Puck Soup - We Promised Awards Talk

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Sean and Ryan talk about expansion, NHL awards, goalie interference, and more.

I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I'm Sean Magnau from The Athletic. And look, we promised last week we'd do awards talk. But there's a couple of things I want to get to first that we hadn't planned on, you know, last week. And let's just get it out of the way now. Do you have any thoughts at all? Sean, you're like the guy who knows all of all this stuff. Do you have any thoughts on the New York Islander's goaltender interference controversy in which,

which they lost last night to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Yeah. So if people didn't see it, the Islanders are tied with the Blue Jackets in a crucial game. They score with 10 seconds left in regulation. 8.9, yeah, that's right. But the goal is immediately and emphatically waved off by the referee. They then proceed to do a very long review and then come back and say,

yeah, call on the ice is confirmed. It's no goal. interference. So as far as as I saw it, and I was watching it in real time, the call itself, it's a little dicey. Like, this was a close call. I can't believe how emphatic it was immediately. I'll put it that way. You want it to be emphatic, right? I mean, you want the ref one way or another to make the call. And what you don't want is some wishy-washy, I'm not really sure, let's go upstairs.

You need them to make a call. And if people have read the article that I did on this years ago, which I highly recommend if you haven't, and many of you have not based on the complete lack of understanding that a lot of fans still have about a rule that the NHL has not ever communicated very well. But the key is, if there's contact in the crease, the goal is probably coming back. And in this case, Paul Mary, Kyle Palmary goes into the crease on his own.

There's no defenseman pushing him in. There's none of that. Nobody even close to him. Yeah. Which, you know, I'm watching that. I'm like, shouldn't someone be covering that guy? Isn't he like one of the three good players on that team? Okay, anyway.

So there's contact. The contact is kind of initiated by the goaltender. Can I say? I don't even think kind of. Yeah. He punches him in the back twice. And that does not matter. It is his crease.

Any contact in the crease is the fault of the attacking player who goes in. It does not matter. The goaltender, basically it's his territory. If somebody goes in the crease and he needs to punch that guy or shove him or do whatever to get him out of the way or work around him, he's allowed to do that. Yeah, stand your ground laws. Pretty much.

So if you're an Islanders fan, the two areas that you maybe have a complaint are one, the contact, I certainly thought it was in the crease, but it was like on the border of the crease. It was. Agreed, yeah. I don't doubt that if you are wearing Islanders, Homer goggles, you could probably look at it and say, no, that wasn't in the crease after all. I would simply remind people it's not about just where the skates are.

Your skates can be out of the crease, but if your body is kind of hanging in it, then that's still, you're still in the crease. The other piece of this that's kind of come up is whether there was time for a reset. Right. Which I will simply say is something that is very rarely called. It has to be very obvious. An extended amount of time passes. And despite people talking as if there was a ton of time here, it wasn't.

Could he have reset? Yeah, maybe. But it's not up to a goalie who's been interfered with to be Superman. And suddenly just immediately respawn in perfect position for the save. That rule is more for, that's more to tell goalies like, hey, even if you get interfered with, you can't quit playing. Don't start waving your arms or looking at the ref or stop the play because you still need to keep going.

But I didn't think there was any chance that that was going to be ruled as having enough time to reset. So basically, at the end of the day, if that had been called a goal on the ice, I think the review gets very interesting because I do think it was interference, but was it conclusive enough to overturn a call? Maybe not. But the fact that it was waved off on the ice made it to my mind.

And I don't, I didn't tweet this, but I was whatever the blue sky equivalent is. You don't want to know what they call it on blue sky. It is so fucking annoying. And it sucks. Don't tell me. Don't ruin my day. You posted it on blue sky, yeah.

I posted on blue sky. this is getting, this is going to be no goal. And it was, again, the fact that there was an emphatic call on the ice, there was, it was not remotely a surprise. Right. That this, that the goal was overturned. And then Columbus goes on and wins. And so it's a tough break for the Islanders,

cost them a regulation win, caused them a point. The one piece of this, I guess the last piece. And look, like the Islanders players were mad. Anders fans are mad. Fine. It's a close call in sports. You're allowed to be mad when a close call doesn't go your way. The part that seems to be resonating maybe a little bit was Patrick Waugh had a comment where he was like, hey, if they're... I have the quote here. Yeah, give me the quote. Paul Mary was out of the crease and he tipped it in. I think their goalie pushed him away at the same time. That's how I see it. If Toronto's afraid to overturn calls made by the referee, we don't need Toronto.

So the fact that Paul Mary's out of the crease by the time the goal scored doesn't matter. The fact that the goalie pushed him, as we've already covered, that doesn't matter. The interesting part of that quote is Patrick Waugh basically saying, hey, if they're not going to overturn a call on the ice, then why are we even doing these reviews? And I've seen some people kind of do the, you know, the little thinking face emoji on that. Like, yeah, maybe we should do that. Maybe once it goes to review, it should just be complete, you know, blank slate and just you just make the call that and that and that's completely the wrong way

to do it like you don't want we don't want even more review and even more overturned yeah that's the whole point of review is to catch the obvious misses this was certainly not an obvious miss i don't think it was a miss at all but if it was it it certainly wasn't you know it wasn't a referee getting screened or uh you know geez we just these guys want to get it right let's help them out. Yeah. It was a close call. Close calls happened in sports, man.

And I don't care how much you review everything and how much you freeze frame it and how high-deaf you want to zoom in. There's still going to be close calls sometimes. Sometimes they go your way. Sometimes they don't. That's life. Sorry Islander fans. I get why you're a little ticked off. But the system worked.

Can I just read, when local media covers this kind of thing, It's always so fucking funny to me because this is in, I would just write you that Patrick Wach quote. This is in the two paragraphs immediately following the Patrick Wach quote. There's plenty of reasons why the Islanders lost this game, from their putrid power play handing back momentum to Columbus after a dominant first period to a passive third period to Waus' decision to lead the shootout with Anthony Duclair, who promptly fumbled the puck away.

But if the Islanders missed the playoffs by a point, and with the Islanders, Rangers, Canadian, and Blue Jackets all separated by two points after Monday night, that's not a remote possibility. They'll have good reason to be upset. You just said they don't. You just said, we think they fuck this whole game up. Like, here's three, four instances where they fuck the game up. But this one review where they have, in the article, a Getty Images photo of Kyle Palmary in the crease. Mm-hmm.

You can go click on it. It's right there. It's right above that Patrick Wall quote. They make it really easy to track down. And it's like, well, look, I mean, if the Islanders didn't fuck up, A, B, C, and D, they'd get the extra point out of this. And then what are we, you know, what are we doing here? Well, don't fucking give the point.

I don't know what to tell you, man. Yeah. And if Kyle Pomerri doesn't go in the crease and everything else plays out, you're fine. Don't go in the crease, man. The referee's waved off Palmieri's goal right away, which is odd to begin with when it comes to a tight goalie interference call. No. What?

What do you mean? That's true in the sense that they usually or that they too often do the wishy-washy no call at all, and let's just gather and go dump. But we don't want them to do that. Yeah. They should not be doing that. I guess all I would say is if you're looking at this, and you're saying, we got to have a system where this doesn't happen,

where we don't have these disputes in these gray areas. So this is the Paul Mary, this is the Paul Mary quote that I thought was actually really interesting. I guess the goalie needs five minutes to get reset and ready for the shot. It looked like the ref, it's the thing in brackets where he says Markovich, who's the name of the ref who waved it off. It looked like Markovic couldn't wait to wave it off. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Because he hates the Islanders. Yeah. Michael Markovich, the famous Islander hit. I don't know, man. Again, these guys are playing their bags off to get into the playoffs. I understand you're going to be frustrated, especially right after a game. So say whatever you're going to say. But we do not have to do that thing where we then turn around and go, well, maybe we got to change things.

Maybe we should just make it so that this or that and then we won't have these arguments. It's okay. have arguments. It's sports, man. Like, there's going to be close calls. It's okay to sometimes argue about those. Trying to take that out of the game just leads you to stupid rules like if anyone's skate is in the crease for even a second, it's no goal. Yep. Which we did in the 90s and everybody hated it. And now some people actually want to go back to it because they just can't handle any ambiguity and how the game is called. Yep. That's all correct. How about those blue jackets, though?

How about them, folks? Snap the six-game losing streak. Still alive. Barely. But, yeah. Still in the mix. Totally, yeah. Like the article said, they're two points out now.

The other team has a game at hand. But they're right there. Them and the Islanders and the Rangers. You know? And, hey, if you even want to say the Detroit Red Wings, got a big win last night. I'm not going to argue with you. I feel like that's where I draw the line.

I'm not. I refuse to pretend that Boston and Pittsburgh. No, of course not. You know, but if the penguins get hot, we're doing that now. Shut up. I did like how, oh, geez, I think it was Rob Rossi had like a tweet or something where he was like, they are just screwing their draft pick. They cannot be doing this.

Like not even pretending that there's any kind of. That's the correct view of these things. Absolutely. Yeah, no, if you're in the business of pretending Boston and Pittsburgh who have, who both have 69 points from 72 games, if you're pretending they're in the playoff race, with their minus 46 and 48 respectively goal differentials, I don't want to hear from you anymore. That's it.

I had this later in the outline here, But speaking of Columbus, they're getting Sean Monaghan and Eric and Branson back. Yep. Now, one of those is really good news. The other one's the Eric and Branson return, you know? On the Han back last night. That's right. Jumping right in.

Love it. Hey, man. Best story in the league, I hope. Just let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. I'm not going to be greedy and say they've got to make the playoffs, but let's just let's give us, let's let us all get behind it. Who's their last game of this? season against. Do they have the, do they have

one more against the Rangers coming up here? I don't know the answer to that. I think that they have, if I'm remembering right, they've got Ottawa like three times in the last 10 games, which they do indeed. A little while ago and that kind of random ones. Hold on.

Their last game of the season, they are at home against the New York Islanders. I hope it's what it's all about folks. I hope it's the same raft man. Same dude. Oh, you have to have it. Yeah, of course. waffles Kyle Paul Mary with a chair while he's in the middle of a breakaway. That's right.

Yeah. Does the whole, like, he's about a single goal, and then he loses a contact lens. Yeah. Eric Branson comes in, drops the leg. It's over. But they're at home. That would actually be a real face turn for Markovic, you know. If I'm, I looked at the Columbus schedule over the way.

And they've got some tough games. but it's also like they've got games against teams like three against Ottawa. Ottawa was kind of locked into a spot. I believe they've got like. Colorado, Toronto, two with Washington. Yeah, yeah. But Washington's done. Like they don't have anything.

Oh, yeah. They're going to be. No shit. So, you know, like there's, I can talk myself into them running off. That's real sports right there. Some sort of eight and three record, which is probably what it would take, even in this. Yep. Turtle Derby of the...

Yep. But yeah, there you have it. The other big bit of news that I guess we have to talk about before we get into awards chatter is expansion. Back on the table again. Because Emily Kaplan on Thursday night

put out the news that Dan Friedkin, a billionaire guy, you know, he wants to bring the NHL to Houston met with the league on quote-unquote numerous occasions. This is a guy who owns AS Roma and Everton. So, you know, those are companies that are teams that are going to generate some revenues for him. He actually just got a deal done for a new Everton Stadium, which is notable because if this guy is going to own the Houston team, he would have to build a new rank in all likelihood. This guy was also an interested bidder on the Boston Celtics deal.

So, you know, if he's bidding on the team that went for, I think, $6.1 billion, you know, he's not going to have to be scrounging between the couch cushions to put together the money for an NHL franchise. That is correct, yes. But this was the interesting thing. Elliot Friedman, follow-up report to that, the Emily Kaplan one, was basically like this expansion. fee will be at or above the senators sales price, which is a huge number growth from what Vegas and Seattle paid. Senators were what, like just under a billion?

Yeah, it's like 950 million, I want to say. So compare to the 650 that Seattle paid. It's crazy. A few years ago, it's, yeah. But the thing that Elliot said, and this makes sense to me, but also it doesn't in a way. Um, he's like, look at the, the number the lightning just sold for, which I think was 2.1 billion. Mm-hmm. Something like that.

He's like, why would, why would the number be like significantly lower than that? And it's like, well, one's an expansion team and the other is the Tampa Bay Lightning. That would be why, you know? Multiple championships, well established, fan base, et cetera, et cetera. You know, the likelihood of future championships to come in the near future, it all makes sense. that you would be. First round matchup with the Leafs coming up. So, I mean, that on its own.

Free pass. That's an extra round of playoff revenue right there. Yeah. 1.8 billion for the lightning, not 2.1. So, yeah. I was a little surprised that they, you know, if the number's one billion for the expansion fee, that makes sense to me.

But if you're anything above that, I'm like, really? for a brand new team for an arena that doesn't exist yet. It's a like I feel like building an arena has to be built into the price of the of the expansion, right? But anyway, I guess part of this is if you are the league, you probably wouldn't mind getting this done before the new CBA when the play. could conceivably make it a bargaining point to ask for a portion of expansion. Right now they do not.

Right now, the logic is that expansion fees are simply NHO owners transferring money amongst themselves, not new revenue coming from customers. Right. But that's just a semantic thing that the players could push back on. And it probably will, but there's a difference between it being theoretical. and it being half of a billion dollars or whatever percentage would be. I think this is pretty clearly going to happen. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. The other thing to say about this is that, you know, we've heard the word Houston bandied about in expansion talk a lot in the last, you know, three, four, five years, something like that. But it was always associated with Tillman for Tito. who owns the Houston Rockets and the building they play in. And another thing that Elliot said was basically like the NHL had a price for an expansion team, and Tillman Furtado was always kind of like, seems awful steep, I don't know.

And now this guy coming in, who knows if this is like a thing where maybe it gets a bidding war going. But just the fact that they would have to build a building, I don't know how long that takes three, years probably. So as you say, they maybe want to get this done ASAP, like get at least the sale or the expansion fee approved or whatever you want to say. But this won't be a team in the NHL until, I don't know, 2028, 2029. Like if they approve it today, I'm saying. Like, you know, if they're just like rubber stamp it, yeah.

And so the other thing to say in all that, and this gets into a theory I've had for a while, but I'm really pushing it now, there will be 40 NHL teams by 2050. That's my new theory. Because these guys and Atlanta, that gets you to 36. We're still thinking about Phoenix. We're still hearing about Phoenix a lot. 34. We're at 32 right now. Oh, right.

Boy, I'm bad at math. So, yeah, 34. We're still hearing about Phoenix. That's 35. And they're not going to have an odd number of teams. We know they don't like that. So that's 36. And once you get to 36, and again, all these billionaires are just coming out of the woodwork,

well, write you a huge check. 10 figures. No problem, you know. That's not a big deal to me. and every time, you know, number goes up very slightly, and this is just what billionaires like to do now. And I don't know. I just feel like in the next 30 years, they're just,

why would you, if you're the NHL owners who are getting all this extra revenue and what have you, why would you turn that money tap off? 36 teams, that's plenty, you know? So I guess how do you look at, how do you look at the like expansion landscape right now? Yeah, I think

I don't know exactly the timing, but you're right. There's just, there's too much money here for the league to have the willpower not to chase it. So we're going to get up there,

you know, whether it's 40 or 36 or wherever. I think that causes two problems, one of which is overstated and one of which is maybe not talked about enough. The one that's overstated is the whole like, oh, you're diluting the talent pool. There's more than enough players out there to support 40 teams. This is not the 1970s when there were 40 pro teams with the WHA and the NHL expansion

and everything and there were no European players and barely any Americans. and so there were some not very good players playing pro hockey. These days, there's enough. And in fact, a little bit of dilution is good because it makes the star players stand out a bit more. Yeah, you want more goals, you know. What happens to, like, kind of kick off every time goals go up a little bit, you know, is they add new teams to the league.

And the bottom of the league gets a little bit worse. Yes. That's it. Connor McAvitt gets to light up a seventh defenseman instead of a sixth defenseman. Yeah, that works. The part that I think is a problem is especially in a league where it has been both marketed to fans and also I think fans just kind of instinctively buy into the idea that hockey man, it's all about Stanley Cup.

you win the cup or you lose. That's it. Some teams lose later and more dramatically than others, but there is no successful season that doesn't end in a Stanley Cup. And that's tough enough when there's 21 teams. Like when you've got 40 teams, that's a tough sell, man. Like, come watch the NHL. There's a 97.5% chance that your season is going to end in miserable failure.

Mm-hmm. Cool. Cool. I can't wait to get really emotionally invested in that. So, I don't know. I mean, I think there is a downside, but also it's billions of dollars. And these owners are probably didn't get to be billionaires by not being greedy bastards. Yeah.

I think it is an interaction. thing about the talent pool just because, again, this is something Elliot mentioned, was that basically like the NHL might be actually worried about diluting it too quickly. Mm-hmm. And so they would want to maybe stagger so that there is an odd number of teams for a year or two and then like Atlanta comes in or Phoenix or whoever. And I don't, I mean, to me, I don't buy that.

I think that is more about, I don't think that's about diluting too quickly. I think that's just a case of, hey, if one team's ready and the other teams, we don't have a second team, let's not make Houston wait and the potential for them to, because I'll tell you right now, just purely as a fan, I want to see two teams coming at the same time. Yeah, that means. The expansion draft would be an actually interesting. Expansion draft. Not an expansion, here's our list that's going to leak out.

Yep. But two teams sitting down and going back and forth picking guys, which is way more fun than what we've had. Also, can we all agree that when Houston comes in, that Vegas is going to have to participate in the expansion draft this time, so we can listen to them complain? Vegas and Seattle, let's be honest. Why not?

But I want to hear Vegas fans complain that they got to lose, like, their third-line winger and how terrible it is. You don't understand. He's actually really. Good. Dude, I hope they lean into it and it just drives people insane. I think that would be fantastic. They should. Um, but yeah, I, you know, I can't, uh, the, the only thing I, I saw someone say, um, is that like, this should be what introduces the idea of promotion, relegation. And it's like, please, man. We don't, it's, I don't even remember who said it. I was just like, it's a cool idea. I've been fascinated by it from the moment I first heard about it. It is never. happening in the NBA. Not in one billion years. Just imagine, I mean, you know, it's, it's, imagine we have that system now and the Chicago

Blackhawks get relegated. Oh, wouldn't that be great? That'd be so far. Yeah, it would cost the league a huge amount of revenue. It's never going to happen. This only works if you have, I'm going to say even more than 40 teams. Like, if you have like 60 NHL teams, you can have a conversation about it. Okay.

Well, but 60, we're going to expand to 60. I love it. None of those new teams will be in Canada, but. I mean, at some point, you just run out of cities in Canada. Already it's like, oh, Winnipeg, it's like the fifth biggest city in Canada. How many people live there? It's like 86. Oh, that's right.

My bad. I didn't know that. But yeah, just turn this into like, you ever play out of the park baseball, Sean? Mm-hmm. you can you can just be like there there's like 80 teams in the league now or whatever like you can just start a league with like a hundred teams in it if you want to that's what it should be like you want to talk about diluting the talent pool it looks like there's a 14 year old out there on on the Hartford team all right yeah let's find out um but yeah i'm i'm really interested because this came out of kind of nowhere it feels like certainly i'd never heard the name, well, we'll talk about it on the mailbag. I had heard the name Dan Friedkin before, but not in the context of buying an NHL team. Let's put it that way.

And so, yeah, I'm fascinated. I wonder if this is, again, just kind of like a stalking horse to get Tillman for Titted a pony up some extra money and just let them be in his current arena. Who knows? Could be. But yeah, let's finally get to it. Awards races Awards races

Um some of them are interesting others have become less interesting in the last few weeks, I would say. Uh, and one of them is very complicated by some very recent news. So I guess the way we'll do it is, uh, the, you know, the classic who will win, who should win.

All right. And, uh, do you want to start, uh, at the bottom or the top? of the list here. Let's start at the top. Let's start at the top. Okay. The heart trophy. The Lady Bing. That's right. Number one with a bullet. The King Clancy Award. Who's the nicest guy in the NHL? And it's like, wait, is that the King Clancy Award? No, no. King Clancy is kindest guy in the NHL. Okay. Masterton is the nicest guy in the NHL. Mark Messier Leadership Award is the coolest guy in the NHL. Well, I mean, we can all agree on that. And then there's also an award for just general vibes. Mm-hmm. That's right. So, yeah, the Hart Trophy, who do you think will win the Hart Trophy?

I, if I had to bet right now, I would say Nathan McKinna. Yeah, I agree. It feels like people want this to be a McKinnon-Drysidal race and missing time to injury late in the season, I think, sets you back a step or two. Oh, it definitely does. And I've read a lot or seen a lot of mentions lately of like this would be the first time since, I guess, Ovechkin that we had back-to-back heart winners and how rare it is to win back-to-back hearts. which feels to me like some of the voter base talking themselves into this being a cool thing to do. Yeah, I agree.

I just think, like you say, I think dry-sidal getting hurt for what, as far as I know, is still an indeterminate amount of time down the stretch. Yeah, not playing this week is the latest, which is when you're being ruled out for future games beyond the next one, that's not great. That's not good at all, especially, again, we'll talk about it in a bit, but especially with Connerick David also being out for an intermittent amount of time. Not good. But, yeah, Drysidal, so right now Drysidal leads the league in five-on-five points with 51. And Nathan McKinnon is way down tied for sixth with 47.

But he's got 47 and three extra games played. a, you know, games play gap will grow. Let's put it that way. But, yeah, I just, you know, some buddies were talking about the Norris, which we'll get to. And like, oh, you know, Quinn Hughes should be getting heart consideration. It's like, Quinn Hughes missed 15 games or 14 or whatever the number is. That's like almost 20% of the season. At some point, they're just not going to give that guy the award.

I've said a million times, like Mark Giordano deserved. two Norris's before he actually won one, but both of them were in seasons where he missed like 15, 20 games. For the games he was in, he was the best defenseman in the league, but you can't miss like 20 games and expect to win an award. It's that simple. Not that Drysidl's going to miss that many,

but they were already kind of slicing it, you know, McKinnon, Drysidle, who could it be, blah, blah, blah. The fact that Drysidel is going to miss three, four, five games, whatever the number ends up, I think it's McKinnon. Now, who should win the heart? Connor Hellebuk.

Yeah. Yes. Can I say this, though, Sean? I got an email from one of those betting sites yesterday. I don't even know which one. Connor Hellebuck is now the favorite among betters or, you know, whatever, the odds makers. Really? Yeah.

I'll see if I can pull it up really quickly here. Because, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised by that. Because I felt like if anything, the case was losing Steve. I agree. Where did I put that email? Let's see here. All mail. Here we go.

Maybe I just fucking straight up deleted it. Well, anyway, he was the favorite. And it was, and it was like, I was surprised by how, um, how, like, kind of definitive it was. Like he was actually the favorite by a decent margin. Okay. So I still think they're going to give it to McKinnon. He actually has deserved. And obviously Nathan McKinnon's a great player.

Nobody's saying he's not, obviously, you know. But, you know, it's just the thing to me of like, at some point you're just saying, I don't think a goal he ever deserves this award, unless he plays for the Montreal Canadians, in which case, of course, he deserves. at 100% of the time. That's about right, yeah. And Ellibuck had a couple of not so good games in the last few days. So that also is a complicating factor.

But he's far in a way, not to spoil Vezna talk here, but he's far and away the best goalie in the league. And, you know, if you look up the Jets' underlying numbers, folks, they're kind of mid. They're kind of mid. So I don't know. I just think it's got to be hell of bug. Yeah, and you know what, the Jets are up to 12th in all situations expect of goals. That's fine. That's right where you want to be as a borderline elite team.

But again, you take him off that team. They suck. They're losing a lot more games than they win. That's for goddamn sure currently. Yeah, the Jets currently have the best all situations, goals difference, and the 12th best expected goals difference. So you do the math on that one, you know. Oh, thank you.

I get it. You go ahead and do it. No. Let me know. And I will just blindly accept it. Yeah. No, I get it. Let's put it this way.

They give up 2.95 expected goals per 60 and allow 2.34 goals per 60. That's a big difference. But yeah. So obviously we both have our guy that we think should win. Whether he actually does, maybe it seemed, you know what, I'll frankly take going into the playoffs, regular seasons over, et cetera, et cetera. If they're saying it's even 50, 50, I'd actually take that. Because it feels like they've been saying Nathan McKinnon for three months, you know?

Yep. What's interesting to me about the race is with, I guess, the exception of the defensemen, Werensky and Quinn Hughes. We're not this year getting the, oh, this guy's going to help this team finish eighth and make the playoffs. We're not getting the Taylor Hall campaign for anyone. I think we're getting it for Werenski.

Werensky would be the guy. But even he, like, I don't feel like he's a serious hard candidate. Like, he'll get some votes. If Columbus makes the playoffs, he will absolutely get, like, second and third place vote. I don't know how many ones he's getting. But he's going to be top three in a lot of ballots if Columbus makes the playoffs, which I don't think they will, to be clear.

Yeah. But it's essentially guys on pretty elite teams. Yeah. Edmonton, Colorado, Winnipeg. Yeah. And the other thing, go ahead. All west coast, all, not West Coast, but Western Conference teams. The Western bias in this league is out of control, especially because this is the other thing I was going to say.

If he had stayed, if he had played all 82. which obviously he hasn't. Quinn Hughes should be, you know, I've said this for months now. It should be, you know, all things being equal, all games played being equal, I guess. Hellebuck Hughes, pick a forward. That would be my, that would be my ballot, honestly.

But, you know, you miss 15 games, that's a different, that's a horse of a different color, you know? Calder up next. You want to do Calder? Yeah. Great. Who will win the Calder? For rookie of the year?

I still think it's Celebrini, but this is close. We have an official, definitely a three-skater race, and then Dustin Wolf complicating it. Okay, so who do you think are the three skaters? Because I think it's two skaters. Celebrity Mitch Koff and Hudson. I don't think Mitch Kov's in it anymore. Hmm. I think he's just dropped off enough that even in his own coach's mind,

like there's been a lot of talk about like, oh, he slumped for a little while. You know what I mean? That, um, that I think that they just, they're just, is a good amount of daylight now between, um, well, let's put it this way. Again, you don't want to miss games, but I feel like they give you a lot more leeway with that with the Calder. But Celebrini has more points in 12 fewer games than Mitch Cobb does. More goals, more assists.

Like, I think there's a, and also he plays like three more minutes a night, three and a half more as a matter of fact. So I think there's just, there's a lot of feeling about Celebrini that I'm not getting about Mitch Cobb now. Okay. So you agree that Celebrini's the favorite right now? It's interesting.

Because I don't know what to say. I do think that there will be a camp of voter who votes for Hudson over Celebrini. But again, if Calgary's around the play, I don't think they need to make the playoffs. But if he get, if Dustin Wolf gets them to like ninth in the West, which is certainly on the table, given how bad the West Wildcard teams are, I think he probably not only would win it, but would deserve it. Frankly, I would vote for him regardless. Yeah.

For 50 games at least, which is, that is a lot of times with rookie goalies. You end up looking at it and you go, oh, yeah, his numbers are great, but he only played 35 games. That's right, yeah. Because he didn't really, they didn't really trust him until January. And they had to trust, they had to trust Dustin Wolf in Calgary. Yep. So, okay.

So it sounds, yeah, I mean, Wolf is interesting because he would need to start eight of their next 12 games to get to 50. Which I would imagine, yeah, that he'll get there. Yep. So, Dom had his. latest awards watch and he has Wolf at the top of the list by actually a decent amount, but it's always hard

to compare goleys to skaters. He's got Hudson next and then Mitch Gough and then Celebrini which is interesting. Yeah, I wonder again, I just wonder how much the games played thing is hurting Celebrini's case. Like I think if you're, again, one of these guys is like a goalie shouldn't win this award.

First of all, I don't know what you're talking about. But if you are, I can I can see the argument for Hudson over Celebrini, former teammates, by the way. But there's no, like, I get that with the heart, you can make an argument, and it's a bad argument. But you can make the argument that the goalies have an award, the defenseman have an award.

Totally. So the heart should go to four. And the forwards only have five awards for them. That's right. So it's tough. But with the Calder, there's nothing. The reason that goalies don't win the Calder more is that it's just hard to compare They don't get the games played

Is almost always It's not even that It's just You know I I want to I sort by points And I don't see this guy there Sure So

Yeah It would be interesting I know a lot of Habs fans Think this is an easy one But Do you So who do you think deserves it then I would go wolf

I agree I agree But I think you could make a game I think you can make a case for any of the four guys. I'm not even taking Mitch Koff off my list yet. I totally get it. He's fucking awesome. He's so sick.

But again, like, I don't know. I just feel like we're a day away from Tortorella benching him again, you know? Probably. But yeah, any of those four would make sense to me, again, Mitch Kov less so. But I think Wolf deserves it. Like, Calgary was supposed to be dog shit this year. year. And he made them into buyers. It's that simple for me. Calgary, everyone was like, maybe bottom five in the league. They

suck. A dozen wolf was like, what if I came in, did like 9, 10 all year? That sound good? Yep. All right. The Norris. Again, another one that the Quinn Hughes injury sort of robbed us of a very cool race. It feels like it's now. kill McCar unless Zach Wrenzky really shows out the last few weeks. I can easily see McCar being around it, obviously.

Like, that's the, that's the, that's the will win for sure to me right now. But again, if Columbus even finishes a point or two out of the playoffs, everyone will go, well, they didn't have Monaghan, they didn't have this, they didn't have that. You know, the Johnny Goddrault of it all kind of does, I think, give him the narrative boost in addition to, you know,

he was a great player and blah, blah, blah, blah. The enormity of that, I think, makes it kind of hard to ignore, not even ignore, but like to put anybody above Werenski. on your ballot if at the end of the year they're even one point two points out of the playoffs like if they're the ninth place team in the east i think it's wrenski but i don't know that that's going to happen so i think all things like again all things being equal macara is probably should be the favorite like among betters

and again because hughes has missed all that time i think he should win it as well does that make sense yep absolutely yeah So where are you at with that? Like should... I feel like it's Macar for both. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see where...

Like, I'd love to see Werencki win because that means that he's had a good finish, which means the blue jackets have had a good finish. And I'm pretty transparently rooting for the blue jackets at this point. But it right now... As should we all be. Yes, all good people. Like, you know, like let's say Werensky wins, you know?

You know how every year somebody loses the awards race and everyone's like, or everyone who's a fan of that team is like complete bullshit? This is fucked up. What are these voters doing? Blah, blah, blah. I can't get into that mindset if I'm a Colorado Avalanche fan in June. You know what I mean? Like it would just be fucking insane to be, to be like, you know who doesn't deserve good things to happen to them? Like feel good moments in that thing.

the Columbus Blue Jackets and Zach Werenski. Yeah. If that's your reaction to this hypothetical I'm making up, you know? But if that's your reaction, you're a crazy person. Yes. It's that simple. You got any thoughts on the Selky? Not really, other than, I mean, Barkov is sort of the default setting.

I find it interesting that when people are mentioning Reinhardt. I'm not completely sure how you can have, I guess you could have two Selky front runners on the same team. I guess there's no reason they... Nothing in the rulebook that says Sam Reinhardt can't be a Selke finalist. But it's just sort of like if you're not the best defensive forward on your own team. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean... It's, yeah, it's, it's, it, Dom's got it kind of all Florida all the time because he's got those two top and then Sorrelli and Brennan Hagel next. Mm-hmm. Then Seth Jarvis and then two Vegas guys, man, it's all these tax-free. They can get all the best defensive players. It's not fair, quite frankly. It's, it needs to be looked at. So if you, if you kind of break it down a little bit, um, Ryanhart is an unbelievable, like five on

five defensive player all 200 feet and not so good at penalty killing basically but taken in totality I think like you say I think he probably deserves it but I don't know that anybody would actually give him that shine because he

plays with Sasha Barkov and you know who else is really good at defense as Sasha Barkoff he's not having I just don't want to get into a situation where he's the new Patriceborough and every like four years they're just like you know what we got to give this guy four out of every five Selke's its entire career, you know? I don't want that to happen.

I would love to see it. I think there's a little too, a little too much, like, thought of, we got to give this, we got to spread this around. Nobody can win the, the, the, the Jack Adams or the heart twice in a row, the nor, the Vezna, that kind of thing. I hate that. But I also don't want it to swing completely in the opposite direction, right? So I think this is a reputation, the reputation award, right? Would you agree?

Like there's, yeah. Yeah. Like, people don't know how to quantify defense, basically. And so they're just like, ah, who's a guy with a bunch of points? And I think of him as good defensively. That's what that award. That's what this award is. Um, so I don't, I don't know how to, how to slice and dice this one.

Like, I think Ryan Hart kind of does. it, but won't, he might be top three, but he won't, he won't win it. When in doubt go with Barkoff for this award. I just, I really wonder if this doesn't become a vote split thing. If those two guys really emerge, if,

if you have some voters who go, I can't list two guys from the same team won, too. And then they pick one guy or the other and suddenly, like Anthony Sorrelli sneaks up the middle. and splits it. Yeah, hey, look, Sorrelli's good. Unlakely, but possible. I just pulled up the evolving hockey forward defense ratings.

I'm going to read you the top three. This is a sick group to me. Like, if you're a sicko if you know that these guys, well, one of them, I'm like, really, he's up there? That's shocking to me. But number one is Logan O'Connor. If you're a Logan O'Connor head, I salute you. you know sure number two i can't believe this is the case but it says here ilia macaa from

chicago i kind of i don't know what that's based on okay that's gonna be relative to the rest of his team or something you know and then number three a guy that i'm oh man i am in the tank for this guy he'd he'd certainly be in my top three but i you know i kind of think he doesn't uh he doesn't maybe score enough or whatever because he i don't i don't know how much they're putting them on the power play in minnesota but it's marrowering i i don't know how much they're putting him on the powerplay in Minnesota, but it's Marcus Falino. I think you can go back and find me saying

Marcus Felino deserves a Selke like two, three years ago, no problem, you know? And he is third among people in or among forwards in defensive rating on evolving hockey. And then Reinhardt is sixth and

scroll down here, where the hell is he? Whatever. I can't find behind Barcove really quickly here. But it's 17th. He's 17th in overall defensive rating among forwards. But of course, also really high in offense. And that factors into it for sure. So, yeah, I think when in doubt go with Barkov,

but who probably does deserve it is, I would say, Reinhardt. But I guess we'll see. The Jack Adams. We've been saying all year Spencer Carberry's to lose. He's not going to lose it now, folks. Well, unless Dean Eveson can get the blue jackets into the playoffs. Yeah, I get it. I think that's the one that could maybe.

I just think if, again, like that's such a good story, Everson getting them into the playoffs, you know, and he's a great coach. I think he might have deserved it when he, when he was with Minnesota at a certain point. But, yeah, to me, I just think, like, somebody pointed this out in the Puck Soup Discord. You know, your preseason predictions thing?

Mm-hmm. Yep. Zero people had Washington as one of the teams to make the playoffs. Zero. Zero. Out of whatever. Thousands of interest. Yeah, thousands. Now, listen.

I think if you put them in, you're a freak and a sicko. Like if you're like, oh, guaranteed Washington makes the playoffs. You're a psycho. You would have no basis to do that other than, you know, who's really good to me is the team I watch 82 games a year. Right. With that having been said... This is the beauty of it, right?

This is why I love that contest, because nobody can come back now and be like, you dummies all slept on the Capitol. I told you. Smart fans knew that they were getting... No, nobody knew. Or at least nobody was willing to... Nobody was that confident. Yeah, that's right.

Lots of people thought the Rangers were a lock. There were, you know, other teams... Totally. That are in day. I think Boston got a decent number, a decent amount of support, that sort of thing. Not one person said Washington. Just interesting.

Yep. I wonder how many people had Washington? Because I have a question about who's going to finish in the middle of the pack. I wonder how high Washington finished in that. I'm looking at it now. Fairly high. They were... Interesting.

The eighth-most pick team. 314 picks. Hey, speaking of the capitals, we have some breaking news here. Uh-oh. Jacob Chikrin, 8 years, 9 million a year. Wow. That's a lot of money. That's a...

a lot of years and a lot of money. How old is he? I am pulling him his page up now. He is 26. So that's actually not... Okay. Well, you know what? I take that back.

He's going to be 27 on the 31st. So six days from now. He's going to be 27. Really good player. Yeah. Really good player. Pretty good player. Well, when he's healthy, he's a really good player.

Let's put it that way. Okay. Interesting. Healthy and not in Ottawa. Now, the number of years you can say that both of those things are true, I think, is literally one. And it's this one. But eight years, nine million A.A.V. A little bit, a little bit of shiny new toy there, for sure.

When they trade for a guy. A little bit. I wouldn't. It's not a greas. They didn't give up a huge amount for him, which is. That's exactly. What really scares you in that situation. Now, here's the other thing.

Sean, do you have a guess about what this defenseman is shooting this year? His personal shooting percentage that has gotten him to 18 goals? 15. It's lower than high. It's 11.5. If you're shooting from way out there, that's still really high, in my opinion. Yep. It is, however, you know, he had 1856 a few years ago when he shot 10.2% in 2020, 21.

Okay. But that was a situation where they were just like, who gives a shit, man? Go shoot the puck all you want. Shot the puck 355 times in 56 games. That's crazy for a defenseman to do that. And in Washington, you know, there is kind of a thing where it's like, hey, if the big guy with the eight on the back of his jersey, if you see that number out there, you give it, he's the one who shoots it. Absolutely. Anyway, there was a game, I think last week where Ovechkin had assists on two capitals power play goals.

And I was like, what the fuck are we doing here? Are we trying to win this record or not, man? That's a screw up, man. What are we doing? Look, if Ovechkin takes a shot and a rebound comes to you and you have an open net, yeah, sure. You circle back and you pass it to the Vetchkin. Yeah.

If I see one, this is how Spencer Carverer wins the Adams. I've been saying this all year. If I see you shoot the puck in a power play or empty net situation, you're benched. That's it. Yep. drives me great. Here's the other thing. I was saying this the other night.

The Capitals, at no point this season, should have let themselves get up by three goals or more. They should be creating empty-neck goal situations in every single fucking game all year. Are we trying to get this guy to a thousand goals or not? You know? Let's take it seriously out there. I've mentioned this before,

but I remember the last time I tried to get into one of the NHL video games where you could like you could just make your own player. Yep. And then you could like even fast forward through games. I would just look for open. Not only could I only score on an open net because I didn't, I wasn't good enough to score on a goalie. But like if my team was up three nothing,

you better believe I was taken over and committing egregious giveaways of my own zone. Yeah. To get it down to two goals. That's right. You have to. And I remember just hanging out with my buddy. Spencer and he was like, you know, someday if I'm a coach, wait a second. Yeah, I think, I think Will and should is probably Carberry because it's not just that

the capitals are defying the odds or whatever, defying expectations. They made the playoffs last year and everybody correctly said this team sucks, though. Yep. And then this year, they're fucking insanely good. they're not as good as the record would indicate, I would argue. But they are really, really good. And at a certain point, you just, you do got to hand it to them. Now, is, we both agree that Carberry's going to win based on how the award is typically voted on?

Yes. Do you think he has been the best coach in the league this year? Yeah, I'd say so. Now, look, is he just telling a lot of guys go out there and shoot 20%? Sure he is. you know, that that is what is fueling. But like, again, if you look at the capitals, like, underlying numbers, they're, they're pretty good.

And I don't know, like, again, if you, if you want to say Dean Eveson, like, pulled that team together and blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to argue with you. I think that's the clear one, two in this league right now. But, like, where are the capitals? They're 13th and five on five expected goals percentage. and 10th in all situations. And that's a team that sucked last year, you know? They were horrible last season, if I'm remembering what they're underlying.

Let me quickly look this up. Where are they? Yeah, there were 10th from the bottom last year in XGF. So to get to 10th from the top is an insane level of turnaround. And, you know, I think, I think, I didn't put this in the outline, but I think you can lock up the GM of the year award too. Yeah.

For the Washington Capitol. Yes, although that's the one that gets voted on after two rounds of the playoffs. Right. Yeah, that's true. Almost always teams that are, so I mean, if they go out in the first round, that changes. But you're right, they had a bit, this is, as Capitol fans love to remind us, we all wrote them off, even though they had a very busy off season. and added.

Yeah, they added a bunch of, you know, lottery tickets that, oh, they all won a billion dollars on them. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I found four lottery tickets on the ground. They all hit. They were all the exact same number. I'm feeling great about this, you know. Especially Logan Thompson, which can bring us to the Vezina, which I think is a short conversation. Connor Halebuck, Conor Halebuck.

Thanks for playing everybody. Logan Thompson got to pretend for a little while. That was nice of Connor. He's probably going to finish second. Oh, for sure he is, yeah. Which, you know, means that he'll also presumably be the second team all-star, which gets him like the, you know, one all-star appearance on his hockey reference page, which is pretty good.

Yeah, being the second best goalie in the league over the course of an entire season is sick to do. It's fucking awesome, you know? With that having been said, he's getting fucking lapped in the Vesna race. And he should be. Like, that's not even a knock on him. That's just how good Hellebuck has been two years in a row now. Do you think it will be unanimous? Yes, I do.

Even though there's a couple of hundred voters. I do. It absolutely should be. I guess there's not a couple hundred voters. There's 32. Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's the broadcasters. No, GM.

It's the GM. Broadcasters is Jack Adams. GMs. Oh, yeah. Then it'll, yeah. Because I got the, I got the stat for you right here, brother. Connor Halbuck, 40 wins. Next closest guy, 33.

End of discussion. These guys love sorting by wins. Yep. And in this case, for once, it's going to get them the right answer. I think it's probably gotten them the right answer plenty of times in the past. But this is just like academic to me. I think this will be unanimous and should be. Absolutely should be.

Like, if you're a Capitals fan, I get why you would be like, oh, Thompson had an unbelievable season. He should get more consideration. I mean, you're wrong, but I get why you would say that, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, I think this is a fucking slam dunk. Like, maybe, I'm not joking, maybe the most slam dunk decision in recent memory for the Vesna. Almost for any award. Well, I would say like the year McDavid had like 170 points and scored 60 goals or whatever.

like, you know, there was just no way they were going to screw that up. But yeah, this is, this is like so easy. Hand everybody a ballot now. Like, what could happen to Connor Hellebuck that he gives up 14 goals in a game? Like, that's the only thing that could really derail it. And even then you'd go, well, I mean, it was one game out of 70 that he started or whatever the number ends up being, you know? he's fucking awesome. It's unbelievable.

Anyway. Hey, speaking of MVP candidates, we mentioned Dreysidal and McDavid, expected to miss time some amount of time, not clear how much, but the reason I wanted to talk about this, other than it's two of the best players in the league, they're not going to get passed by Vancouver or Calgary,

like the gap's just way too big. but will they be the road team against the Los Angeles Kings in the playoffs? Could be. Put it this way. The way they're going. The Kings have 80s. Well, that's what I was going to say. The Kings have 87 points in 69 games.

The Oilers have 87 points in 70 games. I don't think either of them is passing Vegas. So that is going to be the matchup in all likelihood for, I think. Are we excited to this matchup for the fourth year? fourth year in a row Is it really Again it feels like it's been six or seven It's only four

It was definitely the last three years I feel like that's As far back as we go And it's been getting shorter every year Right and it went from I think Did it go seven to six to five Yeah something like that I don't know

There's probably a pattern there But I can't figure it But are we like You know what This is a good test for the people, the few remaining people, I would say, who still like the divisional playoff format, that it serves up, you know, it's not the Battle of Alberta,

but this is a traditional rivalry. These two teams have been in the same division for decades, lots of history, lots of matchups, obviously, Gretzky trade. The fact that it serves it up this matchup in the first round four years in a row, if everybody is like, oh, not this again, please, anything but this, that's a pretty good strike against divisional playoff format. Yeah, no, I agree. Flipside, Dallas Colorado is going to be freaking awesome. Yeah.

It'd be so good. And you know what I can't wait to see is whoever comes out of the Pacific Division, Dallas or Colorado would have beat their fucking brains. This is bullshit, you know? Yep. Let's make it happen. Oh, I forgot to say this, too, speaking of Elliot Friedman reporting stuff, did you hear what he said regarding how they're going to do the awards this year? I did.

Oh, why did you remind me of this? I feel like I saw this on, he reported it on, on Hockey Night in Canada. Yeah. And I honestly feel like I immediately blacked it out. And you've only brought it back to me. Oh, my, okay. You talk about it. I need to just.

So, They had a thing where, is it Josh Allen? Is that who won the NFL MVP? I think so. They had a bunch of kids who are like patients at the hospital that Josh Allen donates time and money to presumably be like, like just record a video being like, congratulations, Josh. We love you. You're the best. And if it's not Josh Allen, I apologize.

I don't watch football. It was Josh. Okay, great. And, you know, he's like tearing up. It's a really nice video. And so Elliot said the NHL maybe wants to take that one step further and maybe like surprise guys by having kids like reveal that they won the award or whatever. But then Elliot said some words that made me sick to my stomach. Or maybe I'm not directly quoting him, but he basically said, or maybe it's a freaking prank show.

Can we Look, this is Some brand synergy I watch AEW Every once in a while Some of the freaking Impractical Jokers The funniest guys in the universe

Show up And they're doing bits With the wrestlers What if What if Carr Hellebuck Goes to go to a bathroom And inside there's a guy Who tells me

What the best is? Can you believe it? All right First of all, I believe we have a show-wide ban On Talking Toilets So skip right by that. I have never in my life been more confident that something was going to be bad than this.

Oh, my God, yeah. It's like I felt physical pain just anticipating how terrible this is going to be if they move forward with this. It's going to be extremely bad. I mean, having like the sick kid break the, the news will be bad enough on its own level, but, I mean, there's definitely a floor to that sort of thing. But if they do it as,

you know, the prank, or even like the coach calling him into the office and, like, acts like he's sending Sasha Barkoff down to the minors, and then he's like, no, you won the Selky.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. And the player just awkwardly having to be like, okay, this is going to be so bad. It's going to be horrendous. And the weird thing is, he then went on to say that the league might still go ahead and do some sort of show for, like, the big awards. Like, Hart Trophy in that, which means they would then do this awful prank idea, like, for what? For the King Clancy? Like, is that you're going to get any reaction at all from a player where it's like, hey, guess what, man?

Oh, I'm sorry, sir. You can't come into this restaurant unless you're the 2025 King Clancy winner. And he's going, but I'm not. I'm not him. That must be someone else. And then a guy comes up, he actually is the freaking winner. And he walks into the restaurant and there's a steak on top of the King Clancy Award. These guys love eating steak.

And the guys like, I don't even know what this award is. None of us. And what did I get this for? Most steak I ate in the league? Is that right? The only way it'll be good is if they do a prank for the lady Bing and it causes the winner to flip out and attack somebody. Like, what do you mean?

You ticketed and towed my car. And he like just randomly starts throwing punches. And they're like pulling him off the guy. Like, no, no, you won the Lady Bing. It's, it's, come on, man. Be cool, Mitch Mariner or whoever it is. I don't know. This is going to be so bad.

This is going to be worse than the comic book guys. I agree. Not even close. I can't wait. Yeah, it's going to be horrendous. Well, here's the thing, too, is like they're not going to do the traditional, like, is this, let me, let me ask you this. And then we'll move off this topic here. Is this just going to be like a situation where these are all viral videos?

Because I don't think they're, or like, they're going to show them like between periods on the TNT broadcast or something. Yeah. They'll cut back to those, those. freaking goofballs, they'll be, they'll be busting a damn gut. Oh, I think they'll release them on social. And, and by the way, also, like, because things take a while to film and edit,

it'll be like, uh, you know, it'll already have been scooped that. Oh, for sure. The thing was filmed four days ago. Yeah. Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be awful.

I can't wait. They are, they are getting rid of our precious, wonderful NHL award show. So I have seven words that would make every one of these awards presentations better. Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville, and this is dot, dot, dot. That would be all right. Guy has the... Hey man, you won the heart trophy.

It's right around this corner. Why don't you just run out there. Giant hand. Bam. Oh. The Calder is just in poopies butt. Yep. This is a good idea.

Finally, we got some more injury news here. Roman Yossi done for the year. I don't think that's a surprise or anything like that. Like why rush them back or anything? This is clearly shutting down guys for the season. Yep, as well it should be. Pedersen and Hoaglander from Colorado, from Vancouver, sent home from their little road.

trip they're on right now. But guess who's back is Thatcher Demko? Mm-hmm. Nice to see Thatger Demko feeling like he can play again, but also feels a little, so we're desperate on Vancouver's part. Yeah, but it's desperate time. This is... And in my opinion, they call for desperate measures.

Interesting. That's something I came up with. Very good. Thank you. So, yeah, it's... it's just one of those things I'm curious Vancouver's still in it

I think they're in a playoff spot as we say as we speak I believe they are not St. Louis is but in St. Louis has a three point lead what a disaster it would be if the Canucks missed the playoffs this year they can say all these guys got hurt whatever

but man brutal yeah maybe we'll talk more about the blues next week or something but 8-1-1 in their last 10. Hachimachi. I think I said it last week. It's almost like hiring a guy who's insanely good at coaching and has that track record.

That was probably a good idea for them. Interesting. Now let's look at Vancouver. Oh, wait. Anyway, I guess that's it for the show this week. I don't have anything else I want to talk about. No. The rest of it's just like, oh, let's watch the damn games and figure out what happens.

You know? Yep, that's it. And every, like, we are at that nice time of year where I don't know how you feel about these, but I like those little charts that go around where it's like, oh, the best, yeah. If this team wins tonight, their odds go up 20%. Yep. But if they lose, you're like, all right. They're dropping 12%.

Yep, absolutely. It's all the games, well, not all the games matter, but many of the games matter. Even you get games like tonight, you got Montreal, St. Louis. Both those teams need that win. They both need to win. So now, unfortunately, they both need to win for different races, which means it's pretty much guaranteed 3.9. Yeah, the handshake agreement before the game, of course. Did I tell you, by the way, Sean, but what has really, I'm back into sports betting.

Did I tell you this? Oh, no, you did not. That's because someone on the Puck Soup Discord pointed out that you can go into the New Jersey Michaels app every day and pick the winners of four NHL games. And if you win, they give you free Mike's points. Okay. All right. This isn't an ad, by the way, but this is really helping me engaged with a lot of games that I otherwise... You know what?

Tampa Pittsburgh tonight, I'm going to put some Mike's points on the lightning. Have you been winning? You've been... Yeah, I've been doing it for a week. I'm up to 26 Mike's points. Yeah. I'm doing a little better than half, I think. He's 14 pounds.

I haven't earned myself a sub yet, but I feel, you know, I feel like by the end of the regular season, I can at least get like a medium, you know. But yeah, I'm going to, I guess I'm going to pick tonight. Give me Ottawa over Buffalo, Tampa over Pittsburgh, Carolina over Nashville. And, oh, you know what's a great game tonight? Washington Winnipeg. That could decide the president's trophy. That could. Now, hold on.

You're subbedding. Is this just like straight picks? straight picks. Oh, straight picks, baby. And then you get a sub at the end of it. The only sports betting you should do is on fast food apps, in my opinion. Yep. I would agree with that.

But yeah, so I'm feeling great about this. This is really upping my engagement. Thank you, New Jersey, Michael. Diamond doink winner, New Jersey, Michael. But yeah, that's all I have. You got any plugs for us, Sean? Got on. Yeah.

Follow me at the athletic. I will be on the athletic hockey show tomorrow. I also will have a post tomorrow where in anticipation of Alexander Ovechkin breaking the goals record, I have gone back and looked at some of history's greatest record-breaking goals. And I've evaluated, rated, and ranked them. Wow. And, yeah, fingers crossed Ovechkin.

reads it and takes some inspiration because let's just say there have been some truly excellent record-breaking goals and there have also been some pretty crappy crappy ones. So don't let us down, Alex. I think that's going tomorrow. Great. For me, you can head over to Elite Prospects and read all my NCAA tournament coverage. You know how many articles I wrote about college hockey since last Wednesday? Every one of them.

I mean, every one of them by me was a college hockey article because I wrote 15 articles since last Wednesday. Knock it off. You're making some of us look bad. This is what I live for, dog. This is what it's all about. I have my NCAA tournament preview. The NCAA tournament starts on Thursday. A lot of really good matchups.

I would encourage everybody, hey, it's at 2 o'clock on a Tuesday. If you're in a position where you can do time theft, this is your opportunity to watch some extremely good hockey. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'm really excited for it. I just think this is one of the more fun tournament fields in the last several years. And you could convince me that any one of like six teams is going to win the national title this year. And usually I think it's like two or three, you know. So this is really electric stuff.

I have tournament previews going up, I believe, starting Wednesday. and I'm just going regional by regional. Like, here's who I think will win basically every game. Yeah, this is what it's all about for me. This is the best time of year for me. So no NHL coverage for me anytime soon. Check it all out over there. And then once you're done doing that,

head over to patreon.com slash puck soup, where me, Sean, and Greg, just yesterday, recorded a bonus episode as instructed by the listeners to basically like make a Luca Donchitz style heartbreaking trade for every team in the league. And people are saying Sean's were diabolical. Ooh. They're loving what Sean brought to the table. The less said about me and Greg the better, apparently, you know.

It almost feels like one of us has a particular expertise in, What makes hockey fans sad? And then we're about to go over there and record the normal Puck suit mailbag that you get every week. But as an extra, extra bonus, if you are interested in the NCAA hockey tournament, I will be tomorrow morning recording an NCAA tournament-only mailbag, which I'm looking forward to doing. I've got a lot of good questions lined up already. So all of that, college hockey, it's that time of year. This is what I live for. So, you know, check all that out.

Patreon.com slash Puck Soup. Elite Prospects. There is a deal going on, like I said last week. I don't know the particulars of it, but I know what's going on. Head over to Relief Prospects. They'll give you all the info you need. Thanks for listening to Puck Soup. And we'll be back again next week.

And hopefully I won't be exhausted like I am this week. Thanks so much. Bye.