Puck Soup - The Ultimate Draft Draft

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

The boys discuss the NHL reaction to the killing of George Floyd and the protests in its aftermath, from player and team statements to hypocrisy to what comes next. Plus, a really fun special event: The Ultimate Draft draft, as we build three teams restricted by which rounds players were selected. We also discuss the Ducks GM dumping on his coach and the merits of summertime hockey. 

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 nonsense. I'm Greg Wischinski of the worldwide leader in sports. ESPN. Oh, I'm Ryan Lamber from this podcast. Oh, Sean McIndoo from The Athletic.

And you're in a puck soup with three white guys, about to talk about stuff that probably deserves many other voices talking about it first. So here's the deal. We're obviously going to talk about the news the day. There are chuckles later in the episode. We've got a really awesome draft we're going to be doing amongst ourselves. And there's going to also be some of our hockey talk about potentially playing in the summer and things like that. But obviously, got to address the thing first of what's happened this week in life, in sports, in society. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer who was white kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes led to widespread protests, led to widespread civil unrest, led to the president of the United States, gassing his own citizens.

for a photo op at a church. Let's have to put, put, to find a point on it. And it led to this seminal moment in the history of the National Hockey League's players where over, well over 50 of them, maybe now even 60 of them, took to social media. In some cases, their teams released statements. And other cases, the players released statements themselves of varying degrees of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, coming out against police brutality,

coming out against racism, and in some cases, in the case of Petrius Bergeron and others, fundraising for the NAWACP in organizations. Their teams, not so much on the candid side. I would say that most of the team statements and everybody except for the one that James Dolan owns

has made one, has veered towards the, let's cover our bases aspect. There were some that were a bit more emphatic than others. There were a couple in the case of the Allenders and the St. Louis Blues that felt the need to dedicate some space to praising law enforcement, which is really reading the room. So that's this week. It's really been remarkable.

And I guess, you know, general thoughts, boys, and then also whether this is a blip or if this is a sea change moment for of the NHL. Well, I mean, we'll see, right? Like, you can put out all the, you know, I'm committed to finding a way forward and blah, blah, blah. You can say all that stuff, but like, even writing a check to the NDACP and like a multi-ethnic center in Quebec doesn't necessarily mean you're like, you actually are making any kind of a notable difference or changing how you go about things in your daily life. And the problem with this fucking sport in particular is that if any of this ever comes up again, right? Like if they say, hey, Patrice, what are you doing for Black Lives Matter stuff,

you know, three months from now? He's going to go, well, I'm really focusing on the season. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, like I said, it's good that they're putting out statements, although, you know, the number of people who are identifying the police is the problem and not just, just saying systemic racism is bad. You know, that's an issue in and of itself. But, you know, I think the best you can do is that you hope they're being sincere in their efforts to learn so that they can teach their kids or whatever they're all saying now about how to be not just like saying racism is bad, but to actually actually be like anti-racist. and some statements are more to that point than others, let's just say. Yeah, some of the statements felt sincere and thoughtful, and some of them did not.

You know, I think there were certainly somewhere, it was pretty clear that somebody got a text from their agent saying this is something we got to get on, and I'm going to draw something up for you, and you post it to your social media, and that was as much thought went into it. But a lot of them weren't. And especially as the week went on, you know, some of them really did seem to have some thought behind them. The bar in hockey is so extraordinarily low for this sort of thing. And even recently, I mean, virtually nobody in the NHL said anything about the Bill Peters situation when that was going on. virtually nobody said anything even a few weeks ago when Akeemaloo put his story out there. And certainly among the white players, there was virtual radio silence.

Which is, it's frustrating. And yet it also, because the bar was so low, this week did feel different and did feel meaningful in some way. I mean, the reality is if we had had this conversation a week ago, when the situation was unfolding and the protests were just beginning and we didn't really have a sense of the scale of what it was going to become, if we had said, what do you think are the odds that multiple big name NHL players

would speak out on this, you would have said virtually zero. Zero. Zero, yeah. And if I told you that actually by the end of next week, almost all of the biggest voices of players would have would have weighed in and many of them would have weighed in in ways that at least seemed thoughtful and sincere, your jaw would have dropped because it is so out of character for this league and the players who make it

up. So I give them credit for clearing a bar that had been set as low as possible. That bar is now higher because of this and let's hope they continue to clear it and they don't just hang the mission accomplished banner and forget about it. And let's set the time, listen, let's set the timeline here. I know our mileage and rightfully so on Evander Cain. A lot of us may vary. He's definitely got some things that he's done in his background, one incident in which he was pulling a woman by her hair at a club,

that don't make him the easiest messenger, let's say, to accept. But you got to give the man credit, man. He went on national television and spoke truth to power. He said, where's Sidney Crosby and all this? That was fucking cool. He literally fucking said, where is Sidney Crosby? Like, imagine that.

Imagine a hockey player going on national television in the United States on ESPN and calling out Sydney Crosby. Yeah, and how many days did it take for Crosby to put a pretty milktoe statement together? Five, six. Good stuff, Sid. Well, I want to get to Sid in a bit.

But like, so he, so Kane goes on ESPN, calls out Crosby and then says that that really powerful thing about, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want to, I want people that don't look like me to come out and, uh, and speak about this with the same amount of outrage I have inside. It's time is the quote. It's time for guys like Tom Brady and Sidney Crosby and those types of figures to speak up about what is right and what is, uh, in this case, unbelievably wrong. that's the only way we're going to create that unified anger to create that necessary change, especially when you talk about systemic racism. So after that happens, the San Jose Sharks owner puts out on the Sharks' Twitter feed a statement in support of Vandercaine, mentioning him by name, throwing his support behind him. That then gives some agency to Logan Guter to speak on behalf of Van der Kaine.

And he does so in a very, very interesting way, because as the, week goes on, you don't necessarily see this kind of language anymore, which was the fact that he kind of couched it by saying, sorry if this offends anybody. Like, you started to not see that anymore on a lot of these statements. So he comes out and says it. And now, now the floodgates are starting to open. And as the week goes on, we start getting away from sort of the performative, you know, racism is bad kind of comments to getting some on, like, I know that we're all. talk about, like, how unbelievable this moment is and how, you know, it's so weird to see hockey players speak so candidly about race. How about, like, hockey players speaking this

eloquently about anything? Fucking Braden-Hulpey going into a soliloquy about the racism inherently of having something named after Woodrow Wilson that crosses over to PG County in D.C. Yeah, there, it's crazy. Like, there were, I would, the thing I said was when all this stuff started coming out, I was like, ah, that's pretty good for, like, a white millionaire. Like, It's not good, but it's good enough for like what we're talking about. And then like Jonathan Taves had like an actual pretty good one. And and Braden Holpey and. Tyler Sagan.

His was more. That was, I felt like the Sagan one was when it started to veer more toward like, I'm listening and I'm learning and I see you and I hear you. He had some good stuff on the athletic too. But like Taves, obviously P.K. stepping up and donating $50,000 to Gianna Floyd's GoFund Me, and then having fucking Gary Betman match it. Wheeler, Wheeler to me, at least gives me hope on a lot of this stuff, because I consumed

probably more Blake Wheeler content in the last three days than I have maybe in the last year. And man, was he good? Like, I mean, you know, talking about what his kids' reaction to seeing George Floyd murdered was really being out there and really putting himself out there. And I know a lot of it has to do with something happening in your own backyard. He's from outside of Minneapolis. But, I mean, that's the beacon of hope for me is that, you know, if you fucking told me the captain of the Winnipeg Jets, you know, in 2020,

would be holding court for 38 minutes on systemic racism and then gets asked a question during it about return to play during the summer and is like, this is pretty trivial. Like, fuck, man. That's incredible. That's incredible. That's something I never, I am an, I am, as many people know, an old ass lib. That shit I never thought I'd see from an NHL player. Fucking never thought I'd see from an NHL player.

So there's that. So two things. I know the Akima, like Sean said, the Akeem-A-Loo example has been bought up a lot as far as like the implicit silence of players. when it comes to that. And I completely agree. Like when the Bill Peter shit was going down, you didn't even get performative. We need to stop the aboos kind of shit from players.

But the guy I thought about a lot in the last week is J.T. Brown. It was only three years ago. It seems like 90 years ago, but it was only three years ago that J.T. Brown stood on the Tampa Bay Lightning bench and raised his fist in the air in solidarity with other black athletes. who were protesting in other sports during the anthems. Many of them were kneeling. He didn't kneel.

He consulted military families beforehand to see what type of protest they'd be comfortable with. And he knew there'd be negative backlash and that negative backlash manifested in death threats against him and his family and his kids. Probably also cost him a pretty good chunk of his NHL career. I mean, how many games did he have played before and after that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

At the time, um, no, no, not a single fucking player stood up for him. I mean, nobody. Nope.

Nobody put a fucking tweet out. Nobody ran to the athletic. Nobody went to the Players Tribune. Nobody, nobody said dick. And, and his team, I went back and looked.

This is the statement that Tampa Bay Lightning put out when J.T. Brown raised his fist to try to bring awareness to issues of police brutality and racial injustice. And contrast this three years ago with what you read this week from 30 teams, 31 at the Count Seattle. This is the Tampa Lightning. The Tampa Lightning celebrate the moment before every game when we can unite as a community paying homage to a flag that is representative of our nation and those who have sacrificed.

Now, you're saying to yourself, that's interesting. One would assume that maybe they would have talked about their player by name or racial injustice, here's the rest of the comment. At the same time, we respect our players and individual choices they may make on social and political issues. So three years ago, the only reaction from a team or a player publicly to J.T. Brown raising his fist to raise awareness for the very issues people are marching on today and the very issues over 50 players and 31 teams put words to in the last fucking week. The only reaction. was his team celebrating the sanctity of the national anthem and then saying nameless player,

brand ex player, we respect you for making the choice that you, that they, we respect the individual choice you've made on this social or political issue. And I mean, like that's, that's the fucking issue here, right? Like, for example, um, you know, J.T. Brown did that during all the Colin Kaepernick stuff. Yes. And fucking Kendall Coyne got owned so fucking hard this week because she was like, oh, Black Lives Matter and somebody just said, hey, here's a screenshot of you Colin Colin Kaepernick, you know, saying he's a piece of shit or whatever.

She said she was disgusted by Kaepernick. Yeah. Nealing during the anthem. And like, she got fucking obliterated with like just this you. and a screenshot. And, you know, like she said what, the only thing you can say, which is like, you know, I've grown and learned and that kind of thing.

And it's like, well, I mean, what happened was it became more politically expedient for you to burnish your image by saying Black Lives Matter now. But what the real issue is, right, is that, like, people who are now saying, you know, I'm listening and I'm learning and that kind of thing, what they really need to do is, Um, think about like why Ferguson didn't make them feel this way. Think about why Amadou Diallo didn't make them feel this way. Eric Garner, like, you know, I went to a, uh, it was, I went because it was a couple blocks

from my house, but it was, uh, like an interfaith candlelight vigil. And they were reading off the names of, uh, victims of police violence. And I was just like, oh yeah, forgot about that guy. I forgot about that woman. Like, like, and. You, you know, most of them don't even, you know, they're nameless to us, right? Like the victims of this, like you don't hear about them unless they get caught on video or something like that. And that's, but to bring up Ferguson for a second, I remember sitting in a room with Doug Armstrong around the time of the playoffs last year.

And we talked about the racial demographics in St. Louis and what this moment meant, their run meant. Like, what did it mean? Like, what is this thing that's happening? And what is the community, how is the community reacting to the blues in a way that maybe they've never, they never have before? And we talked about Ferguson. And he talked about, you know, paying, you know, mind to those, the people that went through that. And, like, to think about that and then think about the statement the blues put out in conjunction with Cardinals. It doesn't fucking, it's all PR.

That's the point. It was one of the single most inadequate things that was said. And it was very disappointing. But to speak about Kendall Coyne for a second. So I think one of the problems for a lot of these athletes and for a lot of people in general is that, and for the NHL, in total, by the way, is that they don't try to get their own house in order first. Right. They're trying to put their shit out there and get their spots in and, you know, part. host Black Lives Matter and have the multicolored emoji fists and shit.

But they don't actually like look inside themselves and be like, what have I done in my past? What have I done to support the cause? What have I done to subvert the cause? And so I believe she's genuine when she's putting that shit out about Black Lives Matter. We'll see. But she also doesn't. You can't just say it though.

Right. But she also doesn't recognize her role in previously. you know, diminishing the attention that it deserved by going, by, by misplacing her outrage on black athletes protesting police brutality by, you know, performative patriotism. And so that brings me to Crosby. So I don't know why the Pittsburgh media had a fucking heart on for me this week. Um, I think probably because I'm easier to go after than a Vander Cain. But like, Kane called out Crosby and said, make a statement. Like, so. support us. We need to hear your voice. And then Sid, you know, put out a statement a few days

later, like four or five days later, which is fine. Like I, I know that there's like a criticism of expediency and whatever, but maybe you don't have the words. I don't know. I'm willing to give him the better, the fit of the doubt. I'm happy he said something. What I find, though, interesting is when Crosby released a statement, he talked about how he's going to listen, and educate himself about how he can make a difference and, you know, all this stuff, right? I mean, and he put it out through the penguins. I guess the Sidney Crosby Foundation had previously put out something. What happened to George Floyd cannot be ignored. Racism that exists today in all forms is unacceptable. While I am not able to relate to the discrimination that black and minority communities face daily,

I will listen and educate myself on how I can help make a difference. Together, we will find solutions through necessary dialogue and a collective effort. when we get around to actually talking to players again, myself or someone should probably ask Sidney Crosby that when your team, okay, decided to go to the White House and in 2017, I think it was, right, and meet with Trump and do so at a time when the president was calling black athletes protesting police brutality, sons of bitches, when NBA players releasing statements to combat that, when LeBron James called the president a bum,

when the Golden State Warriors opted not to attend their championship ceremony at the White House because of this. And then when Sid said, oh, you know, for my view of things, there's absolutely no politics involved. And, like, says that visiting the White House is not about politics. Like, does he have that Kendall coin moment? Like, does he have that moment where he said all of a sudden realizes why so many people were so fucking pissed about what the penguins did?

Like, that's what I'd love to know because that's the growth that needs to happen. So I give Krenmel coin credit, man. Like, if she recognized how shitty it was to not support those athletes for doing, for protesting the same shit that we're protesting now three years ago, kudos to her. But again, it's like she can say, oh, you know, I fucked up or whatever. but like, prove it. Sure, but at least she acknowledged she fucked up. You can't just put a note tap apology, though. At least I know what she fucked up.

But you don't get credit for that. You don't get credit for, I have, you know, this tweet about me that has 120,000 likes or whatever. So I have to put something out. But the thing, but here's the thing, though. Here's the thing, though. I give her more credit for revisiting the past and acknowledging her mistake. and acknowledging her mistakes, then I do, again, the penguins for deleting an image of Crosby taking a face off in front of a black, sorry, in front of a Blue Lives Matter flag, which again was, you know, a night where that that was related to the synagogue shooting. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But if you're on the, the deleting of that image, okay, is an inherently political act. It shows that you are cognizant of their. being some level of backlash, some level of potential backlash, some level of outrage that you promoted this and are now going to come out with a statement, you know, supporting the efforts to reduce police brutality. So I give Kendall Coyne credit because she literally said in her statement, I am not going to go back and delete this shit. I said it. And I give her more credit for doing that than I do the penguins trying to fucking sneak one by. And good job. front by Mika to fucking, or Mika to fucking call it out because they would have snuck it by otherwise.

I get from much more credit for that. And, you know, there are like pictures of Patrice Berseran wearing a hat with that flag on it, too, and that kind of thing. Like, it's, again, like these people see it as an apolitical thing. And I think a lot of the people who are victimized by police brutality would not see it that way, you know. And they would be, you know, right to not see it that way. So, so like, again, you know, it's nice that Patrice Bergeron cut a check to the NDACP, but what now? You know, like, is that to make up for the hat or, you know, like, it's something that there needs to be, like, actual questions asked about. And, you know, hopefully the answers are sufficient.

The thing, the interesting thing about the politics angle is that that's where you felt like Blake Wheeler was doing that thing where he, like one step away from going over the precipice, and he's like circling his arms to keep himself from falling over, which was his discussion about politics where, you know, he says things like, you know, this was his quote, I don't find this to be a political issue, even though when it comes to voting it is, whether you love Donald Trump or you love Bernie Sanders to use opposite names on the political spectrum, we can all agree that this is a problem. Human rights should apply to everyone, whether I'm voting Democrat or voting Republican. I think I can find a candidate on either side that this is important to and agree with the fact that this needs to stop.

That is an idealist thing to say, but I do wonder at an election year, to speak to your point earlier, Ryan, like how much of this change will be influenced at the polls by professional athletes who at that time, you know, will maybe be in their offseason, maybe prepping for the next season, I don't know. But it does seem like that when it comes to the actual political solutions to some of these problems, ain't going there. Even the most outspoken of them aren't going there. Yeah, and if they're not going there now, Sean, thank you for late American speak.

If they're not going there now, I mean, five months from now, exactly, it's going to be going there, which is when you would need it to happen. Yeah, when's the next law enforcement night at, uh, at, uh, you know, a Bruins game or whatever. I'm going to say sometime in 2020, 2020, 2021 season. But again, get, get your own house in a, like NHL. Like, 31 teams put out statements, varying degrees of effectiveness, varying degrees of

of sincerity. But like, if you're the Detroit Red Wings and you put out a pithy 30-word statement that doesn't mention the black community or the killing of George Floyd, and then you allow the Detroit Police Department to use Little Seizers Arena as a processing area for protesters, the fuck are you doing? Oh, I know what you're doing. You're repaying the public funding you got. I got to say I put virtually no stock in the statements that were coming from the actual teams.

These are just brands doing what brands do. It's the PR department. Unless it had someone's name attached to it, I'm not particularly. Even then, yeah. But it's just something that comes out with a logo on it, I'm not particularly, I don't care. It was the stuff that had names attached to it, the stuff that came from the local. players that I thought was at least of some value, hopefully. Let me, let me ask you this, Sean.

I've heard a theory that even though the teams were being performative and even though a lot of the statements were templates and a lot of statements didn't even mention the shit that's going down by name, that their statements gave cover to the players to speak out. Would you buy that? maybe maybe it did and in which case I don't know I'd I'd have more respect for the players who spoke out without having that cover or without believing that they were you know like risk something man like turn on your TV look at what's going on risk something don't don't

don't wait till it's perfectly safe uh don't don't wait till you sure you've got cover. You know, there's, there's more value in doing, you know, as he said, I mean, for Van der Kaine to call out Sidney Crosby by name, I know now even five days later or whatever, it feels like something that was safe and predictable, but it wasn't. I mean, that for, I mean, it's one thing as a hockey player to stand up and speak out

about anything and put a spotlight on yourself, especially if you're a person of color because we've seen how that's gone for other players in this league it's another thing entirely to call out somebody not even on your own team i mean that's yeah you're breaking the hockey code at that point and it's it's it's almost hard because i mean this has been one of these moments in history where everything is changing so quickly that every day it feels like you have to reset all your priors but it's it's even for him to say that there was risk involved. And, you know, I respect the players who spoke when there was risk. And if they were waiting for cover, then I guess good on the teams for providing it. But I wish that they hadn't. And I have more respect for the ones who didn't feel the need to wait on that. Yeah. I think the other thing to say is like, again, there's a low bar here, right? Nobody's expecting Brad Marchand to be like, now, you know, as brother Malcolm said in the autobiography of

Like, nobody thinks that's going to happen. Nobody thinks these guys are going to start reading, like, France Fanon. So, you know, like, I don't know what they think, like, educating themselves is in this case. But, like, you know, if you want a reading list, there are reading lists out there. I mean, you know, two-line pass on Twitter at all your players. By the way, nobody ever took up the clarion call to reveal themselves as a player that listens to Puck Soup. Just want to point that out.

Yeah, no shit. Why would they? Nobody's fucking listening to this shit. Actually, I think if memory serves, I might have asked that on the Patreon. So, you know, that's not even still. That's a slice of the audience of a slice of an audience right there. I was talking to a player this, first of all, like, to go back to getting your house in order. NHL ever suspend Bill Peters?

Like, I know that he packed up like a coward and went to Russia, but. You'd figure, you know, even the NHL has suspended players that weren't in the league before. Yeah, I don't think they did. I did it. And so that's that's one piece of housekeeping. I think that once again, when we talk about, you know, this being a hockey issue, we should look beyond the NHL and ask the salient question that many are asking, which is how USA hockey can continue to put out statements like being committed to being better while still employing John Van Biesbrook. as assistant executive director. I mean, this has been going on for years,

where every single time an issue comes up of a, that's involving race, and they come out and speak out about it, everyone's like, well, you know, you might want to take a look at this guy you hired. And the fumble-handed, you know, apology. He didn't even make apology. He just said, like, I've spoken

before, you know, the Special Olympics or something, so I understand the pain. I don't fucking, it's on color of hockey. You could read it. It's just a job. joke. But yeah, so there's a lot of housekeeping that still has to be done here. And get your own house in order before you start speaking out on these issues, because that's where it starts. And I speaking to a player this week, and they bought up an interesting point, which is that there is a very

big difference between recognizing the pain that a black player or minority player is going through within hockey and recognizing the harm being done to them because these guys aren't dummies. Like, they know that if a coach drops the N-bomb or somebody makes an off-color remark or they're constantly not getting called up from the minor leagues while white players are, like, they can see that, right? And in some cases, they'll say, hey, man, that's pretty fucked up the way you've been treated. the thing that needs the change is not simply just saying,

I'll have your back if you need me, and actually like going up the chain and being like, it's pretty fucked up what this team is doing to this guy. Right. And like, that's that's the level of advocacy that players need. Not simply just like, you could have my axe, but like fucking chopping down the door to help them and to change things. And so I think maybe hopefully there's a recognition of that a little bit now behind the scenes.

Maybe not. I mean, this is all probably naivete on our part to hope that this is a sea change moment. But maybe it's not. Maybe this is a moment when people really kind of start to understand what the fuck's going on out there. Yeah, we'll – like I said, it's about people holding them accountable, right? Like you next time you talk to X player being like, what specifically are you going to do about this, you know? Sean Shapiro had a really good piece on the athletic about that. But he covers the Dallas Stars.

And he said, you know, the Stars put out their statement. Players put out their statement. Tyler's again said what he said. He said, now I have to be part of this. And I have to ask them the questions. And I have to make sure that this doesn't just go away in a week or two. And that this is now something that's part of the conversation. So, you know, I thought that was good.

It's on all of us to do that. And I'm, like I say, I was. impressed by some of what I saw, I'm not given any standing ovations right now. This is that there's, the bar was way too low and, and this league was way too far behind. Absolutely. I'm glad that there was the appearance of progress. I sincerely hope that it was real and lasting progress. But let's see. And there's, there are so much further left to go. let's encourage, but that's as far as any of us should go at this point.

On the media side of things, Sean's piece was good, and I recommend people check it out. Julian McKenzie also had a really good piece for Hav's Eyes on the Prize, the SB Nation blog, about the media and its role in these issues in asking more white players about, about these issues and not simply waiting until they release a statement on notepad, but like trying to get them on the record about this shit. And I'm as guilty as anyone for that disparity. I mean, for sure, I've definitely spoken to more minority athletes about minority issues than I have white athletes. And that probably has to change. But I will say this, though, like, I think there are definitely times when I've been trigger shy. about doing those kinds of stories, because I don't, I don't want the reaction to be, why are you asking White Player X about this? You should be asking Devante Smith-Pelly. You should be asking Joel Ward to bring up some names from the past. You know, like that would be as likely the reaction as anything to asking, you know,

a guy from Sweden about racial inequities in the United States. And so, I mean, I think we could all be better about it. But I just don't know if ultimately that won't be the reaction of why are you wasting time talking to somebody whose life isn't affected by these issues as much as someone else. I guess the answer at the end of the day is ask both players. But I know in the past that that's, for me personally, that's been one of the reasons I haven't gone down that road with a lot of white hockey players. Well, that and the fact that I don't necessarily know if they have anything to contribute sometimes. because you're not all that eloquent when it comes to social issues. But I thought that was an interesting piece by Julian as well.

Do we think there's going to be any of the stuff that spills over to if and when the games are restarted this summer? Do you mean like, is there going to be a Black Lives Matter night at a fucking St. Louis Blues game? No, I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, it wouldn't be at a blues game. It would be inside of an empty arena. Will it be Black Lives Matter Night inside of an empty arena in Las Vegas? Yeah. No, I just mean player protests and some sort of visible thing.

I mean, right? I mean, it's going to, it's, we're not going to see hockey until the end of July. We've got two months to go. Who knows where this story is going to be in two months? It may be ongoing. It may have gotten much, much bigger. It may have faded. and we've all done that thing that we've always done in the past with this story,

which is put it on the front page for a week or two, and then it goes away and we move on to the next thing. I don't know. It's in terms of linking the return of the NHL to world events, two months is forever. So I don't know. I have no idea. It's,

I don't want to even imagine where we might be two months from now. But, all right, so bottom line, open your ears, listen, listen to what minority players and minority fans are saying about hockey. I mean, if you haven't before, I don't know why you haven't, but if you haven't before, you'll get a better understanding of why this shit is extraordinarily important, life and death. I would recommend you checking out Blake Wheeler's 38-minute soliloquy on this issue to see how. how one white player is handling it. And I would also recommend Wheeler, Wheeler's appearance on T.S.N. With J.T. Brown and Matt Dumba and Curtis Gabriel that Rick Westhead put together.

Really good, man. Fucking half hour of your time talking about a lot of these issues and talking about the shit that J.T. went through. Three years ago, three years ago, J.T. Brown raised his fist and no one had his back. And three years later, it's become mandatory in hockey to, have their back. It's pretty, it's pretty mind-blowing. I hope it sticks. Um, but, uh, I guess that remains to be seen. Uh, all right. So there's still a pandemic. Um, and we, by the time you listen to this, there's probably a chance that the return to training camp stuff will be

settled for the NHL. We may even get a sense of what the calendar is going to look like going forward. Um, and that's good news. And, and the NBA, uh, came out with their return to play plan, kind of aping the NHL's plan in some ways, except they're going to go to Disney World. Do you think the eight-game regular season for everybody who has a vague, do you think that's, like, better than what the NHL is doing? I mean, I don't know.

It could be if they, well, here's the thing. could be if they have the time to do it and if they feel like they can secure their shit enough, which I think they might be able to considering where they're playing these games. But I also think that as with the NHL, the question then becomes like how, what are your obligations you have to fulfill? Because ultimately that's driving most of these decisions, right? Is television contracts and sponsorship contracts. So it may be a situation where they had to do it, right? it's not for the equity of the playoffs, it's for the equity coming into the league. So I'd have to go a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole on that.

But what did you think of the format? Well, I think it's interesting just because, you know, in basketball, the quote-unquote better team, or, you know, like the objectively better team, I guess you would say, wins a lot more often than what happens in hockey, right? And so, you know, I don't even know that they necessarily need the eight-game playoffs to be like, oh yeah, you know, like Memphis is better than the next or whatever. You know, I haven't looked at the NBA standings in a while, so I'm not really sure who's going up against what. But, you know, it's definitely a situation where you, I think it's nice that everybody's kind of on an even playing field,

even though they have, you know, an unequal number of games played. and they're not doing the fake thing of like, well, you know, you were going to be the runaway, you know, best record in the league this year. But yeah, you might end up being the third seed in your own conference because we just decided that's how things are going to go. I think that's maybe a little more, it's maybe a little more fair to the top teams. But I think that matters less in the NBA because, you know, the better team wins 80% of the time or whatever the number is, you know. Yeah, it's not the NHL where once you get in as the eighth seed, anything can happen. So we got to really make sure that somebody earns it. Yeah, I mean, is it better for competitive fairness or whatever?

No, you don't need it. It's the NBA, the NBA, unlike the NHL, makes an enormous amount of money from TV deals. And I would assume this is tied to that. They're either making more money or, like you say, they're fulfilling an obligating. of a certain number of games. Yeah, they're running out of the clock. And whereas the NHL makes its money primarily off of the game day stuff, tickets, parking, concessions, all that, to a much higher extent than any other league.

So for them, squeezing every extra game in isn't as important and meaningful. And that's why they've got something that is going to go maybe a little bit quicker and just sort of dives right into into the meat of it. So it's just different leagues, different priorities in terms of the financial side of it. And the financial side matters. This is pro sports. It's a billion dollar business. I don't object to them worrying about how that's, how to manage that.

But I don't think we have to look at this as a competitive fairness exercise because I don't think that's what they're looking at. the NBA probably makes more money off of sales of oversized foam fingers than the NHL makes off their TV deal. So that makes sense. So that brings us to an interesting piece by Myrtle today as we record the show about the shifting calendar. A lot of the stuff is what this stuff we knew about, you know, the fact that the cup

could be handed out in October and Bettman has sort of hinted at the, the potential of the Winter Classic being the kickoff to the 2020-21 season on January 1st, 2021. And then you're talking about if you're getting 82 games, then you're talking about maybe the season ending in August. And boy, that sort of shifts the calendar. And then Myrtle kind of extrapolates if the 2021 Stanley Cup is awarded in August, the earliest the NHL could then contemplate starting next season would be late November, which would inch the calendar forward a month or so.

Even in that scenario, there would be theoretically playoff games played in July. for years. And wonders if we're going to see a fundamental shift in the NHL's calendar out of October into November, playing games in July in perpetuity. And, you know, quotes a source saying that TV or media rights consultants have told Gary Betman that it would increase the value of the broadcast rights to deliver live sports in the summer. So what are your thoughts on that?

Summertime playoff hockey, a shifting calendar away from October. I know that would make the owner of the Dallas Stars happy. He recently said that he doesn't want to compete with high school football in October. So maybe he wouldn't have to do that anymore. What do you think? I love that this is a fucking professional sports thing. It's like, damn, dude, I'm so fucked up over this high school football season.

But it sucks. But it's Texas. It's Friday Night Lights, man. I get it, but also like the fucking Dallas Mavericks, aren't saying that shit? Well. Foam fingers, my friend, as I said. Yeah. What do you think, Sean?

What do you think about summertime hockey? Well, I mean, my, I guess I can do the obligatory traditionalist Canadian take, which is I hate the idea. And I, you know. But I get it. I just finished saying, these are billion-dollar leagues. They have to look at things that are going to increase the value. Again, this continues to be a league that is chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the United States. That they're always just one or two more changes away from finding.

And meanwhile, up here in Canada, we have no. no issues at all with winter hockey and no desire at all to see it in the summer, but it's, you know, this is, let's see, we're going to see it this year through nobody's decision or choice. Maybe we'll find out that it works better or worse than we thought it would, and we can take that information, and next year's going to be all screwed up anyways. You know, maybe you take it as an opportunity to experiment a little bit and try to learn some things that you ordinarily wouldn't have a chance to learn. I'm obviously fine with the way that they do things now under normal circumstances,

but I can't begrudge them at least exploring other options. Hmm. I mean, anything, crying. Yeah, no, I don't care if I can award it. Play the Stanley Cup final on the moon in November. I don't give a shit. Just play hockey. I don't.

I'm not, I'm never, I've never really gotten the, the whole, again, Canadian thing of like, the idea that Stanley Cup is awarded in June is, you know, it's heretical to me that this could ever happen and that kind of thing. Like, I don't give a shit. And granted, maybe that's because I only started watching the NHL in like the early 2000s and I didn't, you know, I didn't grow up watching hockey night in Canada. and all that kind of stuff and having that kind of more traditional view of the sport, I guess you would say, hammered into my head. As Myrtle points out, like, they only really started pushing the cup final

back to like mid, late May and early June in like the 90s. So it was already an established thing by the time I came to the league. And, you know, know, if somebody's 10 years older than me, yeah, I can see why that, and got into the NHL a little bit earlier than I did, like, in terms of what their age was. Yeah, I think, I think, like, I can see why that's, like, such an insane thing that you, like, that you have difficulty wrapping your head around.

But at the same time, it's been this way for 30 years. Like, you're not, it's not going back. So, you know, like, you're, you're just trying to be like, but what if we hold on to the, like, this compromise, this position I've already compromised on. What if we, what if we just hold on to that? And, you know, if there's, if there's more money in having the cup final in July and August, well, tough shit, you know. There's a couple of things from Myrtle's story that I take issue with, though. And it's not by any fault of his own. It's, it's the people he's talking to. in the part about broadcast rights,

the person is saying that the NHL could deliver live sports content at a time of least competition, therefore higher ratings. They're talking about competing with the World Series and a chunk of the NFL season. And then later on, there's a source telling him that owners don't care about home games from October to mid-January. Now, these two things are probably true, but I don't think that we're seeing the forest through the trees here, which is that people don't give a fucking shit about the first 20 games of an 82 game season. Like, that's the issue.

It's not going up against baseball. It's not as if you remove the baseball playoffs with the equation in October, all of a sudden hockey's ratings jump by, you know, a fucking 15 share. it's that no one cares about the early season, the early part of the NHL season. They never have. Just like, for example, if you put Stanley Cup playoff games in the middle of the summer,

and I'm not going to use this summer as a bellwether because I think this is going to be an anomaly because really, I mean, marble racing is getting ratings. We're so starved for live content. But if you put the Stanley Cup playoffs to the middle of summer, I don't think that guarantees higher ratings

just because you don't have as much competition. I still think you have the inherent problem of when your team is eliminated, you stop watching hockey, which has been the problem with this sport for 30 years. So I don't think shifting the calendar does dick when it comes to the ingrained behavior of hockey fans. They don't care about the first 20 games, and they don't care about the rest of their games when their team's not playing anymore.

Well, you know, I think there is to some, like an argument to be made of, you know, the cup final is going up against the NBA playoffs and the MLB regular season. which is really starting to find a little bit of a groove as of mid-June or whatever. And, you know, if you take the NBA playoffs out of the picture and you push the cup final to the dog days of summer where there's a lot of MLB teams where it's like, well, we're like 20 games below 500. It's over. We don't give a shit. like I think I think there is a little bit more because like I you know I obviously agree with you that hockey fans are team fans and not sport fans but I think there might be like look if the if the NHL can get one million more people to to watch a cup like the all seven games over the seven games of the cup final what percentage of an increase in the rating is that it's It's not insignificant, like, by degrees.

So, like, I think if you can get an extra 200,000 people to watch one cup final game, like, that makes a huge fucking difference for the NHL. And that's why. And, like, that's not out of the question if it's not up against the NBA conference finals or whatever. Yeah. The question here is timing, right? Because it's a lot of this you would assume would be linked into the next. US TV deal. How do you maximize their

but that deal is coming up in two years. So if you're going to change something, you're almost, you know, considering this, the rest of this season obviously is a write-off as far as learning anything concrete about how ratings are going to work in different times. Next season's probably a write-off. You're pretty much out of time already in, in terms of learning any, making changes, seeing how they work and then going to a network with,

with evidence that you should be getting more. So I don't know. This feels like a trial balloon that maybe won't go anywhere in the short term. Maybe this is the future down the road. But I don't know. I do find, I mean, I don't think that moving out of those windows is going to increase the ratings necessarily. But I do think that you could say from a media rights perspective.

And again, I work for ESPN. I imagine that, you know, there's going to be interesting. there. The NHL clearly has interest in coming back to ESPN, but all that shit's way above my pay grade. Just need to say that off the, on the record. Like, I don't know shit. I do imagine that there is value for a network in the NHL filling hours. Yep. Yep. In periods of the calendar year where there isn't. And it would be interesting to see, because essentially, like, the NHL would have to wave the white flag and be like, we can't compete with the other three sports.

but if we can carve out a little niche for ourselves at a time when like the only thing going on is baseball and and you know ramping up to NFL training camps when we hold our championship. I mean, maybe it could end up being beneficial. It certainly would be beneficial for the amount of hours that could be dedicated to coverage. Although I do wonder now if we're going to start, you know, shifting deeper into the summer and we are going to apparently do it next season as well. well then you run into the same problem you had potentially this summer, which is the Olympics. And the NHL's going to have to get their spots in before the Olympics start, because then all of a sudden... There's no real estate on the NBC networks. And the way the calendar is working out is you cannot have the conference final and the Stanley Cup final anywhere near the beginning of the Olympics, because they won't be able to air it.

Like, that's the fact. You'd have to go to the golf network to find the fucking cup final if it's up against. the Olympics with the amount of money they paid for that. The Edmonton Oilers are more used to on that. Got them. Yeah. So it's over. It's an interesting question. Listen, I don't want to dispel what Sean said off the hop, which is I don't want

this to happen. I like the current calendar for the NHL insofar as the months in which it's held. I like walking out of an arena and seeing my breath and all that stuff. And I like being in the mindset of it's winter in a talkie time. And I don't necessarily want it to be a situation where it's July and it's hockey time. So we'll see. Also, let's be honest here. I mean, the further you push into the summer, it's the same problem we have now.

The further you push into the summer, the more people have shit going on because their kids aren't in school. Well, and then the other thing is the freaking, oh, it's so bad out there. Puck's really bouncing around on me, you know, all that shit. I find it weird that we went from talking about the ice all the time in the playoffs, like up until two years ago, and then the NHL was like, now, we fixed it, and we're all like, oh, okay, that's good. Makes sense, no. I mean, the other thing is.

The NHL has science nailed down on this at this point. Exactly. It's fucking all set. The other thing is, look, I mean, I know we want to, like I said, Chase the rainbow in the United States, this league still generates a huge percentage of its revenue in Canada. Damn right. And I know it's a cliche. I know it's a stereotype, but we sit up here.

We have like six to eight months of winter where it's miserable and you can't go outside and then finally like late May comes around and it's finally nice and you can finally fire up the barbecue or go to the cottage or whatever. And that's when the NHL is like, hey, we're presenting our most important games of the season. And a lot of us are like, no. You know who's going to revolt as all the capital I insiders who take July and August off? They're going to be like, what is true? I was just thinking about how, like, I'm waiting for like a 5,000 word screed from Pierre LeBron about how this is the worst that the NHLs ever considered.

Bob McKenzie's going to personally beat up Gary Betman if this happens. He's just going to attack him. Bobby Margarita is going to put a chill on this idea. starts pounding on keyboard One other topic to get to before we get to the big reindeer game for this episode is The Anaheim Ducks

Holy shit, did you guys see this this week? I did, yeah. Bob Murray basically throwing fucking Dallas Eakins under the bus a little bit no, all the way I'd say more than a little bit. Yeah.

Bob Murray says, accountability in this group is going to change. That young players were allowed to get away with too much this season. I've said that a couple times, but I'm hell-bent on that happening going forward, and the coaches are going to hear that loud and clear. They already have a little bit. And then later on saying,

I thought Dallas was very organized. I thought the communication was good early, but it got off the track a little bit. I think he had to get rid of some of the things that came from Edmonton, I think those things are gone now. He was very, very hard on some young people in Edmonton, and it backfired at him there. I'm not saying it's all his fault, by the way.

I'm just saying that the whole situation kind of dot, dot, dot. I think he took the foot off the gas a little bit. Now, this is interesting because I spoke to Dallas Aikins before this season, and we talked a lot about his time in Edmonton. And I completely understand what Murray is saying here. I'd be quite quite honest, because when Eakins was in Canada, was in Canada, wasn't Edmonton, Canada. I mean, they're both places. Edmonton is Canada. Edmonton is Canada dash David Staples.

He definitely came in and really fucked up his gig by being too hard on guys and trying to be like the new sheriff in town. And it was because when he was hired, he was hired with the mandate to change the culture. And how do you change the culture? Well, you go in all guns ablazing and start making examples of people. And then lo and behold, what happened, the team said, fuck you, new guy. Yeah. You know, go, go organize the celery sticks with the media.

Leave us alone. And so in year two, he finally kind of figured it out. And he had better relationships with some of the players and yada, yada, yada. So now he goes to his second job. And what does he do? According to Bob Murray, he's like, all right, Toga parties, food fights. Come on, everybody. Let's have some fun.

And that, I think, was a direct reaction to. the way that he went into Edmonton as a hard ass and tried to be more of a player's guy this time. So when Bob Murray says I think he had to get rid of some of the things that came from Edmonton, I think that's it. That is a revelatory statement knowing what I know about, but Dallas, in the sense that I think he

probably came in and tried to be maybe more of himself. Yeah, and whatever. So that's real interesting. And let's also not forget, like, the Ducks record to start the season was pretty good. Like the first month... Isn't it so weird how the culture became the problem the second they lost like six games in a row or whatever?

It's crazy. Exactly. So I mean, it's, you know, if you're someone who just looks at the wins and losses, you're sitting there going, oh, yeah, clearly something changed. And it couldn't just be that our goalie wasn't hot or our PTO or whatever it was. It's got to be, there has to be some kind of character issue with it. So, yeah, it was like during that first month when it was a... the upside down and like the ducks and the sabers were good and some of the other teams with new

coaches and you're sitting there going oh weird the jack adams is going to be a train wreck this year because there's all these coaches are doing great jobs and then yeah it's weird they allowed only 36 goals on 490 shots through uh november 1 and uh and then the culture changed and uh it really it really took a sideways turn and now look i'm looking at their their cap friendly page They have guys like freaking Ryan Getslap. He's only 35. They have Adam Henrique. Superstar player, 30.

Their best defenseman, Hampas Lindholm, sure, he had a bad season, but, you know, what about Cam Fowler? Wow, what a roster. Fucking, you've got to be shitting me. Yeah, it's put together with my Bob Murray, who was also, let's not forget, the last duck's coach, right? He went behind the bench in the previous season, which again, this is like a perfect, I'm not saying he's wrong.

I have no insight into what things are like behind the scenes in the end on Ducks. Yeah. But this is the perfect storm of for a GM to talk himself into, it's a problem in the room. Because he's been in the room, he did like his one month undercover boss tour. And then he had a, he watched his team and his new coach have a successful first month and then fall apart. It would be very easy to convince yourself that it's clearly not the roster. it's yet again something else. So I don't know.

So he puts on a mustache and he goes to the locker room and someone's like, so wait, your name is Murray Bob and you're the new fourth line left wing? Oh, that's correct. I was just bought up from San Diego, in fact. You're not our RTM. You are Murray Bob. You're a player. Yes, oh, absolutely.

Veteran of the game. it's my undercover boss for the ducks I mean obviously none of this has to do with the fact that John Gibson was a minus nine basically and goal saved above average genetic quality starts percentage of 431 right like that's got nothing to do with anything as far as the success of the team no the the NHL is a league where character and wanting to win are far more important than having a hot goaltender for

a stretch of time that's very cool Because that would feel random, and who would want to watch that? All right, now it's time for this week's Reindeer Game. It is not a quiz. It is a massive undertaking on the part of your hosts to give you content during these downtimes and dire times. This is an invention by Sean. We are calling it the ultimate draft draft. And Sean, why don't you explain what the people are about to hear?

Sure. What we're going to do is we're going to build three. teams. We're going to do it through a draft. We're going to take turns picking players. And we have to fill out a full roster, 20 players, four centers, eight wingers, six defense, two goalies, that meets the following criteria. We need to have two players each who were drafted in the top five picks overall, two players who were drafted elsewhere in the first round, two players from each round two through seven, two players who were drafted in round eight or later,

and two players who were not drafted. So that's ten different categories, two players each. And this goes back to 1990. So anyone drafted or who entered the league 1990 or later is eligible. And yeah, we're going to see where it goes. We're going to see what kind of teams we can put up with. Obviously, it's given the criteria, It's not as simple as just picking the very best players that we like the most, but there'll be some of that too.

So we're going to see where it goes. And this is a peak of their powers draft, correct? Correct, yeah. We're not going to, like, you're, you don't have to say, oh, I want 2008 Sydney Crosby or whoever, you know, MVP year Joe Thornton. Like, you don't have to say that. you can just say Sidney Crosby or Joe Thornton, and the assumption is you're getting them out of, you know, out of a time machine basically. Right.

Yeah. Whatever their best season was, whatever you think that is. And without showing my hand, I will say that it's show his hand. It was about to say that in researching this last night, I've come to realize that may haps, there's a portion of the dress. By the way, this is going back to 1990, 1990 to now. There's a portion of the draft that maybe has not produced the same level of talent as other rounds, let's say. And there are also some drafts that were just completely pointless.

Yeah, 1999 through 2001, I think you would say. We didn't need to hold a draft in 1996. We could have just skipped that and it would have been fine. So, yeah, it's sort of a chance to kind of test our roster building, but also sort of remember and recognize some of the oddities of the draft. And okay. Yeah. This is going to be awesome. Let's start.

Now are we going to go by age or reverse alphabetical order to start? It does not matter to me. I did not think how we would do the draft order. Oh, man. Yeah, we fucked this up, didn't we? We did. All right. And by we, I mean, Sean.

All right. The draft order is Greg, Ryan, and Sean. And then we snake it. That's the... All right. Yeah. All right. Let me go.

Here we go. First overall pick. Please do not thank the crowd or congratulate the previous. is champion. That's right. With the first pick in the 2020 Ultimate Draft Draft, Greg Wyshke selects

Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby off the board. Heard of them. All right. That's a number one overall picks that satisfies one of my two players who are top five overall picks.

Yes. Yeah. Correct. I'm going to go little bit of a different route here because you don't uh the problem is that like let's say i'm looking at round four i got to find a guy who's really good in round four or five or six or whatever and so i'm going to go a little bit off the board with this one and i'm going to pick uh pavledatsuk from the sixth round so there there's that yeah listen i consider him to be one of the best players of the last 20 years so good in fact that I think I would probably put him up my ultimate three-on-three team.

Hmm. Above whom, great. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's going off the board at all. I think that would have been one of my picks, heady lasted, because that six the round is already looking pretty stark. So I am going to go, who am I going to pick? I am going to take, in a similar vein, I'm going to start my team, I'm going to build from the net out, I'm going to take Henrik Lundquist, who is a seventh round pick as my first pick.

Now am I going to take as my next pick. Oh, boy, I will take. You had a little while to think about it. Well, yeah, I did. My entire first round strategy was just take Pavel Datsuk and then. I got Crosby and Datsook. I'm certainly falling apart after that. All right, I'm going to go to another round that's not easy.

And again, I don't think this guy is the fourth best player in the last 30 years, but I'm going to do it for position. And based on the draft, a third round pick, Zadano Chara, will be my next defenseman. And with that, we're back to Ryan. All right, I'm going to go another. kind of off the board pick here. I'm going to pick an undrafted player

out of Russia. Oh, shit. Wait, you could do that? Yeah. What? Oh, okay. I don't know. I thought they had Sean, is that true? I can't even tell if you're doing a bit here.

Yeah, I can't. Okay, go ahead. Artemey Panarin. He's good. So there we go. Temi Panarin undrafted winger for Ryan.

Greg, back to you for two picks. All right, so I'll go. So we already started a run on round six, so I'll take Daniel Alpherson off the board in the sixth round. Because round six is kind of problematic. And then I will go with, let's see here. My other pick. let's go

Oh, fuck it Let's go later My later first round pick Yep Greatest goal of all time Righty Bredor Okay I don't know why you just

I don't know why you just drafted two players With that pick but okay It's fucked up that he gets to pick Both the greatest goal of all time That's crazy he gets Hasick and Broder That's nuts Wow Unbelievable

I will also I'll also stick in the No, you know what, I'm going to go elsewhere. I'm going to go to I'm going to take another winger from the undrafted class and I'm going to go with a little guy, Martin San Luis, hockey Hall of Fame or former MVP,

Martens San Luis. And that's it. for my undrafted guys. That's it. You're done with that. You can delete that whole column. I have. All right. Well, uh, I guess, uh, we got maybe a little mini run on undrafted because I'm going to take Mark G. Ordano. That's a good one. Thought about it. And, hmm, hold off on that for a little bit. Boy, this is, uh, this is dicey. Like, there's some genuinely bad players that I already have highlighted as guys to look after. All right, you know what?

I'm going to, this is the equivalent of punting because I don't, this is probably too high for this guy. But I'm going to take a winger. I'm going to take Henrik Zetterberg, which closes off my round seven requirement. Interesting. Back to Ryan. Interesting. Oh, okay, I'll stick in the late rounds here. Tim Thomas is my goalie.

That's solid. That's good. Where did he go? Thomas is in the eight-plus category. Yeah, he's, yeah. Very good. And Greg, Greg for two. All right, I'll go later round.

From the eighth round or later. Peter Bondra. Yep, it's a good one. eighth round or later and then from the seventh round or should I go from the fifth round fifth or seventh fifth or seventh

from the you know what from the seventh round center Joe Pavelski yeah that's a good one that's a good one and I am saying he's a center I know he played a little bit of wing.

It's good to ask, yeah. But I'll slot him in at center. That's fine. And by the way, we should say we're doing centers and wings. We're not worried about left and right wings. We're not worried about left and right defensemen. That sort of thing. Oh, is he a left defenseman or right defenseman?

I'm sorry, Mike Babcock, if you're listening. I know this is awful for you. Ryan, you're up with your, what, fifth pick? I'll go with another. I'll stay. I'll go in the fifth round here. I think good players in the later rounds are very very very, valuable, obviously.

And I'm going to take a young man from Dallas named Jamie Ben. No. All right. Scoring champion, for example. Do you seem to remember that. He did that. He did that. I mean, if we were going peak of his powers, that one year was really fucking great.

Yeah. Yep. And granted, I think that was the year he won the league scoring title with 72 points or whatever the number was. Something like that. It was in the low 80s. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so it's back to me for two. And I gotta be honest, yeah, I, Ryan, I thought you were sniping my pick again. Okay.

Right up even, you had the round and the team. I'm taking from the fifth round, I'm gonna take Sergei Zubov as my. Oh, you motherfucker. Yeah, that sucks. Fifth pick, because. All right, I'm now, I'm building up quite a, uh, Quite the blue line. I think I need a little bit more up front. Mm-hmm. So, oh, man.

Some of these players who are going to get picked late in this draft are going to be bad. They're going to be real bad. Oh, yeah. You think so? Oh, I don't know about that. They all seem pretty good to me. But you know what? I'm going to grab some value here.

I'm going to use one of top five pick, and I'm going to take my first center, who is Connor McDavid. Yeah, that's a solid one. Pretty good player. Six round. I'll take them. Not bad. Interesting.

Ryan. I'm very tempted to stay in the late rounds here. But I got to grab a brand name player, and that brand name player is a guy who brought a bunch of teams kicking and screaming to a Stanley Cup, and that's Chris Pronger. Nice. Very good. Good, solid D. Love that D. Big D. Fucking real good player, man. Jesus.

He was. Second overall pick, so that's your... That's my top five, yeah. First of your top fives, Greg. Okay, here we go. My turn? It is your turn for two. Okay, I'm going to go second round.

I'm sorry, going to go late first round to add my first defenseman. Because if it's peak of his powers, while this man is now a shell of his former self. I think he played at a Hall of Fame pace. And that'd be Eric Carlson. Yeah, that's a good call. So I am closing out my second half of the first round. And then I will go to, I will go to the second round for a winger name of Nikita Kucherov. heard of them pretty good all right so we're into round

those are the two picks that I have made yeah so to want a scoring title reset the freaking cap out of the scoring record he's all right I mean like when you think about it

in the grand scheme of things pretty good yeah hard to hard to line up against him I'm up right or did you yeah you have one more pick or no

you are I picked Kutcheroff and and Carlson That's right, that's right, that's right. Okay, um, height of his powers. Let's see here. Height of his fucking powers. Height of his fucking powers.

I, you know, the seventh round is such a fucking wasteland. I'm gonna add it. That's right. I'm gonna, a real freaking Bobbo O'Reilly. I'm gonna add Anton Straulman. Anton Straulman guy who probably

should have won a Norris at some point. He was really fucking good for a while there. And I mean, look, the rest of the seventh round, look, that's one of the, that's one of those real, we're going to pick a bad player places. Yeah. Okay, so over to me for two. I'm going to take, from the six round,

I'm going to take Mark Stone. Oh, nice pick. Oh, real. And I'm going to take another winger because somewhat surprisingly, I don't know if you guys found this. I was really surprised at how Barron the fourth round got in terms of elite player. So I'm going to take Johnny Gridreau from the fourth round. Nicely done. That's all.

I like that. And I'm going to just check that off. And back to Ryan. We're in round eight. I'm going to stay in the fourth round. for the same reasons you highlighted here, I'm going to pick a center, and I'm going to pick Mark Savard.

Oh, wow, good pick. I like that. Height of his powers. I mean, we're talking about a really good player. Yeah. When he was playing with Ilya Kovilchuk for a little while there. 90 point season, something like that, I think. Yeah, a couple of them, I think.

Yeah, real fucking good. All right. Great for two. Okay, so I will go fourth round, the fourth round run. We got to run on the fourth rounders. And I'll take Milan Heyduke, the only other winger worth a damn, from the fourth round.

Yeah. See, this is what scares me about this is like I'm looking at players available on rounds, and it's bad enough now. When you get late and you're like, I need a winger who was drafted in the fifth, you're just going to be, there's the potential to get screwed hard on this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm taking, and then that's why I am now going to go to the sixth round, close that out,

with Brian Supi Campbell. That's an absolute good pick for the sixth round. That's a real good guy. Famous for those old school puck daddy fans, famous for us having shown his balls in a photo once on the website. I do remember that now you mention it. We tried to, we obscured his, his cock and balls with the head of the Panthers mascot in a Photoshop and still got in trouble for it. The good old days, folks. The Wild Wild West of the internet.

So I'm up again, right? You're up, yep. Okay. Oh, by the way, we've been good on this, but I think the spirit of the game was that it was going to be like a minute for each pick, right? It was something. Yeah, I'm not timing. Yeah, we've been really good on. Yeah, we're fucking around.

It's fine. I'm going to close out my 8-plus round, add another defenseman. Big buff, Dustin Bufflin. Nice. Good one. You're drafting him as a defenseman. That's right. Well, I can move them up if I need to.

Good. That's true. That's fantasy hockey flexibility right there. Oh, boy. All right. What do I have that I need to deal with here? Oh, Christ. Yeah, those players are bad.

Do you know what? I'm going to I think we You still got to build a good team I don't want to get too caught up on Phylland's spot so I'm gonna I'm gonna use a couple of high picks Don't draft for fucking need all the time

Well yeah I probably should be I'm gonna I feel like this is gonna be the moment I look back And regret and feel like I should have But screw it I'm taking I'm gonna take a couple of centers. I'm going to, from my late first round, I'm taking Peter Forsberg. All right. And from the second round, I'm taking Patrice Bergeron.

There it is. That's a boy. Nice. Mm-hmm. I like it. Back to rock. I'm going to burn the last of my top five picks. I'm going to go right down the middle here. Jumbo Joe Thornton. Jumbo Joe. Pretty good fucking player. I mean, for what it's worth, I think he's maybe one of the better players that's played. I think, you know what, Greg, thank you for saying that. I don't think this guy is off the board, so I'll just take him as well as we're doing a top five picks. I have a chance to draft either Ovechkin or Yager, right? Yep.

And that's a real, fuck. I love Yager. You're not the greatest goal score of all time, though, baby. Yeah, I know. So I'm taking Ovechkin. Like, I want to take Yager because I think he might be a better point producer overall, but I can't not take the best goal score of all time. All right.

So, that takes... Ovechkin, Crosby, Kutrov, top line. Come on, motherfuckers. Pretty good. It's pretty good. All right. All right, I'm going to use my first, later first round pick outside the top five. I'm going to use it on one of the great goal scorers of his era, Jerome McGinla.

That a boy. Nice. Ady boy. All right, so that was, let me just get caught up here. So, Greg, you took, sorry, before Ovechkin, your other pick was... Do you want to just reset the teams real quick? my forwards are Alfredson, Crosby, Bondra, Coutcheroff, Pavelski, Haydick, Ovechkin. Carlson and Campbell on the blue line, Marty Bredor is my goalie.

Gotcha. Okay. I have... So, hold on. So, Greg, how many players do you have, Greg? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Right. And Ryan, you've got, with that, again, LaPick, you've got...

got I'm up to 11 players. So we missed, so Greg, we missed a pick for you. I think you only took one pick there in the, I think Oveccom was your only pick in that. Oh, you're right. No, and that's fine. And that's totally cool. Sorry. No, no, no, don't worry about it, dude. I will take a, Ginglet. Do it. And the friendship of you right now. I'm not going to do that to him. He can have a Gingley. He's a flames fan. I'm going to, I'm going to go in a different direction. I feel like this team needs a little bit of sandpaper. And by that, I mean, the sandpaper you get from a tongue when you're licked with Brad Marshand. Third round pick.

Third round pick. Not bad. That closes up my third round, by the way. All right. And then Ryan, you took again, so now it's to me for my 11th and 12 picks. So I'm, see, this is where some strategy comes in because Ryan and Greg. There's some real garbage on the board. There's some real garbage out there, but also there's some good players.

But Ryan and Greg have both used both of their top fives. I've used one of my top fives, which means I can, basically put Jagger in my pocket with my last round pick at this point because nobody else can take them. So I'm kind of, this is where you sort of got to look at like who's used who and that sort of thing.

But your sixth round pick is going to have to be like fucking Jason Chimera. It's going to be absolutely terrible. Hell yeah. Let's fucking go, dude. All right. So I am oh Lord.

Oh no. I just look, I was looking at around and I'm like, oh, please tell me I've already used both my picks there. Nope. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. Okay. I am going to take, all right, you know what? Now I got to pay the Piper from last time, and I got to take some not very good players.

Who's okay? All right, give me fifth round pick. Liberty or give me death. Yeah, no, I might prefer that. Give me a John Klingberg, fifth round pick. Good pick. Yeah, that's a good pick. Yeah.

Oh, shit, I haven't picked anybody from the fifth round yet. It clears off my fifth round. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. And I take that. I'm starting to fill up some positions here.

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Missionary. I need wingers. And the bad news about that is there aren't any. So you know what? This is drafting for positional need. Give me Cam Atkinson, six-rounder.

Oh, Jesus. As a winger. Wow. Good fucking player. Really good player. Multiple 30-goal seasons. Thank you, right. Does he?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can't remember, like, maybe one or two summers ago, I looked it up, and he had scored like the eighth most goals in the NHL over the, the previous three seasons or some shit like that. It's wild. I guess he's good. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I have to draft just to get out from under how bad this fucking round is. I'm going to go with another seventh round pick. Guy, I'm not, like, I think he's good, but, you know, Andre Palat, that trip, when he was with the triplets line, that was a good line. And the rest of the seventh round sucks. So, all right. I'm going to start, I'm going to start how about you. Sorry, he's, he got wing or center for him?

I have him on a wing. Okay. Pull on the seventh round and that was your 12th pick. All right, Greg, four, two. Okay, let me say, okay, one of my picks is going to definitely be, all right, so I have goalie, goal, okay, so, all right, I'm going to take from round seven, um, Fuck. You know what?

Okay, here's what I'm going to do. Sorry. I'm sorry. That's the correct pick. I'm going to take, all right, I'm going to take from round five a little, a little ray of sunshine named Miroslav Chatan. Okay. That works. That's your round.

And then from round seven, from round seven, I'm going to go with, see, I have two ways to go here. I want to keep one of my, I only have one. left open. But I have a lot of D left. So I think I have two center spots and D left. I have one center spot that I could pick from here. And, oh, you know what? My center spot's kind of fuck right now.

So I'll go ahead and take my fourth line center from round seven. Sammy Paulson. All right. Okay. I'm going to burn the rest of my fifth round here. because I don't think it's great what the rest of my options are. Another guy, he was the best goalie in the world for a little while there, Ryan Miller. And now I'm out of goalies and I'm out of fifth rounders.

And yes, that's to me. Getting very tense. No, that was intention. That was me thinking Ryan was making another pick and not. Nope, I'm good. Properly paying attention. Boy, oh boy. All right.

I'm going to grab, oh man, this gets so, because what I'm struggling with is I'm, I've got my three centers. So there's a few guys left that I like that play center. But do you go and do you reach for somebody like that? Mm-hmm. Knowing you're closing it out. Hmm. Does make one wonder what to do. It does.

It kind of does. such a situation. And I think the answer is to just stall as long as you can. I think you should definitely walk away from the draft, yes. You know what? Oh, okay. I just realized I don't have any of my round eight plus. So that maybe makes it a little bit easier.

I'm going to take Pavel Demetra. Oh, shit. Wow. Okay. I don't have eight plus round. I'm not even sure exactly where he was. Yeah. Where he went.

Wasn't even on my board, but a good choice. Very good choice. Yeah. So, you know, solid. Yeah, it's funny, right? Because, like, you do all the research or whatever. You spend three hours on hockey reference like I did. And somehow I didn't have fucking Nikita Kuturov on my board, for example.

Hey, listen, Mia Copa, I didn't have Tim Thomas on mine. Yeah, so there you go, right? Yeah, anyway, I'm up, right? or do you have one? No, I've got one more, but you guys continue to chat in the background and stall for me. I won't mind that at all. Okay, I'm going to take, you know what, I'll finish off my goaltending. I'll grab a backup undrafted Sergey Bobrovsky.

Oh, nice. Okay, that's a very good fucking call, yeah. That makes my life a little bit easier. And now it is to Ryan. Okay, I'm going to close out my fourth round. get my one, two, three, four, five, sixth winger, I want to say, and it's Yuri Littenden. Oh, wow, nice. Defensive ace.

A bit of a, of a Sammy Paulson-esque pick for you right there, buddy. Yeah, except he's a way better Sammy Paulson. Greg, you're up, buddy. Yeah, you're up for two, Greg. Am I to assume that, unless I did not hear it happen, that Mika Kiprasov is still available in round five? He is. Fuckin A.

Welcome to the team. Amika Kiprasov, a scorpion save, motherfuckers. Now, you either get him at a 948 save percentage or a 901, and you do not get, it's a coin flip. I don't know. You're just going to have to figure it out. So I, now that you've made that pick, the goalies are done. We each have two goaltenders.

Wow. So the goleys are done. So I was, I wasn't going to mention this before. The biggest surprise of the draft so far to me was Ryan taking Ryan Miller over Connor Hallibook, the guy that he's been pounding as the... Ryan Miller... Better? I would say Ryan Miller has more of a proven track record.

I think Connor Hellibuck should win the MVP this year, but Ryan Miller probably should have won it when he was on the Sabres. All right. You know, he was... Good call. Again, like between that regular season and those Olympics, like he... just spent eight months fucking white hot.

So I really liked Ryan Miller in the fifth round, especially because of the lack of talent elsewhere in the fifth round. Greg, you have one more, I believe. I do. And I'm going to There's a couple choices here. Shit.

I think I might just put myself in a corner here. There's a lot of corners. This is, we are past the fun part of the draft. Yeah, no, this is a bummer now. For sure. I mean, shit, man. Fuck, I made a bad choice.

I will take, okay, I need a center. This guy's real good. I'll take Patrick Eliash and put him at center. You're putting Patrick Elias at center? Yeah, I don't think you can do that. Oh, you're the devil's saying. How much center do he play? No, he played a lot of center.

I mean, I'll put him on wing. That's fine. I don't care. I could put him on wing and find the center. My problem is that I don't. No, no, no. You've got a spot for both. Yeah.

Oh, you've been tracking this? No. Somebody's got to me. My only thing is I don't have a, I don't know how much center he played. Like, in my head, Patrick Elias is a wing. He definitely played center. But, I mean, I'm more than happy to put him on the wing because I don't really have another solution on the wing. Yeah, okay.

You know what? Fair enough. He played, he played, you know, he took several thousand face-off in his career. You know, very bad at it from what it looks like. Can I put him at center then? If you want to have a guy with a 43% face-off percentage at center, hey, go nuts. Okay. I'm going to put him at center.

All right. So that's Patrick Gellarler's second round. This is, uh, yeah. All right, we're, uh, and that was your second pick, right? Of that, yes, back and forth? Yes, yes. You have one, two, three, yes.

Okay, so Greg's got one winger and four blue liners left to, to fill. I think it took Kipersoff, right? Yeah, yeah. Kipersoff was your other one. And Ryan, Ryan, you need one center, two wingers, and three defensemen. And a partridge. Um, I will say, just to close out my concern about finding a good center here,

I'm going to go late first round, Ryan Getslaff, pretty fucking good guy. He's pretty good. Pretty fucking good career for himself. All right. Sean's up. So now back to me. So I need a center, two wingers, and two. There's three wingers and two defensemen.

One plus two plus one plus one. Yeah. All right. Well, see, ah, man, I don't like having some of these guys, but I don't think I'm going to have a choice. Mm-hmm. So I'm going to take a from, I'm going to finish off my 8 plus requirement. Okay. With an underrated defenseman, Thomas Cabberley.

Oh, nice. Good player. Good, good player. Pretty good player. By the way, if anyone's confused by like round eight plus, given that the draft is only seven rounds long, it used to be longer. It's only relatively recently that it locked in as a seven round.

So that's, in addition to the fact that these players are not necessarily great to get drafted that late, the pickings are very slim. Somehow you've picked Cabrily over Tsaro Sujimoto. Yes. Yeah. Well, you guys wouldn't let me go back to the 70s. That was the problem. And, you know, I don't even know if the Tokyo katanas are even eligible to be in this.

No, they might not be. All right. And let me just plan out who am I taking the rest of the way. I got him. I got him. Do you have a second pick now? Yeah, so I've got to make another pick. You know what?

I'm just going to, I was going to try to get cute and hold on to it, but I'm just going to make the pick now. From late first round, I'll take Marian Hosa on the wing. Nice. Pretty good. Pretty good player. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to finally make my first pick out of the third round. Out of what, the third round?

There's actually, there's some okay players. There's a lot of players. There's some talent there, for sure. Yeah. And I'm got one, two, three, four, five, six. I guess I'm going to go with Chris LaTang. Out of the third round. That's a good pick.

Translation, the tang. I like that. Okay, so I have a winger, four defensemen left. Correct. One of those defense. You are basically Kyle Dubas. You have loaded up on offense and an overrated goaltender, and you've got no blue line whatsoever, so.

Well, then I'm going to try to rectify this from the eighth rounder later, my last pick there. A little piece of hell. by the name Akimo, Teemanon. Good player. Joins the team. Pretty good player. And then with my last pick in the fourth round, and by my math, it means I only have undrafted players left.

You've got three picks left after this. You've got three picks left, yeah. Right. Well, I have two picks. Oh, a winger, too, right? Yeah. You're going to have a winger and three defensemen is what you've got right now. Oh, then you know what?

You know what? I'm not going to go to the fourth round. then I'll do my winger. Boys, if I'm going to have fucking Sidney Crosby on my team, how do I not have his undrafted running mate, Chris Coonitz? All right.

To close out my wingers. You know, I've heard he's like uniquely talented to play with. Very uniquely. I don't know if you guys know this, but Sidney Crosby has a lot of trouble playing with certain guys.

That's true? Yeah. Can't find that chemistry. Yeah. Phil Kessel and Siddi Crosby, oil and water. Chris Cunits and Sidney Crosby. must be milk in milk.

That's right. That's right. That's it. That's my forward group right there. Pretty good. Pretty good. My defense kind of blows, but, you know, the defense could be a little bit better.

All right. I'm going to go with another winger. I need another winger here. And I'm going to go in the second round. I'm going to go James Neal, former 40 goal scorer. Really fucking good for a while. there. Put in with a Joe Thornton type.

You're in business, baby. Oh, right. Okay. One, two. Wait, where am I missing a player, Sean? I've got one more pick in the fourth. And I got one more undrafted. You need a fourth.

You need an undrafted. And I think you need a third. I'm just scanning it. I got one more than a third? Yeah, I think so. Oh, sweet. All right. That's cool.

I must have fucked up and put an X there one there shouldn't have been. That's great. Okay. All good. We should tell people, the record keeping on this all is quite suspect. So if you're sitting there going like Ryan's got like four guys from the fifth round, yeah, sorry. Oh, no, I know I'm good. I have a very good spreadsheet open in front of me here. All right. I am going to go with a guy that I originally did not even have on my, really on my board, but I need the fourth round and I need a winger. So I'm going to take Victor Ardvison. multiple 30 goal seasons really fucking good player

I mean product of a good line but sure and I now have I am looking at I need a center I need a defenseman I need a winger I know who my winger is going to be so I've got rounds two and three to look at and I feel like I can

I can work with that I'm gonna take as my fourth line center third line or third round draft pick uh interesting where you go with this one you got three choices you know what no i'm not uh i'm gonna hold off on that no i'm gonna hold off on that because i realize you guys have already used all your centers so there's i'm i'm better off taking a defenseman because you guys need

defensemen i'm going to take second round uh duncan keith nice yeah i thought about keith yeah that's a good call back there's still two two really good defense on the board the second round out. Yeah. I'd say, yeah. Because the height of his power, as one of them, was really good. Not so much now.

I'd say there's even three really good defensemen in the second round. I'm going to close out my wingers, though. I'm really running out of steam on these guys. And I'm going to take another guy in multiple 30-goal seasons. Patrick Sharp. Nice. And what player? Good looking, good-looking fellow.

He's from what round? You need someone to put on the... Or third round. I mean, sorry. Third round pick. You need someone to put on the billboard, you know, to get the fans in the building. That's a good-looking man. All right.

So I will close out my third round. Thank you for leaving this guy on the board, Sean, because he was really like the only defenseman in the third left. And that's Colton Pereko. Yeah. Take him. And then I will then close out the other round that I needed to close out, which was the fourth round.

And I got two choices here for a D. and I So I've Carlson Campbell teaming in a preco That tells me I need a fucking rock On defense So I'll take Jacob Slavin In the fourth round

Okay And that's We're now to round 19 So Oh my God Congratulations And Ryan you need You need defensemen

Yeah And I have to Just in the interest Of Filling out my sixth round here I think I have to take a young man named Andre Markov. Okay. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Good player. Pretty good. Pretty fucking good. That's a good one. All right. Dun, dun, and yeah, it's okay. This is very exciting.

So wait, so is this your last two picks? So these are my last two picks. Yeah. So my last two picks are Braden Point as my final center. He's third rounder. Nice. And with my last pick, I will take Yarm or Yager.

Pretty good. Mr. Revolvent, really. Yeah. And that takes it back to Ryan. You need a defenseman, I don't know. I need one defenseman. I can reveal now who those three real good defensemen were that were on board. Very good, yeah.

Yeah. I get to choose between Shea Weber at the height of its powers, P.K. Suban at the height of his powers. Or Roman Yosey at the height of his powers. Three Nashville Predators defense. men. Oh, if I may, Mark Edward Vlasic. I'm good. I think, you know what? I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with Shea Weber. Oh, man. I think that's the right call out of that group, but that's, can't really, a little bit more offense from that, from that blue line. And Greg, it's down to you. You need a defenseman from, from, from,

I don't know where. You need an undrafted defenseman? I need an undrafted defenseman, and luckily there's a lot of them there. If we're building a team, the pick is Dan Gerardi. Here comes the Hover pick. Oh, come on. I'm not, what do you mean? Come on.

If you're building a team. I can think of one undrafted defenseman who hasn't been taken yet, who, if you don't pick him, you're a fucking psycho. But here we go. Do you mean Dan Boyle? I do mean Dan Boyle. I was going to say. Like, I think, I think Hidivus powers as a defensive defenseman. Jan Girardi was one of the best in the league.

But you have to take Dan Boyle here. Yeah, you absolutely have to. Absolutely have to. I think it boils a real good pick there. The other two guys would be Tori Krug. And the guy I thought you were going on when I said Homer pick. Brian Rolfsky. Yeah.

Rolfsky. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was way underrated for a very long time. I mean, obviously, if I take like Mietermeyer, I'm taking Rufelski to play with him. But I didn't get him there. All right. So there we go.

Now we have, as far as what happens next, we have no plan. So I don't know if there's. I actually have a plan for this. Do you? All right. We are going to mention our teams. We're going to spell them out. We'll probably even list them on the site.

And then on the Patreon, if you're a member, you can vote for who's got the best team. We'll make a post. Okay. We'll put the teams up there. And you could vote who has the best team. My team. This is just how they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, were drafted, I'm going to obviously mix up the lines

because I have to have Kunitz. It's probably going to be Kunitz, Crosby, and Kuthorov. But here's how I have it right now. Alfredson, Crosby, Bondra, Kuturov, Pavelski, Hayduk, Ovechkin, Eliash, Marchand, and then a scrappy third, a fourth line of Chatan, Paulson, and Kuhnitz. My defense, you know what?

In 2020, I think I can get away with this defense. Eric Carlson, Brian Campbell, chemo team, and then Colton Pereco, Jacob Slavin, and Dan Boyle. We're going to move the puck a little bit, boys. And then Marty Bredor and Mika Kipersoff as a pretty decent battery.

I just quickly put together some lines here, so here we go. Jerome Ginnla, Joe Thornton, Jamie Ben, Artemie Panarin, Pavl Datsuk, Martin San Luis, James Neil, Ryan Getzlaph, Andre Palat, Yuri Littenden, Mark Savard, and Patrick Sharp are my forward lines, my defense pairings are Pronger and Weber,

Strallman and Latang, Buffalo, and in net, I have Timmy Thomas and Ryan Miller. Pretty good. Yeah. Two proud Americans in goal. That's right, baby. Yeah. All right, I haven't really worked too hard on my lines here, but let's... Let's do it this way. First line, Connor McDavid, Yarmor-Yager, Henrik Zetterberg.

Sorry, not decent. Second line, have fun scoring against these guys. Peter Forsberg, Mark Stone, Marion Hosa. Pretty good. Third line, Patrice Bergeron, Johnny Gerdro, Pavel Demetra, fourth line, Braden Point, Cam Atkinson, and Victor Arvinson. My first pairing is Zadano-Jaradano. second pairing is Zubov and Klingbird And third pairing is Duncan Keith And Thomas Karelae

And I've got Henrik Lundquist And Sergei Bavroski is my goalies Not bad Pretty good team So we'll put those up on the Patreon And you could vote on them And that was a fun exercise Thank you Sean for coming up with something this week

So we didn't have to drown in misery Real quick Overrated underrated Favorite least favorite I told the people we would do it this week Because we didn't do it last week Congratulations to Champ for trying to sneak in

Simpsons episodes. Nope, sorry. Not doing it. You got to, you got to, you know the rule. It's a Supolet or it's nothing. So the two choices for you, overrated, underrated,

favorite, least favorite, sports documentaries, or hockey jerseys. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not a big jersey guy, but I'm not a big documentary guy either. You guys pick. You guys pick and I'll go along for the right.

But we can go beyond. I mean, there's other. answers. There's other, there's like other choices here. I'll pick one of those two. That's fine. Yeah.

Oh, hey, listen. Hey, listen. Wrestling managers. Let's fucking go. Well, hold on. You'll get so mad. I don't. I don't give a shit.

We just, we just, we literally just gave them an hour of hockey content. Come on. Yeah. Okay. Wrestling managers. I don't care. Sure. Yeah.

Let's go. Overrated, underrated, favorite, least favorite wrestling managers. Overrated wrestling manager? Uh, uh, Classy Freddie Blassie Who gives a shit? What do you do? We're a sequin jacket

And hit people with his cane Come on Never understood it I came up at a time When Bobby the Brain Heenan Was like The King's shit manager And then we trot out

Classy Freddy Blassie With like the Iron Sheik and Volkov And just be like What's the point of this guy Yeah Yeah Yeah Overrated

Overrated Uh J.J. Dylan didn't The horse The horseman didn't need a manager Come on. He handled their affairs. He booked the limos. Yeah, they didn't need it.

That's good. I like that. That is a good pick. I'm going to say overrated, I didn't see a lot of it. You know what? Overrated Paul Bear. Fuck you.

You all like him because he's a cartoon. He was fine. He was for children. You know what else is the cartoon? Freaking bugs, money, everybody loves them. Yeah, that's it. All right.

There you go. We say we make people mad. Underrated. Oof. I don't know. I think a lot of, this is tough because I think a lot of managers are very properly rated. I guess if I had to go underrated, it would be. Well, you know what?

So is Paul Heyman currently a manager? or is he just a spokesperson? He's an advisor or whatever is. Advocate, thank you, yeah. That's not a manager. I would say he was an underrated manager. Yeah, he was in AWA. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, when he's poly dangerously. So I'll say poly dangerously. Yeah, sure. Used to hit people with this giant phone. That was like, Corinette had the tennis racket and Pauli had the phone. It's a loaded tennis racket. The answer to this one, of course. The mouth of the South Jimmy Hart.

Come on, baby. Come on, baby. Yeah, here's why I say that. The amount of energy that he brought to the ring for one match, when he's managing like the nasty boys or something like that, right? Yeah. Not only does he have that energy when he also manages demolition and five other guys later in the night. Honky Tonk man.

The honky talk man, the natural disasters. You can go down the list. With that having been said, you also have to. factor in the airbrush jackets. You have to factor in the fact that he brought that energy four or five times a night. He had the megaphone. He had the look. He wrote all the wrestling themes of the 1980s. People may not know that. So yeah, I think you have to say the mouth of the south baby. Pretty amazing moment in history for airbrushing around that time. You had Jimmy Hart's jacket. You had Rick Rood's tight.

Everything the Ultimate Warrior did. Yeah, it's pretty great. Ryan had the correct answer. It is Jimmy Hart. That was mine as well. He was fantastic. And I mean, the main, back then, the main job of a heel manager was to make you really want to see somebody get their hands on him and knock the crap out of them. And that's what he did better than almost anybody else.

So for favor, or we're just going straight across the board here? Yeah, Bobby Heenan. Bobby Heaney. It's Bobby the Brain Heenan. For all the reasons that Sean said, like the thing I love about Bobby Heenan was, and I don't know this has ever been repeated in wrestling history, he was kind of like the Lex Luthor of wrestling.

Like his whole gig was just to find new monsters to try to take out Hogan. That was the whole point, his whole existence at one point was, I'm going to keep on, I'm going to find Bundy, I'm going to turn Andre, I'm going to do all the things I could possibly do to take out Hulk Hogan. And I fucking loved that. Like, imagine if there had been one heel manager who was like, you know what, fuck John Sina. For the next eight years, I'm going to try to take out John Sina. And that's your, like, rivalry.

How about this? Oh, God, it's so perfect. How about this? I just pulled up the WWF members of the Heenan family. Adrian Adonis, Andre the Giant, Big John Stud, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard. Andre the Giant and Haku, of course, as the colossal connection. Haku and Tama as the Islanders. Harley Race, Hercules, Ken Patera, King Kong Bundy, Mr. Perfect.

Ooh, when he was managing Mr. Perfect. Paul Orndorff, Rick Flair, and Rick Rood, among others. Yeah, incredible. That is a Hall of Fame list. And, yeah, the idea that they just put it all together to fuck with Hogan, like, oh, boy. Oh, man. This Scotty Bowman of poor wrestling managers.

Oh, absolutely. And the other thing to say, of course, about Bobby Heenan is one of the all-time, probably the best ever color guy on any wrestling broadcast. Without question. Least saver for me, Johnny Polo, obviously. The original incarnation of Raven in the WWF, a spoiled, rich guy, horrible gimmick, clearly a talented performer

when he finally found his shit in ECW but Johnny Polo was like it was just like that was at that point where you're just like maybe we don't need managers anymore kind of thing Kevin Sullivan Legion of Doom I can get out of here sucks

Do you be the dungeon of doom Or dungeon of doom yeah sorry Legion of Doom was awesome different guys But that was also a worthless manager Paul Ellering was a worthless manager Yeah I was going to say can I do the Legion of Doom when they were managed by like a ventriloquist dummy for a few months.

That's no way to talk about Sunny. Oh, geez. I will say any manager that in hindsight was completely and utterly racist. So that would be like you're slick, your sunny, oh no. No, hold on a second. You mean the doctor of style himself slick? The jive-talking preacher who was able to. His theme song, his theme song was called Jive Soul Bro.

It was on one of the wrestling albums. Who was able to turn Kamala into, from heel to face by just jiving with him, this, even though he didn't speak English because he was a jungle can't. Oh, geez. Did you mention, did you mention Mr. Fucci? Because I, I know as a kid, I definitely enjoyed Mr. Fucci. In hindsight, obviously, for problematic character. But I definitely enjoyed it. I find Mr. Fuji at least, like, they didn't just automatically put him with every Asian.

act and just be like, that's all you do. Like, he had the run with demolition. Barbarian, the warlord. Like, it's, and it's, yeah, this, this business is terrible, but yeah. Isn't it though? You can have to be more specific. All right, that's the podcast for this week.

Thanks, everybody for listening. You can follow me on Twitter at Wachinsky. You can read my stuff on ESPN.com. My other podcast, ESPN and I, had a really, really good conversation with Kevin Weeks this week about all the shit that's going on in the world. And also Cam Talbot to talk about the resurrection of Alabama Huntsville Hockey.

And then, of course, you can listen to me, Lambert, and my beautiful wife, Ruby, on MeasonPod, the Top Chef podcast, where apparently, as we found out this week, people who don't watch the show and live in Australia are big fans of the podcast, which is really strange to me. Yeah, don't get it. Imagine listening to, I don't know, a podcast about neighbor. or whatever the fuck. That's like that soap opera, right? That's in Australia that Collie Madog was on. And then being like, I love this podcast. It doesn't make any sense to me.

But thanks for listening. We do appreciate it. Yeah, sign up for the Puck Soup Patreon. I have a newsletter on there. As Greg mentioned, we do Miz on Pod there. Me and Sean Gentilly do stick to sports there. We're doing one this weekend. And, hmm.

Well, just like all the bonus episodes and stuff like that, we do as well. So, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of content on the Patreon these days. So sign up. Yeah. You can find me on The Athletic. I wrote a bunch of stuff this week. Not all of it is going to run this week because this week doesn't really feel like a great week to be doing, to be like the funny tongue-and-cheek sports guy.

so some of the stuff you might see down the road. So instead, I'm going to encourage you to look on my Twitter feed. I've been retweeting a lot of really good coverage that's been in the athletic and elsewhere. Other voices than my own people of color weighing in on what's been happening this week, I'd encourage you to go and look at that and read that stuff and then, you know, come back some point down the road and we'll get back to doing the kind of lighthearted fun stuff. And thanks to Jonathan C for the wrestling manager of suggestion. He even put a Bobby Heenan Giff on his tweet.

And shout out to Master Huba for suggesting violations of the Geneva Conventions committed by American police this past week. I don't know if we could get a favorite out of that, which is, I guess, the only flaw in that plan. Yeah. But a good suggestion nonetheless. And thanks to everybody for listening. Head over to the Patreon for the mailbag.

and thanks for listening this week. It's a weird week, and I'm sure a hockey podcast was not really top of mind, but we do appreciate you listening, and we'll talk to you next week. Bye. See you.

Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute, but we also cover movies, TV shows, eats and tunes.

It's your weekly bowl of hoggy and nonsense. Part two. Thank you.