Puck Soup - Tim Peel Ejected

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

The boys discuss the shocking hot mic incident that got referee Tim Peel ousted from the NHL, and look back on Wysh's infamous tequila-drinking night with the maligned official. Plus, what's wrong with the Flyers, debating the top 10 wingers, Canada's border issues, finding shrimp tails in your cereal, The Snyder Cut and the most overrated and underrated Harrison Ford movies that aren't STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES. 

Today's episode of Puck's Super sponsored by My Booky. It's March Madness. How's that bracket looking? Probably pretty bad if it's anything like mine. But it's okay. You can salvage your March Madness experience through My Booky. They've got a crazy number of wagers, prop bets, everything available, not only for college hoops, but also for the NBA, UFC pay-per-views, and of course, hot national hockey league action. So regardless of your favorite player or team, whether you're betting the first or third period, total. You've got a choice from thousands of lines and prop bets on all sports, and it's all in one place at MyBooky. Do yourself a favor. Get a head start on your wagering day by signing up with promo code Puck Soup, P-U-C-K-S-O-U-P, and My Bookie will match your first deposit halfway up to a thousand bucks that's free cash, credited to your account instantly on top of your deposit. The best part is you always have access to the action wherever you are at home or on the go. Visit the website online or on your phone at mybooky.ag. That's my bookie.orgie.org.

And use promo code Puck Soup, all one word, to grab yourself a deposit bonus. Bet anything, anytime, anywhere with MyBooky and enjoy the show. 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 tools. It's your weekly bowl. of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wichenski of ESPN, primary rights holder for the national hockey league.

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I don't think we have rights to very much at all. Sean McAnew from The Athletic. You're in Puck Soup. It's not true, Ryan. You have the rights to Dmitri Filipovich. Sure. I mean, do you share the rights? I don't even. know. Is he still with Yahoo? Who even knows? I don't keep track of these things. You don't keep track on... Did you see that our former company now has Yahoo Plus, by the way? Whoa.

It's a subscription service so you can get like no ads on your mail and, uh, I don't know. They're just putting a plus behind everything these days and just seeing what happens. But the problem with Yahoo, though, the thing I wanted to mention was that it's Yahoo Plus, but they kept the exclamation point at the end of the logo. So it's Yahoo! patient point plus sign. It's pretty great. There's, oh,

it's, you know who has a plus now? Is Panera bread? Panera has a plus? Yeah, it's like Panera Plus or something like that. It's like a coffee subscription. Oh,

yeah? Is the plus that they pour the coffee for you instead of making you pour your own coffee? It's my least favorite thing about Panera. Let me, let me click on it here. Panera Plus. Oh,

one espresso drink per month and the first three, three months, three months free, and then just nine bucks a month after that, you get unlimited premium coffee, a free espresso drink per month, and all the members, or all the benefits of a normal my Panera membership, such as birthday rewards, special surprises, earned rewards, and more. So nine bucks a month, they're putting a plus on Panera. That's amazing because it's almost like... They don't realize that no one cares about the coffee at Panera, and they just come for, like, the salads and that Asiago cheese bagel.

Yeah. But what have you? Sean, do they have Panera in Canada? I think so. I think we do. But it probably has some other wacky Canadian name. Yeah. Okay.

So what should we talk about? Hmm. How about Tim Peel getting banned from the NHL? Yeah. A month before he retired. What a strong statement from the NHL on this one. We're going to have to fire somebody else now to even it up. So for those who don't know, and I'm sure you know by now, if you're listening to this dumb podcast, it was the National Predators in the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday night. There was a penalty called in the second period on Victor Arvidson of the Predators.

He tripped Red Wings defenseman John Merrill in the offensive zone, even though replay show that Merrill, embellished it. And lo and behold, who makes the call from Center Ice? It's her old friend Tim Peel, as he is often want to do, making a call from the outer regions of the rink on a play in the other zone. With 1242 remaining in the second period, Nashville's broadcast captured hot mic audio from Peel. He was roughing the game with Kelly Sutherland, but it was unmistakably

Peel's voice, saying, quote, it wasn't much, but I wanted to get a fucking penalty against Nashville early. After the game, the NHL said it was opening up an investigation into Peel's comments. Everybody in the hockey world said, all right, this won't amount to anything. This happens all the time. It's game management. It's what these guys do. And then on Wednesday morning before the podcast, NHL Senior Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations, Colin Campbell, announced that Peel would no longer be working NHL games. Now we're in the future. As Ryan pointed out, Peele was set to retire after the season.

And Colin Campbell, I'll just read the statement because, my God, nothing is more important than ensuring the integrity of our game, said the man who once sent an email to the officials about penalties not being called on his son. Tim Peel's conduct is in direct contradiction to the adherence to that corner. Stone principle that we demand of our officials and our fans, players, coaches, and all associated with our game, expect and deserve. There's no justification for his comments, no matter the context or his intention, and the National Hockey League will take any and all steps necessary to protect the integrity of our game. Ryan, what a crock of shit this is. Yeah, of course.

This is exactly like when all these Republicans were like, well, I'm a Republican, but Trump, goes too far, but it's only because Trump just, like, says the things they believe out loud. That's a great, great, great comparison, actually. I appreciate that. You know, everybody in the league knows, or anybody who knows anything about the sport knows that the percentage chance that you get, like, trading off calls all game long is very high. It's very difficult for a team to, like, rack up five power play.

and the other team only has one. It's almost always like four and three in a night, you know? And I think some of that is definitely, well, they could call tripping or hooking or whatever on every single play. Like that classic bullshit. But at the same time, you know, when do you see a penalty late in the third period of a tie game? And it's all game management. And everybody knows it's game management. And people can complain about it, but like they accept that that's the reality, you know.

And Tim Peel just got caught on Mike saying what I'm sure one million NHL officials have said in the past. So to make, to quote, make an example out of him by firing him a month before he was going to retire after an illustrious career of getting calls wrong and things like that. Who gives a shit? Well, he didn't get fired. They just said he wouldn't work another game. They just pulled him off the beat as it was. Right. Yeah.

So even less of a thing then, of a punishment. Sean, before we begin, you know, I've done podcasts in the past with people who vehemently protect and defend the referees. There is obviously that contingent. I've, excuse me for the cultural stereotype, but I find that Canadians are sometimes more forgiving to the officials than Americans are. Would that be accurate you think or no? I think Canadians are like anyone else. They're forgiving to the officials when it helps their team and they're furious at the officials when it goes against their team and everything else kind of. Yeah, you asked a guy who's still mad at a call of a fucking 1999 or whatever it was.

I don't know that you're asking the best authority. I mean, Canadian fans are probably, I would say, more willing to defend the old way of doing things. And some of this falls into that, this idea that, yeah, you even up the calls. That's just how it goes. So, yeah, maybe there's some, the old-timey fans. but it's just because this is what we're so used to. It's been this way forever, and this is why it's a tough problem to figure out,

because we can all say we don't want game management, we don't want even-up calls, but as soon as there's a game where that doesn't happen, we freak out because it always happens. And so why didn't they do it this time? And, well, you know, my team lost because we had to kill five power plays, and we didn't get any power plays, so clearly the refing is wrong.

It's not just that we were getting outskated and we were sloppy and undisciplined, It's clearly because the ref messed up because we're just so used to how it's called. So this is, this whole mess is an opportunity for the league to actually hit reset on this whole concept. They could do that. They could say the reason Tim Peel got fired and he did get fired, you know, they can use whatever terms they want. The reason he got fired is because we do not want there to even be a perception that our officials are managing the game. This is not how we're going to do it. Somebody could even

say, hey, look, it's been this way for too long. We want to be really clear. Call the plays that are in front of you. Call what you see. If that means one team gets 10 power plays and the only one doesn't because that's what's deserved, then just call it that way. And we will have our officials back. And this is step one in us making very clear to the fans that this is what the expectations are. And that would be a very good thing. And there's zero percent chance that that happens. Yeah. This is a guy who was. already on the way out getting thrown under the bus so that the league can just go off and then pretend that this thing that we clearly know happens every single game is some sort of

weird outlier and it's it's garbage is what it is yeah i think it's interesting too that this all comes at a time you know shortly after that big chris for steeg video where he's like look how much all the good players in the league get tripped and held and oh yeah yeah and hit from behind and Nobody calls anything. Like, this is the time, you're right, Sean, to, like, fully reset how the fucking game is called. And the problem with that, though, is that they did that, this is a million years ago now, obviously, but after coming out of the 0405 lockout. Every game had 58 penalties in it, and it sucked shit. So, like, you know, I remember.

That to me, but, but Ryan, in fairness, though, like, to me, that was more indicative of, them trying to enforce the crackdown on obstruction. It was like both teams got nine power plays every night. Right. You know, even then it wasn't nine to two or anything like that ever. Let me put it this way. They, a few years ago, it was probably more than a few years ago now, but in college hockey, I went to a game, no, I went to a game where they, you know, it was, you know, it was,

early in the season, and they were trying to establish that, like, you basically couldn't make stick contact with a player's glove. Was the rule they were trying to emphasize that year. And I'm going to see if I can find the box score of the game, but it featured, like, literally four different five-on-threes and all this kind of stuff. It was brutal. And like nobody wants that either, you know? And so, like, I think the refs are managing the game from that point of view. Like, I don't want to overcall the game because nobody wants to see 15 power plays and blah, blah, blah. But, you know.

And I think fans are okay with that element of it. It's the evening up. It's the evening up and it's the different situation. Like, we all know if the game's tied, late in the third period, you have to either murder a guy with your stick or accidentally flip the puck over the glass to get a penalty. Those are the only two things. Over time, you could probably get away with the murder part. Or the other one is haul someone down on a clearer scoring chance. You usually get a penalty for that too.

Maybe you will. And if one team is up by one goal in the third period, the team that's trailing is going to get one power play at some point in the remainder of the game, and that's probably going to be it. And just down the line, we've all had the feeling of you watch a game. Your team gets two power plays in the first few minutes.

They don't score, and you're sitting there thinking, uh-oh, because we know we're going to kill the next one. And just all of this stuff. And this, you know, hockey fans are so used to this that they don't, seem to grasp that this doesn't happen in other sports.

Like, I'm not enough of a basketball fan, and Ryan can maybe speak to it, but I know in the NFL, they don't do this. In the NFL, there's disparities and penalties all the time, and they might show that, you know, one team's taken six holding penalties in this game, the other team hasn't taken any, and nobody says, oh, the refs are out to get us. They say, our offensive line sucks. They've got to get it together and start playing more disciplined. You know, we got to get some guys who can block without holding.

I think the NFL, I think the difference in the NFL, Sean, is that it's never even evening up the penalties. It is we missed this penalty and we'll get them on the next one. That's the NFL model of this. It's not like evening out. The NFL is also the league that's the most, there's holding on every single play. So you will really want us to call it because we can and then you'll be mad at it. There's holding on every play. And you could like there is because, you know, people look at.

hockey, they go, well, it's subjective. It's super subjective in the NFL, too. But if one team takes three deep pass interference calls, you're not sitting there going, well, the other team should just throw it down the field because we know there's pass interference getting called to even it up, right? Right. It might happen. It's still ref by humans. There's still some game management, but it's not so extreme like it is in the NHL. And you're certainly not sitting out there, you know, as a defensive back going, well, we've taken the last three pass interference penalties, so I can pretty much tackle this guy because I know they're not calling four-point-in-a-row, right? And that happens in the NHL.

You see teams where it's like it's very clear that they know they're not getting called for anything. So it just goes into tackle mode. And it sucks. And it has an effect on the quality of the product. And we need to, you know, step one is we all need to stop talking about hockey this way. And that's the media and fans and everybody. stop pretending that it all has to even up. Because right now it does.

Like you look at these, you can find charts where people list out all the teams and who gets the most power plays and who gets, and who kills the most power plays. And there's a widespread, but it's like a straight diagonal line because the more power plays you get, the more you're going to have to kill. And the fewer penalties you take, the fewer power plays you're going to get. And that's just to the point where there are people out there who suspect that certain smart teams who have a lot of offensive talent like Tampa go out there and intentionally play like a penalty-filled style because they know like, hey, we're good at killing penalties. We're good at scoring on power plays. Let's be a high penalty team where we know there's going to be a lot going both ways. It's going to be even, but we're going to win on the even. It's stupid.

it. It shouldn't work this way. And if this is honestly the beginning of the NHL actually doing something about that, great, if this is just a guy, I mean, he said the quiet part out loud, but he didn't even say it. It's not like he said it in an interview or he tweeted it or something where you could go like, that's really bad judgment to talk about that. He said it into a hot mic that shouldn't have been open. Right. And he said something that gets said a dozen times, I'm sure, every night. The context of that was weird. I mean, I'd love to know more about the context.

I admittedly wasn't watching a Predators Red Wings game on a Tuesday night. Usually when you hear a referee say that, it's because things are getting out of control. It's getting too chippy, right? Like, I'm going to throw a penalty this team's way to calm things down a little bit. Which, by the way, is a type of game management that everybody loves. So when you hear people say, we don't like game management, I don't know. Two things about this. The elephant in the room that we've not discussed is gambling.

And I wonder if the world has changed for the NHL now, where if they have a referee saying, I intentionally called the penalty on one team because I felt like I wanted to, or I needed to, that it's a really bad look for a league that's trying to generate as much revenue as they can from sports wagerers. Great. So start telling us about injuries.

Tell us who the starting goalies are and cut the crap everywhere else and then go ahead and beat up the referees for that. Completely agree. And then the other thing is, I just want to take a quick victory lap here. I don't know if people remember this. But, you know, Tim Peel did get pulled off a game in 2015 after taking tequila shots with me at Foley's in New York City because I was his biggest critic. Lambert knows we had an ongoing feature on Puck Daddy called the Continuing Adventures of Tim Peel, terrible NHL referee. and he met with me. He reached out to me. He wanted to have a summit. You could read about the summit. You could still find the article. I'm not going to go into details here. We've talked about it on the show before. What I do want to talk about is Colin Campbell. I don't know if I've talked about this before. Colin Campbell berated me about that once at the outdoor game in Santa Clara. He found me and cornered me and tore into me not only about Tim Peel, but, but he found me and cornered me and tore into me, not only about Tim Peel, but,

but as the blogger proxy for Tyler Delo, which was very uncomfortable. Yeah, Delo, for those who don't remember, Delo is the one who broke the email scandal where Colin Campbell was conferring with the head of officiating about the penalties called in conjunction to his son Gregory on the Boston Bruins. And I remember two things distinctly from that conversation. One was the fact that he thought that I tricked Tim Peel and taking the tequila picture, to which I said, no, Tim Peel wanted to take the tequila picture and have me publish it. And you could ask anybody at the bar about that because they were all

aware of it. And Colin Campbell going, well, why would he want to do that? And my response was, Colin, I don't know if you noticed, but he was drinking tequila. Like, what do you think? It wasn't the time of night where, you know, he's thinking about next steps and, oh, what does it mean from my the next night in New Jersey. But the crux of the conversation was about how Tim Peel fucking sucks. He's been a horrible referee for years and years and years and years. And this is not simply just me saying this because I watch a few video clips. And this is not me saying this because he has their reputation online.

When people see him refereeing their game, they anticipate some dumb, bad shit happening. Look no further than the number of Stanley Cup final games this guy has officiated, which is none. Oh, I thought it was 100. It's none. It is a meritocracy in the National Hockey League as far as who gets to do what. And you take a look at what, Wes McCauley and Kelly Sutherland and all these other guys that are Peel's peers and contemporaries. And how many important games they've done versus how many Tim Peel has done, the contrast is stark.

And the contrast exists because he's fucking terrible at his job. And he's been terrible at his job for decades. And it's been pointed out how terrible he is at his job. And now two months before retirement, they pull him off the fucking beat because he's terrible at his job. So congratulations to all the appeal critics. Feel a certain amount of vindication today that the NHL finally agreed with you that this guy sucks. It's just happened to be a decade too late. They didn't. You know they didn't.

Yeah. What are you talking about? they did only in the sense that if this was one of if this was Wes McCauley he's not getting pulled off but again that's I don't know is Wes McCauley retiring two weeks from now like that's I think that's the big thing here if this was a normal situation I think they go well you're done for the season and then like

first preseason game next year Tim Peel's out there not making calls and stuff yeah I just wish that I I think the timeline on this just made the decision so easy for them. I wish I could offer a snapshot of this to Colin Campbell back in 2000, whatever, the outdoor game was, and be like, you know, he's vehemently defending the reputation of some guy. And then I'm going to be like, oh, by the way, three years from now, you're going to have to kick him out of the league because he got caught in hot, Mike, saying he's just arbitrarily calling penalties on a team because it was the right time to do so. Well, first of all, I think we can all agree that when it comes to reffing Stanley Cup games, they should have let Tim Peel do a few, just to even it up, you know?

just to good the bad it's got a two more quick thoughts on this and the first I was going to say this at the beginning but we should point out that the clip that everyone has seen cuts off like halfway through I would assume that the NHL's investigation was getting like the full recording

it is possible that he goes on to say something in the remainder of that moment that actually would make you go, oh, yes, they did need to get rid of this guy for sure. I, you know, so, and I say that only because we're doing this on Wednesday morning and maybe by the time people are even hearing this, there's more information's come out or whatever. So that's, that's fine. But it would have to be something because this is the exact, this is, this stuff happens all the time. And it's just, you can't be punishing people for getting caught on a hot mic saying something you know that everyone is saying constantly.

And that's, and that's where I'll, I'll just say. My final point, my condolences to Tim Peel, God, of all the times for a referee's microphone to be working for the first time in NHL history and clearly, clearly recording what he's saying. That's bad timing for him. Yeah, the thing is, right, like, you know, everybody loved when they did the refs miced up at, you know, the winter classic or the outdoor game, whatever, you know, whatever time they have the refs miced up. We all love that shit. And how many times do you think the people who edit those videos together had to edit around pretty much this exact kind of a conversation between a ref and a player? You know, I bet it's often because, again, like, Tim Peel just said what the problem that we've all recognized is out loud. And that's what he is being punished for is getting caught and not, you know, the doing of it.

Yeah, he's getting punished for being caught and being Tim Peel, which makes him probably the easiest NHL official to punish in any meaningful way. Yeah. Yep. All right. Well, I raise a shout of tequila to you, Tim Peel, one of the truly strangest gentlemen I've ever known. Speaking of gentlemen, today's episode is bought to you by Violent Gentleman Hockey Club. Now, the team over at Violin Gentlemen is celebrating their 10th year as a brand. Can you believe that they started out selling their gear out of cars in the Honda Center parking lot before Anaheim Ducks Games?

Now they've turned what was a trunk-based business into a major hockey apparel company that you've undoubtedly seen all over the place. Violent Gentleman offers timeless designs and high-quality materials and fits across all kinds of apparel offerings for men, women, and kids. You can't help it run into a member of the club when you're out at the rink these days. I mean, even walking around events, you see their awesome sweatshirts and hoodies and shirts. Because the team over at VGHC is trying to bring in new fans to their club for the 10th year anniversary, they're offering a 15% discount on all orders on the site when you enter Puck Soup, all one word, P-U-C-S-O-U-P at checkout. Check out the site, man.

They've got great gear. It looks awesome. If you like a big old black hoodie that kind of looks like you're part of a biker gang, you're going to find it there. Also, they have 15 different American Hockey League licensed T-shirts and gear that you can't find anywhere else. They're going to hopefully put out more soon because that stuff is really cool. Again, enter Puck Soup, all one word at checkout right now and get 15% off your order at violent gentleman.com. That's Violent Gentleman, V-I-O-L-E-N-T-E-M-E-N-O-F-com. April 30th.

Violent gentlemen hockey club. They make cool stuff. And you should check it out. Not cool, the Flyers. Well, actually very cool. Cooled off. Bad. Not good.

The loss of the devils last night as we do the podcast. Diagnosis Flyers, Ryan. What's going on there? Now, Greg, speaking of victory laps, remember when you and I said, hey, look, doesn't Elaine Vino's team, like, don't they always kind of struggle a lot? after his first season and all these flyers fans.

Yeah. RIP to his previous career, but we're different. Turns out you're not that different. You know, I don't want to say it's all on AV just because, you know, there's a bunch of guys had COVID, I think, and there have been injuries and blah, blah, blah, blah. But the big problem is Carhart can't make a fucking save. Yep. Right? So, like, they're not playing, like, don't get me wrong.

They're not playing well, I think, for the whole season there, like a shade below 49% if I'm not much mistaken in like, you know, XG and I think across all situations, that kind of thing. More recently, they've been playing better, but they're also playing from behind a lot because, again, Carter Hart can't make a save. He's like one of the worst goalies in the league, which, you know, I don't. I don't know that a coach has much control over one way or the other. You know, like, he, in much the same way, coaches shouldn't get credit for when, say, Kevin Lankin and has like a 930 save percentage out of nowhere. The fact that Carter Hart is 875 this year, I don't think that's Elaine Vigno's fault. His goal's saved below above replacement is like, I think it's nearing minus 20 this year.

Yeah, so that's like, that's like five points in the stand. ending's easy. And boy, you think the flyers might want to have those. But the other thing to say is it's not like their backup is any good because it's Brian Elliott. And this is the kind of thing that like Brian Elliott is predictably not good. Like they had no reason to suspect Carter Hart would be bad because he was pretty good his entire career before this, right? But, you know, Brian Elliott, uh, He was sub-900 last year, and they didn't try to, like, address that at all. Yeah, you could, if you just, every time somebody said, what is wrong with this team, and you just auto-replied, the starting goalie has a sub-900, say, percentage, you would, like, you'd pass the Turing test on that. That would probably apply to enough cases where that's it. That's a huge part of it.

I mean, they're just, Carter Hart was supposed to be a real good, plus goalie might still be. Who knows, but he isn't this year. And that's not the whole deal, but it's... They're just... They're just a really big part of it. They're a sloppy team too, though. Like, I mean, I agree with the Carter Hartsman shit.

But, you know, they give away the puck a lot in situations that puts a lot of pressure on what's basically a pretty young defense and then, you know, a goalie that's not been good this year. they don't have structure. They don't have the same sort of systems working that they had last season. Their young guys have been uniformly bad for various and sundry reasons after being good last year. And, you know, I think Lambert's right that, you know, a lot of that kind of falls on the coach. I know that we don't like to do this and assign too much importance to the loss of one essential role player because it's the

say Matt Niskenen to me I'm going to say Matt Niskenen dude you ask anybody around that team what Matt Niskenen meant to that defense and now it's easy to say that you get the sense

you get the sense that but that's what that's that whole preamble was for you because I knew you were going to do this shit he I mean I'm not going to say he's the thread that unraveled the sweater but losing a guy like that from your blue line

which is a pretty young blue line, which it doesn't have that type of defenseman now, all due respect to like Justin Braun, it was hugely impactful. It was hugely impactful. And I knew you're going to do that. You're the person in my mind when it comes to the, well, you know, the oilers would have been better if it wasn't for losing Matt Hendricks kind of shit. Like, I understand that. I understand how absurd it is on face. But Niskinin was a hugely important player for this team. Yeah, he's a good defenseman or was. Now he's not a guy. He was a glue guy. He was. hey, let me put it in terms you'll understand.

He was there, Phil Hartman. And he couldn't, you know, losing him really impacted the team, I think. Yeah. I mean, look, like, the thing you really have to say is it's not so much losing Matt Niskinin in particular. It's that the rest of the defense wasn't that good last year, you know? I just pulled up their five-on-five numbers from last season. and, you know, there were guys who got deployed situationally, like your Shane Gostas bears who had, you know, decent seasons, like just on the power play and that kind of thing,

but Robert Hogg, Shane Gostis Bear, like, these guys were not good. And then, like, Justin Braun, that always felt like lightning in a bottle, didn't it? Like, he was really bad for a bunch of years. He comes to Philly. He's really good in, like, a reduced role. and, you know, like, now he has to take on a bigger role again, and, oh, he's not good again. Weird, you know. I, you know, the thing I wonder about is, like, I feel like, I haven't looked it up,

but I feel like ProVrova has been really bad this season, like really bad, and I wonder how much that, uh, yeah, 46% XG. Losing, losing, or 49, rather, I looked at the wrong thing. But, yeah, no, like, not losing, not necessarily losing Niskanin, but they didn't, they just had nobody to replace Niskinet at all. And that's the bigger issue, right? It's like, they definitely got caught a little bit by surprise by the Niskinan retirement. But like, they were just like, well, I guess we don't have a plan B at all. We'll see how this goes. So, Sean, what if I told you at this point, courtesy of our friends at Moneypuck, that the San Jose Sharks have a better chance of banking the playoffs than do the Philadelphia Flyers? Ooh. That's spicy. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know what their numbers look like, but this is like if the Flyers crater, like if they have another, and I mean by that, like another bad week, they lose the next three in regulation and drop out of the playoff race, that changes everything, not just for them heading into the deadline, but the rest of that division. because the whole deal with that division was, depending on how you felt about the Rangers,

it was either five or six teams that were playoff teams for four spots. And it was like when the music stops, somebody's going to be left out and it's going to be a disaster. And it probably still would be for the Flyers. But is the music stopping already? Like, are we kind of, and if so, this is early to throw this out there. and maybe it comes back and looks bad, but it's not completely unreasonable to look ahead at the second half of the initial season

and go, we might be looking at some pretty crappy playoff races because... Yeah, yeah. Like the West looks like four spots are already wrapped up. The North is not far from that. I mean, you still want to see what the flames do with Sutter, but the North might be pretty close to having all four spots wrapped up. If the East is wrapped up as well,

And the top three spots in the Central are done? Like, are we going to have a whole second half of the season just watching Chicago, Nashville, and Dallas stumble around trying to get one playoff spot? Like, that's, uh, yeah, playing for the right to get absolutely annihilated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Well, I do, I do think that the jockeying for position is sort of interesting a little bit, and especially in the east, you know, where you've got Boston kind of in that three spot. that four spot, rather, and, you know, what, who do you really want to play them in a seven-game series? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I do think that, you know, there will be intrigue in so far as how some of these contenders do you upgrade at the trade deadline. So there'll be some intrigue there. But you're right. I mean, there's a clear separation and quality right now in these four divisions, which is kind of a bummer. And it's just, unfortunately, it's, for a lot of these divisions, it's happening right at the foremark, right?

Like if there's, when we thought the East was going to be either five or six teams and then a big drop off, that was fine because there's four spots. And even in the central, three teams and then a drop off is okay. But if it's four in a drop, then you're sort of like, what, I mean, does seeding even matter when you're going to be playing in front of a couple thousand fans? I don't know. I'm looking at Dom's projections on our site. And he doesn't like. Yes. He doesn't like the sharks, but he's got right now the Kings at 15%.

The coyotes at 16% Flyers at 14%. So the coyotes in front of you. That's an, that's not. Yeah. And he's got the flyers like behind the Rangers as well. The Rangers are 18. And then it's three teams in the 90s and the penguins at 85% in the east.

So, you know, he's got, that's not wrapped up, but that's getting there for the east. The flyers are going to be the worst kind of disappointment because they're clearly just going to like be like, this is an anomaly. You know, we're going to come back at it next year in a full 82. You know, they got another year on Drew's contract and, you know, they don't have a lot of free agents. And I just feel like it's going to be one of those things where it didn't work out.

They'll say it's COVID. Carter Hart, you know, isn't this bad. You want your giant flameouts to be fun in that grand Philadelphia tradition of overreaction. But I feel like if they if they don't make the playoffs, they're just going to be like, oh, well, that fucking sucked and let's move on. I don't think they're going to, like, reinvent the wheel. I don't necessarily think they have to reinvent the wheel. Like, they just need to invest in players who can actually, like,

help their defense and stuff like that. I don't know that, you know, there's any big, grand solution that, like, we haven't thought of. You know what I mean? Like, I've said it a million times. The season, like, you want to. call it fake? I think that's totally reasonable for any, like, for a lot of reasons. But like, you know, I don't think this is, this is the stat I wanted to say because obviously like the nine nothing loss,

I was like, no coach can survive this, right? Like, this is humiliating to lose to a team that, you know, is a historic rival. Nine fucking nothing. Like, everybody's scoring for them, including a guy who had no goals on the season, uh, light you up for a fucking. hat trick. Like, that's embarrassing. But this is the Flyers last, since March 2nd. This is their goals allowed. 5343-4-5-5-4-9-6-2-4.

That's a lot of numbers over four. It's also the combination of my luggage. No, I completely, yeah, that makes sense. Like there are problems, but the problem is, you know what, goal tendings fucking weird, even at the best of times. I think if we roll the dice with Carter Hart again, we're not going to get another 870 season. I think that's a totally reasonable take.

Your comment about it's a fake season, I talked to a GM recently, who said the same thing, actually. But his caveat was, it's going to be real for whoever wins the cup. Right. No, yeah. And we, you know, we said that, we said that even in the bubble last year. Like, everybody who, uh, who, like, has success in the, in the bubble, uh, they were like, this is actually the hardest Stanley Cup to win. And, uh, it, you know, getting there. Boy, it's a real testament to how good we are. And then everybody else was like, well, look, I mean, we didn't play for four months. You know what I mean? Like, there's no, uh, there's no, uh, middle ground. between those two things. And I think that's totally reasonable. Like, why would Tampa be like, yeah, of course there's like an asterisk on this guy. Like, that would never happen, right? But at the other end of the spectrum, why would, I don't know, Edmonton go, you know what, us losing to Chicago last year, we got to blow it up. Like, it would be crazy to do that. And I really

do think that that's, you just hit the reset button and play the full 82 next year. And then you see where you're at. Yeah. All right, moving on. We published the first of our four positional rankings on ESPN. We're asked 10 players and 10 team officials to rank the top tens at each position. The position was wingers. We're not going lefty, righty. It did really well.

Number one on the list, KIP. That's right. It did really well. Also, we're going to spread it out. It was supposed to all be this week in a binge watch, but we're going to spread it out over the next couple weeks. So defensemen next week on Tuesday, and then the following week will be the best picture, Oscar, the centers,

and then the goalies after that. The winger's list, if you didn't see it, I'll give you the top 10. 10 was Andres Fetchnikov, which surprised me. Lower high, were you surprised? Uh, too high. No, I think that's right. No, no, but, you know, as many pointed out, like, when you have guys like Eilers, uh, Huberto, Matt Kachuk, I, I thought Matt Kachuk would get into the top ten on this.

He really fucking hates Matt Kachuk, though. Well, that's true. Like, if you're asking 10 players what their thoughts are on MacKuch, maybe that's the reason you make the list. Yeah, and it's, it's the same thing with how, you know, when P.K. Suban was winning Norris as every, fucking, everybody in the league was like, that's the most overrated player on the planet. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And by the way, we should point out, Matt Kachuk got, according to you, one first place vote. Yes. The very best winger. A player? In the entire NHL. In this league, who I will say does not play with nor has played with Matt Kachuk. Let's just say his name is B Kachuk.

No, that's too obvious. Oh, man. No comment. Miko Ranton in 9th. A lot of Colorado fans saying that that is way too low. But again, he's got the Nathan McKinnon problem where he plays with one of the top two players in the world in the eyes of a lot of people.

And it's hard to parse that. It's kind of a Yari Curry thing going on for him, not to tie it too close to the finish thing. Mitch Marner at 8, Sean. Mm-hmm. that about right for marner well i mean i'm looking at the guys listed ahead of them and i'm not sure i can make a great i mean maybe marchand and and maybe you know you could based on age you might say i'd take him ahead of some other guys but no if i'm playing a game right now

i'm i'm not putting him ahead of mark stone or even patrick kane the season he's having so it's uh yeah it's that looks about right marciaan was seventh and i did have a player tell me that he should be first, which I thought was bold. But I think his... It was not Patrice's first run. It was David Craichy. No, the, I think you could... I mean, if you really wanted to make the who is the most well-rounded winger argument,

it's still Mark Stone, but it could maybe be Marshand on a good day. Like, I don't know. I get the sentiment. Stone was six. Yeah. Stone was sixth. Patrick Kane was fifth. This was the surprise for me.

Was Ovechkin was still fourth? I mean, I had a coach tell me that he thought it was, he admitted it was kind of a legacy pick, but I just thought given the year Kane was having, there was no way that he was going to be in back of Ovechkin. But Kane, fifth, Ovechkin, fourth. Then we get the top three,

and then it comes to the big surprise. Panarin third, okay, fine. Some people had him first, but third is still probably where he should be. But then Kuturoff second and David Pasternak first. I don't know why people were surprised by this. David Pasternak is fucking unbelievable. Is he better than Kuturoff, though? Yeah.

Yeah, and Kutcherov's not playing this year, so that you would expect that. Like, I think if that top three in any order wouldn't have struck me as a surprise, No, Pasternak being first doesn't... I think it surprised me because Kucherov got more first place most than anybody. And the people that I talked to for the survey part of this were so like... I mean, it was just like gospel. Like, oh, of course Kuturov is first. Like, it wasn't even a doubt in their mind that he was first, then he didn't get it.

Now, I went into the numbers and I found the culprit, I think, because the margin here was three points. and there was one goalie who perhaps not coincidentally has not fared all that well against Nikita Kuturov who left him off his ballot. So that's probably the margin here. But it is what it is, man. And David Pasternak, best winger in the league. I was a little surprised by that. But the numbers are there.

I mean, God, there's no argument with it. Yeah, he led the league in goals last year. Elite defense kind of a player, or at least when he's on the ice, the Bruin. give up absolutely nothing, blah, blah, blah. You know, I absolutely can't knock a guy who has scored like 35 goals a year, like clockwork for five years now. Yeah, he has 155 goals in his last 293 games. He's fucking, or nope, sorry, hadn't clicked on this season.

169 and 314. Yeah, he's scoring like, half a goal a game. That's crazy. He's unbelievable. The guy that surprised me, and you mentioned him now, but I don't think he even shows up in the article at all, but Jonathan Huberto, like, what does this guy have to do scoring-wise to at least get into the conversation? It's wild, right?

I mean, I take him ahead of guys like Max Patcheretti that are showing up as getting votes. I don't know what. No, that's the thing. The two guys that didn't get a single vote. in the top 10 where Brock Besser and Max Patschier Ready. Everybody else had at least some support to get into the top 10. They didn't get a single vote in the top 10. Not even at like number 10.

Yeah. I'm not, that doesn't. That's not like super surprising. Yeah. Okay. Only because when you're talking top 10, there's going to be, there's going to be the same seven or eight guys showing up and then there's only a couple of spots.

Yeah. The other thing to say about Patchy Ready is like, you know, I think people, including, especially in Montreal, take for granted. Like, oh, yeah, he's like just a guy who's going to play pretty good defense and score 30 goals every year. Like, that's reliable, but it's not like eye-popping. You know what I mean? Like, you're never like, whoa, unbelievable.

He did it again. I feel like he doesn't play D. I feel like that's the knock on him is that he's just score, score, score. And that there's not a lot of respect for his all-around game from what I gather. Let's have a look. But, I mean, that's that. The numbers might not bear that out, but that's at least the perception. I'm not going to give away anything on the rest of the list, but I will say this.

The biggest reaction that I got to the top 10 goalies ranking was the sad state of goaltending in the National Hockey League. I had more people lamenting the fact that if you did this 15 years ago, it would have been like Bredor and Hachik and like Tim Tant, like all these like huge names. And then like once you get past the first maybe four. guys. It is a complete... Well, here's the thing. Vasilleschi, obviously, right? I'm not going to give you the full order here, but, you know, just the ones that popped up.

Vasilesky, Halibuck, I think was quite high on a lot of lists. And then obviously, you know, they're all still on Carrie Price's tip. But then you get past that. What does he have to do? I completely agree, man. Rocks. And I had that conversation. A number of the players that I talked about.

to you for the story. I had that very conversation. Like, why do you guys put him over so much? And then, like, you get past that. And then what do you got? Tuka? Maybe? Would be the fourth of, like, the giant kind of amazing goaltenders. And then, you know, how much respect does he have because of the team he plays for being

the reason that he's so good? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, Tuka Rask should be number three in a big three right now with Vazalevsky and hellabuck. But, yeah. It's illegal to say. He's good.

And then from there, after you get past those three guys plus price, it's just a bunch of guys who play 55% of their team's games. And it's like, I do wonder how much of that is this perception that like, oh, you know, 15 years ago, goaltending was was better? Or was it just that there were five good goalies 15 years ago and now there's 20? And so, and some of them even play on the same team. Yeah. And it's like, ah, everyone's pretty much the same.

It's that weird tier of your like Carter heart, John Gibson, Jordan Bennington types. Man, Gibson's an interesting one. There seem to be people who are everywhere from he's the best goalie in the league to this guy is cooked. And it's everything in between. It's very weird. I do not know what's the game. I'll say this because I already mentioned it in an interview this week. there is one player on that goalie list that is the exhibit A in the trial of public perception

versus perception within the league. And it's John Gibson. Like, it could not be more different, the disparity between how we see him through the degradation of his numbers over the last few years and how his peers and, you know, coaches and GM, so it was really interesting. That part of it was really interesting. As in, they still think he's. An elite guy?

I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say that, yeah, they do not look at his goals, save above replacement, dropping precipitously over the last couple of years, or his save percentage being where it is. They do not look at that and say, this person is not good. I can't wait until the Olympics where the gold medal game is John Gibson against Kerry Price. And everyone's like, oh, goals are going to be. And then it's nine to eight. Guys are whiffing on shots from setter ice and everyone's just like this goaltending is so good. If you really knew the game, you would understand. Yeah.

I think Gibson's really good. Like, that Anaheim team is not good. Like, I think that's really what it boils down to. Like, I know what the numbers are this year and even last year, but like, Christ, he's faced, it says here, it says here, 61.5 expected goals so far this season. Yeah. In 23 games. I think what hurts Gibson is that his reputation was forged as being the guy who turned, you know, who spun dog shit into gold with that team.

Because it's not been good for years. And then all of a sudden it got so bad that he broke his back trying to carry it. I think that's a pretty reasonable assessment of the situation. Yeah. Like you can only do it so long. All right, one other little hockey thing, two of our little hockey things here. You mentioned it before, Sean. Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, and then I guess we got to still put Dallas in there

because they're actually ahead of Nashville and points percentage. Of those four, assuming that we're giving Florida a playoff seed, who gets in? Feels like Columbus, right? Yeah, and I think I actually left Columbus off my list last time, but they might be the ones. And the one thing, you know, and, okay, first of all, I'm rooting for Chicago just because I did that preseason prediction thing. And if Chicago makes the playoffs, it wipes everybody off. And I just, the team chaos in me is hoping for that. But yeah, Columbus is interesting because you said it when we brought it up earlier in the show.

You're like, yeah, and you just get to go into the playoffs and get destroyed by Tampa. but like if there's one team that's not going to be scared of being overwhelming underdogs to Tampa Bay, it's Columbus, right? Like they're sitting there going, yeah, we did this two years ago. So yeah, we have no chance again. Okay, sure, let's see how that goes. So they would be interesting. I think they're the most interesting option.

I mean, I still think Dallas is the best of those four teams, but they've just got so many games to make up. And they also need to get the fucking memo on that. Like they, Yes. They are below, they are well below 500. And I'm not talking about like, yeah, okay, they're slightly below NHL 5. They're a game below NHL 500.

But they've won 10 out of 29 games. Yep. That's bad. The only thing with that is you're looking at it and you go, okay, like Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, they're all bad teams. Nashville's probably going to sell. Chicago's not going to add. Is Columbus going to add?

They might even sell. And then you look at Dallas and you're like, oh, they might be getting Tyler Sagan back. And I know we're all kind of like, yeah, what happens when Tampa gets Kutra? But this is like the very poor man's version of that. But by then they might have so much ground to make up that it doesn't matter. Yeah. I would go Columbus just because, I mean, that's John Totorella does. He gets teams to finish fourth.

Yeah. He's basically guaranteed. I'm going to look it up because early in the season one, they weren't good. They weren't doing the John Tortorella thing of getting to overtime a lot. And now one, two, three, four, five of their last six games, they got to overtime and went three and two. You know, for all the shit we give the Islanders for being a scourge and a plague on this game, fucking John Totorella, man. Yeah, no shit. Just life.

Obviously the thing is there is utility in being the kind of coach that plays a lot of three three to overtime games, right? Like, Yes. It's survival. That's the utility. Yes, absolutely. It's survival.

So like, the expectations are never going to be too high, especially, like this year in particular. But like, it's so fucking funny to me that literally at two different points this season, people were like, I think he's trying to get fired. And he's like, don't know, my friend. I actually am going to just grind out a five, four OT loss, a four three OT win, a three OT win, a two-one shootout loss, a 3-2-O-T win, and a three-two shootout win. All in a row, baby. That's great. The thing I heard about Tortarella, because I heard that, too.

I know Elliot wrote about it a little bit, but I heard about that, too, that he doesn't want to coach the, you know, he wants to get fired thing. I also had somebody tell me he's got a really nice place just outside of Columbus, and I just picture, like, Totorella, like, with a, what is he drinking, like a Miller Light or something? What is he, what is he drinking at night to wind down? Like, he's drinking a Coors. and he's looking out over his land and he's just like,

now, do I want to give up the farm, but I want to keep coaching the blue jackets? What do I want to do here? Poor guy. Yeah, I'll go with Columbus too in this one. The border issue is an interesting thing as we get closer to trade deadline, not only to see if they're going to play around

with the quarantine time there, Sean, but also where the winner of the North Division will end up playing. This seems like a storm cloud on the horizon. Yeah, so let's do that one first because I feel like this is not getting enough attention. And I know it's because we still get the deadline to go and the playoff races and everything. But whoever comes out of the north is almost certainly going to have to relocate down to the states for the remainder of the playoffs. Because unless the borders are open, you obviously, you mean, you can't.

You can't be having teams going back and forth across the border with any kind of quarantine, let alone 14 days and still play a playoff series. So, you know, whether it's Toronto or whoever it is, there's a very good chance that whichever Canadian team gets to the final four is going to suddenly be in nomad mode and playing out of some sort of neutral site and potentially doing that while playing teams like Tampa or Vegas who might have, if not full buildings by June, pretty full. I mean, they've already got fans in the stand. So you might, you know, you play game one and two against the Knights in Vegas and the arena's loud and it's crazy and they've got that going for them. And then you come back to

who knows where, Chicago or wherever. And you're playing either in an empty building or neutral fans, like neutral site. It's, it's going to be a really big factor. And I'm not like, you can't complain about it because there's just everybody's dealing with everything this year. There's, there's so much crap thrown in and just everyone's just got to push through it. But I really feel like there's all this talk about, oh, you know, who are the Leafs going to pick up at the deadline? Are they going to win? Is this their chance to win the division and go on to that? Yeah, but when you get to the final four, it's going to be a mess for whoever comes out of that Canadian division. And I don't know. I feel like it's not enough on people's radars right now that

we're almost going to get to that point. People are going to be like, oh, crap, wait, what? The beliefs play in God knows where now. So I think that's interesting. And then the other thing is the whole quarantine issue with the trades and the trade deadline. And right now, if Canadian team acquires somebody, they got a quarantine for 14 days. And apparently there's a push to reduce that.

And I don't think it's going to succeed. I would be very surprised if the Canadian government is not good, given the whole, They just had to start canceling or postponing games. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's part of it. And the numbers are kind of going up in a lot of places. You know,

here in Ontario, there's calls for new lockdowns and stuff. It's not that, I mean, look, it's not that anybody thinks that if the Leafs go and trade for Michael Granlin, that he's going to bring COVID to Canada or anything like that.

It's a perception thing. It's you're trying to get people to understand that these are the rules and we've got to follow the rules. And we're all, we're all making our sacrifices. If you then turn around and go, but the famous hockey guys get to have different rules, then a lot of people throw up their hands and go,

well, forget it. I think it's only fair that if he does bring COVID to Canada, that the Predators kick in an extra third round pick. I mean, I think that's probably what I would ask for. Did I see that the Canadian government was saying, like, even if somebody comes in and they are already vaccinated, they would have to still quarantine. Did I see that right?

I believe at that point, this is, or at this point, that's still the rules. They feel like they don't have enough, because it's still the question of, even if you're vaccinated, that protects you,

but can you still spread and all of that? The lack of uniformity about all this is what's stunning to me. Like, I was watching the Devils game last night. They were in Philly. And like the Flyers are a bunch of fans in the stands.

We know that because they got booed off the ice. But it was jarring. Like, it was just jarring to, All of us, I hadn't watched a Flyers home game in quite a while. And then, you know, lo and behold, there's like a bunch of fans there. And, and I guess my quarantine brain is having a hard time getting wrapped around the idea that things are open in a lot of places. Yeah, it's funny. And in sports.

I was watching some game last week where, and they showed a clip from last season, like before the shutdown and everything. And yeah, the building was fucking packed. And I was like, well, that doesn't feel right. That feels weird to me. It feels weird, right? Like, I, I felt like I was watching something extremely old and not, you know, 11, you know, 14 months old or whatever it was. Because they were just like, oh, you know, the last time so-and-so played in this building, blah, blah, blah.

And they were like, here's a goal. And like the whole crowd's going fucking ballistic or whatever. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah. It's like how when you watch AEW, like all their clips for like in their opening are from when they were in. you know, doing arena shows. And you see Chris Jericho walk out and there's a bunch of fans in Pyro and you're like, wow, who was this two years ago? Yeah.

It's crazy. Lambert, one minute review of the Schneider cut. You loved it more than I did. It was the best superhero movie in a very long time. It was about something. And most of them are just like, oh, you got to fight this gray guy and you got to frown the whole time. But you also have to be a little quippy. having fun out there, you know, like, I don't know.

For me, I'm just so burned out on Marvel that like seeing anything that wasn't Marvel, I was like, ooh, finally, you know what I mean? I was, I liked it. I still think it's kind of like a C plus v minus movie. It definitely made more sense. It definitely made me angry that they took the movie away from Snyder and then did what they did with it. I mean, just to sleep.

They didn't necessarily take it away from him. I mean, well, he, he, he, he walked right for the movie, but, but, but, but, but, but, you know why. Well, yeah, I know why, but, but they were already sour on him after BVS. Like, it wasn't a hard, it wasn't a hard thing for them. It's not like they hired a guy and said, you know, complete Zach Schneider's vision. They hired a guy in Joss Whed and said, make a Marvel movie. Like, right. And that's why it sucks.

So that's why everybody. Right. Right. That's, well, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't work. So it made me angry. agree that they released what they released because it was such a fucking incoherent mess of a of a D-minus movie. Although I did miss the scene where Aquaman sat on The Lasso of Truth.

I thought that was a great scene and I wish it was in this movie. And I also missed the scene where Batman tells the Flash to save just one person. I thought that was a great scene and I wish that it was in this movie. The villain plot still sucks, even though they gave them a little bit more motivation. and you spend the whole movie waiting for Superman to come back when you know he is obviously going to come back and it kind of like, there's no stakes there. Nobody dinged, what's it called, endgame for like,

well, I know fucking Black Panther's coming back. And like, you know, you're on your way to the fireworks factory and you're saying when's Black Panther going to be back? And then he comes back. Right. But the way they did it. like, this is the greatest moment in cinematic history, whatever. And the way they did it was packed more of an emotional punch than anything that Zach Snyder has done in any of these movies.

I don't think. That is, without a question. But it was good. The action scenes are definitely better. He knows how to shoot action. He knows how to shoot superhero poses. I thought the stuff with the Flash at the end was real good. The stuff with Cyborg was obviously better because it couldn't have been any worse.

and in the aggregate, I kind of agree with what a lot of people have said, which is that it's just nice to see someone get to finish what they started and complete their vision. And the one thing I'll say about your Marvel criticism is that it is refreshing to see anuteur attack this material versus an assembly line.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Like everybody's going, oh, you know, the Chloe Zhao, Eternal's movie is going to your mind. I'm like, it's going to look like every other fucking Marvel movie. Like, I love Chloe Jow, but like, Taiko I Tidi made a Marvel movie, and apart from being more fun than most of them are, because they're just like all, you know, the winter soldier can't get a fucking loan or whatever the fuck the new show is about. Right?

No, but, no, but that's an example of, but that was, but that was, yeah, Ragnarok was, was, was, was an artur vision. Scott Derrickson's Dr. Strange was an all-turvision. That was a fucking really fun, cool movie because somebody with a bit of a point of view and perspective was making it. We were robbed of Edgar Wright's Ant Man, which would have been really interesting to watch. But for the most part, a lot of these are just generic. They're all great in a lot of ways,

but in a lot of ways they're very sort of assembly line. So it was good to see someone, much like Christopher Nolan with the Batman movies, you know, imprint his stuff. And for better or for worse, it was a very Zach's. Nighter movie. And I don't think it was ultimately super successful, but it is without question better than that piece of absolute dog shit that was released under the name Justice League a few years ago, which, by the way, I saw Montreal when I was up there for a game. I went to a movie theater and watched Justice League by myself. Like a cool guy. I mean, there's not a lot to do in

Montreal, so that's... I'm like, hmm, club superl-sex or Justice League by myself. What should I do? All right. Jensen Karp found potentially shrimp tails and potentially poo in his box of cinnamon toast crunch. Have you ever found anything weird in your food? Not like, you know, one time I, when I was a little kid, I opened a, or like I poured a bunch of goldfish into a bowl and there were little bugs in there because they were old gold. Yeah. And I didn't realize it, you know. What kind of bugs were they? I don't know.

I was like five years old. Were they like black or were they like aphids? Like what were they? I think they were little green guys. Okay. If I remember right. All right. Interesting.

This was like 30 plus years ago so I have no record. I just remember that it happened and not so much the details. I went to a since closed Caribbean themed restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, and ordered chips and salsa, or maybe the chips and salsa just come to your table. And there was a piece of what looked like a large slice of onion in the chips and salsa. And I'm like, oh, okay. And it turned out to be a large portion of the plastic bag that the salsa came in. That's nice.

And so when I pulled it out with the chip, I mean, the best, the best, the best, I mean, I'm going to be very gross here, and I'm very sorry. Placenta would be the proxy, maybe. As I pulled it out of the thing of the salsa, we didn't meet there then or again. Sean, what about you? I'm not eating anything for the next three days after this conversation. Oh, okay. Fair enough.

Well, let's move on to our overrated, underrated. We had a couple of different topics. one of them was Mexican food selections. Awesome. Do you want to do that one or is there another one that you... That we can do that. You're interested in. That's fine, whatever.

Okay. We might have done this already now that I think about it. Okay. All right. Well, there's shellfish, hockey video games, fictional dogs, cuts of meat. What we do? Number one. Sandwich.

Let's go hockey video games. Why not? Do I know five fictional dogs? Yeah, you definitely do, but, you know. You're trying to trick me into talking about the littlest hobo, and it's not going to work. No, let's do this one. Let's do this one, because we just talked about the fugitive last week. How about Harrison Ford movies excluding Star Wars?

Including Star Wars? Oh, my favorite one is Star Wars. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't even say it. Excluding Star Wars and Indy. Do you want to do that? Excluding. Yeah, sure.

Yes. Okay. All right. All right. I like that. This is from JCW. Good, good, good choice. Juggalo Championship Wrestling.

Thank you. Is that? Do you think that's what it is? Yeah, I do. I think Violent J sent that. Oh, man. Not skinny too dope. Is that the other one?

Shaggy too dope. Shaggy to, right, he's not skinny. Neither of them were skinny. No, Shaggy was pretty skinny. All right. Favorite Harrison Ford movie? that is not Indiana Jones or Star Wars, the answer is... Well, I mean, we're going to start with overrated.

Do you... Oh, right, overrated. Fuck. No, I don't, obviously. Overrated? I'll tell you what my overrated one is. It's witness. A lot of people really like witness where he goes into the Amish community.

But I never really liked it. Yeah. I was going to put that one as my least favorite only because it's, one of the few that I've seen where it was like, and I remember like as a kid, like parents bringing home, like, hey, you like Harrison Ford, right? We got a Harrison Ford, right? And it's just like sitting there watching it. Like, is he going to start blowing stuff up soon or what's happening here?

It's very low-key. I didn't enjoy that experience. I didn't want to put Blade Runner, even though I do think Blade Runner is overrated, so I'll go with with us. Outrageous. Truly outrageous. All right. Like Gem, I know. Um, what's your overrated?

My overrated. He's an American graffiti, right? That movie's only okay. People make a big guy. He is. That was his first big role. And then he made a little movie called Star Wars a couple years later. Well, he's also in the conversation before that.

He is. Well, I mean, he was in the conversation definitely for Han Solo. Okay. Okay. Overrated, Sean. I guess I would go with, you know what, I'm going to go with the movie, Sabrina, because this is, and this is kind of a recurring theme for me, this is one of those movies from like when I was doing the video store days. And I just have like negative reactions to pretty much anything where we had like 12 copies and like every, every mom in the neighborhood coming in asking for it. And I'm like, I don't, I don't know.

So I'm out on that one. I'm pretty sure it was one of the ones they made us, like, put on the big TV. and yeah. Underrated. I'll give you one that I've watched a couple times recently because it was on sort of cable. Cable. I'm sorry, I'm old.

Okay, kids, grandpa's confused. It's all right. Morning glory. The morning show rom-com that he was in with Rachel McAdams and Diane Keaton. It's delightful. He plays a. Kermudgeonly news anchor who's forced to join.

What? Kermudgeonly? I don't buy it. Yeah, believe it or not. Hold on. He plays a Kermudgeonly news anchor who is forced because of the debt he owes Kahnja Club to host the delightful morning show with Diane Keaton. And it's really, it's a really fun movie. I enjoyed it a lot.

And he's great in it. He's really funny. and Rachel McAdams is doing her like My Girl Friday kind of slapsticky comedy. It's a really cute rom-com. Not everybody's cup of tea, but as someone who enjoys the foibles of morning news, I enjoy the film. My answer is K-19, The Widow-Maker. The Widow-Maker. Yes.

Good fucking movie. Did you ever see Greyhound on Apple Plus? I have not watched it yet. I have not either, yeah. But it's Harrison Ford, it's Liam Neeson, it's Peter Scarsguard. What more are you want? Or SARS guard, rather. What more are you want?

I mean, they probably want it to be the hunt for Red October, but for being K9-19-D-Wil-Ber. Sure, but like they already made a Jack Ryan movie with Harrison Ford. That's true. And a Jack Ryan movie about the hunt for Red October with a different guy. That's true. That's right. All right. What's the best, Jack?

Oh, okay. Go ahead. The best Jack Ryan movie is The Hunt for Red October, obviously. It's got a towering Sean Connery performance. I did revisit Patriot games recently. It was pretty good. I don't know. It paints the IRA in a negative light, so you can't.

Well, I don't know much about investing. The Lord's present danger rocks, though. Yeah. My answer is the underrated Harrison Ford movie is the fugitive because it does, it occasionally does not show up on list of the best movies ever made, and it should. It is a near perfect movie. We talked about it before. I won't belaborate. But it is both my favorite and still underrated to this day because I see people make lists of great movies and it's not like at the top.

It's a good choice because that is my favorite Harrison Ford, non-Star Wars, non-Indiana Jones movie. It is perfect. It should be. I love it. He's great in it. It's just great. If you haven't seen it, I don't know why. You should have watched it after we talked about it last episode, for God's sake.

That's true. We're trying to help you. I just turn on your television. It's on some channel right now. Watch it. Is there a single better dialogue exchange in movie history than I didn't kill my wife? I don't care. I mean, yes.

Okay. It's good, but they've written slightly better dialogue. It's not even the best. Two-line Harrison Ford dialogue. I love you, I know is better. That fucking tells you everything you need to know about their relationship in four words. All right. Let's breeze through these.

We were up against it. What's your favorite? My favorite is the conversation. It fucking rips. Great movie. Absolutely. Fantastic movie. Gene Hackman.

Do you believe, do you believe, do you believe the thought that Gene Hackman is playing the same role that he played in the conversation in Enemy of the State? I think that's That's certainly what they're going for I don't know I haven't seen any of the state since probably It came out So Favorite Harrison Ford movie there

Sean Least favorite Fugitive Yeah he already I think I'm done Because I basically picked the No you're underrated Was a fugitive

What's your favorite? Yeah And I'm picking it as my favorite as well It can be boldly shit Can? That's right I'm breaking the paradigm on this whole game This whole game

and I thought you had to do different ones for each once? All about efficiency. Wow. That I would have said Cowboys and Aliens for all of them. Cowboys and Aliens isn't my least favorite. My least favorite is, I got to admit, it's regarding Henry. Yeah, that's, sure. I mean, it sucks.

It's a bad movie. He gets shot. He loses his memory. He has to relearn speech and mobility. I'm sure that's a great movie for someone who isn't Harrison Ford. Yeah. But I want to see. He had to learn how to grumble again.

Yeah, if Harrison Ford is fighting dementia, he better be punching dementia because I don't want to see him struggling through this and not being Harrison Ford. So regarding Henry is my least favorite. Yeah. I'm going to go with one I've seen or I would pick Call of the Wild, a movie that just looked so fucking CGI dog. Oh, boy. Yikes. Did that actually come out?

Yeah. That came out. I watched it over the shoulder of somebody on a plane within the last year. Yes, I was on a plane within the last year. Oh. Spoiler. I'm going to go with... I won't pick Cowboys and Aliens because I'll go with Ender's game.

That's another fucking horrible movie. That's a bad movie. I agree. All right. And I think I said witness already. But yeah, those are all... I forgot about regarding Henry. Oof.

Harrison Ford is in a lot of bad movies. Like, a real lot. He's in a lot of movies, period, I think. Yeah, it's crazy. His hit rate, like, you would think it would be better because he's a really good, enjoyable actor. But, no, he picks almost all bad stuff. Like, when he picks good stuff, it's totally an accident, it feels like. The...

One of the things that I always like to debate is the best... like run of a few movies for a director or an actor. Sure. Boy, it'd be hard to top Empire, Raiders, and Blade Runner. And then Jedi after that. Yeah, that's pretty good.

That is. As a four-pack, that might be tough to beat. But as a three-pack, that's a real Well, I mean, you know, the obvious one is the guy who played Fredo and the Godfather trilogy. Like, he was in like seven movies. They're all widely considered.

Yeah, because the greatest films of all time. Yeah, because he could he, I think he went dog day afternoon, like around the, the dog day afternoon. He's in, uh, the deer hunter. He's in the conversation. Like, it's just he, he, fuck, I can't think of his name right now. And it's, it's, it's, it's, call it fun. I'll find it. All right.

Uh, I'm Greg Gersinski. ESPN. I got to jump off and the boys will finish. Oh. Okay, bye, Greg. I'm Ryan Lamber from Lee Prospects. I don't know why I said my name again. That said Greg made me do it.

Sign up for Relie Prospects. We got a bunch of good stuff on there and, you know, even more stuff. There was just, they just published a big, your guide to basically every notable college free agent who might sign this offseason. And some are already signing as we speak. It is, even for me, I was like, oh, I didn't know that. Like, just so in depth, it's an unbelievable resource. And, you know, with the NCAA tournament starting this week, what better time to dig in on elite prospects? And you can read my stuff on there, too.

Yeah, find my stuff at The Athletic. I just have a post that went up today where I've got the top 12 excuses that you can have ready to go when your team makes a terrible stupid trade. the next two weeks. People seem to be enjoying that. And check out my other podcast, the Athletic Hockey Show, with Ian Mendez on Thursdays. And I just want to say, I remembered the guy's name is John Cazale. And from 1972 until his death in 1978, he was in The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part 2, Dog Day Afternoon, and Deer Hunter.

I don't know that anybody could have a better run of... That guy's like the Chris Koonitz of the movie world. Just riding along. Fucking un-bye. Oh, man. He's like if Chris Koonitz was like Sidney Crosby level good, though. He's an unbelievable, was an unbelievable actor. Yeah.

All five of his full-length feature films were nominated for Best Picture. And three of them won. The Godfather, The Godfather, Part Two, and the Deer Hunter. That's a high note to go out. on for old John Cazale. It's unbelievable. Yeah. So anyway, that's the show, I guess. It's me remembering the guy's name. So see you later. Yeah, right on. And thanks for listening everybody and

mailbag on the way and we'll talk to you next week. Well, bye-bye. That's really petered out. See you later. Yeah. We need you, Greg. Greg, come back or else this podcast is going to go on for another 45 minutes. Or we could just end it right now. 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, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nonsense. Part two.