's like a financial incentive to be good at it. With the help of a young man, you might have heard of him. He plays for the Edmonton Oilers. His name's Connor McDavid. They have revamped the NHL All-Star Skills Challenge or competition or whatever you want to call it to be kind of like a, what's the word for a decathlon, but it's only eight events. Octathalon.

I believe that would be an octathlon. It's an octathlon where 12 players will compete in a bunch of different events. And at the end of it, whoever has the most points

by finishing top five in their various challenges wins a million dollars. That's crazy. They give the like the All-Star Game MVP. They give like a Honda Odyssey and this guy this guy's they're cutting them a check with two commas in it.

Yeah. That's bananas, man. It's a good, that's a good chunk of money. It's, that's, I saw people going, oh, I mean, the 12 players, like, those are the guys that a million dollars doesn't matter to. I don't know, man. If, like, I'm, if I'm making like eight million dollars and they're like, do you want an extra million on top of that?

That sounds pretty fucking good to me. Yep. Like, if you made $80,000 a year and someone was like, do you want $10,000? You're not going to be like, no. That actually does. That's an insignificant amount of money to me. No thank you.

So, and plus, I'm sure there will be, I mean, you know, somebody's going to come along and ruin it and be like, I give this to charity. And then every other player is going to be like, oh, yeah, me too, sure. Yeah. I was going to spend it all tonight. I was going to buy a vacation home with this. But I guess I'll go fuck myself instead. I'll just hand it over to the ASPCA or something. Fine.

Yeah. It's, uh, so what do you think of the changes? Uh, okay, so the, there are six events that kind of count in the standings of this, I think? Or,

well, no, okay, let me, let me rephrase that. The rules on this are a little confusing, so I apologize. You get to pick,

four of the following six that you will compete in. The fastest skater, the hardest shot, stick handling one-timers, passing challenge, and shooting accuracy. And then the top eight advanced to the Honda NHL shootout. And here's what that means. That is eight players line up on the blue line, eight goalies line up on the other blue line,

and each player picks the goalie he wants to go up against. and then I don't really understand what that, like, then it's just like a shootout competition, I guess. I would assume so. I mean, that is a cool idea, the idea that you're drafting your goalie. Yeah. Now, will that be ruined by somebody drafting their teammate and then everybody, like, assuming that the fix is in and the guy just goes five whole, eight times?

in a row. Sure, but it's, uh, okay. So, so they have, so there's the six events and you competed in four of them. So we're talking like eight, eight contestants per event probably. Right. I mean, I'm going to be honest. I like the idea that it's only 12 guys. Obviously that, you know, the, the, the problem, you know, quote unquote with that is it's like, you get to the event and it's like, oh, there's no Rangers, there's no kings, there's no, you you know, this sea, you know, the Leafs probably have three guys in it. And so, you know, there's nobody else on these other teams. But you get like the 12 guys that actually want to be there.

Yeah. This is. I didn't go ahead. Sorry. I didn't say the last thing. There's one more event after the shootout. So two guys get eliminated, like the bottom two guys get eliminated from the shootout event. And then they end it with the Pepsi NHL obstacle course, an event that.

includes all the skills and is worth double the point. So whoever wins that is probably going to have a really good chance to win the whole fucking thing. So I feel like that's going to be the car crash. Yes. I feel like that will be the event that sucks. But I got to say for the most part, I'm pretty good with this. Because part of what stinks about All-Star Weekend, more so the game, but also the skills is the guys who just clearly don't want to be there. And like at the skills competition, there's so many guys on the ice just milling around.

And then like, it's like, oh, I'm supposed to do a hard shot. All right. And the guy just wanders over and clearly doesn't really care. You know, if we can find 12 guys out of, you know, what is it, 44 All-Stars to actually do this and care a little bit or at least act like they care. Yeah. I think that's better. I think it's going to be easier to follow. It's now like an individual competition instead of like.

Get out there and cheer for the central division. I don't care about the central division. I don't like my team. I don't like the other teams in the division. So instead, it's kind of an individual thing. Yeah. We're always saying the NHL should be trying some new things. Totally.

I kind of like this. You know, is it going to get a little confusing with the points and all that? Maybe, but that's what's what's the score for. By the way, the selection process on who the players are, the league will select eight of them with input from the Players Association and a nod to the Toronto Maple Leaf. So I think that to me implies Marner and Matthews. Yeah. And Nealander and.

Right. Everybody else. And then the fans select the other four. Okay. Which will be very funny when the fans like voted Alexander Ovechkin and he's like, please, I'm begging you. The fastest skater, like, he gets. See, that's the other thing. I don't, it is not clear to me if the players get to pick the two events they sit out.

Yeah. Or what? I mean, you're going to have to, assuming that you want even like eight people per event, if I'm doing the math right. Right. Then there's going to have to be some level of like, but yes, I'm imagining that if you're, I'm trying to think of someone who's an all star, but it is like, if Joe Pavelski is like, guys, don't put me. I want to see Mitch Marner in the hardest shot. 76 miles an hour. Just doing slap passes to

Austin Matthews. Well, his sour dad. Did you see that? Did you see that little minor leaf controversy? No, I didn't. What happened? So, um... Wait, something happened with Mitch Marner's dad and it's news.

That's crazy. Yeah, it's wild. Like when John Tavares got his thousandth point and there was that shot, you probably saw it of John Tavares' dad, because it's the dad's trip for the Leafs, like reacting and celebrating when, you know, it's, after. They tied the score with six seconds left against the islanders, crowds booing, all that stuff. And, you know, the dad is like jumping up and down. Next to him is Mitch Marner's dad just looking as dower and miserable.

And because there's a history there, a lot of people were like reading into that, oh, he's not happy because, you know, Mitch didn't get a point on it and all of this. And who know, he might have just been, you know, I don't know, maybe his beer had gotten warm or something. but it became a thing for Lee fans to get Mitch Marner's dad trending. So yeah, maybe that'll be part of it. Yeah, I think this is cool. This is bad news for... I think it's cool in theory.

We'll see an actual practice. I do worry about what if Coyote's fans don't get to see their favorite guy on there. Yeah. Gosh. Oh, no. We're never going to see Roman Yossi in the skills competition again. Oh. How sad.

And it will be annoying that there'll be like three leaves out of the 12, but they'll do that every year. They always do this, right? Like every, the All-Star game becomes like this local thing. And so you can't really do anything about that. But it'll be interesting to see. Be interesting to see if they. you know, how much the how tough the competition gets.

And it's a million dollars, I mean. Yeah, like, it's not nothing. Especially if it, like, comes down to, like, you know, some pylon being out of place or something or somebody like, you know, when they're always doing the fastest skater and they always, like, cut the corners, but nobody really cares. Like, who's going to be the guy who's going to complain? Go to replay review on when Matthew Kachuk, like,

challenges Mitch Marner's, fastest skater win. And they go to an 18 minute review to show that, yeah, Mitch did go around the pile on. To me, that would be cool. That would be fun. It is tragic that we are going to miss out

on the awesome, locally inspired events. We're not going to have to shoot out a deck of cards or shoot the puck in the... I don't know what it would be in Toronto. Shoot the puck into a $4 million dollar bachelor apartment. I don't know, see if you can outskate a broken down subway train. I'm not sure what else you would do. Get on a private plane and circle around.

You know, I feel like we're really going to miss out on the Befriend Drake competition. Skate as hard as you can down the end of the ice, body check an opponent and then say surrey to him. How many tragically hip songs can you? name. Sydney Crosby's like, ah, crap. I would say everybody in Canada under the age of 40 is like, ah, crap. But what do I know? We were having fun. We were having a good time, doing a little bit, and you got to...

Tell me when I'm telling lies, folks, you know? I'm glad Craig Brube is going to whip your ass. You want to talk about all the hits from behind this week? There were a few. There were a lot, yeah, man. We're called. haphazardly, would that be a fair way to put it? Yeah, yeah, no, what you love to see is the consistency.

You know what I mean? Like, a hit from behind is going to be called a hit from behind or boarding or something like that every single time, right? Well, I have news for it. In theory, this is like the easiest call to make in the entire league. In actual, again, in actual practice, it doesn't work out like that at all. It's crazy. And so we had You have Van der Kaine

Yeah Against Minnesota No penalty On that play You have Eric Robinson Was it on Buffalo I believe that's right

Against Montreal He gets Five in a game Yes Which leads to Kyle Ok Pozo saying like how come you know, that was the same as the Evander King hit, et cetera, et cetera. And now that, that doesn't, that argument doesn't hold water with me of like, oh, this one guy got away with it.

He should too. Well, it's, I mean, it's absolutely, it was just interesting because to point out the discrepancy is completely fair, but it's usually like the other way around. Usually it's like, hey, that, you would be somebody on the team that got, got hit saying like, that should have been five. It was five the other night. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, not inconsistent. And then you have Eric Goodbranson gets hit by Nick Cousins. And now, was that the way? They reviewed that, right?

Yes. They called it five to trigger the review. They review it. They give him two. They give him two, correct. And then Good Branson says, you know what? I don't think that's enough. I'm going to give him six.

where it is punches to the head. And yeah, a bit of a take matters into your own hand sort of situation. Yep. I'm sure that there's like a referee out there who could explain why those hits are actually different. And, you know, they're not all the same. But yeah, it certainly is a, I don't know. It wasn't a good look one way or another. Did you see, speaking of officiating, did you see all the stuff from the NBA last night?

No, I heard that, well, I saw, I saw one guy, like, threw a punch. Okay, yeah, that's not the one I'm talking about. There were two other egregious, like, they called the technical for, uh, for a guy for hanging on the rim, and he, like, very barely hung on the rim. And, you know, a lot, a lot of, uh, shots from around the arena of people just going like, what the fuck? And then a little while later, I think I'm getting the, I think I'm getting the order right on this. But then a little while later, Nicola Yokic, like arguably the best player in the world, gets fouled, says to the ref, call the fucking foul. They kick him out of the game. And this is a road game.

The entire arena starts booing. Oh, wow. Because it was just a ref, like, you know, being like, well, you know. The game's more important than me Or I'm more important than the game or whatever Rough show It was It was crazy

Like even And like the the home broadcast It was a Bulls game So the Bulls broadcast is like Come on man Are you serious? It's a huge advantage to the Bulls For Yokic to get thrown out of a game

And everybody's just like This is bullshit Can you imagine if The NHL like throughout, ejected every player who swore the ref. You're playing 1v1 by the end of that game. Yep, yep. And it's only like, only the players who don't speak English are the only ones.

Right, yeah. It's like, we've been saying the absolute worst thing is the ref, but the ref doesn't under the refs. Like, yes, that's, sure. Sure thing, buddy. Anyway, it's a, it's a weird league in both, in both situations. NHL and the NBA. They just won't admit that there's a problem with the officiating. We did a bonus episode yesterday where we watched old hockey videos that I hadn't seen before.

And there's one where, who was it, a guy on Winnipeg or something? Like just grabs the puck behind the net, carries it and throws it into the net in overtime? Yeah. Yeah. Was it Winnipeg? Was I read about that? Yep. Yeah. And there's a quote from Jeremy Ronek after the game that Sean read for me where he's like, maybe the ref should go on strike.

We get some good fucking officiating around here for once. Really good, really good quote from your old buddy J.R. there. My pal. But yeah, that's what springs to mind when I see stuff like this, where it's just like, again, this is the, hitting from behind, ought to be the most obvious call. not only because you see a guy get hit in the numbers, your hand goes up, that's that simple, but because it's such a potentially injurious play, right, that like a ref should just air on the side of like, oh, my hand should go up and not the other way around.

To me, like, to, especially to look at it and go from five to two is crazy. Yeah. But that's, I mean, because they can only review the majors, they call it a major, even if they think it's two, the inclination will be to call a major, then you review it and change it to two, versus call it two and then realize, ah, you know what, we should have had another look at it.

Right. Yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's a little disingenuous because whenever people start talking about consistency and refereeing, what they mean is I want the calls to consistently go my team's way. Of course. Whether you're a fan or Kyle Ocho or like some media play-by-play guy. Yep, sure. It's, it was the fact that there were three fairly prominent incidents within a few days.

Definitely didn't look great. Yeah, and now they're going to be like, we're actually really going to focus in on this. Like, okay, man, cool. Yeah, and all the people complaining will be, because that's the other thing, right? Like consistency is how you complain when your team gets called for an obvious penalty, right? Like Okposa. Yeah. It's, you know, like what's going to happen is tonight some team, there's going to be a hit from behind that everyone's been talking about should be five minutes.

It's going to get called five minutes, and that fan base will then complain because of lack of consistency. Yep. They'll be like, yeah, I mean, he did telescope the guys. spinal column, but I didn't call it that in the in the Predators Wild game

two weeks ago. All right, man. I guess the one last thing while we're talking about officiating and supplemental discipline and all this kind of stuff, Dave Faron gets six games for going after Artem Zub

due to the whole Dylan Larkin thing. That Dylan Larkin play was crazy, by the way. So what were your thoughts on that? I guess what I would say is the stuff that led to Narutlarkin getting knocked out on the ice, I don't like seeing that in sport, you know? But I do kind of accept that that

that's a really bad outcome on a thing we see 500 times a game. Yeah. You know? I don't see I had the interesting perspective of I was out with the family at a we were having dinner when that happened. So I had it in front of me on a big screen seeing replay after replay, but I didn't hear like any of the commentary or anything. So I'm not sure how it was how it was described or that sort of thing. But I didn't like it from Matthew Joseph.

The fact that he, to me, he, you know, yes in the heat of the moment, yes, like not premeditated or anything, but he did pick the head on a guy. Mm-hmm, totally. And it was, you're right, like, we see that a lot. And it never results in something like this, like is scary looking at injury. Right. But there's a part of me that's like, if you're going to pick the head, you are responsible for the results. And if, in picking the head, you, obviously, you knock somebody down and into an oncoming player.

And it just, through a fluke of physics, you get hit in exactly the way that causes an injury. I, you know, to me, that's, yeah, I'm, I'm a little bit surprised that more wasn't made out of that. You know, he got two minutes. I think, I think he, that was another case where they gave him five and then reviewed it and changed it to two. Yeah. Um, no suspension, no fine, no nothing like that, which, I mean, I, I kind of get in a way that you have to say it's either, it's either clean or it's not. And if it's not, then it's got. It's got. got to be something significant, and if it is, then you just let it go. But I was, I didn't, I didn't love that play.

Now, that haven't been said, what David Perron did, that has to be a big suspension. Like it, I don't, I don't at all buy this argument that there's, there's any, in any way that that was too harsh a penalty. Like, it was, the plays over, it was, you know, he takes three steps. and very clearly in retaliation. And yeah, I mean, he sees his teammate down on the ice. I know that's, you know, that's what he's responding to. But he is responding to that.

This is not run of play remotely. This is, it plays over. I see a guy standing over my teammate. Presumably he thought that Zub had been the guy who had delivered the hit or done whatever. Right. And I'm going to attempt to injure this guy by cross-checking him right in the neck. That's got to be a significance. suspension. And I know...

Has to be. There's like, you know, Alan Walsh, Pran's agent had like a little mini Twitter rant where he pointed out that, you know, Prawn's never been suspended and this and that. But... And again, appealing to consistency, saying there have been other crosschecks that didn't get six games. But this one was really bad.

Blatent. I don't know if you saw on the Wings game last night. they, it was the ESPN. And Emily Kaplan was saying that, and I don't know if this was opinion or if this was a reporting, but, but, or maybe a mix of both, but, you know, she said that she pointed out that as a lot of, as both Alan Walsh and a lot of Winks fans pointed out, like Zubb was not hurt. He didn't, you know, he played, you know, he continued to play and everything. But she was like, if he had been hurt, it might have been 20 or 30 games.

Oh, sure. Yeah. bad. And I don't, I mean, to me, we, we just, we don't see 20 or 30 games suspensions in the NHL for first time offenses on, on things. But it was very bad. I don't, I think this is, this is not the one that Red Wings want to go to the, go to the mattress on because it's, uh, it, this, it was really very bad. Yeah, no, I, I, I couldn't believe it was only six games.

Let's put it that way. Well, just so premeditated. And I get the thing about like, about like he has a, he's never been suspended before, blah, blah, blah. Like he's not a repeat offender. Okay, man. But like, that was, that was a crazy decision by him.

And it was, again, like it's obviously, like premeditated, not in the sense of, you know, you're coming over the board saying, I'm going to hunt this guy down and get him. But in the moment, You see your guy is hurt, and you go, I'm going to hurt a guy on their team. Yeah. And so it is absolutely intent to injury.

You got a match penalty. That's what the match penalty is for. And, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm not, I won't say I'm surprised it wasn't more. But because, I mean, if you look at the history of recent history in HL suspensions, I can't, I mean, how many guys have been suspended for six or six or more games. Oh, it didn't result in an injury, right? Yeah, no, it never happens. I totally, like I said, I understand, like, why it isn't more, but like, I'm just the optics

of it. I was just like, you got to throw the fucking book at this. But this Department of Player's Safety is just like, we don't do that, period. It was very weird, again, like watching the game, obviously I was watching the Hockey Night Canada broadcast. I don't know if it was like this in the States or. I was watching the Leafs game. I didn't see this.

It, it, they, they show, like, the incident happens. And obviously Larkin's hurt and it's, it's scary. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I, I meant last night. I was, where? Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I'm talking the, I can't remember the, the Saturday night game.

Right, right. They showed the replay of, like, Joseph on Larkin, like, ten different times. And, yeah, I mean, that's what the reps were reviewing and everything. And, you know, and then you see the refus come out and he goes, you know, blah, blah, and you start to see Paran. And only then did they show. a replay of the cross-check. And they showed it like once.

Right. And they were watching it and you're like, holy crap. Like that's what you should have been showing us over and over again. But they only showed it one time, I think, on the, at least in the original. So, yeah. Don't cross-check guys in the neck. I'd say that's a good rule of thumb. I would say a good way to go.

Now, you know, this is going to get appealed, or it is being appealed currently, I think. And as is his right on any suspension more than six or more. I think it's six or more, yeah. Which, like, I don't expect Betman will reduce the penalty. And if he does, you might do the thing of like, well, it took me exactly how long it took to play six games to, to reduce your suspension to four games. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing.

But six games is a long time, so I don't know if they can get away with that. No. But yeah. I mean, it's... Can't have that shit in sport now. It's almost certainly a...

Just a formality that that Benman will approve. Although I believe technically, can betmen not increase the suspension if he chooses? I think he can, but I don't remember. off the top of my head. That would be very funny if that's, if that is happened.

I can't, you know, now that I think about it, I can't imagine the process works that way. It would be sick if he could and did that in this case, just because, again, it was a wild-ass cross-check to be. But what, again, I, if I'm a Detroit fan, I'm not, the Peron suspension is not what I'm coming after. It's more Matthew Joseph, you know, taking a, you know, taking a, you know, kind of punch slash stick to the back of the head on a guy to oh by the way on that

did you see all the stuff about oh it's great news larkin went off under his own power i have never seen someone look more out on their feet yeah going off quote unquote under their own power like he was he was hanging there limp man yeah yeah yeah going going off under own power from a head injury is not anything to be excited. Like if a guy goes down holding his leg and then skates off, then that can be a good sign. But, uh, yeah,

I, like I get people don't want to be stretched off. It looked like the cover of weekend at Bernie's, man. Yeah. Like he was just limping their arms and they're like, oh, he's going off under his own power.

This is great. Yeah. I don't agree, man. No, that was, and it was weird, right? Because even, again,

having seen the replay eight times of the play, you're still not quite sure, like, how he wound up getting knocked out like that. But it was, that was very scary. Like, you see a guy face down with his arms kind of twisted around like that. It was, yeah, that was an ugly moment for sure. Yep. On that wonderful note, why don't we take a break? We'll be right back. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Nuts.com.

And folks, we all like to snack. Let's not kid ourselves, you know? We like candy. We like nuts. We like other salty. snacks, crunchy snacks, all that kind of thing. And you're thinking, yeah, I can go get all that at the grocery store. Well, I guess that's true.

You can do that. But what you can't do is get the variety of options they have at nuts.com. Take pecans, for example. You can get pecans at the grocery store, but can you get bourbon pecans, sweet and and spicy, pecan brittle, butter-toffee pecans? Come on, you can't do that at the store, and you know it. Don't lie to yourself. And it's not just that because they also have stuff.

stuff like almonds, cashews, pistachios, dried mango, crystallized ginger, dates, jelly beans, jawbreakers, root beer barrels. The variety is vast at nuts.com. And that's why nuts.com is your one-stop shop for freshly roasted nuts, dried fruit, sweets, pantries staples like specialty flowers and more. Their wide selection means there is something for everyone. And at nuts.com, quality is a top priority. I mentioned those roasted nuts. They roast the nuts and pop the popcorn the same day it ships. So it reaches you fresh satisfaction guaranteed. Now they sent me a few bags of their a variety of nut offerings.

Again, pecans, cashews, pistachios, all that stuff. It's gone. We went through it about as quickly as it came. So it's just one of those things where you're going to be fighting with the people in your home to get to the last of what's in the bag. You can shop all at cart at any time. You can opt into hassle-free auto delivery so you never run out of what you're looking for. the choices are endless.

So here's what you're going to want to do. Right now, nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at nuts.com slash puck. So go check out all the delicious options at nuts.com slash puck. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more. That's nuts.com slash puck. Our next partner is game time. We're all finishing up the holiday season shopping. And sometimes I've been known to give tickets as a gift.

My dad and I both love stand-up comedy every few years. If there's a big-name comedian, somebody that I know that we've watched and enjoyed together, come into town near where he's at, boom, there's your Christmas gift. Nice night out, go-watch comedian. it's nice to give somebody an experience instead of just an object that maybe they're gonna like or maybe not like so much. But anyone who's ever done that,

who's ever bought tickets for somebody as a gift or for whatever reason, you know that what you don't want to hear is have that moment where you call them up, oh, how was the show? Oh, you know, the show was great, performance was great. Yeah, yeah, how were the seats? And then you get that kind of pause

and you realize like they're about to tell you like, you know, They were okay, but maybe not quite what I was expecting. You shouldn't have to worry about stuff like that when you buy tickets to your next big event or to someone else's next big event. That's where game time comes in. Fast and easy way to buy tickets for all the sports, music, comedy, and theater events near you. And they've got killer last minute deals, all in prices, views from your seat, and the best price guarantee. So it takes all the guesswork out of buying tickets and takes all of the surprises.

out. You get to see that view of the seat before you buy. That means you know exactly what to expect when you arrive. And again, those all in prices, all the totals up front, none of this stuff where you hit a few buttons and you're feeling good and then you get to the end and suddenly the number is a lot bigger than you expected. In fact, number won't be that big at all because they've got a lowest price guarantee as well as event cancellation, job loss protection, etc. All sorts of good stuff. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with GameTime, download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code Poc for $20 off your first purchase.

Terms apply, again, create an account and redeem the code Pocq, for $20 off. Download GameTime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest prices guaranteed. All right, let's open up this final segment here talking about the Miko Rantaninan thing. Guy has a big game.

Yeah. And they're like, hey, what's that like? And he was like, well, it's to show one of the Finnish players' dads that he's full of shit or whatever. And it turns out Arturi Lekinen's father has been saying some what I believe Migo Rantin

and called bullshit about him in the Finnish media apparently saying like he doesn't train in the off-season or something. It's really hard to get a handle on exactly what was said but like... A lot of dad drama this week. Let's go. and then like afterwards clarified like

but everything's fine with me and my teammate whose dad I just ripped well I look I think you can hold both things in your hand at the same time you know you can be like dude get your dad to stop talking shit about me in the media but we're cool right you know yeah I guess

you know like if your dad started talking shit about me I'd be like now hold on a second you know but I wouldn't be mad at you for what was being said by someone else. I suppose not. Yeah. Although. Which is why I'm going to have my dad call Elliot Friedman tomorrow. Although, I mean, there is also kind of the question of how does his dad know this?

Where's his dad getting this information from? That's a good point. But yeah, that's obviously just funny. I don't know that it's, I guess it's something to keep an eye. eye on, let's say. But it's not a... Oh, and I don't... I mean, they'll be...

It was good. How many times do we say it a year, right? Like, you can't say these guys are boring and never say anything, and then... Yep. Criticize them when they say something. You 100% can do that, by the way. But in this case, it's good. He was fired up.

Hey, maybe the next time they're in a game seven, uh... All the players should have their dad. That's talk crap about Miko Ratinan. That's what I'm saying. He has a significantly higher level he can get to when he's... Yeah, Nathan McKinnon pulling him aside. You know, I heard, you know what I heard Kail McCar's dad say about you? Yeah.

I heard he said that you once ate some white sugar. Is that true? Had some... What was it white pasta? He was enabled. End of the game, they're like, they're like, he's like, oh, I blacked out there. What happened? They're like, you had 14 points tonight, big man.

Yeah. Anyway This was a crazy thing that I saw last night Again, I watched the Connor Bowl last night I did not watch anything else In the 10 o'clock hour Tuesday, buddy

But I did see on my Twitter timeline Jeff Baker, who I believe writes for the Seattle Times Am I right about this? I believe so. Yeah. He tweets, Bui must be signing autographs on the main concourse again with a photo of a shitload of empty seats in Seattle.

And then, a little while later, he tweets, like, what is ostensibly a photo of the scoreboard to indicate that the Cracken only have one shot on goal. But he gets a lot of empty seats in the shot, let's say. Yeah, he's got a lot. I'm just scrolling his feet. He's, yeah. He's just, he's not using the zoom on the,

yeah, on the old phone camera. First good chance of the scoreless game comes 17 minutes in. The ice takes up a relatively small portion of the photo, which instead includes a lot of empty seats. Then, cracking at 102.58 since their last score. almost five full regulation periods in one overtime session. This is taken during the intermission.

There's even more empty seats. Basically, every photo he took of the game last night, there's a lot more focus on how many seats are empty than what's like actually happening on the ice, including one that says crack and shooting percentage at 20% tonight. And you can see the play is going on in the photo. but it's in the offensive zone that is cut off in the photo. So you can just see like three guys skating toward the puck, which is not in the frame at all.

It seems, I don't want to... It's subtle, but... I don't want to, you know, put words in this guy's mouth, but I think he's taking some shots at the locals. Well, it is funny because they're... In his original tweet, there is a reply from a, Smoke salmon, not drugs, who says, is this a poor attendance tweet? Oh, he can't slip anything past that guy.

No, he really cracked the case. It was a sellout, listed as a sellout last night. Oh, was it really? I didn't know that. I'm looking at it, 17,151 is at least what works. So that says to me a lot of people were like, you know, I spent like 80 bucks on these tickets or whatever. I'm not fucking going. Yeah, I want to go see the Florida Panthers.

I mean, look, the Cracken are bad. They have been quite bad. So, um... Now, I read an article out of the Seattle area over the weekend. Oh, good. Where, uh, they were talking to, I think, a guy who was covering one of their games for, like, who's going to be the play-by-play for one of their national games this week. And he's like, uh, now look, how much of this is just the fact that they're not shooting like 14% this

Some of it, but also, and it's like, no, let me stop you right there, Big Dog. There's more than some of it. Almost all of their success last season was because they had, I don't remember now, the fourth highest shooting percentage since 2007-08. Almost all of their success was because of that. And now they're not getting that success, and the team looks really bad. Yeah, this is, I think I told everybody to keep an eye on this this summer, like 50, times.

It was roughly, yes. Yeah. And so, like, you know, he, he, Jeff Baker's tweeting out, crack and shooting percentage at 20% tonight, about five times better than it's been the last five games. Yeah, you got like, whatever, 70 games of, of 20% shooting last year. This is what happens. You ask, you know, the Toronto Maple Leafs of the, the lockout shortened season. Right?

Like, didn't they have like an extremely high shooting percentage? Yes, they did. And that convinced a bunch of dumb people. Well, look. Now, I'm not saying everybody, they haven't seen enough hockey to really understand all this PDO stuff, I would say, as a general populace. But if you didn't see this coming a mile away, you know. And I guess all the empty seats kind of imply. People are like, I don't know what's going on.

I'm not going over there. It's really strange to me that a local reporter is doing attention. You know, usually that's reserved for Montreal guys in Florida or whatever, you know. You don't often see the local guy being like, where is everybody? Yep. And, well, I mean, they're selling the tickets, but a team is not good. team's not good and it's not like they went out

during the off season and like loaded up but well they did shockingly little and that's the point yeah ride the hot hand well I mean that and also like this team that stinks

is like pretty close to capped out if I'm not much mistaken it's not like they're you know they're sitting uh with 12 million dollars in cap space that they couldn't yeah they currently have $55,000 in cap space.

So, like, this team that stinks, it's expensive and it stinks. That's the problem, right? They're like, oh, we got to, you know, I haven't looked at it, I guess, recently. But, like, I bet Vince Dunn isn't living up to that contract. And like I've said a million times, I'm a Vince Dunn guy. But, like, if you expected last year to be the standard, I don't know what to tell you. Yep. A lot of UFAs coming up.

I'll see. I'm with you on that. I think everyone expected the shooting to drop. I did not see them being this man. I've got them in my bottom five now and it's like. Yeah, I don't, I didn't think they'd be bottom five. But I also didn't think that they, I'm going to look up with their team shooting percentages right now. But I didn't think it would be as low as it probably is.

Right. Right now they are shooting eight and a half percent. Yeah, I didn't think, you know, I thought it'd be closer to league average. Eight and a half is horrible. The league average right now is 10-1. But can I say this to you? 886 goaltending ain't helping. And I would also probably say it's not the first time.

890 last year, 886 this year. I think we've identified one of the big problems. Feel like we have, yeah. Anyway, and it only costs them, whatever, the combined cost of Grubauer, Dreger and Joey Decord. Looks like that's checking in just a shade over 10.6 million bucks.

Just a bit. Just a tiny bit. Obviously Grubauer's hurt, but, you know. I guess we'll end it this week. We'll talk about John DeVarres getting booed. I don't personally, you know, I don't give a shit. Yeah, I mean, it's that he got his thousandth point in New York.

I think I would have been fine with either outcome. There would have been something kind of, you know, if that had been the moment where the fever broke a little bit, and Islander fans, you know, begrudgingly gave him a, you know, cheered for him or whatever. But also, he did it with six seconds left in a game that they had been winning. And they emptied the bench. Yeah.

And so if you weren't like really clued in, you'd just be like, what the fuck is happening right now? I mean, I think they, I think all the fans there knew that he was, that was, he was getting his 1,000 point. I don't think that was a big secret going into that game. But, yeah, you're allowed to boo. I mean, there's no, it doesn't have to be rational. We've, we've said multiple times on this show. If people were rational in how much they cared about sports, then there wouldn't be sports podcasts or websites or sports at all.

So, I admire being committed to a bit. So I could do without the, you know, I, if you want to boo, go ahead and boo. I could do without some of the, like, rending of fabrics and garments in the, like, comment sections about how, like, they're, you and I were talking. Arthur Staples wrote a post, you know, basically explaining the Islander's view of that. And there are some very unintentionally funny comments from Islander fans, including one guy who is telling what he is very clearly convinced is a heart-wrenching story about his 11-year-old being betrayed by John Tavares. And everyone else is just laughing at it.

Like that kind of stuff is, I think, worthy of mockery. But booing, go ahead and boo. Yeah, I didn't need an article being like, here's why. Here's the trauma that he inflicted upon them. And that's why it's actually okay for them to boo. It's okay for them to boo because who gives a shit, man? Like, you can boo anybody for any reason if you want to. Was it Winnipeg just did a thing where they would pick a random player and boo every time he touched the puck, like in the first season or two?

Yep. Nobody was like, how dare they? Because everybody understood, like, oh, we're all just having fun. out here and it doesn't really matter. To their credit, I will say, I was glad that no Leafs were like, have a little class. Think about all this guy did for your franchise, whatever. You didn't see any of that. That, that to me is good.

I just, I just didn't need the explanations going the other way of like, you got to, here's what you got to understand. No, I get it. Totally, totally on board for it. Totally understand. Mm-hmm. Not, it's not a tricky one for me. I'm actually very smart.

And the Islanders won in the end. Yeah, in overtime, very funny how that happened. Like, again, oh, you emptied the bench to celebrate this guy getting his thousandth point, and then you immediately fucking lost. That's funny. That's right. All right, why don't you hit him with a plug, Sean? Well, let's get out of here.

Find me at the athletic. I got all sorts of content going up. I'm doing a piece later this week where I'm looking back. Five years ago, I tried to predict which teams were and we're not going to win the Stanley Cup in the next five years. So I'm going to look back at that. And I got it exactly right. Toronto Maple Leafs? Yeah.

Uh-oh. Pretty sure they got one, didn't they? Well, you might be. Maybe I'm remembering the time a guy got his thousandth point. No, I think you're remembering at the time they got a lot of respect in the handshake. Oh, in the handshake line. Yes, that's right. Do you remember this?

Yes. That was... It's one of the most important things to ever happen in sports. It's honestly tomato tomato at this point. Is that it for your plugs? That's all I got. Okay, great. E.P.Ringside.com use the code.

I love EP. When you buy an annual subscription, you get 15 months for the price of 12. What a deal. A steal, even. With World Junior coming up, like, this is the time to be subscribing to the elite prospects. Nobody will have better. coverage of the tournament period. I'm comfortable saying that as a guy who will have nothing to do with the coverage.

No one will do a better job than we do. Period. End his story. And then Patreon.com slash fuck soup. As I said earlier, me and Sean recorded a bonus episode where he showed me crazy clips from the 80s and 90s that I had not seen before. And boy, there's some crazy shit in there. Hockey used to be an insane. sport, like truly the Wild West.

I think fun is what is the word you're looking for. Absolutely. Absolutely. But also, again, like Wild West shit, where it's like, yeah, it was actually allowed to to stab a guy in 1978, 79. That was just in the rule books. You could do it. We had a coach punching a player.

We had a fan jumping on the ice. And getting, argued out. all. Wiped out by a linesman. You want to talk about a hit from behind. This was more boarding, I guess you would say. Yeah. But this linesman killed this fucking guy.

I'm shocked that that guy did not die on the ice. He got wrecked. It is a crazy clip. It was a very fun episode. Yeah, we had a blast doing it. People seemed to like it. So, and when, you know, when you, when you click on it, we also do provide the, uh, the playlist of videos. So you can, so you can check it out too.

By the way, people, uh, I'm glad everyone's liking it, but you can stop subscribing to that YouTube channel. I don't, I don't update it and I'm not, uh, like, you're, you're not missing anything other than potentially some videos of my kids. So don't, uh, please don't feel you need to subscribe. On YouTube, can you like block that? This is like a private only channel or whatever Maybe

I don't know But then I don't fuck around with you too Like that's not going to be able to watch the videos Well I don't know Maybe you can mark like some as This is beside the point I guess So yeah Patreon.com slash puck soup

And yeah Thanks for listening everyone Thanks again to Dan from Joy Wave For the great new theme song And you'll hear it again on the way out Thanks for listening everyone. Bye bye Bye bye

Thank you.