Puck Soup - The Mike Smith Experience

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Sean and Ryan talk the Oilers getting swept, the Avalanche advancing, the Eastern Conference Final, the Bruce Cassidy firing, and more.   Sponsored by Trade Coffee (drinktrade.com/puck) and Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck)

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hockey and Nancet. I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And we have to very solemnly say goodbye. the Edmonton Oilers who got swept.

They got destroyed in this series. They got killed. Yeah. And no shame in getting destroyed by this year's avalanche. But some shame, for sure. Maybe a small amount of shame. I got to say, I enjoyed this year's Oilers. They were a fun team.

pretty much all year long. Like for good and bad, as a neutral observer, they were a lot of fun, the ups and downs. And I'm just bummed out that this series was over so quickly. Similar to the Flame series, right? Like, you had that game one that was so amazing. And this series even more so than Calgary, like after the game one,

it settled down. Like the games two and three weren't very memorable. Game four was a real good. But, yeah, I definitely could have handled six or seven games of that, even though we got the right result. Do you think there's any correlation at all between you saying certain games in the series were good and the fact that in those two games,

neither goalie could stop traffic? Yeah. It's amazing, hey? It is. Because here's the thing. game one obviously was awesome and I you know we can go over the whole thing again

you know how many goals is too many goals you know I don't want to watch every game be eight to six fine but I even game two which was a low scoring game felt exciting to watch because you're like

neither one of these goalies was stopping anything so game two was the four nothing game yeah so even as you're watching even though it was a low scoring game it was still excited. Like, that's what makes hockey exciting. It's not the goals necessarily. It is the scoring chances. And a scoring chance is just anything that you feel like might go in, like has a reasonable chance to go in. And when two teams are locking it down and the goalies are always in the right

spot and everything, it feels like there are no scoring chances because everything, you know, even you see a shot and you go, maybe that'll hit a skate or something, but nothing's going in clean on anyone. Whereas when the goalies aren't good, or the teams aren't good defensively, or when the teams are willing to trade chances and that sort of thing, suddenly everything's exciting, even if you're not getting goals. And that's,

you know, kind of how it felt with these two teams. And then as game two went on, you realized, wait a second, no, they are locking it down. But,

God bless the Oilers, man. And I mean, this isn't a radical take, but we got to talk about McDavid and Drsidal because, holy crap. Who's that? There are two players. they play for the Oilers.

You probably haven't heard about them because Austin Matthews got a haircut today, so that's taking up most of the coverage up here. But I feel like McDavid, we've been talking about the whole way, but rightly so. And I mean, Leon Dressidal, that fourth game, I mean, he's practically skating around on one lake.

God, at this point. Every time he got lightly brushed up against, he was grimacing as though he'd been. shot. Every second shift. The amount of pain he had to be playing in is incredible. Every second shift you were like, get this guy off the ice. Yeah. I don't want to watch him play anymore. And then on the next shift, he would get a point. It was a primary assist that he completely set up 100% on his own. He's just creating the audience. And it's sent to a tap in. Yeah. And like even if you think like, all right, maybe he was milking it a little bit for for the cab or

whatever. So, I mean, he's clear, we don't, as we're recording this, I don't think we know what the injury was, although people seem to be saying like high ankle sprain the whole way. Um, but I guess we'll find out. But it was obviously, yeah, bad. The, the high ankle spurt, like, that's one of those things where usually a guy takes like three months off. Yeah. And they're, he didn't. Extraordinarily painful. Like, I can't imagine, like, I mean, you know, you get a high ankle sprain, it is a sort of injury that some people can play through, but you'll see like a football player having trouble running on it. I can't even imagine skating. Like all the dynamic moves you have to make with your ankles just to skate at an initial level. And how do you get your

foot in the skate? That too. Like that I could be like, like, hot what? Yeah. But yeah. So I feel like this is the series that kind of like, I don't know, we used to do the whole. like we'd run over ourselves to say Sidney Crosby wasn't the best player in the world and it feels like maybe with McDavid he's separated himself so much that now we do it with like second best player and this was the year that everyone was like it's Austin Matthews now and then other people were like I still think it's Nathan McKinnon

and this this playoff run was kind of like Leondrisettel on one lake going like hey might be the second best player of my own team but yeah maybe I am well we'll get to it in a minute but uh I think you can make a pretty good case to McCar is not the second best player in the world but we'll get to Colorado

there was so much talent in that series It sucks that it ended in four games But yeah So this is being viewed I think based on everything I've read In the last couple days As like an unequivocally successful season In Edmonton

Right They go to the They go to the conference final. They're very high up in the stand. They finished second in the division, right? So I'm going to, this is going to shock people. I'm going to offer my counterpoint on that, which is McDavid and Drysiddle had the best postseason since like Wayne Gretzky, right? Like not just in Edmonton, like period. Like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, these are the people they're being compared to. Yep.

And the rest of the team was so fucking bad that they got swept in the conference final. Like they dragged this team kicking in screaming into the conference final and got destroyed. Now, adjusting for era, you could argue that this team just had the two best post seasons any player has ever had. Yes. In the four-round era, period, on the same team at the same time. Yep. And I mean, you know, obviously We can talk about the Mike Smith thing all we want

Like, you know, he's costing them games, blah, blah, blah. That's true. But like, you know who else was awful in this series? This guy named Duncan Keith that the Oilers traded for this summer And he was supposed to be like a difference maker for them. He was fucking awful. And yeah, I mean, I just I look at this team and I look at their caps.

situation. This is the other thing, is what put the oilers over the top this year? Vanderkane drops into their laps, just absolutely falls out of the sky, a million bucks, whatever the number is, and they instantly get like a guy who can score at like a 40-goal pace with his eyes closed, basically. And led, I believe, leading the postseason in goals. So, yeah. Monster post-season, whatever else you think of the guy.

Right. And whatever you think of how he played in this. See, I thought he played like a total shithead the entire series. He was asking for that suspension for like three games. They finally gave it to him. Or two games, I guess. But like I guess my thing is like everybody's talking about, oh, like after the game, all the others are like, oh, you know, this is kind of how it happens. You make the playoffs a couple times. Then you go deep in the playoffs.

and then you go even deeper than that. And it's like, I mean, that sometimes. But then also like the Ottawa senators, the Dallas stars, the Montreal Canadian. This is the Greg Wysinski theory that, like, you have to lose to learn how to win. And he's certainly not the only one. But, you know, he's a guy on ESPN, I know. Okay, all right. And we had this argument, I feel like last year where you think you and I are both on the same page that, no, not necessarily.

Sometimes you usually do lose before you win because there's 32 teams. Most teams lose a lot. Most teams lose a lot. But sometimes the capitals, right. You know, like the Rangers right now are kind of showing that they, you know, maybe you can just skip right to winning. I do think like, I think Leander Cytle, I think it was put it pretty well. In one of his comments, he said like, look, this feels like progress. But 2017, when they won around, also felt like progress.

And that was five years ago, and they haven't won since. So, you know, I don't see this quote. That's very smart by. Yeah. So he basically, you know, like I think the answer is we don't know yet. This could be, you know, and I'm not saying that, you know, if they win the cup next year, that's good. And otherwise, it's not. But they, I mean, this team, absolutely.

I could see this being the stepping stone. You know, they had three rounds to not only gain experience, but to look at their team, to realize to really take a hard look at what they're missing. They could add pieces like this team could be a cup contender next year. Sure. This team could also miss the playoffs next year. And if they do, then, you know, it's, hey, you had a fun ride. It's great for the fans, you know, and all of that.

But it won't really have ended up mattering. And that's especially true if, like you say, like, is a Vander Kier? Kane going to stay. Maybe. Well, their cap situation is insane right now. They have like, they have like $7 million to spend maybe a little more if we're all assuming Oscar Clefbaum's never coming back. But like, doesn't Evander Kane immediately take up a huge percentage of that?

And then they also have to extend to pull you, Arvi and Yamamoto. And let's just say like, yeah. You never know what a player's priorities are, but I don't think Evander Cain is looking to take any discounts. No, no, no. Just because he likes, you know, he likes the team or whatever. Like, he's got to go against. Well, the only reason I was this good is because I played with Connor McDavid a lot. So I better, I better just take a hometown diss.

I'll sign for a million dollars again. Oh, great. Now, if he gets a big settlement from the sharks, and I don't know what the timeline on that is, maybe that does change things. Like, I mean, if an arbitrator says, no, you can't fire a player in the middle of the season. You owe him everything left on his contract. Right. Maybe that changes things. But Ken Holland did say that when it came to Evander Cain, he basically said, I can keep anyone, but I can't keep everyone. And with the implication being,

somebody's got to go if we're going to keep certain guys. The one guy I look at, though, and really wonder about is Duncan Keith. Right. Because if he retires, that doesn't just, I mean, that's five and a half million comes off the cap. Right. And I believe, did we ever get an answer on this? But wasn't there talk that if he were to retire, that because of how cap recapture works, that bizarre, stupid rule, that the Oilers would actually get a credit and they would actually get more cap space, like they would get like an extra million bucks or something. It was some weird thing like that. And I know there was confusion. Some people are saying, I don't think it works that way. I don't know if that was ever. fully explained, but the point being... I just pulled it up on Puckpedia here. Edmonton would get 3.48 million in a negative cap hit, so a cap saving. So like if they get him to retire, they immediately free up like $8 million.

So yeah, puckpedia says if Duncan Keith were to retire after the 21, 22 season, the Blackhawks would take a 5.5 million cap hit this coming season. So he retires this summer, that 5.5 this season and 2 million the season after, and the Oilers would lose his actual cap hit and have a 3.4 million. So, I mean, that's your whole offseason right there. Yeah, for sure. Jesus, like a bad player freeze up $9 million. That's Evander Cain right there if you want.

Yeah, absolutely. And I believe that. Like, Duncan Keith is not, like, I'm imagining knowing what this contract was that he's probably not making a lot of actual. Yeah, base salary, $1.5 million. Yeah. Which is not nothing. I'm not walking away from $1.5 million just to do anyone a favor. But.

I will say this. Duncan Keith is like, you know, six months younger than me. I can't imagine just being like, you know what, I will come back. I've made like $80 million in my career or whatever. I'll come back for one more season. No, thanks. Yeah. Well, but I mean, two other things to factor in on that is one is, I'm sure like anyone else who's, geez, what is he?

Like, what is he? Like, 38 years old or something. Yeah. If he's 38, I'm sure, like, any NHL player 38 could be, quote, unquote, injured and not play. Like, there's nobody at that age who's been in the league for 20 years that couldn't walk into a doctor's office. And just be like, my kneecap points the wrong way. It's been like that for three years. And the doctor's going to be like, you should not be playing.

I will sign the form that says you're injured. But if he does that, then the Oilers get the LTIR credit if applicable, but they don't get the bonus cap space. The other thing is, I do wonder if Duncan Keith is sitting there going, if I retire, do I really want to screw over the Blackhawks? Like, I played my whole career except for one. Yeah. I mean, are they that screwed over? They're taking a cap hit in a year where they're going to be tanking anyway, so maybe who cares. But I wonder if that's a consideration.

But man, if I'm Ken Holland, I'm anything I can do. I'm just leaving a lot of brochures around my office going like, you know, there's a really nice retirement community here in BC. Maybe you want to think about it. I like, you didn't say Edmonton. You're like, eh, the Rockies Mountains are just. Duncan Heath is from BC, right? He's a BC guy. No, he's a Manitoba.

guy. He is a Manitoba guy. He said, pretending he knows where Duncan Keith is from. In my head, it was B.C. And maybe that's where he's made his home. He's from Winnipeg, and he plays in Edmonton, so let's just go with B.C. as the retirement. You know, if you're a rich Canadian

guy, I feel like B.C. is the place to be, right? Yep. You can afford a cottage in the greater Vancouver area. Maybe not like a apartment downtown or something like that. Yeah, you couldn't. This guy doesn't have Jeff Bezos money.

Exactly. So Mike Smith is signed through next year. Yeah. At $2.2 million, which is fine for a starting goalie. Yeah, right. And to be fair, Mike Smith, in both the playoffs and the regular season, positive goals saved above expected. Now, the numbers were fine.

The numbers were fine. That having been said, he is Mike. and just think of a year older Mike Smith who didn't play, you know, he can't play a lot of games for you, right? Like that's the thing to say is that at his age he's going to play like 30, maybe 40 games if you're lucky. And, you know, like, that means that you have to have a backup who's a guy you can actually count on. And is that Stuart Skinner? Nico Koskenin started 45, or played 45, you start at 45, it started 40, started 40, three games for this team.

Yeah. 15 more than Mike Smith. And he's bad. He's bad. And so bad, in fact, that they already said he's signing in the Swiss League this summer. Yeah. Like, his Swiss League announced that a month ago or something like that. Crazy.

So, yeah, is it Stuart Skinner? In which case you're spending $3 million on goal tending? Not bad. Which is good. But maybe it's bad goal-tending. Yeah. And you're doing that with the understanding of. We do need Stuart Skinner to play like 45 games for us.

Yeah. I don't know about that. The other thing that you can do, if Smith comes back, and I say if, because he didn't really sound all that convinced after, you know, when they were talking to him immediately after the loss, that he didn't sound like a guy who was necessarily coming back. But, you know, who knows? But assuming he does come back, the other thing you could do is you can roll the dice maybe on, you know, somebody else. you know, Billy Huso maybe or somebody like that for a couple million bucks.

Hope that, you know, maybe you hit a home run on that. And if not, you know, you've got trusty old Mike Smith. Maybe more old than trusty, but you've got him. But, yeah, I don't know. Like the whole,

should they have got a goalie? I mean, I think you can look at this team and say, I mean, I think you could say they could have Igor Sturkin and they weren't going to beat the avalanche. probably but they're not getting embarrassed like they did this this was a team that needed better goal but who who in hindsight should they have got there was nobody right there was nobody flurry didn't really work for the wild uh well that and flurry was only gonna go to the wild yeah that was like the one place he was going to go so even if even if paulin had been able to work his magic and

talk him into whatever that that that didn't work i'm trying to think what other goalies moved or could have moved. Yeah. Like, the thing that is, like, that was mind-blowing to me is I watched all four of these games, obviously. And after every single, or well, I guess after the first three, there was some question of, do you go back to Mike Smith after that one? And it's like, if you have to ask that about your goalie after three games of a four-game sweep, that's bad. That's really bad.

And like you say, nobody's beaten the avalanche the way they played in this series. They were a fucking kill bot or whatever, you know? Like it was ridiculous how much better they looked than the Oilers. And some of that was definitely, you know, Darnell Nurse had like a torn hip laborer. He was awful in the whole playoffs. He was horrendous. He's this year's guy who was completely terrible and then at the end you find out he should not remotely have been playing and you go. Correct.

Okay. Yeah. And so, like, that definitely all factors in. But so does the fact that, like, you know, after Darnell Nurse, their next best defenseman was maybe Tyson Barry and he kind of sucks. You know, like, so I don't want to put it all on Mike Smith. With that having been said, Mike Smith doesn't want to put it on Mike Smith either. No, he does not. And I.

Man. He loves blaming other people for it. He loves waving his arms. even on the goal that lost them the series, immediately turns to the ref, like, what the fuck? It's like, Mike, you gave up 58 goals, man. Like, I don't know what you want. Yeah.

That was pretty close to a high stick. I look, obviously it was. And like, I don't want, because I, look, TNT, I don't want to step on TNT's toes here and get into the business of saying that goal wasn't Mike Smith's fault. That's all, every single goal he allowed. Look, what's he supposed to do there? that was a shot Every single one, yeah.

Like almost, I want, I kind of want to go back and just watch every goal in here, Darren Pango. You know, if the defenseman had done this, this, or this different, you know, that kind of thing. Like, just, it was amazing to me how often they were saying that about a guy who gave up, like, again, like probably 20 goals in four games or whatever it was. truly a remarkable you know goalie union standing up for one another the one thing I am going to ask

is unlike T&T if you're discussing the high stick if you could do it without swearing that would be that would be cool I think there should be more swearing on the broadcast

it was great you know what he said the SH word and they was like oh oh oh oh that was great that was pretty good it was Koharski right

it was Koharski, yeah. God love Kowarski. Yeah. For people who didn't see it, it was, they're reviewing the overtime game winner in Game 4, which is as close to a high stick as it can possibly get. And he's like watching the replay live. And he goes, holy shit, that's close or something like that. And then he goes, oh, holy heck. He really did the worst job ever trying to save it and everybody's just laughing, having a good time. Look, I watch AEW. You could say shit on TNT.

No, he's going to stop you. Yeah. They didn't cut his mic. No, they didn't. They didn't cut to black and go to commercial right after it. Right after he had said all the things that he was supposed to say. And everybody's like, oh, they're really mad at him. Yeah.

Oh my God, they've taken down Don Koherski's merch page. That's crazy. This is real. Yeah, when he called, when he called, when he called, Jay Woodcroft a fucking mark. That was when I knew it was a work shoot, baby. Yep. Can't say that.

That's not in the script. But yeah, so one last thing with the Oilers here. Obviously, they went pretty far with the coach they gave the interim job at mid-season, right? Yes. But, and we'll talk about all this later too. Boy, this market for coaches is insane. Do you retain Woodcroft? I think you have to.

Although if I like just happen to bump into Barry Trots' agent on my way to get ice cream at the store, maybe I'd just casually. Yeah. I don't know that anyone else would, even Cassidy would move me. Because, I mean, Woodcroft not, he didn't just get them in the third. They really did play significantly better under him. For sure. Whether you just want to look at wins and losses or look at other stuff, he really did turn that team around. I'm not, yeah.

I mean, I'm not convinced that he's 10 years from now. We're going to be talking about Jay Woodcroft as an impact coach in the league, but I do. So this is tough. He certainly has earned the job. He has done, when you hire an interim coach, this is what you do. The only argument against it would be, like we kind of laid out. McDavid, Dracetyl are both nuclear height of their powers right now. Maybe the two best players in the world.

Do you have to break some rules to get the absolute best group around them? And maybe you say that's our minor league coach who did a great job. Isn't that guy if, but, you know, do you move him out to bring in Elaine Vino or some, you know, recycle guy? is there any... Hear me out, John Tortorella. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Can't wait to see Connerick David

gets 60 points, but four third place Selke votes. That's right. It says here the Oilers went to overtime 42 times this scene. That's crazy. Wow. They'd have a good record if they did it.

Like, honestly, that's not a bad idea. Just play for the tie every single night. And then you go, Leon and Connor, you're playing the full five minutes. They win a lot of those. That sounds great. You absolutely would. I pour one out for the Oilers, man.

That was a fun, fun. They got as far as they could go with this group. And yeah, and it's one of those things where it's, you can look at it. You can go two ways, right? You can say, hey, man, they went to the final four. They were absolutely within, you know, swinging distance of a Stanley Cup. you could also look at it and say, as we said, arguably the two greatest individual post-season of all time, and they played 500 hockey in the playoffs.

Exactly right. They went 8 and 8 in the playoffs, including playing a King's team that nobody went into the season thinking was remotely a playoff team. I don't know, man. You know that the other team this doesn't look at. great on is the flames. Calgary flames, yeah. All of us who, well, not us

because I wasn't one of them, but anyone who had like the flames coming out of the west, like beating the avalanche doesn't look great right now because by the transit of property, the flames might have lost the avalanche in three games. That's right. Yeah.

Would have been a waste of six days. Yeah, hey, they didn't even play all eight this time. They played seven, the Oilers. So, yeah, just a really weird postseason for them. I'm really curious to see what lessons they take from it. I bet the answer is let's trade for more guys who used to play for Chicago. Let's get Jonathan Taves in here.

And luckily, Chicago. They're willing to oblige just about anything. Probably. Although, there was that funny thing where there was somebody wrote that like, or maybe it was it was Elliot on. on hot stove where he was he was like Chicago they're not going to move uh cane taves or Seth Jones but everyone else is a man you're like like that sounds about right yeah you're like yeah so Alex to Brinkette and that's it like that's you don't have anyone else that

anyone's calling about so remember when Kevin Lankin was almost working of the year for the three months until he turned into like an 880 goalie yep you could get him for that three months Peter Marazick, buddy That's the That is They've been saying Peter Marizek to Chicago It works

I like it All right So we did the Oilers Let's do the abs Um Kail McCarr in the series Was fucking unbelievable Like whole

Oh my God And I feel like Tell me if this is crazy But I feel like Years from now as many highlights as that series generated. I feel like years from now, the one play we might remember is the one-on-one with McCar, like, chasing down McDavid. Yeah, just kind of casually swatting the puck away from him.

Yeah. Like, with all the goals and everything, like, that play is like the one that sticks with me. Like, that is a, like, man, I don't, that's, that's like the signature. That becomes your signature play, especially a guy like Kilmaccar, who scores a lot. Scores goals gets points But anyone who we just instinctively If a defenseman scores we go well They must be bad in their own end

And then you have something like that Like that was like his Paul Coffey breaks up the two on one moment That was yeah He is just Macar led all All avalanche guys in in total points At 5 on 5 in this series

And this is a team with like Nathan McInnan on it He is Yeah and Like the McDavid versus McKinnon thing didn't really... Nobody else had more than six. Yeah. McDavid McKinnon didn't really... Like, you know, obviously, it was a short series.

It didn't turn into like Ovechkin Crosby or something. But they were both good. And McKinnon especially was, you know, he was really good. And then Kelmachar was head and shoulders even better than that, which... Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And like Miko Ranton and had a great series too.

I think he scored three or four goals. Like he had a really nice series for himself and everybody's like, he gives a shit, shut up, get lost. Kail McCar, let's talk about that guy. Like Wayne Gretzky on the Turner broadcast is just going, oh, God, Caleb Carr, whoa, unbelievable. Like every chance he gets. Like he's not even really saying like, look what he does here and here and here.

He's just going like, can you believe this guy? He's so good. Which would be completely useless. from anyone else, but when it's Wayne Gretzky, like, played in the Oilers, played with Paul coffee, and he's like, geez, this guy's amazing. You're just like, yeah, that actually tells me more than just about any. They actually just said to Kail, like, can you believe how much, like, at the end of the, at the end of the series he puts on the headset.

And they're like, can you believe how much Wayne Gretzky's talking about how good you are? And he's like, no, it's crazy. I can't believe it. It ruled. It was so fun. But yeah, I mean, we can talk about another really good player for Colorado was a guy, he scored the series winning goal. Arturi Lekinen was unreal in a shutdown role. Unbelievable.

Yeah, the whole, I mean, I don't think anyone said to Joe Sackick had a bad deadline, but, you know, there were a couple of rumblings that should he have swung bigger than he did. rather than making, I think, three or four, death-ish moves. I mean, Josh Manson was a bit bigger than that, but he looks... It looks like he did the right thing, because that's exactly what you want, right? Like, you get a guy reasonably cheap at the deadline, he comes in, plays exactly the role you want him to play, and, oh, by the way, also gets an overtime winner. Yeah, I think he had, I think he had like two or three goals in the series overall. all like just really

saw, yeah, two goals, four assists second on the team in scoring tied with Landisog and Rantan in that series. I guess you take that. I guess you take that. Is he signed for next year? I can't imagine, no. Oh, he's an RFA next year.

Wow, so they're going to keep them. So they've got, if they can or could potentially move them for to recoup something. Yeah. But, yeah, just what a savvy pickup. God, like, I guess that it really is the story, right? Where every time you looked up like even Darren Helm was having a good shift,

and you were like, oh, well, I guess the series is over. Listen to this. Darren Helm outscored the Oilers, 2-0 on the ice. 63% expected goals. Darren Helm did that. That's how comprehensive this beatdown was. Darren Helm. Like, there is, you cannot tell me that,

there weren't people out there when they saw, like, they sit down to watch Colorado and they're like, oh, here's Darren Helm, and you're like, is that like Darren Helm's kid? Right, Darren Helm Jr. Is Darren, yeah, Darren Helm, that guy who played for the Red Wings years ago and then retired, presumably, like this must be his kid. And not, it's the same guy. Do you want to guess how old Darren Helm is, by the way? 38.

35. I was at 38, 39 as well. It just seems like he's been around fucking forever. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which I guess is, his first season in Detroit was 0-7-08. So I guess it's not that long ago. So he would have won a cup. Well, that's it.

I mean, he can tell these guys what it takes to win a cup. That's right. Because he did it when he was 19 or whatever. Yeah, he's like, I'll play with Nick Lindstrom. And Kel McCar's like, got it. Yeah. Kel McCar's like, I guess I guess I could die. it down to Nick Lindstrom

if you really want me to, sure. Yeah. Okay, so the abs are through to the cup final, obviously. But this is the complicating factor in all this. Nazan Khadry, done for the year. Sam Gerard. Yeah, Sam Gerard, done for the year.

I always get tripped up on that because of the freaking fugitive. Yep. I'm like, there's no way that's his name. Same name as the guy from, yeah, it is. It really is. And then Darcy Kemper.

is a questionable maybe. Yeah, although Darcy Kemper was the backup for game four, I believe. Did that end up? Which suggests to me that he should be okay. I mean, you wouldn't presumably, I mean, it's always weird to me when a goalie is hurt, a starting goalie, and then you bring him back as a backup. It's kind of like if he's, he can either play or he can't. And it's always a little strange, although, you know, Francuse has been good.

So maybe it was just case of ride the guy. You know, it's 3-0. You don't need to shake it up. And also, like, you know, they use the term in basketball. Maybe he's on a minute's restriction. Maybe. Although, like, he's talking about, like, apparently was talking about, like, oh, I couldn't really see the puck too good or whatever.

So it's like, oh, any minutes with that kind of a situation. That feels like you should be, be okay. It just makes me like, I remember one year I was playing in a ball hockey league and it was like, we had half a team. And so we go to the first game and like we meet the other half that they've put us with. And that's going to be our team. And that includes the goalie. And like the goalie was really good. Like we're shooting on him in warm up.

The guy's amazing. And then like one of the dudes pulls his side. He's like, hey, just so you know, that goalie is legally blind. He can't see like anything past like 20 feet out. So don't let any point shots go through because he will not move. But in close, he's great. have a good game. We're just like,

oh, that's, yeah, maybe that's Darcy Kemper. Like, we're like, do we need to get like a ball with a bell in it

or something for this guy? Like, it's, uh, so I don't know, man, but, uh,

yeah, is Cadry definitely out? Yeah. Like, was that, okay. That sucks for him, man.

That's, that's really rough. The other thing with Colorado is, how long is the layoff going to be? Yeah. Because we, I saw, yeah,

like, I mean, the lightning arrangement. we'll get to, but that series is now going to go at least six. Certainly feels like it could go. Say, if it goes six, that's Saturday night. If it goes seven, that's Monday. I think Chris Johnson tweeted where he said that if the avalanche swept, which they now

have, that they could have this 12 days off before their next game, which implies that even if Rangers Tampa goes seven and ends on Monday, that the final wouldn't start until Saturday, which I really hope is not the case, but maybe. Like, that's, you don't normally think that there's any such thing as too much time off. Right. But, you know, we've seen the whole thing, right? You know, we all know the stats now that a team that sweeps versus a team that goes seven and everything, like a two-week layoff, that's, I don't know. I mean, you'll take it.

You'd rather have that than be playing knowing the series is still alive. but that's a potential issue. Yeah. I really hope they don't push the start of the cup final back like four days after even the second, the other final as conference final has ended. That would be insane, or three days or whatever it would be. Like you say, let's just fucking start the shit on Wednesday.

No one wants to be home on a Saturday night. Do it on Thursday if you need to. Like, yeah, you know, I know they want to do the media day or whatever, but... Yeah. Oof. I mean, especially since this playoffs has been so smooth. Like, the schedule has been so good almost every second night. You know, no disruptions.

They apparently even, like, we're going to kick Justin Bieber out of Madison Square Garden. Yeah, the only one that didn't happen for was the Tampa had a back-to-back with Florida. There was, like, one. Yeah. So, oh, God, I hope they don't do five days off or whatever. That would suck. That would be awful. But, yeah, like...

All the poor media having to spend extra time in Denver. Right, yeah. Heartbleeds. Yeah, that's going to be a tough one. But, yeah, so, I don't know. I guess my big takeaway is, like, the Avalanche swept the Edmonton Oilers without Codry and Gerard and Kemper. You know, like they made it look extremely easy.

And I'm not saying like Tampa or the Rangers would be a pushover for them. But like they have a little bit of proof of concept, I guess you would say, in terms of, yeah, we're pretty good. Even if we don't have our number two centers starting goalie and like number four defensemen. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, beat a real good St. Louis team. And if it's Tampa, if it's, yeah, if it's Tampa, then. You'd probably figure Cadre and bring point, maybe cancel out if point isn't back, although we don't know on that yet.

So, I mean, injuries happen. It's part of, but it's just, that's, it's so rough for Cadre, especially going into free agency, like it's, and it was a, I assume you were fine with the suspension on Kane. He didn't have any issue with the call. No, I think, I think it could have been two or three. like clearly like a dangerous. But I think every, like when they announced the one game suspension,

like everybody made the same joke about. Yeah, of course. Yeah, for the, wow, for the rest of the playoffs. I don't think it really mattered. It is weird. Your website pushed out a push notification that said suspended for the series. Yeah. And then had to be like, it's only one game.

And everybody was like, same thing. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I mean, it is. And I know like he got five during the game, but didn't get kicked out of the game because you can hit someone from behind into the boards and injure them. But if it's not a head injury, it's not a game,

which is another one of those weird dumb rules. But anyways, I mean, it's, on the one hand, it sucks for Nazim Kadri. On the other hand, I guess, you know, I know some people won't have the most sympathy given how he has ended some guys series over the years. But yeah.

Yeah. One last thing on that is somebody said, like, what is it going to take to to get someone suspended? for two games in the playoffs. Like, what do you think would have to happen? And I posted the, the Mark Andre Fleury-de-Bor sword picture, and I said this, but like, real.

Yeah, that might get you too. That might get you too. But, yeah. All right, why don't we take a break and we'll be back to talk about the Rangers and the Lightning. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon,

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obviously, go, the lightning have completely taken over this series. I was like, I mean, they won two games in a row, but the range. just did that right before they did it. So, and like, the lightning played awful in games one and two. I'm not saying they didn't, but I'm saying, oh, don't you think maybe like the Rangers might have had something to do with the lightning played awful in games one and two? I think that's true. Is that possible?

Um, and so, yeah, I, like, I, I, I just kind of look at this and go, so far, both the home teams have looked great. And in fact, I would say on the. balance, like on the balance, you would say Tampa has definitely been the better team, at least at five on five, and then like the Rangers power play makes up the difference, right? But what did, what, what was the thing with last night was the Rangers had like a minute of power play time? Right. Which, yeah.

The things that concern me here if I'm a Rangers fan, you know, other than obviously the fact that Tampa is an amazing. generational team is sort of, I guess maybe it's two ways of looking at the same point. One is we talked in the first segment about the whole Russ versus Rest and when a team coming off a short series plays a team on a long series, the team coming off a long series usually wins game one and you wonder, you know, are we seeing Tampa shake the rust off? And also this Rangers team, don't forget, they played back-to-back seven-game series. and as we said in the first segment the schedule has not had a lot of big gaps and stuff into it.

So does fatigue hit you at some point? Now we've all been wondering that about Tampa because they've played an insane amount of hockey, but does that maybe become an issue with the Rangers where they start to lose a bit of steam? But yeah, I mean, if that haven't been said, game-to-game momentum in the playoffs really isn't a thing. And you're going back home.

and it's best two out of three and you've got two of the games at home where you've already won twice. I'm scared of Andre Vasilisky, obviously, because we know how he gets. If he's figured it out, then for game. But, you know, like, there's just not a lot of

even like special teams scoring really in the series apart from game three, right? Like, game three, both teams scored two power play goals, I want to say. And then, so that's a draw in theory, or in actual practice, I guess. And then the Rangers have, I think, zero five-on-five goals in Tampa, which is bad. That's not going to win you any hockey games, right? Yeah.

So I think the big narrative, if we want to put it this way, for the Rangers, is that they were up to nothing in game three. halfway through game three, they're up to nothing. And I would even say Tampa hasn't particularly looked great. And then Tampa, once they score that second goal, Tampa's like, okay, that's enough of this bullshit. You know what I mean? Yep. And so I guess, not to put too fine a point on it, but like, do the Rangers feel like, oh, shit, we let them up off the mat? Yep.

And now we got to. That's the metaphor, right? When you've got the champ, right? Hold on. When you've got the champ on the ropes, you've got to throw your knockout punch. You don't back off. And, you know, we saw the Leafs had a chance to do that.

Didn't. The Panthers never even got to that point. So, I mean, credit to the Rangers for what they've been able to do. But, yeah, that, I mean, the, we're not there yet, but the symmetry between that moment in game three when the range is are up to nothing and the penguins being up to nothing on the Rangers in an elimination game. That was the game. That was the show we were doing live.

We were watching it. We did the Rangers obituary as the game was still going on. And that ended up being a little premature. But yeah, I mean, you got to finish when you can. But Zer said the, I mean, this lightning team is. They're the Tampa Bay Lightning, right? That is the thing you're going to come back to. We've had three years to sing their praises.

So we always, you know, by now we always feels like we always talk about the opponents and what they're doing right and wrong. And, you know, and sometimes, again, as a Leafs fan, I know there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, here's what went wrong with the Leafs. They played the Lightning. That's it.

The Lightning are, right. Some people would say the best team in the league. Regular season doesn't say that, but regular season doesn't tell us everything. And certainly the Lightning would say, you know, what the hell? like we've shown already that we can just kind of cruise into the back half of a regular season and start the playoffs and just go kill mode.

And look, they played two full post seasons and a full regular season in like a year to win the first two cups. They're not going to smash the gas pedal the entire season. So, yeah, they're, they're, They're real good. But, again, like the Rangers absolutely have maybe, I mean, I'd pick the lightning right now, but it's, you know, what, 55, 45, maybe 6040 if you're really. Not even, I don't think.

Yeah, this could absolutely go either way. And again, game-to-game momentum time and again we've seen is not necessarily a thing. So we'll see. I guess what I would say is I just look at the lightning's depth where it's like, okay, Kuturov hasn't had the best night. Well, here's Andre Palat. He's totally capable of taking over a game if he needs to, you know? Yeah. And Stamcoasts.

And, well, I guess they don't have breeding point. But you, like, you know, you can just go down the whole roster and go, oh, you know, who's really good. Actually is this other guy who hasn't done a whole lot yet. But, you know, he's, we've seen Alex Coraloran takeovers. Corey Perry keeps chipping in. Anthony Sorrelli hasn't done really anything in the playoffs. Yeah, they don't have, like, there's no dead weight on that. At any moment.

At a big goal last night, right? Yeah. So, and that was another guy that everybody was like, come on, he looks cooked. And he's like, no, I'll score a big goal here and there. And still, you know, I'm going to the net and all that kind of stuff. and you know what honestly like the goal Justin Braun getting walked

by Begoshin last night that's like the funniest thing I've ever seen because I was like whoa who was that was that was Zach Begoshan? Yeah I pulled off that book I don't know where that came from man because I watched him with the Leafs and yeah I wasn't seeing it I haven't seen him I've watched his you know pretty much

his entire NHL career, I think. And I don't know that I've ever seen him make a move like that. Now, I'm sure, somebody can go, you know, on February 14th, the Atlanta Thrashers, you know, they played the Carolina Hurricanes. And he, he, uh, he took Glenn Wesley to the house or whatever, the rack or whatever. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. But, um, yeah, just like, when that's, when that goal is happening for you, like, everything's going your way all of a sudden, I guess is my point.

Like, you can have Zach Bogosian pulling off Connor McDavid-Daubes-style moves. Oh, okay. The one other thing I want to say about this is like, so much of last night's win was that they only gave the Rangers like a minute of powerplay time. Yep. Because the Rangers scored immediately. And as soon as the Rangers go on the PowerPlay, you're like, Like, just put the goal on the board already. You know, like, it's, that's how lethal their power play is.

And, like, if the lightning are going to stay out of the box, which they didn't in games one and two, I have a hard time seeing the Rangers winning this series. Yeah. And again, I mean, this is part of it is staying out of the box. Part of it is how the officials decide to spin the wheel of how are we calling this game. But we know that typically the game, they let more go as a series goes off. on. And Tampa's, Tampa's a weird team. Like, I know for years it was pointed out that they always had, they were always near the top in both power plays and power plays allowed. And of course,

we know in the NHL, it's, it shouldn't be linear, but it is. Like, you know, they balance things out. And there was a theory that Tampa was doing that on purpose. They knew they had more skill. So go out, take penalties, knowing you're going to get penalties and your power play is better than the other teams and balance it out. But you do wonder if they're like a little bit have cracked the code of having control where they can get to a series like this and go, ah, hold on. Now we're playing a team that their power play might be better than ours. Right.

And maybe a little bit similar to the Leafs, although not in the series. But so let's, so let's turn the dial down and we'll play a low penalty game. And if so, that's just more credit to John Cooper. They took a ton of penalties. Yeah. And again, the earlier in a series, you sort of go... Yeah. Sure. So, yeah, I mean,

New York goes to those saying. You want to take one of those... You go to Tampa with a 2-0 lead. You just want to take one of the games. Come home with a chance to wrap it up. Didn't do it. Disappointing.

Head, you know, you were right in game three, even though he gave up a ton of shots. And game four... I mean, even I wouldn't say game four was... You know, you kind of said that, you know, it was a decisive win for Tampa. I mean, two nothing going in the third period.

Yeah, well, I just said that in terms of, I don't think the Rangers got particularly close to the net until it was already like three nothing. But even that, I mean, if you're looking for optimism, you go, you know what, we played a credit. That was our worst game of the series. We took their best punch. And we were still one goal away in the third period from being right in it.

So, and you're going to go home and, you know, the garden's going to be crazy and all of that stuff. And you're going to probably be saying, well, there's no way we only get one powerplay the rest of the way. Well. The rest of the way. Let's see. And even that power play was like, was Sergeatschav just acted like a dumbass. Yeah.

He drew a slash. But then he did another slash and so he got two penalties. This is the thing that, you know, but this is how the playoffs works. Like in the referee's minds, often, it's, you know, we, okay, we deferred. couple of games, we settled them down and now we can sit back. And even though guys are cracking sticks over each other's head, it's like, no, no, we're not going to call anything. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess, like I say, I watch this series and I go, well, look, like at five on five, it's really not even that close, right? Like, Tampa has killed them at five on five, which I think everybody kind of expected. Like, the Rangers are not a good five on five team. Yeah, and special teams is part of the game. Like, that's... Yeah. Yeah, the Rangers have four more minutes on the power play.

And what's funny is they're tied in power play goals three to three. And yet you watched these four games and you said, oh, well, the Rangers like their power play so much better. You know, like it, it's kind of funny how that works out, I guess. but yeah, I don't know. I would say on the balance, like I'd give a slight edge to the lightning, even though, you know, obviously it's tied, but you don't want to put the Rangers on the power play.

If I had to bet everything I own, I'm taking the lightning, but this is not remotely a situation where, like, you know, if you tell me the Rangers with the series, like there will be extremely mild surprise and that's it because they're right in. I don't even know that I'd be surprised at this point. I'd just be like, oh, it sounds like Sirkin went nuts for the last couple of games. And you'd probably go, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

Great. Thank you. Yeah. So, I don't know. I'm really, I really, I was kind of dreading this series a little bit. I thought it would be not that fun. It's been pretty fun. Oh, yeah.

Honestly. Um, so just a bunch of good game three was unbelievable. What a fun game that was. But yeah, I don't know. I'm looking forward to the rest of it. It's certainly not been the series that some people worried about, which is just a goal-tending battle and, you know, 100%.

Like this has been, this has been great. The Western series was a letdown. Maybe expectations were too high, but this, yeah, this series been good. I'd love to see it. go seven and then start the Stanley Cup final immediately afterwards. Yeah, goals are 12-11 for the Rangers in the series. That's a good amount of scoring.

It's a bunch of... For the two best goals in the world, that's, yeah, you'll take that. Oh, for sure, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I do, I guess, my final point on this is I kind of do wonder if the, if the Rangers are going to be counting, how many power plays are going to be counting on the rest of the way? Because like you said, if the reps are just kind of like, you know what, we're done calm. These games are too big.

We're trying to manage these games. Yeah, we wouldn't want to decide the series by not giving the, we wouldn't want to decide the series. So we just won't give the best power play in the playoffs any opportunities. Sure. It's fair. That way we won't have influenced the outcome and all. What a fun sport. Yeah, there was, I think it was Keith Jones last night was talking about, um,

Oh, you know, that was a penalty that, you know, normally you'd get five, but given the game situation, I'm good with two. And it's like, yeah, that, that's an insane thing to say. What are you talking about? That's stupid. But, okay. That's hockey, baby, or at least that's the NHL. So, yeah, I don't, I guess I don't have too much more to say about this series than that. Yeah, I mean, by the time we're doing next week's show.

show will have an answer. The series will be over. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out because it's been good. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's take another break and come back and we'll talk about all the other news this week. Today's episode is brought to you by Trade Coffee, which is the lovely coffee company that sent me some really good coffee, not all that long ago, that was much better than my usual. My usual coffee, of just going to the grocery store and taking whatever was on sale that week. I'm not somebody who puts a lot of thought into the coffee I drink. It was cool to have a company do that thinking for me and pay it off by sending me some really good stuff. Trade coffee sends you freshly

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The biggest news where I live is not to do with the Stanley Cup final or the Eastern Conference final. It's to do with Bruce Cassidy got fired like a month after the Bruins got a limit. It's always weird. Very strange. Don Sweeney said he needed time to digest the whole situation. Which immediately what kind of really like occurred to me about that was that this is on Friday, the Bruins announced every player on the team had surgery this summer. It isn't coming back till November. Yeah.

Like every good player. with the exception of David Pasternak, who they're now apparently going to trade. We'll talk about that in a minute. So Bruce Cassidy gets fired. This seems to be a confluence of things. I don't know if you saw all this hullabaloo, but...

They're good work. Yeah, he got fired. It seems like there was a faction of veterans who didn't really care for his hands-off coaching style. it seems like the team itself was not happy with how the younger players were being treated. You know, Cam Neely said at the end of the year, young players felt afraid to make a mistake, for example. And so, you know, they said basically that they need a new voice for the new direction. Well, they didn't say new direction.

for I think the direction of the team this year and beyond or something along those lines. Yes. If I was smart, I would have written that quote down, but I didn't. So I guess what do you think? I mean, it was a surprise to see him fired, both because he's a good coach and also because of the timing. If it had happened right after the playoffs, then, you know, okay. And I do think he is a very good coach. but sometimes the, you know, the best coach isn't the best coach for your team, especially after a few years.

And there's a long history of coaches in this league who are, can be demanding, can be a bit of a hard ass, can have an act, so to speak, and have a shelf life. And, you know, Ken Hitchcock famously was a guy that you brought in for four years. Pat Burns was another one. He would get you results, and then by year four, the players would be like, I'm going to strangle this guy, and you'd move on. I'm not saying Cassidy is that guy, but maybe he is. And it's, you know, we'll see the direction it goes. It's just what's more interesting to me is the, what does this mean for the future?

And are we going to see a rebuild? Does this affect Patrice Bergeron? This is a, you know, not a young team. In fact, you could argue they've only got one. real good long-term piece and that's Charlie McAvoy. Maybe it's rebuild time. Maybe it's, you know, and then if so,

what do you do? And you've got the whole David Pastureneck situation where he's another good young should be long-term piece, but he needs a new deal next year. And he's going to cost $10 million. He should be, you know, Artemi-Pan money in theory.

And apparently, according to the reporting, is not very happy with the with how some things have been handled and Elliot like Fluto on the athletic had a piece where he was saying like hey a Pasternak trade is absolutely a possibility and Elliot Friedman

this morning basically said that the priority is to sign an extension which is what people always say but if doesn't look like there's an extension then they have to trade him so it certainly sounds like Pasternak could be traded this off season and if that's the case

especially if Patrice Bergeron's not back I mean do you look move in Brad Marchand and you know who else I mean they just sign Hampus Lindholm but yeah going down the list like there's there's talent on this team but you could so Pluto uh did a local sports radio show here in in Boston um yeah before the press conference yesterday and boy he you don't you You know, Fluto doesn't usually tip his hand as much as he did in this interview in terms of like, oh, no, like, here's everything I know that went on behind the scenes without, you know, saying too much, obviously. But they will explore a pastor Nacritre. And I did write this quote down to initiate a rebuild.

And he also said that the next coach will be, quote, a young coach. And then he said, quote, between Jay Leach and David Quinn. Jay Leach, I believe, is the coach in Providence right now. David Quinn. David Quinn. Huh. And so the thing they said on the show and you just kind of hinted at it, I guess, is so why do you trade? Like, it makes sense why you trade for Hampus Lindholm, but why do you then sign him also?

And if the thing was, well, you trade for him and you sign him because that's the only reason. like way he would go to your team or whatever. I guess I get that. But, you know, and I was fully in favor of them making that trade at the time because I thought, well, there's no way Bergeron doesn't come back. But now Bergeron is maybe out until November or so. McAvoy, Grizzlic, Marchand, also all out until November or December. And it's like, you know what?

Why would Bergeron come back at that point? I think Fluto said the same thing. Like, what's in it for him at that point? Just to like, like, if he's coming back, he's coming back to play competitive hockey. The Bruins don't feel like they would be set up to be particularly competitive. I will say, though, that, like, Bruce Cassidy averaged 110 points per 82 games. his team, his Bruins team, that's a crazy number. Yep.

And so if you're getting rid of him, the only thing that you're doing, I feel, is almost ripping it to the studs. Like, you can't do that in this league, obviously. They have a bunch of guys with no moves and no trades. But fucking, they got to be open for business, right? Like you said, if they're trading Pasternak, they got to. trade Marshand. They got to trade Taylor Hall. And now all those guys have movement protection of some kind. And it's always, you know, and even when you're rebuilding, you still need players,

that sort of thing. But yeah, it's, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. And, you know, it sounds like David Pasternak is kind of pissed off. And, you know, if he, again, like, you could sit down and negotiate, but he could say either, no, I'm not signing, or, you know, I want to see how the summer goes. I want to see what moves are made. I don't want to, me committing long term isn't going to be the first piece. I want it to be the last piece after I see everything else. And the ruins could legitimately say we need it to be the first piece

because it's going to determine how everything else goes. You don't want to load up again with more veterans and then have David Pasternak go, nah, actually, trade me. So this is suddenly the biggest name, certainly on the trade market, And maybe on the market period, depending on how you think of the Johnny Godreaux's and guys like that. I think Pastor Nax better than Goodrow, for sure. Certainly at his age, too. Yeah, there's also that.

And the price point, yeah. At the price point, but I don't know that considering you're going to have to give up presumably big assets to get him versus signing a UFA. I don't know. But you know who this has really got to be big news for. is those four bad teams in the Atlantic who are all in various stages of rebuild, especially Detroit and Ottawa that are kind of in theory coming out of the rebuild.

Buffalo, we're not sure. Montreal's just starting, we think. But those teams, you could sit there and be like, hey, you know,

if you're Steve Eisenman, should he go out, get this guy or that guy, can Ottawa afford to go get Claudeauroo? And there's always that part of you that says, yeah, but, I mean,

what are you going to do? You make the team 20 points better and you still miss, miss the playoffs by 10 points because there are four really good teams in the Atlantic that are locked in. Maybe not now. Maybe there's a spot opening up. And does that change what you do if you're, especially Detroit, or maybe even Ottawa where you say, like, we've got to, we can actually catch these guys now if they're going to, they're going to tear a big chunk of their roster down? Yeah. And I guess the other thing about the Bruins is that they have,

I think five forward signed beyond this is a 2022-23 season. And now those forwards are Marshand, Hall, Coil, DeBrusk, and Oscar Steen. Okay. Would not have got that last one? No, I don't think so. And all of them, but Debrusk and obviously Steen have at least a partial no trade. but Hall and for some reason Charlie Coyle have full no moves as well. So really strange, but this is a situation where, and God, even after 24, they only have three

defensemen signs. So this is a team where, like, the Bruins, if they want to turn it over, they can do it pretty quickly just in terms of, like, swapping out just about everybody on the roster in two years, basically. Yeah. So, yeah, Brad Marsh, Sean's no movement clause expires this summer. So he had a no movement clause for the first five years of his deal.

And now it's a no trade. And according to this, it's a six team. Cat Friendly says six team trade, which presumably means he gives them six teams he'd accept a trade to, which is still pretty close to a no trade because you can, depending, you know, if you want to, you can dick around and put like Arizona or whoever on there that you know isn't going to be interested. And then 15 team no trade in.

year seven and then an eight. So basically diminishing no trade protection the rest of the way, which does, you know, mean that even if it's, you know, you can go to him and say, we've got an opportunity to move you here now. I know they're not on your list right now, but, you know, we can keep you around for a year and then maybe move you somewhere even worse next year. Like, it's open. And that shows that they, that Don Sweeney potentially foresaw this coming. when he signed that deal. Yeah. Now, the other thing about this is that a lot of Boston people,

Boston people are fucking insanely pissed about this firing. And I get why, like, you know, if you're like, look, we were a couple bad injuries or whatever, away from getting into the second round, and then after that, who knows, like, okay, sure. but, you know, like, as everybody's kind of pointed out, like you don't make this decision unless you're like, oh, I don't think we're competitive anymore.

That's it. Yeah, which again, is weird when you're like one game seven loss away from. Yeah, and you were like a hundred and whatever point team, like a hundred and six point team or whatever the Peruvans were this year. They were really good. At the same time, you lost to the hurricanes, you watched the hurricanes lose to the Rangers. The Rangers are now maybe in the process of losing the lightning,

who'd be potential underdogs against the avalanche. So maybe you look at this and go, yeah, we're not that close. Right. But the thing that everybody is pointing out, rightly so, is, do you want Don Sweeney in charge of a fucking rebuild? This guy can't draft. Can't develop. Yeah.

Like, it's so funny. Did you see somebody tweet it where they're like, you know, oh, they could get a bunch of first round picks for Pastor Nack? Imagine what they could do with three first round picks. Yeah. I mean, like, it's crazy because, like, you know, they were like, oh, the young players were afraid to make mistakes. And it's like, I've seen all these young players.

And apart from, like, I don't know, like, who is their best young player at this point? Like, is it fucking? Like, if we're not counting McAvoy, yeah. Right. Like, if we're saying, like, if we're saying, like, awesome. Oscar Steen, who's already 24 or whoever, like, if that's your, like, number one fucking guy. That's the youngest guy on. I guess you would say Jack's did nicka, but he's 23.

So, like, he's not young. He's fucking Charlie McEvoy's age almost. And Charlie McEvoy's been in the league forever. So, like, if those guys were afraid to make mistakes or whatever, it's like, oh, it seems like all they do is make mistakes because they're not that good. Right? Like that's, is that not where you, where you land on all this shit? And there's always been talk that like Sweeney and Cam Neely are maybe not always on the same page. And so you do wonder if that's part of it.

Maybe they're, you know, Don Sweeney didn't need time to digest. He needed time to decide, you know, to figure out if he was still the GM. Yeah, I mean, like, I think Sweeney mostly has as bad. Like, I think it was Fluto said the other day. you don't make this move unless your boy, who's your boss, is signing off on this. Right. I'm just going to read you a list. Is your boss the one who is making the decision?

And it's sort of like you go along with it or else you go with him. Sure. But I'm going to read you a list of the Bruins draft picks that, like in any way notable, Bruins' draft picks that Don Sweeney has made since he took over in 2015. Jake DeBrusk. Perfectly good NHL player. Nothing. He's fine. Brandon Carlo, good-ish middle-payer defenseman.

Charlie McAvoy. Really good. He's fucking awesome. That's it. We're done. Yeah. And again, you know, not to beat the point in the ground, but you look at some of those other picks that they had, even Dubrusk and guys that were still on the board. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah, if you're going to rebuild having the guy who doesn't draft super well. And I like Don Swini as a GM. I just counted 43 draft picks. Three of them, you're like, that's a legitimate real NHL player. Maybe Ryan Lindgren, too, but obviously he's not on the Bruins anymore.

And so, yeah, like if you're going, oh, you know what, they've made, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, even on Trent Frederick, right? Like, okay, now we're up to five in 43 draft picks. And obviously some of those were like in the last two or three years. But they haven't had a single guy make the NHL that they drafted after 2017. Right? Like, it's crazy. Yeah, that's not, yeah, it's not good enough.

Even when you don't have the high picks or whatever. Right. the other thing is obviously they've been trying to be highly competitive the last few years. They have two first round picks since 2018, and, like, those picks were number 30 and 21. So, okay, I get all that. But, like, they have to do a better job. Like, even the guy, like, the college hockey guys, they've drafted, who I obviously know who they are a little bit.

I'm just like, oh, you know what, Jeremy's swaying to. I shouldn't forget about Jeremy. Swayman, he's their goalie of the future. He's a very good player. But Jeremy Swayman is the one guy where I'm like, nice pick, yep, for sure. You know what I mean? In recent years.

And obviously Charlie McAvoy, I thought he should have been the first defenseman taken in that draft. He was unbelievable in his draft years. So that they got him at 14 was a bit of good luck and kind of a no-brainer a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. I just look at this and I go, I don't know if Don Sweeney's the guy I want being my drafting and development GM.

I think that's very fair. Let me ask you this, because I get my, as always, good old Jimmy Shapiro comes through with the odds on the next coaches. And he's got each of the teams with openings, or most of them at least. But for the Bruins, no David Quinn anywhere on this list. But two of the top three, Barry Trots is number two. But number one is Nate Lehman, number three, Greg Carvel. Two college guys. What's the scouting report there?

That certainly says the young coach thing. Nate and Greg are obviously, I can't. Well, Greg Carvel used to be an assistant coach in the NHL. And now I'm blanking on where. but and then Nate obviously has not, has not had a coaching job at the NHL level. He was an assistant with the Ottawa Senators from 2005 to 2011. And the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim before that, as a matter of fact.

So, yeah, you know, like they're both good coaches, nice track records. obviously Carville is the guy who coached Cal McCar. Not the guy who recruited him, but the guy who coached him. And obviously that worked out pretty well. And I would say a lot of the guys he's coached have kind of punched above their weight in terms of like getting into pro hockey and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, making an impact there and that kind of thing. So if you were going to hire somebody out of college hockey,

right now. Would those two guys be near the top of your list? You know, Nate's a guy that everybody's been talking about for years. I think, honestly, I would go with Christ, now I can't think of his name, but the guy out of Mancato. I won't even pretend like I'll be able to help me. I'm totally blanking on his name right now, but but he's an unbelievable, Mike Hastings, Mike Hastings, he's an unbelievable coach.

Like, took a team that was like not anything, basically, when he took over his coach. And I want to say they have the best record in college hockey over the last 10 years. Just like, incredible job. Back-to-back Frozen Fours. probably would have made it the year before that if they had actually played the tournament. Like he's a really good coach. Does a lot with very little.

Now, I don't know if that is how you want your coaching to go in the NHL if you're trying to develop young players and that kind of stuff. Mankato's not exactly a future NHL player factory, let's say. But like if we're talking about that, you would say, like Mel Pearson, I guess, is at Michigan, but like there's a lot going on with Mel Pearson right now.

So, I don't know, like, Nate's, like I said, Nate's a guy that everybody's been connecting to an NHL job for as long as I can remember. Well, they've got them listed at four to one, which is certainly not overwhelming favored, but they do. Oh, David Carl is the other guy. Denver is coach, former Puck Soup guest for some reason. They just won a national championship,

but like that guy is a very, very good coach. And he's like 33, 34. So you're, again, you're talking about like a young, young coach. You know, like he's going to be younger than some of the guys on your team, honestly. So, yeah, it'll be interesting. I can see a lot of, like, again, I would be kind of surprised if the Bruins went in the first-time head coach direction, but, or first time in-time in-prose. If they're going to tear it down and rebuild.

I just did a lot of talking, sorry. Maybe they do, but yeah. Do you want to just, since I got it open, do you want to go down the other teams and just real quick look at who they? Let's hear them. Why not? So this again, according to my pal Jimmy, Blackhawks coach, Derek King at three to one. And then...

No thanks. Well, I mean, that would be the state of course. We want to stink next year anyways and try to be... Yeah, I guess that's true, yeah. Peter DeBore, Barry Trots, is third. Mike Volucci, Derek Lalonde. And then we get into the recycled Jim Montgomery, Rick Tock, Travis Green, Jeff Blasheel.

Now, see, Lalonde is an interesting one to me. Because that's like the, maybe the start of the John Cooper coaching tree. Like they've played, they've been together at every level and that kind of thing. Okay. And he seems to be like extremely like well respected and all that sort of stuff. So the flyers, number one, John Tortorello, which I don't think surprises us. No. Number three, Rick Talkett.

Number two makes me think that maybe they haven't put a ton of work into this list or there is some. word out there that I haven't heard, but they've got Mike Yo as the number two for the Flyers, and he's been told he is not going to get the job. That was like a month ago, so don't know what's up there. Barry Trots, Jim Montgomery. By the way, can we talk about the rumor that Mike Yo might go to Vancouver as an assistant? Sure we can. Yeah, that's very funny to me that he seems to keep winding up in play, like Bruce Boudreau in the last year of a contract already, already seems like maybe a bit of a lame duck. Like, I was talking to someone, I said, like, Mike Yao is starting to be like that guy in

college who hangs around everyone's girlfriend. And he's like, I'm just, you know, just a friend. And you're like, are you though, or are you waiting to slip in there? Because he could be yet another failed interim coach. Golden Knights, Claude Julian. Again, Pete DeBore. Like, what? How old is this?

That doesn't need, yeah, that doesn't mean any sense. This must be a, you know what? This must be an old list. Brand new. Yeah, you know what? This is an old, like, they sent it to me today, but this is clearly an old list if he's got Pete to borrow there. They do a very, well, he does a Barry Trott. So, well, and he's got Bruce Cassidy, but he's got Bruce Cassidy on the list.

What hell's going on? Jimmy. Smart now. All right. Next Jets coach, he's got Barry Trots at one to one. And then Scott Arneal, which. presumes that Trots is, again, that feels old to me. This is really interesting. The Red Wings coach. And again, this is maybe just based on the rumor mill two months ago because it really feels

like they've taken an old list and just added Trotson Cassidy to it. But they've got Sergey Federov as number one. I hadn't heard that much of that. He's in the KHL, I believe. He is. He's a very good coach in the KHL is my understanding. But like the way the KHL works, like, is insane and I don't really understand a lot of its internal machinations. So he could just be on one of those teams where it's like, oh, the salary cap doesn't apply to them. They can do whatever they want. But with that having been said,

apparently everybody thinks he's like a future NHL head coach for whatever reason. I would be shocked if they did it just because it's like, they haven't even retired his number yet. Yeah, that's it. There's something going on with Federer. Robin DeTrue. But maybe Eiserman can patch it up. I don't know.

And I got to give credit to the odds makers here. I love it when they troll a little bit. The last guy on the list at 33 to 1 for the Red Wings job, Patrick Watt. How great would that be? That would be a really fun way to go about it. He'd have a reason to beat up a Red Wings goalie then. And then for the Dallas Stars, they have Mark Savard, and then Peter DeBore, Richard Gromberg, which is a name that comes up often enough that I should probably figure out how to pronounce it.

And then a bunch of, did I really? Wow. A bunch of X-stars. Yerry Laytonin. Sergei Zubov, Steve Ott. Sure. And Mike Babcock shows up on a few of these lists, but again, that could just be trying to chase down name recognition. Yeah. I think Mark Savard is a very interesting one. Obviously, he's an OHL coach right now. Now, I want to say Windsor. And that is where Dallas has, like, their best prospect. And so, like, that. But do you want to get into the business of, hey, you know, you know, who knows this one guy in our system is the guy who's already his coach? He should be the coach of everybody.

No, like, Marks of Ard has always struck me as, like, a guy who really gets the game and all that kind of stuff. Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him get a head coaching job. Will he get this one? Given how the Stars team is constructed, I'm not totally convinced that that's the right move. But, you know, the way the Stars team is constructed, I'm not convinced that anybody's turning it around anytime soon. So why not just go with the guy you might as, you want later on? I think you're probably right. And it is weird that we had, well, I don't know.

know, it feels weird that we have this many openings still. Usually, it's not weird to have this many openings during an offseason, but usually they start to fill up and we haven't seen it. Plus Woodcroft, we got to talk about. I guess, yeah. Well, we already talked about it. Lane Lambert was the one guy who got hired for the Islanders. Yeah.

And that was an internal hire. Yeah. Marta S. Yeah. Marta S. We obviously was hired, I guess, officially. lost the interim tag, but, yeah, that's, we don't know the Hawks. And I guess we even technically don't know the Panthers, but we all assume that there's

nothing going on there. But who knows, if Boston can fire their coach yesterday. Yeah, that's right. Maybe we're not done. Yeah, okay, let's talk about, there were two extensions signed yesterday. One of them, just about right. one of them I was a little surprised by. Jack Roselvic, two years,

four million a pop, stays in Columbus. Makes sense to me. This is a good deal for both sides, I think. Columbus doesn't really need him to like fully deliver. They'd love for him to fully deliver on the value, but like, yeah, they're not, not rebuilding.

So whatever, that's fine. Still, still very curious to see what they do with Linae, But yeah. That feels fair. And especially, well, I mean, I don't have a ton just because I mean, I don't think he's moving the needle on anything. But there's, you know, if you're Columbus, there's a perception that, you know, maybe you're not a destination and maybe you got to overpay a little bit to keep guys. This is a fair deal. A guy who looked great with them when he first went over and then it's been up and down since then.

Settled down. This is, it's certainly. I mean, if you're Columbus, you can probably where you're at, rebuilding-wise, you can afford to overpay if you have to, especially on short-term deals, aren't tying your hands. But I don't necessarily think they did.

It was fine. Ken Holland just confirmed high ankle sprain suffered in game six of the L.A. series. So there you go. Just, again, amazing that... Ridiculous, yeah. And we all kind of said, like, you know,

when they finished... Calgary early, like maybe he'll be better for Colorado and maybe he was to start, but the level of production he had with that injury is phenomenal. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, we're ridiculous. So I guess we'll have Oilers updates throughout the rest of the podcast. But yeah, so the other one is Dennis Gurianov, one year $2.9 million. And the reason this is interesting is he seemed to offer.

be in the doghouse with Dallas of late. So to get an extension it seems like it's because the coach got fired.

Yeah. Slight raise. A very slight raise but like to for I thought they were going to trade them this summer like trade his rights or whatever and maybe they still will

they can certainly trade them anyway. One year deal not as production has dropped but you know, He's a useful player. Yeah, he was RFA, right? Yeah, he was.

Yeah. But yeah, that's probably fine. Yeah, no, no. Like, I think Gori-Anna is a guy where I think he was just really miscast last season. And the classic thing of like, oh, you're not playing the way I want you to play because you kind of can't play that way. so why don't you go sit in the press box? I am very curious to see what a new coach can do with this guy. And you know, your Rick bonus is not going to change his ways in way through.

Not for Dennis Gourriano. Eighty-third season. So, yeah, it could be a good spot. I thought Dallas is another one of those teams. Which direction are they going to go? We will see. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, so those are the two extensions.

And then we'll round out this episode. do a quick little chit-chat about the various awards that have come out since we lasted the podcast. Darrell Sutter wins the Jack Adams Award. Yep. This makes perfect sense. It would be my pick. Yep.

Yeah. I didn't think of the, like, the top three were my top three coaches of the year. Let's put it that way. But of those three, Darrell Sutter was the should have been the runaway favorite. And he was. So great. That right. And, I mean, we've talked about this before.

There is an argument to be made that the way that Jack Adams should be for the best coach and guys like John Cooper should be nominated every year, be a finalist every year. But it's not. It's evolved over many decades into the best surprise team coach, you know, guy who exceeded expectations award. And given that, Daryl Sutter was the right call. Yeah. Um, Carrie Price wins the Masterton. Now, I would have said half the roster of the Arizona Coyote should have won this award. Yep.

But, uh, Carrie Price, I guess is a deserving winner. I guess. I guess. And, and again, this is, this was, uh, kind of a shoe in. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like, uh, I didn't, did, he did, he didn't get it unanimously. I'm assuming because this is I don't, I don't award that everybody votes on. So, yeah.

I think it would be I did not see the voting for this. Yeah, he had, yeah, no, he had 50 first place. Actually, 50 first place votes and Hayes and Chera both in the 30s and two other guys with double digits. So it's far from unanimous. Ryan Getslaff and Kyle Ok, so gets left.

Okay, a bunch of old guys that you used to suck and now you kind of don't, a little bit, kind of players. And then you've got the six places Brian Boyle with the, yeah, you probably should get votes, but you've already won it. So you can't win the Masterton more than once. So Jack Eichel got six first place votes, so good for him. And then I think everybody, I think all 32 nominees got at least one votes all the way down to Jared Spurgeon, who got one third place vote and finished last. It's a tough one.

He overcame. I agree that he's the guy. in the NHL, who overcame the lease this year, for sure. Yeah. Patrice Bergeron wins the Selke. I always complain about Selky voting because it's just like, who deserved it two years ago? That guy wins. Yeah.

Petrease Bergeron, first of all, he probably did. I'm not going to look, but he probably did deserve the Selke two years ago. Definitely deserved it this year. This is certainly a career award in terms of, uh, We all love Patrice Bershron. He deserves to be considered the greatest defensive forward in the history of hockey, or 200 foot forward or whatever you want to say. And so we will give him the most Selkies ever.

But also, you can't say he didn't earn it this year. He was fucking awesome. He rocks. Yes, absolutely. And he now holds the record, taking it away from Bob Ganey. I don't know if you know this, but they created this award for Bob Ganey. And one time a Russian said that Bob Ganey was. the best player on Canada.

Wow. And he definitely didn't say that just to screw with Canada. And we definitely didn't just fall for that hookline and sinkers. I'm sure. I know I've said this on the podcast before, but it reminds me of when, like, in 1996 or whatever, they asked Yarmir Yager, who's the toughest guy to play against in the league? And he said, Hal Gill. And the ruins were like, let's give this guy $7 billion.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And like, not quite. Hal Gill wasn't hard to play against, but I do think probably there were harder guys to play against than Hal Gill. Absolutely. Not quite unanimous for Patrice Bergeron, but he got 160 of the, I want to say, 200 votes. So, yeah, that's... And what a high to go out.

Like, if he really is retiring, which people seem to be increasingly believing now that he has to come back from an injury or surgery and all that kind of stuff. What a way to go out. Awesome. Shout out to the three people who had him fifth on their ballot. Who, Bergeron? Yeah. Yeah. Anybody leaving him off?

There was apparently, I saw something where one guy left him off and people were mad and then he said that was an error that he was supposed to have been first. And I don't know if that was, I don't know how you do that, but he seemed to plausibly convince people that that was a mistake and that he meant to have him first. Ken Holland told Jay Woodcroft they will sit down next week to discuss their future and so it sounds like Hmm okay so not as much a sure thing as you might have thought Yeah

Kyle Connor wins the Lady Bing Award Sure All right great I bet he's a little bit embarrassed to have won it Congratulations Kyle Well apparently he said that he grew up like watching Pavl Datsuk So he was okay with didn't seem as, you know, this isn't like an Alexander McGilney type of thing.

Right. I will say this. I get, of course, why nobody would want to be like, I'm the most gentlemanly player in the league. Ugh, please. I get why anybody would not want that distinction. But you know what? Hey, I'm a millennial. Give me a freaking participation trophy, okay? There you go. There you go. They give you a big trophy. What's wrong with that? That's nice. Yeah, it's fun. My, my, uh, to me, the most interesting, thing, and this is me being a total Toronto Homer, but the most interesting thing about the

lady being voting was Austin Matthews finishing 10th in a year in which he was suspended for cross-checking a dude in the face. Hey, we all make mistakes. Including multiple first-place votes. Yeah. There were also two goalies that got first-place votes, which was in Henry and Campbell. Great. I'm fine with that. That's fun. There's no reason why he can.

can't, I don't, I don't know how. People always get so mad about, like, this guy got suspended. You can't give him the lady being. Like, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I don't feel like you can get the lady Bing when you got suspended. I don't, but like I also, if we're going to say this is the award that everybody's a little embarrassed by or whatever, like, who gives this shit? Normally, whoever you want. I don't care. I suppose so, yeah. Now, here's an award, an award I care deeply about. Anse Copatar wins the Mark Messier Leadership Award. Yeah, we talked about that last week. I don't think he came up.

We didn't mention him. Messia, a little off the board. You can't trust this guy. But that's, I mean, obviously we're not, that's why we're not leaders, you and I. That's right. Just a couple of followers. If we could see into the mind of Mark Messier, we'd be doing a lot better for ourselves. It is weird that he's like, it feels like he's settled in like,

This is obviously a veteran award, but it's not a, like, end of the career award. It's, like, guys who have two or, I guess you need two or three years to enjoy it. It's, you know, like, it's, it's like, don't save all your money till you die. You got to take some of it out and go have fun with it. Now Anzay Kopupatar gets to be defending Mark Messier leader for, and I hope, hopefully for him, his leadership skills don't diminish over the coming year, as it apparently, has with everyone else who's ever won the award. We need to talk more about the Mark Messier curse.

Those guys were never good leaders again. It's crazy. It's become garbage leaders. And even Dustin Brown, I think, won it and then lost his captaincy to Anzay Kopitar, who is now the best leader. I mean, that's just... And it took him so long to be the best leader that you're like, well, why did Justin Brown lose the job in the first place?

That doesn't make sense. But yeah, the last award here, given out last night, P.K.C. Suban wins the King Clancy Award for being the nicest guy in the league. Being a good gentlemanly. And look, P.K. Suban has given a lot of money to charity and worked with a bunch of organizations in every city he's played in and all that kind of stuff. And for me, though, honestly, he was in jackass forever. Give us by every award. That could be it.

I mean, it's not going to be as big as the Oscar award. Yeah, that he gets. But, yeah, excellent work by him. And also, I guess we should point out that the still no news on the GM of the year, and nobody seems to care. Nobody is, nobody seems to care. So, yeah, no. I don't remember what award we're finding out tonight.

Let's see if I can find this. Awards, shit. I thought we're almost done, because then they've got the big four. In a couple of weeks they're going to do. Yep, that's true. Let's see. Oh, this is from, I was going to say May 20, if this doesn't make a, no. Yeah.

I don't know. This thing is all kinds of wrong. I don't know. Oh, those are announcing the finalists. Okay, I don't care about the finalists. Just tell me the fucking winners, please. I hate the fucking NHL's website. It's so bad.

Today is the eighth. No, we're done. We're done getting awards announced because we only have the five big ones and those will be all revealed on the 21st. That's why I couldn't find it. According to this, on July 7th, two plus weeks after all the awards,

that's when the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year award is going to be announced. So are they maybe waiting until after the season? I guess so. Are they going to vote on this now? Oh, Christ. So just, okay. I have a really good feeling about who two of the finalists are going to be. Yeah, seriously.

Like, you know what, hell, I have a pretty good feeling about who three of the finalists are going to be. I can tell you who they are right now. Joe Sackick, that's one. Julian Brisebois, that's another. Chris Drury, that's the third one. I don't know the order yet. I don't know who's going to. Ken Holland, man, he'll be four.

I think he's third over Drury, unless the Rangers go to the final, obviously. Yeah. All right, that's fair. Okay. That's fair. Yikes. Yeah, this league rocks. What can we tell you?

All right, that's it, though. We're done. So, Sean, it's your turn to do plugs. Check out my stuff on the athletic. I'm actually working on a big feature that's going to drop on Friday. Wow. Yeah, they asked me to do some big kid work instead of just making like rosters of guys with mustaches versus guys with beards,

which is probably next week's piece. I was going to say, The fact that you haven't done it yet implies that you will be doing it soon. It's in progress. That's right. Definitely. And then like once the final start, obviously I'll have my usual rooting guides and all of that kind of thing. And then pretty soon, off-season mode.

And you know what that means. Fucking around. Just absolutely. Man, you don't even want to imagine the ideas that I'm sitting on for August. So get in now. That's right. And then, of course, you can find my stuff at EPRinkside, E.P.Rinkside.com. And if you sign up for an annual subscription, you will get three months tacked on to the end of those 12 months when you use the code, I love EP, all one word, all capital letters.

And then, of course, we have the Pucksoo Patreon. Me and Sean, very, very smart, ahead of the game kind of guys. We were like, we don't want to do a bonus episode while the cup final is going on. So what we're going to do instead is we're going to do a bonus episode this week. And we did it yesterday. And it was, you know, if you go back, if there was a rule in the NHL where after you beat a team, you get to take one player from that team for the rest of the playoffs, who did you pick? And we did that for five years ago, 10 years ago, 25 years ago, and so on. Fun episode.

People really liked it. People seem to have enjoyed that. They like it when I make you talk about old-timey hockey. Yeah. By which we mean the early 2000s. That's right. Let's just say the name Babe Dye comes up in a not flattering light. Yeah.

But yeah, so that's a fun one. And then we're going to do the mailbag and then we have all the other bonus stuff that we do. So check it all out. PuckSuit. Patreon is patreon.com slash puck suit. So there you go. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support.

As always, and hell, by the time we're talking to you next week, cup final. Can you believe it, folks? Wow. Very exciting. Yeah, that rocks. Hell yeah. All right. See you later.

Bye-bye. Bye. It's in tools It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense Poggy and nightstands Park Sue