Puck Soup - Trouble in Paradise

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Sean and Ryan talk OT records, Elias Pettersson, the Devils' problems, and more.

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And folks, you know us. We're all about accountability on this show. We're all about, you know, when you, when you, when you, well, I just, I just feel the need to apologize for something right off the bat here. Do like a note tap apology, but on the podcast. Get your ukulele.

Folks, I said the words green men on the show last week and then they fucking showed up on TV. I apologize. Yeah. You did not confess that. I totally spoke that into existence, and I'm sorry. I don't need to see these freaks. I don't need to see these freaks.

Yeah, something like that. They're dancing around. It's like, oh, can you believe it? It's the joke from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 12 years ago. Ah. What? Didn't need to see those guys. Didn't need people to be like, it's so sick that they're bad.

Is it? Is that what it is? Kevin Bix was pretty excited. Yeah. Do you think they got the idea from you? Like they were listening and they were like, wait, that's us. I hope not. You know what?

I'll like double apologize if that's the case. If like I'm the cause of it, like the actual not just not just I said, you know, like summoning Beetlejuice. I said green men three times. It ruined everyone's Canucks game. Like if I actually gave it. them the idea. I might quit the show. Now don't, listen, now people are like, okay, I got to get in touch with the Green Men, get them to say. Yeah. They got to hold up a sign. Yeah. I'm the, look, none of this is

binding, but I am sorry. I am sorry for bringing up the Green Man. Do you, do you have a plan for what you're going to speak into existence on today's show, or is that just going to come from, from that? Look, I feel like I say a lot of bullshit on this show, you know? Yeah. And like, what do you want me to say? Oh, I I hope Dune 2 is good. I know Dune 2 is good. You know what I mean? I'm seeing it Thursday, but I don't know. There's not a lot else I can like really, I really feel like.

Wouldn't it be funny if like Lee fans threw waffles on the ice this week? Remember that? Okay. Come on now. Wacky. Uh, was, okay. Let's get into it. Was what happened at that, like to prompt that?

I can't remember the details now. I don't remember. Was that fire a coach situation? No, it was just like the team is bad. And I think that was part of the deal is that nobody understood exactly what it meant. In my brain, it's rolled up into the whole thing. Remember when they lost a bunch of games and the fans were booing them and then they won and they didn't do their like little stick raising celebration and everybody was mad?

In my brain, it's related to that. But I could probably find out it was like three years apart because that whole era of the leaves was just. Pointless It I thought See now I thought People figured out that it was like He threw a waffle

Because they're waffling About being buyers versus sellers Or something Maybe I'm getting that wrong Yeah I don't I don't think we ever located the guy Wow He's still at large folks

He's still out there He's listening to this right now Going I still have some waffles at home Yeah he's gonna swing by the store Pick up some egos On the way to the Leaps game this week Um So yeah

I don't know. That guy, that was, I feel like that was also the first time someone threw a leaf jersey on the ice and we had to have a national conversation about it. No, actually, the throwing a leaf jersey on the ice goes back at least in the 80s. But that was, they did, it happened with the leaves and then it happened with the oilers. And then we had to talk about whether that was respectful or not. A copycat crime. Because you know what it was not, Ryan. Wasn't classy.

No. And that is the number. one thing we're concerned with on this podcast is whether things are classy. Who is who is or is not staying classy? That's right. Yeah. Remember again from that movie? Yeah.

No, that was a, that's, do you feel like stay classy is still the number one movie reference from like 15 plus years ago or has, I feel like, so you're telling me there's a chance has been making a comeback lately? You aren't kidding, man. That is a...

Anytime you say, I got it. I mean, I'm noticing it. I can't imagine, like, being somebody like Dom who has to, like, post, like, hey, 3% chance that this team makes the playoffs and then just get that hilarious response 400 times. You know what? I had this at the end of the show. Let's do it now. Because we're kind of on the subject. I...

Because we talk about this sometimes on the show about, like, I... I really think that like a team's ability to win in overtime gets like overstated or whatever. And, you know, it just teams that go to overtime a lot kind of feel fake in a lot of ways. Yep. So I found a website, Stat Muse, that you can type all kinds of things into there and it doesn't always know what you want. But if you type in NHL Team Overtime Records 20, 23, 24, it gives you. you everybody's record in overtime. And it seems to be pretty accurate from what I can tell.

I hate that. Because I'm always looking for obscure things. Yes. And it always comes up. And it's like they've got it SEO rigged so that like it comes up looking like it has the answer. And then you click on it. And it's an answer to a totally different question.

The one that I always am looking for is record and one goal games. And maybe there's a website out there that tracks this better than Stabb News. because, well, I mean, there couldn't not be, because when I click on that, they will tell you a team's record when a guy scores a goal. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, that's not what I want. You have a question. It shoves its way to the front of the line to tell you it has the answer.

And then it tells you completely different information that you didn't want to know. It's like having a man around. It's like, this has got to be what that experience is like. I do think the NHLCOM's page has won goal games. If you have an afternoon to kill while loading three pages, I actually do have a tremendous amount of that information.

Well, anyway, stat muse does have the overtime records for presumably every season, but certainly this season is the one I'm looking at. I wouldn't presume that at all. That's a good point. What team do you think, well, it's a tie for first. What teams do you think have gone to overtime the most?

I know the Leafs are way up there. They are tied for third in the league. Okay. There are two teams ahead of them. I'll give you a hand, both in the Eastern Conference. I know Boston has got a million loser points, so they must be. That is correct, yeah. Okay.

And is it Philadelphia? Is it John Carruella doing his, oh, wow, okay. No, the Flyers have quote unquote only been to overtime 15 times. What about the Islanders? The Islanders is the other team. They and the Bruins. are both 8 and 14 in overtimes. 22 trips to OT.

And can I just say that looking at the Eastern Conference standings with the Bruins on top, thank goodness for the loser point. Helping those bad teams stay a little bit. Just doing exactly what it was designed to do. Did we not say coming into the season? Well, you know, if the Bruins just like lost 20 more games or whatever, they'd still be a hundred point team, they're putting that to the test. They're like, okay, we'll get to overtime and do it, but we're going to lose a lot more.

We'll lose a lot, yep. But for the Islanders to also be there, they have 30 loser points or points from overtime games. They're 8 and 14, like I said. And for them to be where they are in the standings, they are 21st in the league standings right now. 30 points from overtime. You know how many points they have total? 62. Wow.

So are you one of these people who, because I've had this debate before. We all hate the loser point. I just hate it on it. And yet, when you look at, you see a team like Boston with a lot of loser points. Well, maybe Boston's not a great example.

Boston and the Islanders, because they're both going to overtime a ton. But there's always a team that has like, like, I'm looking at the Kings. Yeah. They are, if I'm reading their record, right, they're four in ten after regulation. So do you look at this and say, this is a team getting boosted up by the loser point? If we didn't give points for losing, they'd be neck and neck with the flames, fake team, blah, blah, blah.

Or do you look at it and go, their record and regulation is pretty good? And then you get to overtime and you flip coins and who cares what happens there, as far as telling us what teams are good and bad. I think that the more you get to, you can't close it out in regulation, the bigger that's a problem for you in the playoff. Like, I've never done whatever, like the deep statistical research that you, you know, but like just vibes wise or whatever. That's what we're going by. Yeah. I feel like that's about right. I feel like it's roughly the more you get to overtime, the more I'm kind of like I don't, I don't really buy it with these guys in the in the playoffs.

And a good case and point for that. You mentioned the Toronto Maple Leafs. under overtime, 18 times they are 10 and 8. Yeah. Which, you know, you would expect teams to be about 500, but the Leafs have a lot of skills, so maybe you say like 10 and 8 is roughly correct. You don't want them going to overtime 18 times. Yeah.

Because that's 10 wins, right? Like, they have 10 wins in overtime or the shootout. And that really does kind of do a lot to obscure. How good are these guys actually? You know, they don't let you play three on three. played, there have been 23 of those games. So well under half that they have just played 60 minutes and beat the other team. Right.

And as people will always point out, there's no three on three in the playoffs. No shootout. I literally just said it. So there you go. If you're getting to overtime, even strategically, even if you felt like, hey, we're a really good overtime team, which I feel like history has shown us is not really a thing that exists. Correct. theoretically it could. It feels like that could be something.

Even then, you're not setting yourself up well for playoff success. And if you're just getting there to squeeze as many points as possible out of your games, which is a very good regular season strategy. It's gotten John Tortorella to Jack Adams Awards. Yeah. But that doesn't help you in the playoffs either. So. So a great example of this, by the way.

is the St. Louis Blues. They almost never go to overtime. They have the second fewest in the league. They've gone nine times. They are seven and two in overtime. Wow. So that's 16 points in the standings. And if you want to say it should be like five and four,

you know, it's kind of a more marginal difference. But if you look at the wild card and you look at where the blues are in the wild card, there are a couple of points out with a, or four points out with a couple of games in hand, you're like, oh, if it weren't for their insane overtime record, we wouldn't be talking about them at all. We would be talking about them selling and tanking and all this. And the flip side is, blues fans would say, well, if we got to overtime more often the way that all these other teams are doing, then, yeah, so the standings suck in the NHL. Yeah, no, they do.

So ridiculous, we're having, like, philosophical discussions, but what does it mean to be a good team, whereas every other league is just like, I have more wins than you were better. Right. Let me put it this way, though. The Detroit, this is why I was looking at this, the Detroit Red Wings. This is a team. They're red hot right now. These guys can't fucking lose, you know?

Now, sure, if they played the Chicago Blackhawks 58 times in row, yeah, they have. You know? They have, this is why they're interesting. They have 16 overtime games. That is, one, two, three, three. four, five, sixth in the league. They are 10 in six in overtime, right? And again, you can say, well, they have some really good skilled players, you know?

But it's like, I don't know, man. Like people are talking about that Patrick Kane goal the other night. Or I guess that was in, yeah, that was at night, right? That was Sunday, Sunday night, yeah. Yeah. People are, oh, what a moment. I mean, I guess. He scored the overtime game winner against the worst team in the league.

Shouldn't you, like, be not wanting to go to overtime? You should. But. Yeah. They've gone to overtime three times in their last four games. Oh, I understand. Even your cold gray heart. Well, I don't agree.

Whatever you're about to say, I don't agree. They have gone, so this is the important part to me. In their last 23 games, they've gone to overtime. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times. That's a lot. Mm-hmm. And in those overtimes, they are seven and two. And so people talking about all this surge from the red wings, I don't know, man.

You know, I just... When your games suddenly become 50% more valuable than most games. And this is getting to overtime in the NHL, I believe, is a team skill. It is something that is coaching, it is an approach. And it drives me crazy whenever you talk about, every now and then, somebody will ask Gary Betman about changing the standings and they'll occasionally make the point. Like, does it not bother you that teams are very clearly playing for overtime? And Betman or whoever is being asked a question will say, oh, we don't think that's the case. It doesn't matter what you think.

There is, like, you have put a very clear and obvious incentive in front of teams. If your expected points in a game go up by 50% if you can get the game to overtime. If the NHL allowed the two coaches to just shake hands and say we're going to go straight to overtime, every single game would do that. Yeah, 100%. Not even a question. So you can, so, I mean, when people say, oh, we don't think teams play for overtime, time. What you're saying is you think your coaches are stupid.

And as much as I wish the coaches were stupid, a little more stupid in this league. They're very obviously not. So of course teams play for overtime. And there's been like, I mean, 538 did a study. And you can see the little graph of expected goals just dips in the last five minutes. It plummets because teams play for this. Might as well get the extra point out of it. If you're, you know, if you're a Wings fan or whoever, you're like, yeah, well, that's, that's the league works, so that's how we're going to play it. Yeah, and the thing with the wings, too, is, look, going into the year, what did everybody say?

Well, they've loaded up the roster enough that it feels like they will be competing for eighth in the east, right? And I think they're probably going to end up maybe even seventh the way things are going right now. But, you know, again, like, what is being seventh in the league? league or in the conference really mean. You know what I? And they added Patrick Kane in the middle of the season, which we were skeptical.

It's worked out, you know? I think we said at the time, like, it's not impossible that he has a good season. The odds are against him, though. And, well, he's beaten those odds badly, I would say. But we must also say this. You know what I started to see in the last week or so? A lot of Red Wings fans going, yeah, they have. have a really high shooting percentage and it does not match up at all with their like chance

generation, expected goals generation, et cetera. But what if the Red Wings are doing something? The models just don't capture. They've cracked the code. What the Red Wings do? Well, it leads to a 104.3 PDO or whatever the fucking number is. Are we not, how many times are we going to have this conversation? Well, you don't understand about the team that I watch 82 games a year?

They're actually different. But Ryan, have you considered this? Have you considered that like an unscreen shot from the point is not the same as a shot? I have considered it. Yeah, no, I actually have. Has anybody come up with this? What if the Red Wings have just decided to only shoot when they have a wide open net? Smart.

If that's what they're doing, that's smart. Stay on the perimeter and just shoot from there because that's definitely a thing that happens. That's not a made-up thing that doesn't ever happen in an NHL game. This guy who tells me he watches all the games is swearing that that's their strategy. I do think if you're the Red Wings, they're one of those teams where it's like, yeah, just getting into the playoffs does matter. That is important. Let's let some of these guys play some games. Let's put, you know, let's take the next step.

Steve Eisenman can't keep this thing in neutral for the entire C, the entire. run as GM. So, yeah, make the playoffs. In theory, get your teeth kicked in by the Panthers or whoever, but. Boy, talk about how good the Panthers are, huh? Boy, boy. Yeah, Panthers are really good. I watched the, I watch the, uh, the Hurricanes game.

Yeah. And I got to say, man, is probably the number one hater of one-nothing games. That was a really good one-nothing game. It was. That was the game people talk about whenever you say like, hey, we should have more scoring or make the nets bigger. And some guys like, actually, I enjoy a one-nothing game when it's end-to-end with lots of chances. And you're like, yeah, that happens once a year. Sure.

The rest of them are terrible. This was the one a year. This one was the first game all year. I know we pull the cliche out all the time, but this was the first game all year where I was like, this does feel like the playoffs. Yeah. Even, you know, they hated each other. There was, you know, some questionable hits. and it was, I didn't even get mad at the offside review.

That's how much I was enjoying the game. I'm always mad at the offside review. By the way, the Panthers, middle of the pack when it comes to going to overtime, 11 times, they're right around Vancouver, New York, the Rangers specifically. I say New York, not helpful. The Rangers and Tampa. And they have four more wins than the Bruins, but they're two points back because jazz hands.

That's how the standings work. Baby. Well, it's also they're two points back because they have two games in hand. They have two games in hand, but they have essentially the same points percentage. Yes. Even though they have four more wins in two fewer games, because the Bruins games are just more important, guys. Sorry. Bruins games are really important.

And the Leafs are right behind the Panthers because Leaf games are the most, or no, what did we say, third most important of all? Yeah, tied for third with, now I don't have it in front of me, hold on. Tied for third with Dallas. Okay. Dallas, good team this year. Dallas is always weird. Dallas, I feel like every year plays a lot of overtime games and their results wildly swing back and forth. They're dead even 500 right now.

Okay. Thanks, Dallas. Let's try to make a point there. A whopping nine and nine. And then I was just looking like who else is, is. dead even in overtime. So really strong company for them. Chicago, Calgary, and Arizona.

Oops. Oops. But yeah, I thought that was interesting. I actually found a website that will tell you what teams records in overtime are. So there you go. Hey, speaking of that, I was watching that Flyers Rangers game the other night. And they were like, on the broadcast, they were going like,

oh, John Tortorelli, you know, he's probably. We got the inside track for the Jack Adams. And it was like the first time all year I'd been like, oh, yeah, we've been talking about the MVP, the Vesna, the Norris, the Calder, certainly. I hadn't really thought about the Jack Adams. Do you think Torts has its own up? Because that's basically what they were saying. No.

Absolutely not because Rick Tocke, if anything, he's getting more buzz up here. Real? I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. Look at, look. But I mean, the way the Canucks are playing right now, maybe. we'll have it, we'll be different, singing a different tune in a couple of weeks. But, yeah, I think, Tortorella, I think the Flyers probably have to make the playoffs.

And then he is maybe a favorite, but Rick, I mean, the Canucks could win the President's trophy. So, yeah. Then it's back to talk. The question I think is, is there room for anybody else to get in on it? It looked like for a while maybe Chris Knoblock, but that's, I don't think. likely anymore? I think there actually are quite a few candidates at least.

So I wrote about this the other day, which is because I was like, oh, well, if I'm now thinking about it, I might as well get paid to put it out there, you know. I think, Boston, if they end up, you know, if they turn it around toward the end of the season

and end up winning the president's, trophy again after losing their top two centers, I think that might get, I mean, Montgomery won just last year. And nobody ever wins twice in a row since. I mean, guys never win twice, period. Like, John Torterrell is one of like six guys in league history to win it twice or more than twice. Because the award is for surprising us the most.

Correct. And once you've won it once, in theory, it should be hard to surprise. Unless you switch teams, then you kind of get a reset. John Torterella is about to win his. his third, with his third different team. Won one with Tampa, one with Columbus. He's about to win one with Philly. But yeah, Florida, obviously, you know, they have, again, to me, this award is very much about narrative.

And like the Bruins, hey, they won a second president's trophy in a row. And they lost Bergeron and Creachie and didn't replace them with anybody. They just moved two guys who were lower on the depth chart up two spots. And it worked. I think you can make the, I don't think they're going to win the president's trophy or anything, but I think you could, you could make that narrative argument. Florida is the same thing. The narrative is, first like month and a half of the season, they didn't have their two best defensemen, you know. Gustav Forsling was their number one guy and he did really well.

You know, Paul Maurice went out there. He said, hey, Sergey, why don't you stop 92% of the shots you face? That's worked out great. great. It was so smarting him. But, I mean, they weathered half the season with Matthew Kachuk kind of just like muddling through it. So there's that.

Peter Levy-A-Let takes over from a certified coaching genius. Everybody loves this guy. And everybody's like, oh, my God, Pierre Leveolette, including us. And they're maybe the best team in the Eastern Conference, depending on the day, you know? Tortorella, obviously. Detroit can make the argument for sure.

Washington, I think if they kind of squeak in, they have a really tough schedule the rest of the way. But if they can kind of squeak in, like if Tampa keeps dropping off or whatever, Spencer Carberry getting that bummed team over the line? New guy rookie coach is a big favorite of Jack Adams voters. Yep, absolutely. If I'm an old broadcaster and I'd never heard of the guy.

Absolutely. I'm in. Dallas, pretty good argument if they end up winning the Western Conference. Vancouver, like you said, obviously. Rick Bonas in Winnipeg, no problem there. Again, easy to make the argument. Chris Knoblock, like you said. Bonus is also a really well-like guy who has never won it.

I'm pretty sure in his 90-year coach. career, so. I'm blanking on his name right now, but the guy from the blue, the guy the blue's hired to turn things around, they're right, they're right outside the playoff bubble looking in. If they get in, he's going to get a look, tell you that. But I do, I, Drew Bannister, and he would have, what, like 50 games, 50, 55, something like that.

So that might be enough. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of votes. I'm just not sure. And I don't know what I base this on. But I feel like this is one of those awards where if everyone's already got you locked in halfway through the season, then you really are kind of locked in. Versus some of the other awards where we go, you know, we're okay to change our minds a little bit. It helps.

It helps if everyone's been talking about you all year long. Definitely. I still think it comes down to talk it and Tortorella. two cheery pleasant men. Mm-hmm. No, I think I agree with that. But I don't know. Just...

It's in play. Yeah. Like I said, them mentioning it the other day, I was just like, oh, I guess I haven't thought about that. And I think there are maybe six guys who will, you know, potentially finish top three or whatever, you know. Pretty cool. Hey, I just mentioned the Jets a minute ago. How about their owner? sitting down with the athletic and basically saying,

be a shame if I had to threaten to move the team. I'm not threatened anything, but... It would be a shame. I'm threatening to threaten. This is, so this was Mark Chipman. Yes. And he's the chairman of the Jets. Basically the, not quite the owner because like,

right, he's not the big deep pockets. In fact, the Jets owner, I believe is like the richest guy in Canada. So that will play into this, I'm sure, at some point. But yeah, he expressed some concerns, attendance-wise. Not going to work over the long haul, was the pull-a-quote in the headline,

which if you're a Winnipeg Jets fan, has got to make your blood run cold a little bit, given the history. either out of fear of oh god we're going to lose another team or maybe anger as far as I can't believe they're threatening us with this again. My read is it seems to more be the former or it's more, the feeling that I'm getting from Jets fans is less of a don't threaten us vibe and more of a kind of like somebody at the dinner table finally said it, the thing that we've all seen and not talked about.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I don't know whether it's a good thing or not, but it was, it certainly felt like he was choosing his words very carefully. Oh, for sure, yeah. Because like, and even he, one of the quotes in the article that I thought was really interesting was basically like, look, the tickets sold themselves in the early days, you know? and it kind of seems like he was saying, and we took it for granted. He's like, we didn't do a good job of being a service provider. They were more of a service provider than a sales provider.

And that he isn't sure they even did a great job on the service side. And yeah, I mean, they've got this small little arena and obviously a small population relative to the NHL. the smallest market in the NHL, a smaller business community than certainly most other markets. Economy in Winnipeg and Canada, it's not in shambles, but it's not great. You could certainly imagine coming out of the pandemic, especially some people are looking at discretionary spending. So it's tough. And what makes it tough is this is happening in the backdrop of a legitimate Stanley Cup contender,

which of course always makes you wonder what's going to happen if we miss the playoffs five years in a row. Yep. Which happens to most teams eventually. And in fact, it's very hard to build a Stanley Cup winner without going through that other side of it at some point. Yeah, it's very difficult to, because the thing that he's, He's talking, he's not saying like, we need, you know, Joe six-pack. We need that guy buying all the tickets he can, you know? Specifically what they're talking about is we don't sell enough season tickets.

We need to sell about 13,000 season tickets per season to like be comfortable and be and be certain that like we can stick around here is basically what he said. And you'll note that like 13,000 is like 90. percent of the tickets available to any given game. They're like, we need to be guaranteed at least a 90 percent sell out every single night or it's not going to work for us here. And

and you know, because I've heard the same thing here in Ottawa. That's always been a thing. You can't rely on the walk-up traffic every night. Yeah, sure. And it makes it, I mean, teams like that could point to a team like

Toronto or Montreal or some of the teams in the States and go like they're 100% before they drop the puck on opening night. Of course. So how do you compete with that? And it's tough, but I don't know. I mean, it does feel like a lot of this would have been foreseeable when the league made the decision to go to Winnipeg.

But there was just so much enthusiasm, right? I mean, remember, like, what was it, 15 minutes or something, they sold all the tickets. They had all the deposits. They had everybody signing up, you know. So I'm interested to see Gary Bettman is there. this week. And crucially, he's meeting with like business people and that sort of thing.

The kind of people that buy, you know, season tickets and, and luxury boxes and all that kind of thing. So it's, I mean, it does feel like there's a delicate dance going on here because I think the league and certainly Chipman are smart enough to know that like an over-the-top threat isn't going to play well. Totally, yeah. And yet they kind of want to leave it to read between the lines. The other piece of this that's unrelated and yet completely related

is you're going to have a fan base in Winnipeg going, wait a second. We lost our team to Arizona. Arizona's been a mess for 25 years. And they still keep getting chance after chance after chance. But like we have one season where the attendance dips down below where it needs to be and suddenly the commissioners being airlifted in to threaten us that we're going to lose our team, there's going to be frustration there. I don't think it's an un-like, I get why that, like any Jets fan would say that.

I do not think it's a reasonable comparison, though, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the thing you said, this is the smallest market in the NHL in Winnipeg, right? by like a pretty decent margin, if I remember correctly, versus what's Phoenix? Like the sixth largest market in the U.S.? Something like that? Way up there, right? So just-

Phoenix is a huge TV market. Yeah, that's what I mean. Not for hockey, obviously, but that's, yeah. The other thing is, the owner in Phoenix is like we want to stay in Phoenix because we think if we can get the arena figured out, we can make money, you know? And also, you know, it's been pointed out about like the coyotes might be a loss leader for other businesses he has going and blah, blah, blah. Point being, he doesn't want to move, right?

Right. He's like, you know, they're going to have to drag me kicking and screaming out of the desert is basically what he's said many times in so many words. versus the Jets ownership being like, oh, maybe this isn't going to work financially. Yeah. Well, and that's where it's, again, it's really interesting that Chipman's the guy doing. And he is the public face of that group.

Ownership group, yeah. But for people who don't know, like he kind of came into prominence back when, like, they were trying to save the team and then get the team back. And, you know, there was this whole civic pride thing. and he sort of got swept up in that. So he's, in theory, the last guy who would, like he's not a guy who's necessarily going to go with the team. Right.

So maybe if he's the one delivering the message, I don't know if it resonates more or not. It's nasty. And you hate to see it, but this could be headed to a tough place. And I'll tell you right now, it's, if Winnipeg goes, Ottawa's next on the, to be the lowest rung on the ladder. Yep. You know, I...

You know, I... I saw someone the other day, and you know what, this is all actually kind of germane to the discussion, right? Because just the other day, Craig Morgan was like, look, the coyotes, they've had like four million dollar gates so far this season. Or maybe not gates, but games that just... generated a million dollars in revenue. And, like, were all those games very obviously, like, you know, Toronto and Edmonton came to town and it's easy to sell tickets.

Like, guys will come down, like, fans will come down from wherever. The one game I went to there, it was like, you know, 60, 40, with Penguins fans being 40. Okay. You know? and so like yeah you can sell out a 5,000 seat arena and make a million dollars a game when other fans are buying the tickets, right? And I've seen that argument like, hey, the senators have 16 sellouts this year. And then you look at what ones they were and it's all, okay, the Leafs are in town, the Habs are in town.

You know, it's the same idea, right? Yep. And Winnipeg has that less because who wants to go to Winnipeg. You know, like no, no one's making the track out to Winnipeg just for the fun of it, it feels like. And when you can't rely on your own fans to sell your tickets, that's just going to create a problem. Like eventually, you know? And the, the article that, um, that was on The Athletic kind of was talking about, Winnipeg's maybe the one place in the league where it really never rebounded as much as everybody else did after the pandemic.

And I don't know how you fix that because they don't have, especially there, unlike Phoenix, unlike Ottawa, they don't have the corporate base to just be like, yeah, you know, we can sell 2,000 of our season tickets to businesses or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. It's tough. Here's the cynic in me. Is this part of a longer-term push? And I think it's fair to say that Betman in the league, their preference is for it to work in Winnipeg. Oh, yeah.

To their terms. You know, I don't think this is, they're sneakily already, you know, got this team signed and sealed and on the way to Salt Lake or wherever. But. Little city called Atlanta. You ever heard of that one? Yeah. There is the cynic in me that says that if this goes bad, that it won't be an immediate thing,

it'll be a longer-term thing, and that Winnipeg would not be imminently losing the team until, oh, let's say roughly 2006 or afterwards, because that's the year that the Canadian TV deal expires. And you don't necessarily want to be weakening, losing a Canadian market right around the time that it's time to find another company to overpay so badly for your rights that it devastates their business for a decade to come. Just a thought. Two years left on that deal after this one. Man.

It is a weird time in the league. A lot of teams yesterday were, I don't know if you saw this, were, like, putting out what their season tickets are going to cost next year. And like the Bruins, for example, is taking like a pretty sizable jump. And I saw a lot of Bruins reporters being like, I don't know, man, the vibes in the building feel different and the prices keep rising. And I kind of feel like that's connected. And maybe, you know, it's just the team's getting to the end of its competitive cycle. And a lot more team.

Like, you know, if the Bruins give up a goal, you're a lot more likely to be like, well, they're not coming back for this one, you know. Although they're probably getting overtime at least. I mean, yeah, you know you're getting overtime with the Bruins. So maybe the ticket should cost a little bit more. Yeah, but that's the thing. It's not free hockey anymore, you know. They call it free hockey. Yeah.

They're like, you actually do have to pay for this. Let's talk about, I don't know if you saw this on yesterday. There was a report, Rick Dollywall. and I think it was kind of following up an Elliot Friedman report from over the weekend. I'm just going to quote Rick Dollywall here. Up until now, I always thought Pedersen would sign,

but now I'm not so sure. Vancouver's got to do the homework here when it comes to a trade. I don't see a trade in the next two weeks, but if it doesn't get resolved in the summer, it could end up gearing that way. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

That's, uh, not what you want to hear, especially in the middle of a dream season. Well, so it was a dream season, right? And look, they beat the Bruins in overtime the other night. We keep talking about it. But they'd lost four in a row before that. They only have two regulation wins in their last, let's see here, 10 games. Things are going a little sideways for the old Canucks.

It feels like the things they do. Yeah, go ahead. Can we agree that, look, there's 60 games in the season. We've all been yelling regression all season long. Hasn't really, there was a dip, but it hasn't really happened. Sometimes it doesn't happen all year long. But if it happens now, everyone's going to blame the Peterson story, right? Like, everyone's going to be like, this is Elias Patterson.

As soon as that went out, it became a distraction. We'll talk about distractions and pressure and all that too with another team in a minute. But I think that this news is coming. I think it's not coincidental that this news starts coming out around the time the Canucks have like a four-game losing streak where they give up like 20 goals in four games or whatever it is, you know. 22 is now that I look at it. You know, the two teams they beat in regulation in the last. little while here are Chicago and Detroit, not exactly the best teams in the world. And they lose an overtime to Detroit.

They lose to the Bruins a couple of weeks ago. They beat Washington and OT. I don't know, man. I think that if we're talking about why wouldn't Pedersen resign, I wonder if he's smart enough to look at the PDO and go, This is all bullshit, though. You know? But do you think it's that? Like, I know everyone just,

anytime you hear about there being hesitancy by a player, that it all goes to while it's about winning a cup or whatever. But, I mean, he doesn't necessarily believe that this team is the best team in the league, as the standings would say. But this is a good team. This is a team that has as good a shot at winning the cup as most teams, certainly most teams that would have 10 million. million a year available to work into their cap framework.

Yeah. So I, you know, I wonder if there is hesitancy, if it is that, or if it is, maybe it's a money thing, maybe it's a, wants a bigger market, maybe he wants to play in the States, maybe he wants to play in a non-hockey market, maybe he, you know, there's a bunch of things it could be. Or it could just be that he just is a. a year away from free agency and he's got his agent going like, dude, just get there. Let's see what happens.

He can make $13 million on the open market. You might. The cap's going up. He heard like this? No. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

I'll readjust all my previous thoughts about the Seth Jones contract. So Elliott's report on Saturday was that teams are now calling. Yes. And Dolly Wall said the same thing. Just calling basically. Not calling with an offer, not call. Like, I mean, I can't imagine a scenario where there could be any traction on a trade now. Like, there's no scenario where it makes sense.

Unless he's literally like, I hate it here and, you know, there is some sort of imminent breaking point. But I think even then, you're just like, well, let's just write out the fucking season. Let's be clear. People listening to this aren't clear on this. He's in the last year of his contract, but he is an RFA at the end of this year. The Canucks maintain his rights. He could at that point sign a one-year deal that would walk him to unrestricted free agency next year. And his qualifying offer is 10 and a quarter.

Right. That's the other thing because that's based on his salary this year, which is 10 and a quarter, even though his cap hit is 7.350. So this is very similar to like the Matthew Kuchuk scenario from a few years. Just in terms of how the player has a whole lot of leverage here. but this is not you know, I think the way people talk about it sometimes I could see people getting the impression

that this is like he's sitting for agency this year and he walks for nothing. It's not that. So even in a worst case where, you know, let's just say, I'm not suggesting this is the case, but in a worst case scenario where Elias Pedersen has already told the Canucks I will not sign with you guys. I am, this is my last.

contract with the Canucks and I want to be out of here. They can wait till the offseason, try to win a Stanley Cup this year, which would could change a lot of things, and then get to the offseason and still trade him for a boatload. Probably get a Jonathan Yurdo type player. Whoa. Do you think that's possible? Do you think that's real?

Wow. Yeah, no, it's one of those things where... I, you know, I don't think anybody expected the Canucks to be this good. And if you did, you're a psycho. I don't like, you know, you, you ended up being right, but you were way out on the limb. Yeah. And I kind of figured, you know, again, my read from the, look, okay, let's start with this. The reason this is happening right now, again, this is what Dolly Wall said yesterday.

The Canucks don't know if he wants to, one way or the other, what he wants to do. They don't know if he wants to go. They don't know if he wants to stay, which is a tough situation to be in, right? Like, that's kind of unbelievable to me that you're just like, yeah, could go either way, who has any idea at this juncture. And that, to me, reads as the player just either not knowing or not being. willing to communicate that. And, like, I think it's totally reasonable for him to be looking at this team over the last, however many years he's about what's, this is like seventh year in the

league, sixth. And I think it's totally reasonable for him to look at this team and all the changes it's gone through and all the struggles it's had and just go, I don't know if I want to commit to this long term, which isn't acceptable to hockey. fans. You know what I mean? Like, people are just like, well, you should have your fucking mind made up by now. Mm-hmm.

And he's just like, I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. Or maybe he does and this is kind of, I don't know. Yeah. He's already, you've already decided to break up, but they got to wait until they get back from vacation first. So just being awkward and weird on the plane home.

It's a really, it's a really difficult situation for, for, for, for, all involved kind of because, you know, he could, he could just go, whatever, give me 13 million bucks. And the Canucks go, we'll give you 12 and a half. And he's just like, I don't, I'm not going to fucking argue with you about this. You know what I mean? Like, that could legitimately be his thinking here. I don't know. And the fact that the Canucks also don't know, to me, that's a problem for the Canucks. Like, to have no idea, they have to put these contingency plans together. Well, yeah, and again, they don't have to do it now. They can have some conversations now, do it in the off-season. But I think the answer here is that at some point in the off-season, you have to go to Elias Patterson in his camp or whoever it is and say, here is an offer. It is not a final offer, but this is the framework we're looking at.

We need to know from you whether there's a future here, yes or no. And if we don't hear from you, that will be considered a note. Yes, right. and then you go from there. And you do it as nicely as you can. You say take all the time you want. We're not putting like a hard debt. We're not trying to power play on you.

But no answer to us has to be an answer at this point. So this could be a really fascinating offseason piece because you don't see players like this become available all that much. No, he's one of the best players in Lee when he's on. Yeah, the last one who did under similar to stangler. Matthew Kachuk, who is a guy that a lot of people look at as, even though at the time we all went, wow, Florida gave up a ton to get him, you now look at that as, oh, they stole the guy.

Of course Florida went out and got this guy. Right. Why didn't every, why wasn't every other team in the league on him? Ederson, you could certainly argue, I think, has been better in Vancouver than Kachuk ever was in Calgary. If I'm remembering right, I think Kachuk. kind of made it clear that Florida was his preferred destination, which limited the market. He had a few teams and, yeah, that were speculated about. The speculation was that he had like

a short list, but we don't know what that list is. And obviously, if the list was just Florida, then Calgary, Calgary did well in that trade. They didn't do so good in the contracts after. Right. Yeah. Again, but again, as well as they could. Yeah. If you're a Canucks fan, you're not looking at the flames right now going, yeah, we want to go down that road. Let me just throw this out there since we're being wildly speculative. Okay. If you're the Canucks, do you, if you decide you have to move him or that it might make sense to move him if he's not happy or not committing, do you take a, what happens if you decide

you're going to take a run at Macklin-Cellibrini? You're going to call up whatever team wins the lottery and say, how would you like a a hundred point player in his prime right now. Because Celebrating is both a BC kid, I believe, and also his brother was picked by the team. Oh, I always forget, Aden was drafted already, yeah. So, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, if I'm like the sharks or Chicago or whoever wins the draft lottery, I'm like, I think I'll stick with the 18, or the, God, he's only going to be.

18 like a week before the draft. I think I'll stick with the 18 year old. Even if you're Chicago? San Jose for sure, because they needed to tear it down rebuild. But what if you're Anaheim? You've already got a bunch of young pieces. Yeah. What if you're Columbus and you're desperate to breathe some life into a... Well, I mean, you know, who can get a read on what's going on over there?

Yeah, that's true. We don't even have a GM there. It just, the question made me think of... Something that I had already thought of last week when Austin Matthews got his 50th goal in Arizona. Yep. And I couldn't help but remember back. I've mentioned this before. But back in 2016, the Austin Matthews draft, do you remember there's that period where people were like, oh, the number one pick in the draft is from Arizona, would the coyotes trade up to get that spot? And this was before the lottery.

So this was before we knew Toronto had the pick. And I don't think Toronto was ever going to trade it. So it ended up being a point. And everyone in Arizona just shot it down immediately. The GM did the, I want to say owner, but I think it was the team president or seed. Like he actually was like, whatever they're smoking and drinking up there in Canada for these rumors,

because people were suggesting Oliver Ekman-Larsin would be the piece that you would dangle to move up. Right. And they were, and like, I went back and I looked and, like, you can find fan blogs from coyotes fans who are like, it would be insane to consider moving Oliver Ekman-Larsen for the Austin Matthews pick. Oh, that was why they were saying?

Okay, hold on, folks. Come on. And at the time, Oliver Ekman Larson was 24 years old, one of the better young defense, you know, all of that stuff. But now you look back and you're like, and again, it's a theoretical point because the Leafs weren't going to, weren't going to trade the pick and they wound up with it. But you look back on it, you're like,

this could have been a franchise killing mistake to not try it. I mean, Austin Matthews in Arizona. would be everything right now. And Oliver Ekman-Larsen almost immediately was shown to have already hit his peak. Yep. Has never been the same. And in fact, was a contract anchor shortly after that.

Yep. So it's just that, and I say that only because I know if you say like, Elias Pedersen for the Macklin Celebrity pick, people in Vancouver are like, you're out of your mind. This guy's amazing. No, we don't want it. And it just obviously, you know, getting a local guy in Arizona is a little different

and doing it in Vancouver, but it just, it made me, made me just kind of think back to that. Yeah. Well, I mean, Vancouver was going to trade up for, for Connor Bredard,

and that didn't, that didn't work out, so. They should have been, well, they might not have been, as, instead of buying them out. That's right.

Um, but yeah, no, I think, I think it's, what they do is fascinating, especially because they have the second strongest, uh,

strength of scale. schedule down the stretch in the Western Conference. And if they drop out of that number one spot, I mean, they would have to really drop dead because of Vegas and Edmonton are really struggling right now, too. But even if they end up like third in the West or something like that, like still first in the Pacific, but like Winnipeg and Dallas or maybe even Colorado passes them, they're going to have some questions. to answer, I think. I think, you know, they're, I'm not like super convinced that they're going to have like a big turnaround here in the second half. So we'll see, we'll, you know, I think, look, they, or second half, what do they have 20 something games left, 22? I think we're down to that, yeah.

Yeah. You know, the last quarter of the season here, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, they go, you know, 550 or something instead of the 700 they did in the first three months of the year or whatever, you know? It's really, they're an interesting team. I don't know. Anyway, one other interesting team. And again, a team where we're talking about pressure, you know, I saw it yesterday. First time I've seen it all year.

Beat Rider in New Jersey, Ryan Novizinski. writes the, they got a fire Lindy rough column. Yeah. Now, it was paywalled, so I could only read the first two paragraphs. Oh, yeah, no, I said, that's, that's true. But, I mean, it said in the headline, fire Lindy. Yeah. It's, uh, man, like, I, it's, it's starting to feel like it's just not going to happen there.

I, I, I, the devils are my team, and there's always one team every year where I just, I refuse to accept the reality playing out in front of me. Yeah, you and the rest of the devil's organization, I think, is what's... Maybe, yeah. They're not going to trade for a goalie. They can't really... Why do you say they're not going to trade for a goalie? Is that...

Have they said that, or are they just... No, but like... The fact that they haven't, like, at this point, what, you know, your seven points out of a playoff spot, you're... What have they lost three games in a row? Something like that? They're just they're struggling. They don't seem like they're ready to go a lot of the time.

Three regulation losses in the last four. They beat Montreal. And like there was an opportunity to, you know, close the gap on the flyers a little bit. The flyers aren't playing well all of a sudden. Especially after they beat the flyers in the outdoor game. They killed the flowers. And everybody was like, here we go. This is it.

And then they were like, never mind. We're good. And, you know, you can say, well, look, the Dougie Hamilton injury. Sure, yeah. Sucks to lose one of the better defensemen in the league. But, you know, the issues are obviously in goal. They're obviously to a lesser extent up front. And this is the pressure thing, Lindy Ruff.

You know how you know he's embattled? He's like, the pressure you guys in the media are. putting on them to get the power play going. Yikes. Wouldn't want to be you guys. What's up, dude? They can't get the power play going and that's my fucking fault. I'm just sitting here asking why isn't the power play good?

Shouldn't you have an answer for that, Lindy? And his answer is, yeah, I do. It's your fault. It's on you. Oh, my bad, dude. I didn't know it. Truly wild to me that that would be. that that would be the thing he would say at this juncture in the season.

Yeah. Because it's not like they were in a playoff spot and they dropped out. They've been chasing it all fucking year. Yep. And he's just like, oh, man, if you guys would just get off their fucking backs about the power play, we'd be sitting pretty. We wouldn't have a negative 12 goal difference right now if it wasn't for you guys. By the way, sub 500 at home.

14, 15, and 2 at home. Well, again, that's all the pressure. If it wasn't for these fans going to the shows, you know, we'd be in great shape. It wasn't for the customers. This would be a great business. I mean, the customers were just putting so much pressure on them. You don't understand. The, it doesn't it feel like the devils that we've gotten all year going, well, they've still got time.

and they can always trade for a goalie or maybe even make a coaching change and it just feels like we're getting very close to oh, it's too late to do any of that stuff. There's no point trading for a goal this year like at the deadline, do it in the offseason or whatever. But I mean, with Lindy Ruff,

he's obviously an older coach. You could transition it in the off season. That one might be preferable to everyone. But yeah, are you willing to miss the playoffs this year? Might not have a choice. Yeah, I was going to say, Being willing is kind of beside the point right now, you know. But it just feels like you got to do something.

Like this team's too good to waste a season finishing like whatever six points out of the wild card. Yeah. Right? You would think. I mean, the counter argument would be we got all this young talent. It's still developing. It's not even, you know, even Jack Hughes has in his prime yet. We're missing our best defenseman all year.

year long. Let's not do anything to upset the long-term plan. This is our floor, this is the season where everything went wrong. Is Lindy their long-term coach, though? I mean... No, he's not. But is your long-term coach somebody you're going to hire mid-season? Right.

Do you fire him and do an interim situation, which, I mean, does that, like an internal interim situation? Does that help you at all? Does it hurt you? Sometimes it does. I mean, it's always... It's always weird to me, though, when they're like, they're like, they're fire the coach and like promote an assistant.

He comes in. He's all right. Here's what we should have been doing all along. You're like, dude, weren't you here? Right. I just kept getting overruled. That's not my fault. Yeah. It's true. They're just, look, here's everything you need to know about the New Jersey Devils this year. Worst points percentage than the Washington Capitals. No further questions, Your Honor. Like, this is a problem. Uh-huh.

And I don't, you know, again, you can just say this is, they don't have the roster for it because of the injuries, because they made the decision to move on from two absolutely mediocre defensemen who are struggling in their new homes over the summer. They, Jack Hughes missed time with an injury. You know, the list goes on and on. You can make any excuse you want. But I think, I think you can make the argument that the team should. be better. I think you can make an argument and go, well, of course, like, look at the, look at the goal tending, look at the defense. They, they tried to get two rookie defensemen in the, is an amateur rookie or did he play enough games last year to? I believe he's still a rookie. Yeah. So you're,

trying to put two rookie defensemen in the lineup. So that's tough. That's not, that's not easy and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I guess. So, man, but we all were like, these guys could win the Eastern Conference. And I don't think, I think a lot of times there are not many markets where if the local media feels like they're safe to say, fire the coach, that that's not going to be what happens. You know what I mean? Like, how often does someone write that article and then the team doesn't. do it. It's not that frequently. Like, guys kind of feel like they get the green light to write that kind of thing.

Yeah. And it is, there's always that kind of like crack the seal feeling where it's like, okay, now that somebody said it. Now we're quote unquote having the conversation. Yeah. So. But again, it's the kind of thing where when's the right time and how late is too late? If that's even something you think is going to help you. I mean, it feels like it's too late now, right? I mean, you could also, yeah.

Yeah, you could imagine a situation where they make the change, they bring in, you know, whoever it is, and things go even further off the rails. And you go, oh, yeah, we had a steady veteran hand at the wheel. And we, we panicked. But yeah, what a weird season. The good news is. For sure. Yeah, but the good news is the, like, their opportunities, everybody ahead of them kind of sucks. You know what I mean? Like Washington kind of, not even kind of, I would say. Tampa kind of sucks,

it seems like Detroit kind of sucks in terms of process, if not in terms of putting the puck in the net. You know, we can, again, we can argue about what that means. The flyers kind of suck. I don't know what else to tell you about the flyers, you know. We've talked about it kind of at length. So you can see a scenario where the devils, if they make a goaltending change or they may they make a coaching change. And look, the devils have been around Markstrom. They're probably kicking the tires on like Soros or any of these other guys that are potentially going to be on the market, although I think the Predators are kind of in the

playoffs right now. So who knows? But they're like doing their due diligence. I just don't know. I think Elliot said the other day that like the devils were kind of wanting cap retention on Markstrom. And the issue was... Allegedly what held up the deal, yeah.

Yeah, the issue was that they were like, and this is what will pay you to retain salary. And the flames were like, well, you should pay us this. And they were like, never mind that. I, you know, who knows what that difference of opinion was? Like, if it was a third round pick versus a first or something, I don't know.

But I don't know. I feel like you've got to kind of be... willing to pull the trip? Like, if not now, then when? You're going to wait another week, maybe lose two more games? I don't know, man. The, uh,

they're next two are against the sharks and ducks. And then. That should be a big time decision maker. Then the Kings after that, uh, they're doing the California. And then they come home and they got the Panthers,

blues, hurricanes, Rangers, stars. So that's for pretty good contenders. in five. They don't play the Flyers again until the second to last game of the season. They have the ninth toughest schedule the rest of the way in the entire league.

I don't love that for them, you know? No. So yeah. So sharks and ducks, then Kings, Panthers, and Blues before the deadline. Knowing that you've got Hurricanes ranger stars right after which is I mean that's tough right because you can make a deal with

the deadline to get better and then go 0 and 3 and you're five days after the deadline going we're out yep and we just potentially I mean the thing is if they trade for either Saros or Markstrom those are guys with term I'm pretty sure Soros has term right yeah Saras has term right yeah Saras has got one year left after this and then and Marchham has two yeah yeah so it is because you're right I mean you can could say, make the argument I just made, which is, this is just isn't our year, you still got to get a goal in the offseason. And the pressure to do it, well, I mean, you kind of got away in terms of public perception

with not doing it last summer. Yes, because everybody was like, their system allows them to protect mid-goleys. Yeah. And then, you know, you lose Dougie Hamilton, it's like, never mind, forget it. So, I mean, you're going to have to do something in the off-season. So, but, yeah, maybe, I guess maybe that's the flip side, right? You call up Calgary, you say, you know, we want to go revisit the Barclan thing. You just can't get a deal done there.

You've already tried. It didn't happen yet. You call Nashville. You call Barry Trots. You say, UC Saros, name your price. And he says, there is no price. We're not doing that now. We're not doing that in the season.

Call us in the summer. Right. So, I mean, those are the two guys with term that you would think you would be targeting. So what do you do? What do you do now? Do you go and get like a Jake Allen or Mark Andre Fleury? It doesn't sound like he's going to move, but, you know, someone like that for the season, give up assets for that.

Maybe? I don't know, man. I mean, honestly, if I'm Lindy Ruff, I'm sitting there going to the front office. Like, don't fire me without giving me a goalie. Like, you guys know what the problem is. Give me a goaltender, and then if I can't win with that, then fire me. Yeah. Do you think like the, you know, if the fire Lindy stuff really, really kicks off in the next little while here, I know they're on the road, but they come home, they're whatever, one and two on this road trip.

Do you think all the devil's fans are chanting like, oh, actually, we were right the first time? Yeah. We retract our apology. Honestly, if that was the chant, then yes. If they chant, we were right the first time and we retract our apology. Then I will I will 100% be on board with that. I wish we had a devil's fan on this podcast that could help us. They're actually really pretty good if you think about it.

Yeah. You know what their problem is? They don't get to fucking overtime enough, man. Mm-hmm. There you go. Games less valuable than everyone else's. I'm not, they have nine trips to overtime. It's the second, tied for the second fewest in the league.

Just something to think about. Mm-hmm. No joke. If Lindy Ruff was a little bit better at getting to overtime, I don't think anybody's writing a fire Lindy column because they're definitely not below the capitals in the standings. You know, three extra overtime games, we're having a different conversation about this team

because they're at least a game or two back of the Flyers instead of five points back with a game in hand. It's just something to think about. Why don't we wrap it up? with this discussion here. And this can maybe be a part of the wider Pacific Division discussion. The Vegas Golden Knights have put Markstone on the LTIR with a lacerated spleen. Nasty to hear about that.

That sounds really bad. It was Peter Forsberg had that at one point. right? I think that's right. And I remember the Leafs, Nikolai Borchewski had one, and it was like, we found out like,

oh yeah, Borchewski's going to be out for a while. He got injured in the last game. You're like, oh, that's weird. I don't remember him leaving that game. And then we found out afterwards, like he almost died on the airplane.

They were like, yeah, if it had been a longer flight, that would have been hit for him because that's a serious, that's serious stuff. Yeah. But also fake. Yeah, it's cap circumvention.

and everybody understands this. Right. It's not like a back problem where the guy's like, I don't think I can go today. Ooh, a lot of pain. This is a lacerated spleen. Just my opinion, I'm not a doctor. But when someone's like, hey, one of your internal organs is lacerated, I don't think you're like making that up, you know? That would be kind of a weird one to go with if you were going to do the fake an injury, lie about it, deal.

You know, you can fake a limp. You can put on a neck brace and, you know, like wheel yourself into a courtroom. The quintessential stud muffin mark stone, that kind of thing. But I don't think you can be like, well, I mean, the thing is, you're pretending to have a lacerated spleen. No one can see it. You just pull up like a x-ray or whatever. I guess an x-ray doesn't show you your internal organs. Probably not.

Well, that would be it. You pull up the x-ray. You're like, look right here. It's got nothing where the screen should be. Oh, boy. But yeah, to me, I mean, you know, they're in a tough spot because they keep, stop me if you heard this before. The best players on Vegas are injured for the long haul here.

Is that a problem? Feels like maybe this might be the first time it really is because they are. they're struggling a bit lately, four, five, and one in the last 10 games. Yeah. But also comfortably in the playoffs. Yeah, I mean, they had the best start in the league. Gearing up for a first-round matchup with the Oilers, unless the Kings come in and ruin it. Speaking of teams, it aren't very good lately, the Oilers kick.

Well, that's what I mean. Like, now it's actually getting it. Kings were dead in the water two months or a month ago. They fired their coach. And now, well, maybe there's another Jack Adams candidate we want to talk about. You know what I mean? Plus whoever takes over in New Jersey. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Look, they could get within two, three points of the playoffs in New Jersey. Pretty good. But, yeah, no, like the Pacific is fascinating because no one wants to win anymore in there. Mm-hmm. Except the Kings, I guess. And the flames.

Boy, you want to talk about, we were just saying about Jacob Marsham. everybody they're going to trade in the next week and a half, two weeks here, is like having the best month of their season. I'm telling you, man, they're going to get to four points out of the playoffs deadline week and lose. Yeah, for sure. The absolute worst K. And then do, like we just said with New Jersey, like get to the deadline and then

immediately lose two straight games and be seven points out and be like, I wasn't ready. Let's do the deadline again. Yeah. Right. Don't do that, Calgary. Please. You're our only hope for saving the deadline.

We're begging you. Yeah. Oh, I mean, God. That would be the nightmare if they, if, because I think, I think I've heard multiple reporters be like, oh, you know, a lot of teams are maybe looking at those two, those two Calgary defensemen as like a both in one trade kind of a thing. Mm-hmm. And it's like if you take away one of the quote unquote big, look, we're in a situation where

like Chris Hanav, you're like, that would be such a big trade. Yeah. This is a problem for the league. But that being the case, you're like, no, if you take away the ability to independently report on a Chris Hannev and Noah Hanofen trade, that's like a huge problem for the Deadline Day show. Yeah. We need you to just split it in half at the very least.

Make the same trade. Do it in two parts. Yeah. Yeah, you know, TANF for the for the prospect and Haniffin for the first round pick. Yeah. That's how you got to do it. Right there. Oh, it's crazy.

We submitted that five minutes apart. Isn't that such a weird? By the way, I love how this thing that happens in Canada, I'm assuming not the United States, where every time like a trade happens two weeks before the deadline. or like somebody signs an extension, James Duthey trends because everybody is making the same joke. Well, he trends because he's taken one step closer to the ledge. He's going to jump off after he has to eight hours of off the ledge.

Yeah, it's brutal, man. Yeah, seeing all the, all the like, oh, the trade board's really heating up and you look who's on the tradeboard. And you're like, never mind, man. I can't. I can't. care about this. Like Jake Gensel's going to be, and I like Jake Gensel. He's a very good player, but like he's the prize of the deadline.

He is, come on. The fifth best guy on the, maybe sixth best guy on the penguins. Oh, man. That's brutal. Speaking of this, have you seen that there's been like, I don't know about rumors or speculation, how you want to put it about the penguins would trade Ottawa. or trade Carlson to Ottawa? Yeah, so Elliot had that in his 32 thoughts.

Is that where it started? And he was very, very clear. He said, this is just me spitballing, manifest, like, even more of a qualifier than he usually puts on things because he's, you know, like most of the insiders, they tend to differentiate between here's me thinking and here's me, quote unquote, thinking because somebody has nudged me in that direction. Right. I mean, it would make sense.

for Pittsburgh to be looking to get out of that deal. And whether it would make sense for Ottawa to acquire it, given everything else, I'm not sure. But probably wouldn't cost them a ton as far as futures. Sure. It would sell some tickets. And Eric Carlson does, from everything I've heard, like, he likes Ottawa. Sure, why not? You know, like, he didn't leave because he didn't like living here.

There were other reasons. So those reasons aren't here anymore. So, you know, it doesn't not make sense, but once they move Chikrin or Thomas Shabbat, then maybe they've got room to do it. It's so weird to talk about the senators being like a capped-out team, but they are. It's not that weird to me. I've been looking at it for years going, these guys are a cap team? Oh, boy.

Uh-oh. But usually they were a cap team because of like Mary. Gabricks contract. Sure. Now you're like, oh no, they actually have players. Cool. Well, the problem is they don't have players. Well, they have got players signed.

Got 20 guys who are playing. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, I'm looking at Chris Johnson's latest, latest like trade board or whatever. Hanifan 1, Tanav 2, Gensel 3, Adam Henrique 4. If we're in a world where Adam Henrique is like the fourth,

maybe most desired or most likely to move or whatever. I don't know, man. Maybe we just don't do a deadline this year. You know what? That's an option. Vladimir Tarasenko's in your top ten. Alexander Carrier is in your top ten. I've really been enjoying the attempts to manifest Tarasenko into the next, like, guy who's

going to get a first round pick. We tried this already. Yeah. You know, it's funny. People said that about Nick Doud. Now that the caps are back in it. Somebody's going to be the center they overpay for. We sent it about Sean Monahan, too, and we all went, ha-ha, let's try.

And, you know, so who knows? I saw an article the other day that was like, should the sharks trade Michael Granland? Yeah. What? Yeah. Should the sharks trade? I'm going to stop you right there. Yes.

Whoever you're about to say, the answer is sure. Why not? Not even yes. It's just like, what's the deal? difference. Okay, sure. Go for it. You want to know who who's another guy in the top 20? Your old friend, showing. You guys

go way back. Ilya Lubbushkin. Yeah. It's been associated with the Leaves. I always feel like if the Leifes ever had a guy like that in the playoffs, things would have been different. Maybe this is the year. Whatever, I don't know what they're using for their net rating here, but like I'm

assuming these are like Dom stats or whatever. I just clicked on Lebutte. can't say it now. Ilya Lubushkin. Minus seven offense, minus six defense. Perfect. We got to have that guy in the top 20. No problem.

He's your man. Matt Dumbas in the top 20. Minus two offense, minus seven defense. Let's load them up. Anyway. Why don't we call it a show there? Not really. You know, we're in that kind of limbo period of between the All-Star

breaking the trade deadline. Next week will be in deadline week. That's right. A busy one. Yeah, should be. Hopefully, you know, I would love to have like trades to talk about and not trades that could happen. You know what I mean? Like trades that have already been completed.

But it's obviously not up to me. James Dutty screaming at his divisor right now for you to shut up. That's right. So, yeah, why don't you hit him with the plugs on? Let's get out of here. Find me at the Athletic, doing lots of trade-related stuff these days, and we'll also have something fun coming on the weekend or maybe early next week. But, yeah, good stuff in my columns, as always, I hope.

And then my show with Sean Gentilly, who some of you may have heard of, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based out of Pittsburgh. and we have, we're hosting the Wednesdays on the athletic hockey show podcast. So if you're the sort of person who listens to hockey podcasts, and I suspect you might be, listen to that one. Or at least give it a five-star rating. Help us out. Yeah, one or the other, you know. Yeah.

But in the five-star rating, you have to say this is for the Sean show. Oh, right, sure, yeah, because it's all in one feed for you guys. Yeah, otherwise they might. I wouldn't want to, you know, I'm not out here trying to be a team player, okay? Like, let's hook me up. Absolutely. For me, E.P. Rinkside, of course, NCAA hockey tournaments coming up. I will be doing wall-to-wall coverage.

I booked my Frozen 4 travel last week. So we're all locked in for all that. Very exciting times. And we're also stuff I don't have much to do with. they're pushing out the CHL NCAA European Free Agent guides over the next week or two, I think. I'm pretty sure the CHL one is already out. Go look at the guys your team might sign, and people who pay a lot more attention to the CHL than me have put together a pretty comprehensive article.

So, yeah, check that out, and then go to patreon.com slash puck soup, all kinds of bonus episodes. Yesterday, we did one with, again, Sean mentioned it, a devil's, a devil's fan who will remain unnamed, let's say. And we were tasked with coming up with the player who best spiritually represents all 32 NHL franchises. We had a good time with that. And nobody got mad about a single thing we said. Yeah, everybody was just like, thumbs up, man, you nailed it.

They were saying, thank you so much. Except Boone Jenner. He was really mad. enemy. Yeah. Boone Jenner, I mean, look, that's the freebie. That's the freebie we'll give away. Boon Jenner, the spiritual representation of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Who could dispute it? Who could argue, you know? Not me. So there you go. Thanks so much for listening. We'll catch you next week for a trade deadline preview show. Bye, bye. Bye-bye.