Puck Soup - Tough Week

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Sean and Ryan talk about the Gaudreau brothers, big new contracts around the league, and more. Sponsored by Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck) and AGI (drinkag1.com/puck)

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McAnew from The Athletic. And, yeah, well, what happens often to me when it comes to hockey news of any kind is I think about, like, first I'm like, okay, how am I going to talk about this on the podcast? And on, well, I guess it was Thursday night into Friday last weekend or whatever. I saw the rumors. I stayed up to like three in the morning, hoping to get confirmation or denial one way or the other, fell asleep,

woke up. I don't even know what to say. Yep. Like five days later or whatever. I don't know. Yeah, similar situation here, obviously referring to the Johnny and Matthew Goddrow tragedy, had kind of initially seen

not even the rumors themselves, but seeing people reacting to the fact that those rumors were out there. Sort of, I guess initially thought, well, this will be one of those things that turns out to just be a dumb little social media rumor. And I think once a little bit of time elapsed and none of the insiders were popping up. That's when you started to really get the sinking feeling.

Confirmed Friday morning by the Blue Jackets. And then, you know, almost, I mean, as big a gut punch as that was, it almost just got worse as you got more details and, you know, the fact that it was the sister's wedding and all of this other stuff. man I don't I mean I don't I don't I don't know that what we can really even say about something like this like you know I mean I know it's it's the biggest story of the of the moment and maybe the whole summer in the NHL but I don't I don't know what to say other than it's it just kind of takes your breath away

that that something like this happens yeah and like you don't want to reduce These two guys to, you know, they were hockey players. Johnny Goodro, obviously, like, I think a seven-time NHL All-Star. MVP caliber seasons more than once in his career. Matthew, a four-year, you know, became a very good college hockey player at B.C. By the end of his career, I believe he led the team in scoring his senior year, if I'm not much mistaken. And you don't want to reduce them to that

because as all the tributes have come out and said, like great family men, you know, just really starting their lives as family men in a lot of ways. Clearly beloved by like, again, kind of maybe trite to say, but beloved by their friends in a way that, you know, every, any time. someone dies shockingly young people are like oh we love that guy but like this just seem to go above and beyond where you know i think a good measure of a of a hockey player and what they're

like or whatever is how many fans either like or dislike them you know um and like i'm not saying you know a brad marshand where everybody it's like oh i hate that guy but i love to have him on my team. Like, that's not to diminish. Like Brad Marshan seems like a perfectly nice guy or whatever. But, like, how many hockey fans of the Edmonton Oilers, whoever you want to say is the Blue Jacket's biggest rival, um, are like have a bad word to say about Johnny Goodrow at any point in the last decade.

Yeah. He was one of those players. It was just easy to like, you know, is the, the smaller guy, the guy who kind of had to overcome the odds. and yeah yeah i mean you could tell whenever there's a tragedy obviously you're going to hear the person

spoken of in in the best possible terms yes that's right but you can kind of still tell like you know there there's certain cases where it just feels like above and beyond you realize like oh wow this this person really had an impact um and you know when you when you have not just people in their immediate sphere, but people who had, you know, in some cases, cross-passed with them years and years ago,

you know, making a point of standing up and saying, like, this person really left, you know, really had an impact on me. Kind of tells you all you need to know. So I don't, you know, beyond that, just, you know, awful situation. of course for the family, but you know, you look at the blue jackets. I know.

I haven't been through this, you know, just three years ago. And now again, I don't know. I'm not even sure what you can say. Just, just awful. Yeah. I was thinking kind of the same thing about Boston College, obviously, Jimmy Hayes a few years ago. And now this and Tony Voss, who was like maybe my age, maybe a couple years older, died a few months ago as well.

Just like, what do you even say, you know? I saw that there were interviews with the coaches at BC, obviously, like, that's where Johnny and Matthew went to college, and the, you know, Jerry York had some really nice quotes in the globe about, again, like, what they were like as people just, You know, some of those, like, never had a bad day style guys, you know? I can't relate to that, but, you know, just, again, like, if that's the testament to them, like, obviously, Johnny in particular, probably the single greatest season of college hockey I've ever seen. And if not, like, the greatest, certainly up there with, you know, Ryan Miller's Hobie Baker season in 2000. one or whatever, just like dominant on a level that is kind of unimaginable, where he

averaged two points a game. I don't know if you know this. Just like every game, two points, lock it in. It was remarkable. What year was that? 13, 14, I want to say. Okay. So that's a couple years after he's drafted.

Yes, he came to BC drafted. He had all like Calgary already took him in the fourth round. I think it was. And I would say having seen, I probably saw both of them play 50, 60 times when they were in college. With Johnny in particular, like you knew, I would say maybe a month into the season. That first season you were like, whoa, look out. He should have probably won the hobby his sophomore year in addition to his junior year. Like I said, Matthew became the leading scorer on BC, which not easy to do.

That's typically a pretty talented team by the time he was a senior. But I don't know that he was getting into the lineup a ton as a freshman. And then just the fact that he went from not really getting into the lineup to maybe arguably the best player on the team in four years. again, like kind of speaks to that, uh, that determination that, you know, Matthew was smaller than Johnny. So to, you know, to contextualize that, like, for him to become one of the best players on,

in the elite program, again, just kind of tells you a lot about what they were both, uh, what they were both like, like, like, I don't know, I, on the ice, obviously, but also like, in how they approached getting better and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Again, I can't speak too much to what they were like as people. I, you know, talked to them a handful of times one-on-one, probably combined. And that's like a work setting. So that's not, I'm not getting like a sense of who they are or anything like that. But yeah. Again, like just the way people have talked about them for the last five days. or whatever, four days, tells you kind of everything you need to know

about who they were as people as well. Yeah. I've seen a couple of places that have suggested, you know, you always start thinking about it, you know, are there ways to honor or memorialize people and that, you know, of course, Johnny Goodrow,

had won the Lady Bing early in his career and I've seen a couple suggestions of renaming the award for him which I don't think is an awful idea you know it's

if you're going to have an award for sportsmanship sort of on and off the ice and that's yeah I don't hate that idea yeah I agree especially given that you know for now It's this is an award named after the, you know, some guy's wife.

I'm saying some guy. I'm not trying to discount the history. It's like I believe a Canadian military hero. Oh, okay. I literally, you could have told me anything. And I would have been like, oh, yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, he had, I believe he had donated, like the guy who donated the trophy named it after his wife.

So. Yeah. Yeah. Open to that idea. I had seen the suggestion, too, to have it voted on by the players instead of the media, which I also like. But I will say this. One of my big things is like, you know, I go to all these college hockey games and I just

see some random guy wearing Johnny Godroo's number, Jack Eichel's number, Kail McCar's number, this kind of thing. And I'm like, what are we doing here? Are we not retiring numbers these days? Like, come on, right? And, you know, apparently I saw this quote over the weekend. BC's current coach, Greg Brown, said that, like, they, like, floated the idea after Johnny won the Hobie. And he was like, do not retire my number.

Really? Yeah. I had also seen a suggestion to, like, college hockey is getting more rewards as time goes on. they, you know, they added the Mike Richter Award for Best Goalie, maybe 10, 11, 12 years ago. Because, like, goalies just never won the Hobie, is basically why. And they were like, okay, well, if they're not going to win the Hobie. And now there's like a now. They've had the top freshman award for a couple decades now.

But, like, somebody said there should be like an Art Ross style trophy named after Johnny Goddrow. you know, just leading scorer gets it. That's awesome to me. Let's lock that in. That works, you know. And again, he had 80 points his final season in college, and I can't think of too many from, you know, what you would consider, like, what, like, recognizably modern hockey,

basically. Like, there were a bunch of guys who broke 100 in, like, the 80s and 90s, but that kind of doesn't count because, you know, they didn't invent goaltending yet. Yep. So, like, 80 just feels like an unreachable plateau almost. It would take a really special player to even get 70, I feel like, most years. So, yeah, if we want to say, you know, the Johnny Godreau Award for College Hockey's leading score, big salute for me. I think that's an awesome idea.

That would be a cool idea. I would also not be surprised if either or both of the Flames and Blue Jackets retired his number. Yeah, I mean. They'll obviously do things to honor him, as I'm sure just about every team will, you know, have moments of silence and that sort of thing. But, yeah, Blue Jackets currently have only the one retired number is Rick Nash. Yep. The flames infamously are very weird about their different,

levels of retired numbers, honored numbers, and that sort of thing. Right. Wouldn't be surprised. But again, you know, all these different things you can do, just awful situation doesn't change the reality of pretty terrible time. Yeah. Really, really touching, I would say, to see the little, like, fan-driven memorials or whatever we want to call them, just, like, outside those two arenas. I was thinking about this with regard to retired numbers, though, is, like, every once in a while, when we're talking about retired numbers on the show, you'll be like, oh, yeah, that was, like, a prospect who passed away or something like that.

When was the last time, like, it's probably never happened that a guy, you know, as impact. full on the ice as Johnny Godreau was, like, dies in the, what's basically the prime of their career, right? Like, yeah, the only, the only other time that I can think of is, was Pellie Lindbergh in the 80s, which was, you know, I remember that because I was a little kid. And then that was like my first, that was like my first introduction to the concept of, like, drunk driving. Like, this was a bad thing that had happened.

And, you know, he was, you know, memorably the fans voted him to the All-Star game that year, even though, you know, he had been deceased for a while. I wouldn't be, wouldn't be shocked if we maybe saw something like that here. But, yeah. Again, just, yeah, just awful. I don't know. Unbelievable. Literally, like. Yeah.

Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, you know. Like, that feeling of, like, waking up Friday morning and just, like, being, like, that, that, like, I don't want to pick up my phone. Because he just kind of felt like, you know. It was all anybody talked about all day. It was. Yeah. I was surprised at the, like, the reach that it even had beyond the hogs.

Totally. Yeah. And you're seeing people like LeBron. commenting on it and you know not to not to do that hockey thing where we know we get all excited when anyone outside of hockey mentions us but it's uh you know it it just sort of gives you the you know a further further insight into you know not just his impact and the family's impact but just the the tragedy the whole thing that like that's right people who don't follow hockey and and would probably in you know a lot of cases be dismissive of it are

just, you know, when you hear about somebody, you know, in their prime, like, you know, just just like that because one idiot had to make a dumb decision. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what else to say. I don't think there is anything else. Yeah, it's just, you know, at this point, you just hope for the best for the family, you know.

obviously there's the go fund me for Matthew's widow. Doing extremely well. Really nice to see all the money coming in from around the NHL. A lot of people donating like $1,313, that sort of thing. Just so tough. Yeah, what else do you even say? Like I said, you just hope the family can, eventually find some peace.

Like, that's all you can... That's it. Yeah. And beyond that, I don't even know. Yeah. Well, on that note, why don't we just take a break and we'll be back to talk about some other hockey stuff in a minute. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by Raycon.

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as well as five-free AG1. PADES with your first purchase at drinkag1.com slash puck. That is drinkag1.com slash puck. Check it out. All right. We're back. And there was a bit of actual like on ice or whatever you want to call it hockey news. Over the weekend as Seth Jarvis extended with Carolina, eight years.

Now I'm blanking on the amount of money, but it's like seven and change. I would say. Yeah, 7.5-ish question mark, which is where this whole thing became and, I don't know, to me, still remains a little bit confusing. Yeah, right, sure. Now, you have an accounting degree, I believe. Is that true? I don't know. I made that.

Like an unbelievably bad math guy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, $7.42087 million against the cap for the next eight years. But, crucially, he has deferred receiving his signing bonus, 15.67 million in signing bonus, has been deferred until July 1st, 2032. Which is after the contract. playing terms of the contract will have expired. So this, I mean, I don't know, maybe other people had a different experience.

I found this quite confusing because I initially learned about this through the Frank Sarvelli piece at Daily Faceoff. And I think I came away from that with an incorrect impression of what this means. Now, let me walk through it. And you tell me if I'm right or wrong here. Because the impression that I initially got from Frank's piece, and this isn't necessarily a criticism of Frank, this may just be me misinterpreting something.

Every explanation I've seen has been like, oh, doesn't that like a little bit contradict what the other guys said? Right. So, you know. So the initial, the implication that I took away from Frank's original piece was that there was a, loophole or just a rule, something that said that essentially

you can defer money outside of the window of the seven or eight year contract, push it back further. And that if that money is pushed back further, that it no longer counts towards the cap hit of the contract, which would clearly be potentially, an enormous loophole and would be such a large loophole that you immediately question why we

haven't seen this over and over again. You know, why aren't the Toronto Maple Leafs telling someone, hey, we'll give you tens of millions of dollars in bonuses on day one of year nine so that it doesn't count against the cap? And then leads to all sorts of problems with S-Core? and whatever have you. Having further read up on it and then kind of gone back

and revisited the frank piece, my understanding now is that it's not the case that anything past the original contract doesn't count. It's that anything deferred past that becomes discounted essentially based on a formula

to account for the reduced value of future money versus today's money. Yes. Which does not feel like a loophole at all. It feels fairly reasonable. And like maybe this is not the game-changing new way of doing things that we initially thought it might be. I think it still can be, right? But you have to at some point take it to some sort of like logical extreme to make, like, I think the example Frank used in reading the piece was like Leon Drysidle.

He's going to sign for eight years, 14 million bucks. Like as we were recording this, Elliot tweeted that out. is what the AIV is going to come in around. We'll talk about that more in a second. And the example Frank used was like, let's say he defers some huge chunk of his money for the ninth year or the 10th year, the 30th year. He could, in theory, he could just say, pay me whatever,

one million per year every July 1st until, you know, the Bobby Bonaea scenario. The Bobby Biniya scenario. That's exactly right. It would lower like, okay, here's what it says. What if Drysidal were hypothetically willing to defer 33.6 million of that contract to be paid out over the 40 years after the deal expires? That would be approximately 840,000 per year.

until 2073, that would pay Dreisdel 80 million over the first eight years of the deal, hypothetically making the cap hit around 10 million per year or a discount of 4.2 million a year. That's not exactly how it works, but the numbers are around and it's easy to grasp and understand. And that's the part that confuses me, because my understanding now is that it would not do that. And obviously, you know, Frank says that's not exactly how the math works. So there's some wiggle room there, but that the money that is deferred does not simply disappear from the calculation. But it would be discounted because a dollar today is worth more than a dollar 20 years from now, both in terms of your perceived value. But in this case, just based on the interest, right?

I mean, it's going to be literally worth less. Yeah, and like inflation and all that kind of stuff. You know, I used to be able to buy a Snickers bar for a dime or whatever. Thanks, Biden. You know, now they caught, oh, you're telling me, brother. So, like, there's that. But the reason that I think this isn't a game changer is just, you know, we've talked about it last week with Maddie Baneers, where we're like, why didn't he just take a two-year deal?

he'll go out and get, you know, 90 points the next two seasons and then say, okay, I'd like $50 billion now, you know? Yeah. He could have done that, but hockey players are just like, I'll take whatever amount of money you want to give me right now. Yeah. And the, again, if my understanding is correct now, which it may not be, would not be the first time. You know, what is happening here is, you know, you say, well, why aren't all teams doing this? Teams would probably love to do this. Yeah, you're going to get the player to agree to it.

Yeah, because you're essentially saying to the player, take less money to keep the cap down. Just in a different way than you ordinarily were. You know, the hurricanes basically, instead of going to Seth Jarvis saying, look, we know you're an $8 million player, but we got to keep the cap hit tight in order to build around you. We want you to take 7.5. they essentially had the same conversation, but instead they said, we know you're an $8 million player, we'll give you the $8 million,

but we're going to stretch it out over time in such a way that it essentially is worth $7.5 million. And that gets reflected in the cap hit. And so the question of, you know, would Leon Dreisadle do this? You know, apparently we're about to find out, but presumably no, because, you know, he wants that money up front.

And, you know, when you look at the big money teams like the Maple Leafs, Rangers, hawks, habs, whoever you want to go down the list, they've actually done it the opposite way, which is the Leafs famously with some of the contracts they've signed, they have front-loaded it. Right. Which is basically the flip side where they can go to a player and say, hey, you know, we're going to give you 50 million over the life of this deal. but we're going to front load so much of it up front that it's going to be worth more to you

than it would be for you to sign somewhere else but it's going to be the same cap it like that's how the big market teams manipulated now this is sort of a flip side of the coin that works for the teams but not necessarily the players yeah the thing is too that like

basically my understanding, and again, conflicting, contradictory, whatever, reporting on what all this means. But like, it's not like they're going to give them $8 million that Oilers just tweeted out that Drys Idol is signed. But it's not, so it's not that, it's not that like, they're like, we'll give you whatever, it's 15.67. it's like 15.67 plus interest that is based on some sort of a formula but agreed upon by the NHLPA in the league in the CBA. And so like he basically he he he's making the bet that hit that money will make more money by the by that standard formula that that's already been agreed to. then it would if he, you know, got the check today and invested it, is what I understand the situation to be. Happy to be corrected on any of this, but like it's just very confusing.

And that, you know, that diminished value of the money applies just as much to year eight as year nine. Yeah. But the NHL CBA basically says if it's within the bounds of the contract, we're not doing these calculations. We're just taking it at face value. It's only once you go beyond that the diminished value kicks in. So, you know, you can kind of get it from the standpoint of, is it a loophole that he has deferred this to one day past the point where the savings kick in? You know, that becomes sort of the, if there's a loophole, maybe that's it.

But not. to the extent that it was maybe initially represented or at least interpreted. Let's talk to I said. We did this is, you know, we're maybe bearing the lead a little bit here, partly because like we say, it's, this is. It literally got tweeted out two minutes ago as we are recording. And thank you very much of the others for doing it,

doing it now and not an hour from now. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like some teams we could mention. highest cap hit in the league. Yeah, eight years, 14 million. It doesn't start this coming season, but the one after the 25, 26 year. So he's got one more year on that $8.5 million deal that ended up being one of the great bargains in cap era history. Totally.

And now he's no longer a bargain in the sense that he's not just the highest paid player in terms of cap hit in the league. in the league, but by a significant margin. Passes Austin Matthews, who would said we went from Connor McDavid at 12.5. McKinnon came in at what, like 126, I think? Yeah, something like that, like barely got over the line. Matthews took a big leap from there to 13 and change, and now we've got 14.

And obviously, McDavid still to come a year for now. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, you know, one of those things of all this stuff about like, oh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, that was never going to happen, doggy. That was not, that was just simply wasn't going to occur. Well, it wasn't going to happen except until he was signed. It was kind of one of those things of, like, you know, it's, it's, it, it, we, we can't, it. You know, Dreisado is a different level of star than an Artemi Panera or John Tavares.

But, like, there were guys like that. I mean, hey, man, Steve Stamco's never going to go, never going to actually hit free agency. And then they do. Well, again, like, Stamcoast did it when he was 37 years old or whatever, right? Like, there's a difference between signing when you're 29 and signing when you're 35. And clearly, this was a situation where, I mean, look, Dreisadels. asking for the moon. He is, there's no discount here,

but there had been a discount for the last eight year. Was it an eight year deal? That's exactly right. Yeah. So, I mean, he had every right in the world to go to them and say, you know, we're going, we're setting a new mark. I think we had talked about how this contract should have made him the highest paid player in the league, cap it wise.

And it did. And clearly the oilers were willing to go there. And clearly the oiler, I'm sure they would have loved to have found a way to hold the number down. But clearly this wasn't where they were going to go to battle. They weren't going to sit there and go, you know what? You know what we need to do a year before McDavid's extension? We need to go to war with one of the five best players in the league. They just went to a cup final.

They got better this summer, quite frankly. on paper at least and barring injury and all that kind of stuff. It seems like they got better. And, you know, the real thing now is like, it's not just McDavid.

What about Evan Bouchard, whose contract is up after this season as well? Yep. And that's a different discussion, obviously. That's, that's just like, I think we're going to be hearing a lot of like, hey, you know what you should really do is like defer some of this money. We're talking like, look, we'll give you $100 million, but you're going to have to defer 90 of that.

How does that sound? You know, that's kind of where my mind immediately goes. It's like, okay, they can't sign McDavid until January 1st, or they can't extend them, I should say. but Evan Bouchard they could sign right now to an eight-year extension, whatever they want to do, you know? They might not have that option just because of how the salary cap works,

you know? Like they might have to give him $9 million. And, you know, then they got to figure out what they're doing with Darnell Nurse or any of these other guys that are making maybe a little too. much money.

The classic nice problem to have. Oh, for sure. Yeah. But still a problem. A problem nevertheless, that's right. But a problem that lots of teams in the league would, like, oh, it's got to be tough to have so many elite players. It's going to be crazy.

This is going to be true. They're going to be probably approaching like $42, $43 million against the cap for just McDavid, dry sidel, nurse, and Bouchard. Oh, they'll be well past that for those if you're counting nurse in there because, you know, McDavid, I mean, you would assume the starting point for him now is, what, $15 million? Yeah. Oh, I'm just talking about next year. Oh, yeah, okay, just next year. Yeah, yeah, you're close to that.

Oh, yeah, McDavid, if he's being serious and he's not necessarily taking the discount, the number should start with 16. Yeah. Easy. If not more. And as many people have pointed out, you know, if salary structures in the NHL were accurate to player contributions, guys like McDavid could make the max, the 20% max, and you would just take that money from other guys. You know, the third liner doesn't get $5 million anymore.

We're giving all of that to Connor McDavid. Right. And it would make sense. but typically not how it's done. Remember when they first got McDavid and Drysidal was really starting to come into his own a little bit? Everybody was like, well, they'll do the thing that like Chicago did for all those years where a guy takes a little bit of a discount. Like a very good player takes a little bit of a discount to come and play with Connor McDavid. And then they were like, what if we overpaid Milan Luchich immediately?

Well, that would be a great idea, except of course it was a bad idea. idea. But, like, they're actually doing that now, right? Like, I'd say Zach Hyman probably took a little bit of a discount. Evander Kane certainly did when he, and there were obviously extenuating circumstances there. But, like, Arvinson, Jeff Skinner, like, these guys are taking discounts. They're, they are the, oh, I just got bought out or I'm coming off a bit of a disappointing

year. Just let me get on that top power play unit for a little less. money and I will I will get back to my you know 40 goal form or whatever 35 goal form. So you know that's that's the opportunity right like that's that's what overpaying dry sidle and McDavid quote can you overpay those guys I don't know but that's what quote unquote overpaying those guys does is we can get a guy for a million dollar discount here and there and then you kind of make up some of that in the aggregate or whatever you want to say. It's good news for the Oilers.

Oh, awesome. This is, you know, holy shit, man. There were a lot of bad ways this could go and didn't happen. And yeah, I mean, until it was done, if you were an Oilers fan, you could always hope that, you know, he'd signed for 10 million and say, oh, I just really want to chase a cup and all this stuff. but realistically this was this is pretty good. Yeah, you got to a cup final with him at eight and a half

or whatever the number is, right? It is exactly eight and a half, yeah. That, man, what a deal on Leon Dreisdell these last several years. And one that I, I mean, I remember when he signed that initially going, oh, I don't know about that.

Yeah. Like he had and head, remember, you know, he had a very slow start to his career. Yeah. And really smart people like me were like, I think this guy's a bust. And, uh, oh, well. You know, I, it's one of those things. 10% of the time I'm right every time.

Again, it's just kind of one of those things where he, he's, he a little bit did the, uh, the thing that I was just talking about with, you know, other, other, like, impactful players coming to Edmonton. It's like, well, if you put me on a on a power play with with Connor McDavid, I have a very complimentary skill set. And it's going to work out fucking awesome. And so it did. Like, obviously they've played a part more in the last little while here.

But what percentage of Drysydel's points are because he and McDavid compliment each other perfectly. You know, it's 40%. I'm not looking at the numbers right in front of me here, but like that doesn't feel like an unreasonable number, 35, 40, something like that. And, you know, you shave 35, 40% of, uh, dry, those points off and we're not talking about a 14 million dollar player. And I'm not knocking the guy.

Like, it's important to be able to, uh, you know, bounce off the best player in the world give other teams a second option or give your team a second option. So, yeah, good for Leon Dreisettel, great for the Oilers, in my opinion. Yep. There's no downside here. Yep. Hey, let's talk about another potentially huge contract. I think last week it was that a local radio guy, I don't remember who it was off the top

in my head, so I can't tell you if he's like reliable or not. said that the ask from Jeremy Swayman to the Boston Bruins is a $10 million A-AV. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's the top range of goaltending money as of right now. That's right. And I'm saying that because we're still waiting on a Schisturkin extension. Which will be $10 million probably.

Well, I don't know. If Swayman hits 10, Yeah, sure. Ask for more given his slightly more established resume. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you never know what's an ask. What does that mean? Is that the starting point and the Bruins come back at six and meet in the middle?

Or is it... Eight and a half or whatever. Again, it is September. We are getting close to camp. This is a case where he needs the... new deal, right? This isn't this isn't an extension kicking in at this moment. He doesn't play this year unless he's got a contract.

So not a holdout, by the way. Just, you know, get ahead of that. If you start hearing those, that term thrown around. He doesn't have a contract to hold out from. A couple weeks to get it done. Deadlines tend to move things, but I don't think you worry if you're a Bruins fan until you get to camp. Yeah.

He starts missing opening a camp or whatever. As soon as he starts missing any time in camp, that can potentially play anything, especially with goalies. They're all so weird. You know, takes, he misses one day at camp and gets off to a slow start to the season and suddenly it's in his head that that's why. But yeah. Well, I mean, the Bruins have such an immaculate backup plan in goal. That's true. Yeah, they've got.

I heard they got like a $3 million guy sitting there ready to go. So that's great. Yeah, Swamen. The thing with him asking for $10 million is he hasn't even played 150 games in the NHL, or at least in the regular season, I think probably his playoff runs just barely get him over that, it seems like. So he's played 152 total games in the NHL. Now he's like a 920 goalie, right?

Like, this is, there's a lot of pretty definitive evidence that this is a great goaltender. That's what I've been hearing from Bruins fans for the last few years. Well, I mean, you just don't want to get into a situation where you're giving $10 million to a guy where, you know, maybe he turns 26 and kind of, you know, you know. Let's put it this way. If he drops down, he's a career 919 regular season goal tendee. It's not out of the realm of possibility that, like, he drops down to 908 this year or something like that. And that's not worth $10 million. You know, 920, 919 is, but 908 is not.

And just the way variance goes, he could very easily just have like a kind of down year, right? Like, Connor Hellebuck had a 9-10 season a few years ago. And that's one of the best goalies of his era, right? Shasurkin has had some ups and downs. Ilya Seroquen has had some ups and downs. You know, like these are the goleys we would consider some of the best in the world. And, you know, one bad season, you know, I said Halebuck, 9, 10 a few years ago. the two or three seasons sandwiching those,

922, 916 on one side, 920, 921 on the other, right? But that's when, that's when Conor Halibucks at like a, what was his old contract, like six and a quarter, six and two thirds maybe. There's a big difference between that and 10 million bucks.

There is. There is. And obviously term matters here too. Yeah, of course. There is a world of difference. between making a big bet on a guy for two or three years versus locking him in as long as possible. Yep. They should just give him $10 million a year.

You give him $80 million, but they give it all to him six minutes after the contract expires. Well, that's what I mean. And then it's $0 on the cap. Don Sweeney's going, pointing at my head right now. I really got this figured up. Don Sweeney's like, let me tell you something about salary defer me. You ever hear about this? You know what?

Let's conference in Seth Jarvis's agent. Let's see what he has to say. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, this is anytime I talk to a friend of mine who's like a big Bruins fan, what's the latest with Jeremy Swimming? I don't fucking know, you know. But like it's just weighing heavily on Bruins fans' minds for understandable reasons, obviously. So, yeah, that's, that's it.

The other thing I guess I want to talk about this week is I saw an article in one of the San Jose papers that with the way Wright Steels and everything work, the Sharks opener, you know, Macklin Celebrini's presumed first game of his career will not be on local TV. Only ESPN Plus. not even like on ESPN or TNT whatever it's just on ESPN plus and that's it now I remember when I was first like getting into you know

buying the center ice package every year back in like the early to mid 2000s let's say it would just be like oh yeah there's like 12 Canucks games a year that aren't on TV anywhere or they were paper do you remember this they were pay per view games yeah i do remember that brief foray and i'm sitting there i'm going like this this is like small-time shit right this is this is why the nchl's kind of a joke is that like there's only 68 fucking ottawa senators games on

tv every season what's that all that's insane to me and it wasn't that wasn't that long ago. It was less than 20 years ago. I guess your mileage would vary on whether that's a long time. But the fact that now they're doing that with ESPN Plus, look, ESPN Plus to me, if you're a hockey fan,

it's a pretty solid investment. I'm not going to lie to you. But it is bullshit that you can't, like, in the local market, just get the TV games for, or every game for free or as part of your local cable package or whatever. That's fucking ridiculous to me. That is frustrating. And I mean, when you're a young team, you're debuting young players in that. And maybe it is even more so.

I don't know that Macklin Celebrity is quite at that level that it's, you know, I'm tearing my hair out that I can't see his debut game. You are if you're a Sharks fan probably. You probably are. You're not like you, you're not staying up to watch a fuck. at sharks game. Who could blame you on the East Coast for going to bed instead of watching a San Jose Sharks game?

One of my friends for years was a Sharks fan. I was like, dude, you're the only Sharks fan in Ottawa. What is, what is up with that? Oh, this is a friend in Ottawa. Yeah, that's crazy. That's wild, right? Like, that's... Well, no, that's a different team.

That's Minnesota. Okay, sorry. I get those mixed up. I mean, two franchises with... That's right. That's right. Really confusing to me. We're going Devin's set of Gucci mode.

He was very briefly a Jets fan. Anyway. Danny Heatley, I'm out. That's all I got. Danny Heatley played for the wild. Did he play for the wild? I think he did. You're probably right.

I mean, you would fucking know, right? I don't know a lot of things. You know what? He played for the wild for three years. That is crazy to me. That, wow. If you had told me he played 20 games for the wild, I was buying. Okay, sure.

I can believe that. He played for the wild longer than he. he played for the sharks. Makes me sick to my stomach finding stuff out like that. That's wild. That's right. That's why I used it properly. We did it.

Yeah, I didn't want to do the Journeyman game necessarily, but sure. You know, yeah, it's, to me, like, the league needs to do something about this. In recent weeks, we've seen that, like, if you download some app, like, Every Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks game is available to you in your local market for free. Which I think is the way things are going with ballet sports or whatever. Like, you got to do it kind of. You know, it's, I believe the Utah Jazz started that. Or maybe theirs is just on like local like ABC affiliate or so I can't remember now.

but to me there has to be a better solution than if you don't have ESPN Plus and you're in the local market, take a hike. Like, I'm not sitting here in Boston expecting, well, I should be able to see every shark's game on cable. That would be a ridiculous ask, obviously. But, yeah, if you're in the local market, they are, they got to do something about this. Full stuff. It's ridiculous. Mm-hmm. The good news is that if you do get ESPN Plus, everyone's experience with that is so positive.

Yeah. Just a rave about how well it works and they love it. Yeah, no, it's, if you can get the game to work, the game works fine. Sitting there, you're watching a King's game. There's a way to put it. Yeah. If it works. If it works, it works.

No problem. Yeah. As long as it works, it works. it will probably work. Don't look into how frequently it works or does not work. Yeah, don't ask questions. Nope, that's exactly right. By the way, Pierre LeBron just tweeted that Dry Saddle's deal is front-loaded.

So presumably not in fact. Yeah, no, I didn't, I didn't think he was taking any deferred money. No. It's a little, we didn't say this earlier. It's funny that like people acted like this was a crazy new thing. It's just a very rare thing, obviously. But, yeah. I did like the part about how, like, it turned out Shane Don't did this, like, nine years ago and nobody noticed because.

Yeah, because I believe that was on a one-year deal. And everybody was just kind of like, oh, I guess, you know, if you're a broke-ass franchise, you can do that. Was I think how everybody took it at the time, like it passed with little notice? But there was no reportage that Carolina did this with Jacob Slaven earlier this summer. I didn't see one person say that. I couldn't find anything about it trying to, you know, customize the Google search or whatever. And he only deferred like 65 grand or something, like a very negligible amount of money per year. Mm-hmm.

But I think Frank characterized it as like a trial balloon, you know? And it worked. Nobody really took notice of it. But now that they did it on like a bigger name, bigger name might not be the right way to put it. But like a contract where they're deferring, like half a million bucks a year or something like that, it makes me wonder, oh, maybe that's how they get the Sydney Crosby deal done, you know? Could be. Could be. Could be.

Could be. You see, Yost had a thing today about Sydney Crosby trade deadline. Scenarios? No, but that would be insane. I mean, he was very clear that this was unlikely, but he feels that it's more unlikely than impossible, which I found it interesting. Basically saying, hey, if Crosby's so loyal to the Penguins,

why not let them ship you out at the deadline, go get a couple first round picks out of the deal? Yeah, come back and come back to a better team and finish your career on a team that's maybe not quite as hopeless as they would have been. That's the Keith Kachuk model, right? It kind of is. For people who don't remember Keith Kachuk, the Atlanta Thrashers looked like they might have made the playoffs at some point. And what was that, like, 08,09 maybe.

And they were just like, yep, we're selling the fucking farm here. were just bringing in a ton of guys. And it went about as well for the Atlanta thrashers in the playoffs. They didn't make it. So that's something. But it went about as well as you would expect. I think they got swept. And then Keith Kuchuk was just like,

okay, I'll go back to the St. Louis Blues this summer now. Thanks for the first round pick or whatever. What was the trade tree on that? Did that end up being anybody any good? I feel like it was, why do I feel like the Goshen picture? may have been part of that. Okay, here we go. I would have to look at them. This was February 07, so this is the 07-08 season.

Traded by the Blues to the Atlanta Thrashers for a first round pick, which was later traded to Calgary, and Calgary took Michael Backland. A third round pick on a guy I never heard of. A first round pick that was later traded back to Atlanta, which they used to select Zach Bogosian. A second round pick in 08, which another guy that, like, didn't work out. and Glenn Metropolitan, the great Glenn Metropolitan. Okay.

It's a guy they, so great, they named a division after him. That's exactly right, man. But yeah, Michael Backland was the guy I was thinking of. Obviously, didn't play for the, for the blues, but it turned out to be a pretty good player. Captain of the Calvary Flames now, am I right about this? Yes, I think you are. You get a captain-style guy.

Yep, just named captain last season. Good player. Really nice career for himself. Anyway, one other bit of news here, I guess, that has happened in the last little while since we started recording the podcast, is that the St. Louis Blues, speaking of, officially announced that Torrey Krug is out for that. the year. I don't think anybody's surprised by that. No, that had been the word on the street. So, yeah.

Unfortunate, man, what a weird year for the blues. Mm-hmm. What are they doing? What are they trying to be to be determined, I guess? Yeah. Another bit of breaking news here on the Jeremy Swimming front. He is participating in the Bruins captain's practice. which apparently started today. But I'm seeing here, Brad Marchand skating around,

Chris Wagner's there. But Jeremy Swamen's there. So it's not like he's sitting at home pouting or whatever. Yeah, because that will be interesting because I don't even know to what extent he's allowed to participate in Bruins camp without an extension.

Yeah, I have no idea. You know, like, but again, I guess the good news, is it's still somewhat amicable. You know, we're just a few days away from the start of football season, so there's still some major players that are either unsigned or in the case of the NFL holding out

because you can do that there. Contracts can be renegotiated, torn up, whatever have you. But we'll see. We'll see where it gets for Swamen, but we won't get ahead of ourselves. Right. Anyway, back to the blues.

Like you say, weird, weird off-season for them. You know, I don't think anybody's surprised by this turn of events, let's say, for Tori Krug. Obviously, the injury just sounded really bad in general. But, you know, they, they don't, like, that's not a guy they're really going to need. I don't know what their realistic outlook is for this season in terms of it being any good. But at the same time, like this blue line now is, even with Torrey Crew, quite frankly, it was going to be rough. But I'm just going to read you. Oh, no.

Justin Falk, Colton Perrako, Philip Broberg, Nick Lettie, Scott Perunovich, Ryan Suter. I completely forgot Ryan Suter. Yeah, well, that's a couple of weeks from now. We will be doing our, our annual who he play for. That's, you, you, that would have been a stumper. Really? Oh, yeah. I would have gotten it only because when Broberg signed, uh,

Ryan Souter. Yeah. There was, I, I said this, I think a couple of weeks ago. There was one player that I, like, I saw, oh, he signed with this team where I was like, well, I don't think that actually happened. That straight up couldn't have occurred because I feel like I would remember that. And then I looked it up and it's like, no, he really did sign there. That's true.

Like it was such a who he played for that I wrote it down like two, three weeks ago. And it's just been sitting on my little book. I'm glad you snuck it in there because that would have been an 0 for one for sure. Yeah. Yeah, man. There were some real who he play for signings this summer. I'll tell you that for sure. But anyway, I think that's about it unless another team wants to make like big headlines in the next 30 seconds.

Yeah, we're going to give you 30 seconds. What if we just did 30 seconds of silence at the end of... Everybody would be like, why can't this be the whole damn podcast? These guys just not talking. Yeah. Not a bad idea. All right. Okay.

Sean, why you hit him with the plugs? We'll get out of here. You can find me at the athletic. Occasionally these days. We'll be ramping up in a few weeks, but I'm still at the tail end of my quiet but not quite time off time. As well as podcast stuff potentially starting up again soon. Wow. Figuring that all out.

I thought I felt a knife in my back. Other than that, follow me on Twitter for updates on my fantasy football team frequently over the next coming weeks. Are you going to be tweeting at any players who maybe let you down in a given? I like to get in their DMs. Yeah, smart. And just be like, dude, I lost my matchup by 0.8 points because you didn't catch that touchdown. But, you know, we'll see.

At that point, you just need to pick up an extra yard or three, you know? That's it, right? I mean, come on, man. It's not a big ask? Have some priorities, exactly. How are you going to do this to me? That's what I'm always saying to professional athletes. Yeah, because here's the thing.

I pay their salaries. If you think about it, you really do. I do. By not going to the games. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat. I'm ramping up my college hockey preview stuff, but that won't publish for like another month.

But there's just a lot of it to get through. So I got my hockey east media poll in my email this morning. And I was just like, fuck, man. I have not thought about who's going to finish where in any conference. Please let me breathe a little bit. But I got to do that this week because I think Hockey East Media Day is like next Monday or something like that. Brutal stuff. But yeah, I just wrote about the Seth Jarvis thing this weekend.

I'll have more stuff coming this week because I've got to go to a wedding this weekend, so I won't be home. Yeah. So, you know, keep an eye out for various contents from me in the next few days here and use the code I love EP when you sign up for an annual subscription. They'll give you three months tacked on to the end for free. Now, if I don't fully love EP, like if I just, if I'm not, Not ready to make that level of commitment. Can I... Well, you can just lie and get the discount.

It's a great call. Yeah. Nothing prevents you from lying. I'm writing this down right now. Smart. And then, of course, head over to the Puck Soup Patreon. We just wrapped up another month of really good content. People seem to like it.

So head over there. Sign up. You get bonus episodes for me and Sean. You get bonus episodes for me and Sean Gentilly. You get bonus episodes from a certain ESPN hockey writer who will go nameless. Name rhymes with Rob Grunkowski. Yep. Let's say.

And yeah, all that stuff's going on over there. I don't know. Just a lot of podcasting we're doing. So check all that out. Thanks for listening. And no main show next week. We're going to go Patreon only next. week, but then we'll be back the week of the like 15th or whatever that is. So keep an eye

out for all that. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.