Puck Soup - Who He Play For 2022

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Sean and Ryan talk moving board ads, the Barzal contract, and keeping rookies on the roster. Then they play another edition of "Who He Play For".   Sponsored by Athletic Greens (athleticgreens.com/puck), Factor (go.factor75.com/puck60), Raycon (buyraycon.com/puck) and Betterhelp (betterhelp.com/puck)

Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. We also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hockey and Nancet. I'm Ryan Lambert from Elite Prospects. I am Sean McIndoo from The Athletic. And, Sean, before we go here, I forgot to put this on the rundown. and I just remembered it.

I bought my Halloween candy yesterday. Okay. And I guess I'm wondering, you've been a homeowner for a long time. This is my first year doing Halloween as a homeowner. What is your Halloween candy setup? I'm pretty standard, you know, big box of candy. We got the bowl at the front door and we, if people come ring the bell, like we don't leave the bowl out.

Yeah. We, and I open the door and I pretend to be scared of all the scary costumes. Sure. And pitch a couple of candies in there. We, we have like a couple of decorations we throw up, but we definitely don't go, we don't go crazy. Yeah, we're not going to go crazy at all. There's one house in our neighborhood that has like giant spider webs coming off the roof and stuff like that. And most of them are more adorable.

It's like a 10-foot skeleton standing out, and it's like the first week of October. Yeah, a friend of ours definitely bought the, like, 13-foot Home Depot skeleton for $200, and it's in their front yard or whatever. And respect, I, you know, I get it. But my thing is I don't want to friggin lug that thing in and out of the garage. You know, that's my main thing. If someone would just, like, come leave it on the lawn for a month and then pick it up, that'd be one thing. Yeah.

But I don't want to do all that. The other thing is I tried to buy one of those skeletons and when it came time to pay, like I tried to give them bones, but they wanted worms. And there was a lot of confusion over what the money was. So, yeah. Now when you buy candy, what do you buy? I get like just like at the grocery store like the 100 pack of, in fact, actually, I guess it's probably like the Canadian one, right? Because it's got like the arrow bars and a few other things. Peanut free. Always buy that peanut free candy.

My girlfriend recently went to Canada with her mom for like a fun week trip kind of a thing. And she brought back the big 100 box of Canadian candies. And I don't know that it lasted more than like seven or eight days. It should. No. But I, so the reason I bring this up is I bought my Halloween candy yesterday, like I said. and I have always been very committed to when I own a house,

I will be the big bar house in the neighborhood. Everybody says that. I bought it. All right, you're following through? Yeah. So I bought, went to Costco. This is what we bought.

We bought the big box of the Hershey's variety pack, which is Hershey's Reese's, Hershey's with almonds, and Kit Kat. We then bought the M&M, well, I guess the Mars company variety pack, which is Snickers Twix, peanut M&Ms, regular M&Ms, Milky Ways. And then we bought the, I don't know,

Butterfinger box of Butterfingers, Nestle Crunch, 100 grand baby Ruth. That's solid. And I think these are full bars and what, go ahead, sorry. So first of all, like how, he must have spent a fortune, like. No, we went to Costco. I think we got out of there for like 40 bucks. Okay. Wow. Here's my question. You're new in this in this house. Do you have a sense?

Like, have you talked to neighbors about like how many kids you get? Because it can be very weird. They said like 40. It depends on the year, but like 40 to 70 is a good number. That's good to know because you. Oh, for sure. There are neighborhoods that you would think would be crawling with kids that get nothing and vice versa. but I'll tell you once the word gets out that there's a full bar house in town. I welcome them. That sounds good to me. That brings the out of towners. Yeah.

Well, so the thing is this, right, is when I was a kid, there were two or three, depending on the year. I feel like one of them must have moved away at some point. But there were two or three like big bar houses. And the respect me and my friends had for those people. These are people that care about us. This isn't, this is a famous story for people who listen to stick to sports. But there was one house that gave out raisins every year, every year. And then the school bus would go by their house in the morning after Halloween.

And it would just be a bunch of raisins on their front lawn. Right? And so, like, I obviously was never going to be that guy. But I just, like, I could tell you, right now, the big house with the columns, the big White House with the columns, those people gave out the big candy bars. The brick house, like four houses down, those people gave out the big candy bars. And so for me, I'm going, I remember those now. I'm like a 40-year-old man. I remember how much I loved and respected those homeowners. And so I want, like, if the extra respect from the

neighborhood children, like, and potentially saving me from getting like the tree in my front yard T-Ped. Yeah. That's worth $30 to me, 30 extra bucks, you know? I think it is. I think it is. Have you ever, did you ever have like the full can of pop house? No, that never happened. No, we, um.

That was another big one for us. And I've told this story before on this podcast. That sounds crazy to me to get a fucking can of Coke. Yeah, exactly. Like that, uh, that does feel a little risky because like, you know, not, not that, uh, you're, you're handy. these kids a weapon at that point. To use it.

And they're already carrying around a pillowcase. So you put the two together. You're putting them up to some real damage. It should be like when you go to the concession stand, you get like the tallboy beer and they open it for you. That's right. They don't trust you not to, yeah. It should be like that.

But I've mentioned this before, but a couple of years ago, my kids were out trick-or-treating and somebody dropped like a full can into their bag. And they were very excited. it and they got, you know, however far away and reached in, pulled out the bag, and it was a can of V8. Yeah, a classic story. That's a mess because, man, you're going to give someone raisins.

At least raisins look like raisins going into the bag. You're not getting any false hopes up. A can of something and it turns out to be vegetable juice. Yeah, that's rough. Man, oh, man. Yeah, I, you know, I'm not a, you know, I lived in apartment buildings for years. So we had, we would maybe get one trick-or-treater, two, you know, but like people aren't going door-to-door in their apartment building trick-or-treating. It's just, or at least in the places I lived, because it was always either like, you know, a mix of childless young adults or like college students, you know.

So there'd be like four kids in the whole building. Nobody was buying candy for them. So I'm really curious to see because I, when I was a kid, we lived in a neighborhood where it was like, oh, no, we had, every house had four kids in it. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to what happens because. I got to say, man, you're also, you're showing a lot of self-confidence to load up on full candy bars four weeks before Halloween. Who do you think you were talking to? I have other candy bars for me.

I have a garage freezer full of Reese's peanut butter cups and Reese's pumpkins right now. Right. And also, what am I going to do? Eat a butterfinger? Gross. I hate a butterfinger. That's a good point. They always talk about, oh, it's a peanut buttery flavored thing.

It's like, if you eat in a butterfinger, why don't I eat one? I'm like, I don't get any notes of peanut butter with this. It tastes like toffee, which is what it's supposed to taste like, I feel like, because there's a big toffee thing in the middle of it, just my thoughts. People get mad when I say I don't like Butterfingers, but I think they're gross. Anyway. That's right, folks. It's getting all the big takes. That's right.

Here's another take that people are going to be mad at. I don't care if the board ads move. I really don't fucking care. Yeah. I want to see it, but I'm more concerned. This is the story where the ads on the boards now, is this like every rink or only certain ones? I don't know.

You're asking me to have read the hockey business story. It's not going to happen. Fair, fair. But they will now have these like virtual ads on the boards where if you, when you go to the rink, you will see regular ads. and from many of the camera angles on TV, you will see regular ads, but from the standard angle,

like the back in the stands that you normally watch the game in, they can superimpose different ads on that. And that allows, for example, if ESPN, through some mistake, winds up broadcasting a game that's in Canada, rather than seeing pizza pizza ads and Tim Hortons, you can...

What is sub 47? What's that one? is that the name of it? There's one that's like a sub place that has just like a number in there. There's all these local, like local places, right? And I did see somebody complain about that, that you miss like the, during a boring game, you can sit there and be like, what the hell kind of pizza places?

Why is there like a pizza slash muffler joint? And how can they afford cornerboards in Dallas? Yeah, that's just called Canadian Tire, right? Yeah, well, that's it. And so they're going to have that. But also, I guess they can, I don't think they animate as for advertising. But like when they change or when they come in, there's like a little animation they can do. And I don't know.

That might be distracting or it might be the sort of thing you don't even notice. I guess we have to see. Well, you know, I think the obvious analog is that when you watch soccer, it used to be the same. same thing as hockey. It's just like a static that, you know, they paint the fucking Goodyear logo on a big board and then they put it up next to the field, right? Yeah. They don't do that anymore. All those things are like video boards. They all move and stuff like that, you know? Right. But it's not part of the playing surface, which the boards. I guess that's true. But it's right behind it. Like, it's, you're seeing it in the frame the entire game. And, you know, it moves. So like, your eye is drawn to it a little.

But I don't, I'm not, I've never like, I can't concentrate on this game. This PlayStation ads playing in the back, you know what I mean? Yeah. And now granted, soccer, it's a big white ball. You kick it around, right? Hockey, it's a little black puck. What are the people always say about, oh, I don't watch hockey on TV. You can't follow the play.

Now, these are people with little tiny brains. I can follow the play very easily. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But I don't know. Like, I think there's a high possibility that it's going to be very annoying and stupid. But like I can't, oh, we're, like you say, we're losing the fucking Bradley's ads on the Bruins boards. Bradley's is a chain that went out of business like 1994.

So, you know, very good reference by me. But whatever, like, you know what I mean? Like, oh, we're losing. Who gives a shit? Fucking put a Bud Light logo there instead. Like, I guess I don't care. And you can still see those weird ads during the replays because it's. Oh, thank God.

Oh, that was a close one. You'll be fine. Here's the two things I look at. Number one is they animate them a little now. What's going to happen when someone comes in and says, you know, I'll give you guys millions of dollars, but I want my thing to be super animated. Are people actually going to say no? Or will they just take the money? We'll see.

I don't know. The other thing that concerns me more is I have yet to see any of these kind of virtual projected ads in any sport, they always tell you that, like, you won't even be able to tell, and then a player goes by that area and gets eaten by, like, a Harvey's logo or something. Right.

And it's... Yeah, the other thing is, like, oh, you won't even be able to tell, and they look like, you know, what we thought of as good CGI in, like, 2006. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, no, these look like the...

skeletons from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Yeah. Oh, no. And like, well, we had this in hockey, right? Because we recently, they, when they introduced those projected ads at the blue line. Yeah. Like just on it. And they're like, you won't even be able to tell.

And then you absolutely could. Yeah, of course. Players went by at a certain, you'd be like, what just happened? Oh, right. Those are fake ads that. And if that's happening now in the corners. I just, I don't want this whole thing to look like, you know, like a early PlayStation 2 game where they hadn't quite figured out. Yeah, I have bad news.

It's 100% going. Okay. But yeah, much like the, I don't know if they do this in Canada. I don't think they do. But certainly in the U.S. And like, I think of specifically the Capitals. When you watch a Capitals game, they project ads on the glass behind the goals sometimes. Yep.

Yeah, we do that in. Ottawa definitely has. Ottawa for sure. Yeah, you're right about that. It looks cheap as hell. It does. It looks really bad.

And I think that's what you're going to end up. And again, like, is it going to... Those look bad. Those annoy me, even if they look great, like,

I know you didn't put an ad on the transparent glass in front of, like, some of your most expensive seats. So it's like just... But, hey, we got to make money.

Got to, let's get that salary cap up. That's right. Some of us have. Some of us have rating MVP's to extend. Let's get that revenue. And hell, if you're the Islanders, you have a guy who's, like, pretty good. You have to give $9 million to.

You know, they don't call him the King of the Segways for nothing. That's right, baby. Yeah, this Matt Barr's Al extension. Eight years, 9.15 million per. And, you know, unlike most of these deals, like, actually, that's the money across the board every year. Yeah. Yeah, no bonuses, just flat. That's Lou Lamarillo for you.

Everyone's like, oh, he's a genius. No, he's just, is he a genius or is he old and just wants to keep things simple? Pop Pop doesn't do signing bonus. Yeah. So what were your initial thoughts on? My initial thoughts, again, yet another, in theory, our player in his prime locking into a eight-year deal in a flat cap, even though we know the cap is going to start shooting up in a couple of years. I don't get why they're all doing this.

Yes, I understand that there is such a thing as injuries. Yes, I understand that it's a lot of money. It's more money than I have and all of this stuff. Not me. I have more money than that. Yeah, you do. But I don't get it. I don't get why. And I think that, obviously anytime you sign a guy to eight years there's shared risk the the team is certainly taking a risk too we've seen guys sign big deals like that that a couple years in don't look very good even guys that did it when when they were young obviously if you sign a guy in his late 20s you're taking an enormous risk I understand why those guys are signing eight year deals if they're offered but for sure um guys like you know like barzell

jack hues tim stuczo like on all on down the list I don't understand what why they're doing it. And I don't understand why their agents are having them do it, although I have a theory. Do you want to hear my theory of what is at least partly contributing to this? Yes. It's not just, you know, people always say, well, guys get injured. Sean, did you know that sometimes guys could get injured in the next eight years? Did you know that guys could have their production stall out the next eight years? And I do know that. You know what else sometimes happens over the course of eight years? Guys change. agents.

And I wonder if some of this is just agents going like, you know what, dude, you lock up for the max because then I get all of it. Yeah. And I'm not going to take the risk of telling you to wait two years. And then in two years, you hire a bigger name agent to sign your big deal. And now I've cost myself millions of dollars. I really wonder if that's part of it. Now, I got to say, when they signed this deal, I was like, oh, yeah, he's a good

young player. I totally forgot. This is a guy in the third year of his, you know, three-year second contract where he's getting $7 million. And I'm like, holy shit, is Mapar's all like 25 years old? He is 25 years old. He will be 26 when this contract starts. And so to sign Mapar Zoll for eight years, you're like, oh, that's a decent amount of time. He's going to be 34 when this contract ends.

How old am I? How is that possible? I'm not even saying they shouldn't have done it because of the term or whatever. Like you get the, especially if you're the islanders, you want to be like, no, no, we're not letting any good players go anywhere. Like, absolutely, I totally get why they, I'm going to tell you folks, overpaid him. They absolutely overpaid him. This is like almost Matthew Kachuk money. And this is a guy who has like 180 point season.

Well, that's it. And he has, like, this is the part that's, like, this is the part that's, surprises me whenever I. And that 80 point season was five years ago or whatever. His rookie year. Yeah. Right. Like he comes in his rookie, he has 85 points in a full season, wins the calder. Everybody's like, holy smokes, the islanders have got their franchise player for the next decade plus. And since then, not only has he not had an 80 point season, not had a point per game season. He hasn't come close. 62 points in a full season. 60 in the COVID year. 45. And And last year, 59 points.

Here's the crazy part about that, that 59 points. 15 goals. Yep. Maparzal is a 15 goal player last year? That doesn't make, now, great. Even in his big year, even in his big year, he scored 22 goals. That's his career high. Yeah.

I mean, last year, or not last year, but the 56 game season, he, I think was on pace for like 25 or something like that. So, like just looking at the math really quick. But like, again, this is definitely an overpay. I don't know how you argue that it's not, except to say that in three years when the cap is $91 million, and you go, oh, Matt Barzal only makes 10% of the cap, that makes sense to me. It's weird, right? Because we're so used to seeing these deals get signed where somebody signs a long deal. And we go, well, it's going to be good value for the first few years.

And then after that, it's going to go bad. because of the player's aging curve. But here, because of his age and because of the cap curve going up in a few years, it almost feels the opposite. Like, it's an overpay now, but in three or four years, it'll be fine.

Which is the opposite of how we're used to looking at this stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's $9 million for a point-of-game center is very reasonable. The question is, is that, what he is, can they get him back to that?

The other thing I want to say about that, though, is what kind of help has Matt Barzal had the last three years, let's say? Very little. So, you know, the idea that, like, he can set up all these guys for all these goals themselves. Nobody's setting him up. And that's part of the reason he only had 15 goals last year, right? But at the same time, you know, I look at, I look at, I'm on. their cat friendly page right now. This is, I feel like I'm losing my mind. Five million bucks for

Jean-Cabriel Peugeot. Five million bucks for Kyle Paul Mary. Six million for Brock Nelson. Like, you know, to one extent or another, these are or were all good players. But again, every single one of them is overpaid, right? And so at some point, you're just like, yeah, I mean, you know, like, I guess we're past the days when like the Cal Clutter Buck and Matt Martin contracts were like truly objectionable. It didn't always, it wasn't always that way, but now it feels like,

okay, they're kind of getting what they have earned or whatever. But yeah, I just look at this roster and I go, oh, if everybody's overpaid, I think I've identified what the problem is, right? Like,

they just don't have enough guys who are like, going to be able to keep up with Barzal in like a serious way. And I guess the other thing to say is they just change their coaches. And so you can say, well, you know, Barry Tross system, you know, even your guys who should be scoring like 100 points, they're only going to have 75 or whatever. Yeah, that first year, that rookie year when he had the 85 points, the Islanders were top 10 in goals scored that year, but finished dead last in goals against, missed the playoffs

by a mile, were last or close to last in the metro. the four years since they have not been a top 20 goal scoring team that entire time. And three of those years were very trots. Now, obviously, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. If Barzell's your best offensive player and he's not performing, then you're not going to score a lot. Or is it that you're not scoring a lot? And so he's not getting the numbers, especially as a guy who's not a goal score. He's getting the assist.

You need someone else to put the puck in the net. But I think there is a chance that a new coach comes in and goes, all right, priority number one, or close to it is I'm going to get this guy going again as. Oh, it has to be priority number one. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll be interested. This is, you know, the one last thing I want to say about Barzal is like, he's not like a particularly good defensive player either.

Like I don't think he's like horrible or anything, but like he's not a guy where you're like, oh, when Marzal's on the guy's fucking locked down, it's over. He's young Patrice Bergeron out there. You know what I mean? Like it's just not the case. Most offensive 25-year-olds aren't that guy. For sure. But like I'm saying you don't find extra value outside of the point.

That's that's right. Like there's no like hidden value in turn. Again, apart from well, he's going to sell a lot of jerseys for you. And, you know, like he's the face of the franchise. And that in itself is worth X amount of dollars, which is true. Inarguably true. But at the end of the day, you. do want to see the production on the ice.

And I don't know if it would, let's put it this way. Just in terms of if you look at all the players in the league who make $9 million or more, I don't know how many you say like, oh, that guy is definitely worse than Matt Barzal, you know. I think there's a few. There are a few out there. But, but like, you know, they're the Tyler Stagin guys where they, they got signed when they were the young Matt Barzal types.

And then... Did you see Tyler Sagan is the highest paid player in the league by salary this year? I didn't see that. Actual dollars in. That rocks. Oh, I love this sport, man. That's so cool. I can't, I mean, I really, again, I understand, yes, oh, gee, Sean, if someone offered you eight years and nine million, you wouldn't take it.

Yeah, of course. But in two years, we've already seen Nathan McKinnon sign a deal that, you know, that, you're that went past Connor McDavid. In two years, Austin Matthews is going to sign a deal that's going to be 13 or 14 million. In the two years after that, Connor McDavid's deal is going to be up

and he's going to sign a deal that's like 15 minutes. Like, we're not that far away from looking at the top of the salary for forwards and seeing 15 million, 13 million, to probably be a 14 million guy and sneak in there somewhere, a few others. And then there's going to be a whole bunch of guys

in their prime making 7,000, eight, nine million on long-term deals that run through the rest of the decade. While the cap is going up five million a year, the cap's going to get to 100. And look, some of them maybe won't live up to the deal and they'll be happy they signed it, that they got their money well, they could. Others will feel, you know, maybe others won't care. Sure. You know, they've got enough money.

But man, there are definitely some guys who are setting themselves up to really be looking at their agent going. Why did I lock in on this? I could make 14 million on the open market, like not even the open market, just if I signed a new deal right now, I left tens of millions of dollars on the table by signing that deal that you told me to sign. I don't know. I'm very interested to see how it turns out. You heard Nathan McKinna when he signed his deal, he was like, I was sick of hearing about how underpaid I was. And he's not going to be underpaid anymore, but someone else will be. Yeah. Yeah, it's, yeah, like you say, I'm looking at the list of guys who are starting next season are slated to make $9 million or more, and there are 36 of them.

And like, you know, like, yeah, 36, yeah. And like, you know, there are Jeff Skinner's on this list, right? There are Seth Jones is on this list. There are Jamie Ben's on this list. I get that. But I'm just saying, I think Barzal is like in the bottom. Like out of 36, is he in the 26 to 36 range or whatever? Yeah, I think he kind of probably is.

And again, I like the player. I think he's, what do you want to say, like 85th percentile forward in the NHL, something like that? You know, that's a really good place to be. but I you know obviously the other factors of like we can't have another John DeVarez situation yeah that is what drove this this money I think

and the islanders do remind me a little bit of like the sharks when it came to like Thomas Hurtle and Timo Myers especially where it's like we've got all these bad contracts we are locked into these old guys but that can't be a reason

to not sign the good young guy. You've got to sign him, but then, yeah, I guess that's going to be the question. Does this turn into a Logan Couture situation where you're looking back going, oh, this guy wasn't as good as we hoped he would be, and now he's another one of the bad contracts. A few years before we'd be saying that about Barzell. Yeah, for sure. Again, it was one less thing to worry about if you're the Islanders.

And look, the other thing is they got the brand new arena. It would be awfully tough for them to be like, oh, we can't afford to keep our... Right. Everyone's favorite player. Yeah. Yep. All right.

Now, Sean, when do you think the first NHL game of this, regular season game of the season is? What day do you think this is? You know what? I know this. Okay. And I'll tell you why I know it. Okay.

Because months ago, in the summer, when I was putting together my, like, rough schedule of what I was going to write and when, I must have Googled, like, NHL opening night and found out that it was it was this Friday Friday yeah crazy and I found that on I was like oh that's weird that they were doing it on Friday anyways I then proceeded to plan you know the last few weeks of my work all around the NHL starting on Friday and it was only like two days ago that I realized that that's just the Europe games and that the actual season for

everyone else starts like Monday and Wednesday of next week And the only reason I found that out is because I was looking at a team schedule for some preview I was writing. And it said that on Saturday they were playing a preseason game. And I was like, well, that's not right. The season started by then. And then I pieced it together. And I had to like come crawling to my editor and be like, I need to change my schedule because me, your professional national hockey writer, did not know when the NHL season actually started.

I must have Googled it. So much like you, I found out by. accident by Googling like when does the season start and it says well the you know the the ESPN games and everything those start on a Tuesday or whatever and I was like okay that sounds that sounds right to me that the season usually starts on a Tuesday or Wednesday and then they were like but of course if you want to watch the sharks and predators open the season that's that's it Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Oh. Huh. Okay. If you say so. Yeah. Did you see the video? By the way, these games are,

are, like Sean said, this Sharks Predators game is in Prague. Yes. Did you see the video of Cody Glass being told he made the team? I did, yeah. What a little cute video. It's, it was... He cried a little bit. It was nice.

Yeah, I'm sure he was kind of wondering why there was a cameraman in there. That's right. Filming it. But, sure. Yeah, it was, you know, that was nice. I got excited when I saw something that, like, I saw a reference to the video before I saw the video. And I love videos of where they tell the guy in front of the entire team.

Yeah. Like, do you ever see these videos where it's like some college walk on? Yep. And they like will announce it like this offensive lineman made the team. And like he just gets dogpiled by 50 guys that are so excited for him. So I was hoping to be that. But I guess, you know, he's he's probably not the first person to have a hockey conversation with David Poyle and end up in tears.

So that's... Yeah, I thought that was a really nice video. But yeah, Sharks Predators, Friday afternoon. This is the weirdest league on Earth. 2 p.m. Eastern. Well, and look, I mean, we understand why. Obviously, you got your, you know, you got your time zone difference. And they're over in Europe, so they need to, when they fly back, they're going to get a few days off.

So I guess they didn't want them starting at the same time as everyone. and then having, you know, being like three games behind two weeks into the season. I don't know. Or maybe the NHL thinks this is a marquee event and they wanted it to have the spotlight. I don't know. I guarantee, even as we're talking about it now, that I'm going to forget on Friday afternoon that this is happening. Yeah. And I'm going to see somebody, like, I wonder how many tweets I'll see and feel annoyed that people are like live tweeting preseason games.

and then before I clicks in. Yeah. Oh, they must be playing ZSC Burn today. You know what all this does is I bet you it's screwed up everyone's fantasy hockey drafts. Yeah. The weekend would be a great time to do that. Now you can't or it's going to like screw up your first week. Yep.

Now, I will say this though. If you're drafting anybody on the sharks and predators, you have bigger problems. Fair point. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's, um, I, I guess I'm excited. Watch an actual real NHL game with our full NHL teams. None of these AHL, apart from the Sharks, I guess.

But I don't know. I'm interested to see how things go for the Predators this year, certainly. That's, I don't know. By the time we do next week's episode, like, it's going to be the regular season has already started. So, like, I don't want to do a team-by-team preview or anything like that. But the predators are fascinating to me insofar as literally anywhere they finish in that division. I'm like totally makes sense to me. I get it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, challenging Colorado would not make sense to me. Well, only because I think they have the goalie who, oh, if that guy rips off like a 932 season or whatever. Oh, yeah. Okay. For sure. Okay.

You know what I found out about. the Predators when I was doing one of my preview pieces. They had in Nashville. They did. Did you know this? We have hockey there? They had over 60 majors last year. They had a lot of fights. They had

guys who fought last year. They had got, you know, 60 major penalty of which most, you know, almost all would have been fighting. I assume not quite all of them, but and the difference between them and the second place team that I want to say was the Minnesota Wild.

was the same as the difference between the second place team and the 28th place team. And not only that, they had 60 majors, there has been no team in the last decade has had more than 50 other than that. So, I mean, they didn't just, like, lead the league. They just went out of their minds. And yet, did you ever, like, at any point last year, feel like, man, this is this Predators team. It's an intimidating bunch. This is the Broad Street Bullies. this is the old Norris Division.

This is, you know, keep your head up in Nashville. Like, I never felt that way. Like, I... No, I agree with you. Mark Borwicki used to play in Ottawa. I like the guy. Good dude. Not...

I'm not really terrified every time he's on the ice, even if he's going to fight 20 times a year. So, I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to look it up here. Fight. Team leaders for the... I'm on HockeyFights.com. Well, this is for the postseason. that doesn't help me.

Hey, wait a second. There's no fighting in the postseason. Somebody had four, it said. Yeah, the Predators had 59 fights. 59 fights last year. That's a lot. That's a real lot to me. Like, who are they fighting?

I don't know. That's my question. Because there are teams now. Like, we live in an era where there's teams, like, what's the bottom of that list? There must be teams that have single digit. Fights for me. For sure, yeah. Let's see here.

three teams had single-digit fights. Can you guess what those three teams were? One of them you should absolutely get the other two. I think you would have no. Is Toronto one of them? No, Toronto had 12. We had Wayne Simmons. That's right.

What's a team that put a premium on skill last season? Went fairly deep in the playoffs. Colorado? Nope. Colorado had 20. Tampa had 20. Tampa had 31. Yeah, okay.

The bottom of those two lineups had a lot of tougher guys. What's a lineup that were you're like, oh, they didn't have a single tough guy last year? And that's why they're trying to trade a really good player on their team now and have been for the last year plus. It's the Edmonton Oilers. The Edmonton Oilers seven twice. I was thinking Emmettin. I thought Evander Kane maybe would have. Well, he only came in.

Yeah. And they were tied with the Columbus Blue Jackets and then the only other team with single-digit five. fights, the Dallas stars with Ad 8. Hmm. Who knew? Not me. Yeah, clearly. But yeah, that's really weird.

To your point, though, of, like, who did they fight? I feel like the answer is that Tanner Genoa and, like, Cody Glass really squared off, like, four or five times. Just, like, the guys were like, where are you doing? We're busy. Hold on. Trying to figure out. Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about the one other thing that I cannot fucking believe people talked about it this much in the past week.

Okay. Did you know that some teams in the NHL, and notably a very famous one, they're like, oh, what if we tried this forward at defense? Yeah. Mitch Barner. He's going to play defense now. Okay. That's fine. He's a good player.

Like, it makes total sense. A guy who's good carrying the puck. Put him on the blue line. He carries the puck an extra, like, 80 feet for you. Yeah. Works out. To me, it's, it's very interesting because if people, you know, people didn't hear the story, it's, the Leafs have been practicing with Mitch

Martyr on defense, not because they're actually switching his position, but because the thinking is late in the game, if they're trailing, you go four forwards. Yeah. not just on a power play, but you go four forwards at five on five. But not four forwards because Mitch Martin would be playing defense. But you have four forwards out there. On the ice, yeah. While one of them is still kind of playing a defensive role, it makes sense.

You hear it and you go, yeah, let's see if it works. Now, this being the NHL, whether it's the Leafs or whoever tries it, the very first time that that guy gets burned on a two-on-one-one and the other team scores, that'll probably be the end of it. because if something doesn't work immediately, we stop. But yeah, that's, I mean, we've seen the evolution in the last 20 years of power plays where, you know, in 20 years ago, every power play was three forwards and two defensemen. And you had three forwards, your three best forwards, and then two defensemen bombing slap shots

from the point and missing the net and all of that other stuff. And now the vast majority of teams are using four forwards on the, the power play and some of them are even using five. The next logical thing, I think, is to apply that same concept to five on five when you are pressing offensively at the very least. And, you know, again, nobody's saying that you send Mitch Marner out in the defensive zone to clear the front of the net when you're up by a goal with 30 seconds left. It's the opposite.

It's we need a goal. There's five minutes left. We're down by one. Yeah, have Mitch take a few shifts on defense. And that gives us some extra offense. Now, it'll be interesting to see what they then do with, you know, with the Austin Matthews line. Who do you swap in as that other wing? I don't know.

We'll see. But it's smart. I don't know that it's super groundbreaking or controversial. I feel like they're famously had guys moving around the lineup all the time, like pretty recently where they were like, hey, Brent Berger's. Or don't you play forward for like a full season. There have definitely been guys. But that was more like Brent Burns, today you are a forward. Yeah.

You know, Dustin Bufflin, you're going to play defense today. You know, Sergey Federer famously was maybe closer to this where he shifted around a bit. But there had been guys who switch positions. Yeah, Marty McSorley was another one. Marty McSorley got Selty votes one year, even though everyone thinks of him as a defenseman because he played forward for a bit. And then, of course, also you had a whole bunch of no talent enforcers who just played whatever position. because it didn't matter. They were terrible at everything.

So they were, they just need to get on the ice. But this is, this is different. Like nobody's, you're not going to be able to draft Mitch Marner as a defenseman in your, in your fantasy pool, but it is,

it's the same. I mean, we see it in football. We've seen more of these hybrid players who play different positions. Baseball, it's always been a thing. NBA, I imagine,

but, yeah, it's very common that you would, you know, move guys around. A guy can be a center, guy can be a power forward, that kind of thing. So, like, LeBron has played in center, even though he's only like six, eight. Just you could put it, there are some guys you can put anywhere and, or not anywhere,

anywhere, but like you can put in two or three different positions in the NBA and it is totally fine. The other thing that's interesting in Toronto on the blue line is they have also been having Morgan Riley play the wrong side a little bit, because they're like a lot of teams, they have more depth on one side than the other. And so he's volunteered to switch over. And wouldn't that be groundbreaking if we discover that super talented defensemen actually don't turn into a potato if you put them on the wrong side? No, they just get a little bit worse.

Just get rid of this scourge of having to talk about left and right-handed defensemen. Yeah, you know. Constantly. Like maybe your fourth best defenseman who happens to also. be the same hand as the first three guys doesn't need to be a scratch so that you can put like a literal wet bag of lawn clippings on your top pair because they hold the stick the other way. Yeah. Curse you, Mike Babcock. That's the worst thing Mike Babcock's ever done is that left-right defenseman thing. Yeah, I think that's probably true. Yep. All right. I will try to put a list together during the break, though, to see if there's any other bad. Keep the private, though.

Yeah, I wouldn't want that to get out there. So, yeah, we will take that break and we'll be right back. This week's episode of Puck Soup is brought to you by a new sponsor, Factor. And folks, falls here, right? And what happens when the fall comes? Starts getting dark earlier. It's a little cold or out. You maybe don't want to go out and, you know, do summer stuff.

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All right. We just talked about the Toronto Maple Leafs. Let's talk about that other team in Ottawa. Ottawa, Ontario. They are in Ottawa too. I get, well, they're in Canada. The Ottawa senators, oh, they're going to be all set. They got Cam Talbot in that.

Yeah. Well, Cam Talbot's out a month. Oops. Tough shit. They claimed Helberg off waivers. Put a gun to my head. Could I tell you Helberg's first name very quickly? I don't know that I could.

I just worked on Helberg, so here we are. I was going to say Marcus. It's Magnus. Magnus, yeah. And as I said, he has been in the league since 2013 and is two and old. Once he played 14 games, yeah. Yeah, he has two wins, no loss. These guys never lost.

It's coming up on a decade of no loss. Yeah. Now, can I tell you what my mind immediately went to when I said Helberg? And the answer is one of the guys from the Big Bang theory is called Simon Helberg. It's not him. There you go. Same dude. No, I looked it up. It's not the same dude. I got to tell you, man, this, you know, Camp Talbot, I think he, he, what, cracked a rib, I think was. Yeah, something like that. That's not good. everybody outside of Ottawa is like, oh, they got Camp Talbot. Talbot's a new guy. Anton Forsberg was really good last year. I still, I think Anton Forsberg, even if Cam Talbot was healthy, was going to be the starter here. And Talbot was going to tell Cam Talbot that.

He gets past hockey tell him somebody is going to be the starter instead. But that's, but that's my point, though, is like he engineered this trade out of Minnesota. Mm-hmm. So that he wouldn't, um, you know. you know, have to have to be behind Mark Andre Fleury. And then Otto was like, oh, we actually had a goalie last year who was pretty good for us. And you're like, oh, did that help you in the standings? Oh, not at all.

No, not at all. No. Anton Forrestberg was very good last year. He has not been good the entire rest of his career. So, you know, we know how goaltending goes. But I don't think that's going to crush the senators. And I don't know if you saw this, but just in the last few minutes as we're recording this, Kevin Weeks tweeted that an Alex to Brinket extension

is closing in. Ooh. Makes sense. Watch another, it's going to be another eight year deal for me to get mad about. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know.

Like, I guess it doesn't really matter that they're losing Talbot. Like you said, they're going to, it doesn't, it feels like the goalie quality is kind of beside the point in Ottawa this year. It is except that I would say that in Ottawa, like, nobody's under the illusion that this team's a cup contender. There are a lot of fans here who would like them to be a playoff team,

but I think there's an understanding that it may be another year. But the expectation in Ottawa is they've got to play meaningful hockey all year long. They can't be out of it by December again. And so they are under a lot of pressure to get out to a good start, or at least a decent start. Remember last year they won like four of their first 20 games? And that was it. Like last year, they came in with some decent optimism last year because they had finished the season strong and, you know, on all of this. And then they just face plan it right out of the gate.

And it was another, you know, season of total hopelessness. How many times do you think it's going to happen where a team that's eight miles out of the playoffs? And the example I always use is Columbus in like 2015 or something like that. maybe even a little earlier than that. They would, like, three years in a row, they ended the season going like, you know, 12, 8, and 2 or whatever. And everybody's like, next year's the year.

And then there were the Columbus Blue Jackets again. The Sabres, the Sabres do it every year. Well, the Sabres do the opposite, where they start insanely fucking hot. Well, that too, yeah. And then they lose 46 games in a row, and everybody's like, oh, geez, I don't know what happened. And it's like, well, you're the Buffalo Sabres.

And so I guess my point is, I never again want to hear about, oh, they finish the season so strong, though. Doesn't matter. Who gives a shit? You miss the playoffs by 60. Especially if you're playing backup goalies and, you know, you're the schedule, you're the schedule trap game every week where it's like, oh, we got Tampa on Thursday. And we lost three to two in overtime. Yeah, of course.

Who gives a shit? So, yeah, you're right. Whereas, but the point to bring back to Ottawa this year, they actually made changes and brought in guys that should make them better. For sure. If they get off to a slow start, and so, yeah, that's, you know, if Forrestberg isn't good, now they don't have that second guy to go to. I was talking about this with Mendez last week on our show. Yeah, I was talking about this with Mendez on our other show. We both think DJ Smith is a prime candidate to be first coach fired.

Yeah, you mentioned that. If it gets off to a bad start. You mentioned that on this podcast as well, because we were talking about coaches who could. theoretically get canned first. They've got us. It could get ugly in Ottawa if they have another. Now, last year, I mean, winning four out of 20 games, that's not even really, really legitimately bad teams.

Don't start that badly. But this does hurt and that's a you've, you've kind of lost, you know, by the time Can't Talbot comes back, he may have either already lost the starter's job or all hope may have been lost in Ottawa. Right. So we'll see. Did you see the NHL.com, speaking of coaches getting fired,

did you see the NHL.com panel of experts who slam their head in a car door and then fill out a survey? Okay. Their coach of the year candidates. Number one with a bullet. Mike Sullivan, can that be right that they actually think? Mike Sullivan is going to be the NHL coach of the year? Yeah. Which, now, if you're asking me who's the best coach of the NHL?

And you want to make the case for Mike Sullivan? Yeah. I'll listen to that. I would absolutely listen to that. But was it you or I'm assuming it was you who made the point that like he got this team into the playoffs last year. Everybody was hurt, you know, all this stuff and either didn't get a first place vote or didn't get a vote, period. So what is he possibly going to do this year that's going to suddenly make him a Jack Adams winner? Yeah, well, so I didn't make that point.

a guy named Craig Wimmski did. And because my rule... Are you different guys? Yeah. My rule is that I don't comment on NHL.com list because they are designed to piss you off and make you feel like you're going insane. Yep. And so, yeah, just real quick here. Mike Sullivan, Rod Brindamore, Gerard Gallant, there's another guy who could get fired.

John Heinz, number four. What are these people talking about? Their job is, like, apparently, to watch hockey. And yet, here we are. But, yeah, DJ Smith, the reason I bring this up is DJ Smith got a first place vote. One NHL.com writer was like, I think this guy's going to be the coach of the year in the NHL. Well, if you think Ottawa is going to make the playoffs, then DJ Smith will make, we'll get a lot of them. Yeah.

Good point. Good point. We had a question on the mailbag on the Patreon. what is the year that you think it is no longer the top four in the Atlantic is some variation of Toronto, Tampa, Boston, Florida? I think next year Boston is going to have a really good chance to not do it for obvious reasons. And hell this year, now that Taylor Halls hurt for the first month or whatever of the season. I mean, if I had to bet, like, I don't think you'd have to offer me really great odds to entice me that this year could be the year. just because this is usually what happens.

Like somebody either jumps up or falls back. Like it wouldn't shock me at all. And definitely I'm not looking at this going. Like the question kind of implies that you might look at it, go, oh, it's going to be another three or four years. And no, I mean, next, I would say more likely than not next year. And probably 50-50 this year. I don't know if I'd go 50-50.

But yeah, I think I'm going back through pages. on NHL.com's standings page to see when the last time one of those teams wasn't in the top. Yeah. So 1617, Ottawa finished second in the division. Wow. And Florida missed the playoffs by fucking 15 points or whatever. So yeah, that's as far back as you need to go. But that's a long time ago now.

That's six years. So, yeah. I think next year, is the year that I'm like, there's a better than 50-50 chance that somebody figures it out. And again, I think it's mostly because the ruins are basically

setting themselves up to take that big step back. Yeah, the way that they signed the Bergeron-Craty deals with the cap hit kicking into next year and that it's pretty clearly this is the last dance. Has anyone made that comparison? Not me, certainly on this podcast. I didn't. No.

One other thing that Kevin Weeks brought up this morning, he posted like an eye emoji and said like keep an eye on Dallas or whatever. So people think it's for obvious reasons. People think it's something to do with Jason Robertson, who remains unsigned. But I just saw that Darren Drager tweeted ongoing discussions between Stars and Jason Robertson. It seems like a major shift is going to have to occur for. Robertson to start the season in Dallas, but still time to get something done. Right. So that feels like there being two sides to negotiation and each side, a different side reached out to each of the insiders.

That's right. Yeah. And I'm not sure which would be which, but. Or maybe the same guy, you know, a smart agent tells one insider, we're getting close to get the excitement up and then tells another insider. Yeah, but they need to really step up a little bit. Yeah, step up. Well, maybe that's it too. Boy, that'd be smart.

Whoever his agent is, that would be a smart move for him to do. But I think the thing that's funny about that is now the stars, like fans at least, are going like, well, maybe if they get someone to take on Anton Hudobin, he's signed for like $3.7 million. Well, he's making $3.7. His cap hits like 3.3 or something like that. and he sucks. He was terrible last year. And he's coming off a season-ending injury from last season. But other than all those things,

do you think you could get a second round pick for him? Yeah. Oh, and they can't eat any salary because all of it has to go to Jason Robertson. That's the other thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah, this is going to work out great for you guys. Congratulations. But yeah.

So that's your Jason Robertson update. is he remains unsigned and he might or might not sign in the near future. And, you know, this being this podcast by the time we've recorded it and actually pushed it out, he's signed. He and Alex DeBrinke and have both signed

and been traded for each other. That's right. It's three seconds after we finish his podcast. You might say, well, then guys, couldn't you just like get back together? Hey, shut up, shut up, no. No. Don't say that.

that kind of stuff. Not doing that. But yeah, so that's what's going on with that. Here's a question I have for you. We're now at the point in the preseason where people are starting to go, hey, this young guy, this guy who's like a rookie this year, should he make the team out of camp and stick around all season? There's Yerislavkovsky.

Brad Lambert, I saw a couple articles about that. He's at a really good preseason. No relation, by the way. he's had a really good preseason for Winnipeg should he stick around Shane Wright you know we're starting to hear that kind of talk a little bit I think so here here is a philosophical question for you if you're a team that is probably not going to make the playoffs and Edmonton or Winnipeg rather can at least like talk themselves into you know we have a chance because we have a goalie and you know all that kind of stuff but if you're Montreal and you have like

almost no shot of making the playoffs. or Seattle to a lesser extent. They have a slightly better shot, but still not a particularly good one. Do you let those guys make the team this year? There's so many different ways to look at this. Obviously, the right way is it's whatever's best for their development. Yeah. If going back to junior is, you know, it's that old thing, right?

Do you want somebody struggling at the NHL level, or do you want them to go back and have a dominant year of junior and then come back? And you know what? there's not an obvious right answer to that one. You know, clearly you don't want a situation where you keep a kid around and then they're in the press box or they're on the fourth line. The Stephen Stanco's development path. Yeah, which, you know, look how that turned out.

You never even hear about that guy anymore. So it's... Well, yeah, one goal in that playoff where they won the Stanley Cup for the first time? Exactly. You only have one goal, pathetic. You barely even noticed him for most of the... Yeah. most of the playoffs there.

So that's what you should be thinking, especially if you're a team with no hope at the playoffs. Whatever is best for the player's development, that's what you do. But there are other pieces of this, right? There is, you know, what are you selling to the fan base, both in terms of marketing the player, marketing hope? Do you want to, like, if you're a lousy team, do you want to put, you know, this, hey, everybody, look at the shiny new kid we've got here.

See, like, there is a future here. You know, that would apply, especially, I think, to a team like Winnipeg where there's a lot of angst in the fan base over the fact they didn't really change the roster. In Seattle, where you're trying to sell tickets and keep the excitement level, you know, does it to have a guy who was the presumptive number one pick in the draft up until he dropped? Does that affect your decision? And then there's also, like, as a GM, right? my first rule of the NHL always. GMs are concerned about their own reputation and careers, first and foremost, before what's best for the team in most cases.

You know, is anyone under the gun? Is it does it make sense to get that guy out there? Is Ron Francis maybe thinking, you know what, we got Maddie Banyers who's going to maybe win the rookie of the year. We don't need to get Shane Wright in. We can have safe Shane Wright. And then he can be next year's big thing. I don't know.

I don't know enough about any of these players to say development-wise, this is what the right thing is. You hope the teams make the right decision for them and them being the player, not the right decision in the short term for the team through some other perspective. Yeah. What would you do? You're the prospect guy. I think are these elite prospects, would you say? You know, they are elite prospects. I don't think

I Maybe Brad Lambert because he's actually like played pro hoc Well I guess Yuri Slavkovsky has too But Brad Lambert has played a higher level of pro hockey Like in a better league certainly Than Slavkovsky

But talk to me about Lambert because this guy He was like He was drafted last Was he drafted last year? Yep the 2022 draft yeah A couple of months ago And he went late

late- late-ish, yeah. So where, how does it, because usually when we're having this conversation, it's top five picks, right? It's rare for somebody to go late in the first round or beyond and make the NHL right away.

So what's his deal? His deal is that he was a guy who was supposed to, you know, like he was supposed to be a higher pick than this. There was talk for a little while that he could be like a top three pick. And he dropped to 30th. Yeah, 30th. So, yeah, like, and he just didn't have a good year last year.

I think there were some injuries or something like that. I might be mistaken about that, but I'm pretty sure he got hurt. And he just didn't have a good draft year. It's really that simple. Okay. But, like, he was playing in the men's league in Finland. Yeah, we should say he's, yeah, he's, that screws me up. Like, you, you can't be named Brad and be like a Finnish guy.

Like, that's, I'm sorry. Put a couple of dots over the A or something. His dad's Canadian, his mom is Finnish. And I believe it's a situation where his dad was a pro hockey player in Finland. You can't just figure this out. It's the Douglas Murray thing. Like, let's just, please. And that was the same thing, right?

Like he was, he was Swedish, but his dad was Canadian or something like that. Anyway. Yeah. So he just, he just didn't have a good draft here. But again, like, everybody was always like, but he's a really good player. And so the Jets, you know, much like when the, when the Islanders got Atu Roddy, and that was a guy who everybody thought was going to be a top five pick for a little while. And then he, I think, I think he even dropped to the second round.

and then it seems like he's going to be good. So, you know, it's just one of those things where, like, a bad draft year can set a guy back, but, like, if the consensus for a while has been, like, this is one of the better players in this draft year, that is probably the right call, you know? By the way, at two, Roddy, that's a finished name. Now, that, oh, boy, is it that AA at the beginning of it,

you can't beat that. Exactly. But, yeah, so I think that, I think that's the, the thing with Lambert is that he just, he was, I think he's also like one of the younger guys in the, no, the year before. So he was one of the younger guys on one of the, uh, Finland teams. But I think he was one of the older guys in this year's, yeah, he was born in December. So he'll be 19 and, uh, mid December this year. So yeah. So he, but he, again, like, he was the youngest play one of the youngest players at World Junior in 2021, you know. So this is a guy who he's always kind of been on the fast track. And then, you know, for a million different reasons, a guy can have a not great draft year. Look at Shane Wright, you know, the consensus number one guy.

And then he doesn't go, he drops to fourth, right? So, yeah, that's, but anyway, my point is with signing these guys and keeping them around and all that kind of stuff, I think if there was a. fairer transfer agreement or whatever you want to say between the NHL and the CHL where these guys didn't have to go back to dominate the OHL like you said that would be one thing then it would be a slam dunk keep them as a as a professional player but like put them as the number one center on your AHL team or whatever I think the fact that it's either the NHL where as you say

they're going to maybe get like second unit power play time in third line minutes or whatever or send them back to juniors. I think that makes it a little tougher of a decision because, you know, like what Shane Wright's going to go back and just speedbag the O HL this year, probably. Brad Lambert, same deal, right? Is that where, like, that is where he would go then, right? I believe so. I don't know who has his rights or if anybody does.

He might be one of those guys who's eligible for the AHA, in which case. send them to the AHL for sure. But yeah, like if if it's a choice between the NHL and the NHL and the CHL,

I think I would rather send them back to the CHL just because you don't want them playing 12 minutes a night or whatever. And then you get to slide a year of their contract when you're going to be bad anyway.

Yeah. I do always wonder that. Like it's such like and it is, it's a, it's a crack and sliding a year is double-edged sword right like that that can help you you want to have them on the entry level but also that means you get three better years on the entry level that second contract might be significant and it is always tough like especially for those guys who land right on that razor's edge where it's like

the choice is 12 minutes a night in the NHL where for maybe the first time in their lives they're not the best player and they're not even viewed as a particularly good player and some guys don't handle that well. Or you go down to junior and it's easy. You just speedbag everyone and really, it depends. Like you can learn a ton. You can up your game or you can just be like hockey's easy, man.

I'm so good at this. I don't, you know. Yeah, I think that's a thing where you're going to be in constant communication with their OHL coach or whatever. Be like, put this kid on the PK. Let's see what happens. put this kid out there in the last three minutes of a game where you're down two goals, see what happens.

And probably coaches are going to be doing that anyway. But like, yeah, anyhow, that's my thing on that. Let me, I got an email the other day. And again, we usually don't like to do too much on this podcast now, like sports gambling stuff. Yeah. And in fact, I would say like, don't, this is me saying, do not gamble on sports. It's fucking stupid. There's other things you can put your money on if you, you know.

I did this day. I always say it's I have a lot of fun. I don't put a lot of money down, but I like talking about futures. Who's going to be, who's going to win this award? Who's going to win that eight months down the line? But you could not twist my arm enough to get me to be like betting on like, oh, the least are minus 130 tonight. Yeah, that seems insane to me. But the email I got, and I don't even know what, like, gambling site this is for,

but it's the goals scored over unders for the top 10 projected goal scores in the league, according to whatever site this is. I thought this was a fun one. Austin Matthews, over under, 56 and a half. I'm going to go under just because 56 and a half is still so much in today's NHL. And obviously, you know, an injury or anything like that. also he had an injury like jeez he had what 60 and like 72 games last year something like that yeah i i have to take the over yeah because of that like oh what

happens if he misses 10 games well i guess he only clears it by three and a half goals you know oh okay yeah so yeah i'm going to take the over on that one leon dry sidel 54 and a half oh uh yeah i mean i i i go under for the same reason but i have to go under on that one Okay. That feels like, look, again, great player, 50 seems within his power, but 54.5 is a lot. And what, I don't, I don't think he even hit that last year, right? I think, excuse me. He was close last year. He had 55.

Yeah, I'm not going to count on him to hit that again. As much as I think he's an unbelievable player, obviously. Connor McDavid, 47.5. Over. I don't even need to know what it is. I'm taking the over. Here's my theory on Connor McDavid, and we saw a little bit of it in the playoffs last year.

I think that having spent a whole year of listening to people do the, oh, is this awesome Matthews now the best player in the league, is going to make this guy Supernova. Or maybe he's already supernova, whatever the next step above. The guy had 123 points in 80 games last year. Elite athletes are almost always, like, insanely, competitive, like to an unhealthy degree. Like, I don't mean that admirably.

Like, oh, he's a competitor. I mean, like, they're a little bit psychotic. Yeah, like Michael Jordan being like. Exactly. I think that having to hear about how, well, you know, Austin Matthews with his two-way game, and is like, I can see Connor McDavid being like, I will

score more goals than Austin Matthews this year. I love this thought. I will say his career high in goals is 44. And 47 and a half is obviously like a decent size step up from that. But I like what you're thinking and you convince me. I'm going over as well.

So here's the other thing I want to say about that though. And to your point about the ultra-elie guys are always hyper-competitive. You ever see, you know, like when Sidney Crosby was in his first like five years in the league, they'd be like, oh, he's really good, but he can't take a face-off. And then one summer he takes eight billion face-offs, like just practice his face-offs, 24 hours a day for a month straight. And then he comes back. He's the best face-off guy of the league.

Oh, Sydney Cross. Yeah, I mean, he can put the puck in the net. Or, you know, he can, he's a playmaker, but can he really put the puck in the net? Comes back to the next year, wins of Rocket Richard. I can absolutely see Connor McDavid deciding that's what he did. Could you see him doing it, like, just once to show what you can do it? Like, you look back and you're like, what?

Hey, Connor, what was the deal with that one year where you scored 70 goals? Yeah, you had just wanted to. You had 62 goals at the All-Star. break. What happened with that? Decided I was going to do it. Yeah. Just, yeah. But, but I guess that lends even more credence to Drysidal can't hit 54 and a half if McDavid is the focal point of that offense. Alex Ovechkin, 45 and a half. I mean, no backstrom,

but like when... Yeah, so that's going to really hurt back. When have you ever, when has anyone ever made money betting the under on Alexander Ovechkin? That's kind of my thinking here, yeah. That is, that's kind of where I'm at with it where like, yeah, that's a lot of goals. He's 36, 37 years old, whatever he is now. But he's Alex Ovechkin. He will find a way to score 50 goals. It's just how it works.

So, yeah, I will take the over on that very slightly. Kierl Caprizov, 43 and a half. He had 47 last year for reference. I think he's over. I think he's a guy that if Dark Horse, Baroque et Richard, Art Ross,

MVP, all of that, especially of McDavid, for some reason isn't playing a full season. Yeah.

I'm pretty all in on him this year. I'm going to take a slight under, I think, as much as I think he's good. They,

they had a lot of, they had a lot of success last year that I don't know how repeatable it is, basically. But with that, having been said,

they also weren't particularly good on special teams. So there's obviously the opportunity for him to take a step forward on that front as well. I will take the under, though. Kyle Connor, 42 and a half. He had 47 last year. Yeah, I don't know why. I never get that excited about Kyle Connor and.

I know why. Probably should because he puts up the numbers. Yeah, but even then, like, I feel like this is a me thing, but I feel like I've got it stuck in my head that he's like always the third best player on that, their best forward on that team. I think he's certainly the most productive forward on a pretty consistent basis now. Christ, he had 93 points last year. Next close his guy on the team was Mark Schifley with 70 and 67. Nobody even close. Pierre-Luc Dubois, Blake Wheeler, Nick Euler.

And now granted, a lot of those guys missed serious time. And Kyle Conner and who was the other one, I just looked at it. And Dubois did not. Those were the only two guys who were pretty consistently in the lineup last year. Or only two big guns, I guess. But yeah, so I don't know. I think I'm going to take a slight under here just because everybody was like, oh, he had 47.

That feels like a lot. Yeah, it does. It does feel like a lot. So that's why I'm taking the under. Chris Kreider Chris Kreider's up next Here's the thing though I don't disagree with you

I think obviously he scored 52 last year It says here I think this is like right where it is It's 40 and a half And I think he's a 40 goal guy Next year Yeah That's okay

I'll take the slight under Just because 52 last season You know what his career high was before that was 28. So give me that under. Okay. Yeah. I will stick with the under, but I got to say that under is lower than I would have

thought for a big market 52 score of guy. Yeah. But I think this is modern day Adam Graves. Yeah, for sure. Totally agree. Jake Gensel, 38 and a half. You know what? Another guy that I just, I never give enough credit.

How many did he have last year? 40. And it was his second 40 goal season. And in fact, Christ, he's scored at like a 40-ish goal pace each of the last four years. I might go over then on that one. Surprised to hear myself say that, but where are you? I think I will take, again, the slight under. I think the slight under makes a little sense there.

Again, just everybody on that team's a year older. They're going to be good, but how good and that kind of thing. He's a really good player. I got nothing against the guy. but I'm going to take a slight under. He'll be a 35 goal guy only or whatever, you know. Now, the next one up here, he has the same number as Jake Gensel,

38 and a half. Miko Ranting. Rantan in last year had 36. That was a career high. I got to take the under. Yeah, I think I do too. Although he is a guy, like, unlike most of the guys we just talked about,

he's a guy that's young enough that, if he gets over that, you're not looking back going, oh, you know, he had a career year. You're like Kyle Connor's age. That's the new, that's the new normal for him.

Yeah, but I mean, Connor has kind of done it all right. Yeah. Yeah. I guess give me the under. Yeah. Okay.

And one last one here. I just trying to talk myself in. I gave up. One last one here. We mentioned him a little earlier. This is a place for the Tampa Bay Lightning. His name Stephen Stamcoz, and that number is 38 and a half.

He had 42 last year. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to trust him to stay healthy. is my issue there. Did last year, but... Yeah, yeah, he definitely did last year. If he's healthy, if he could guarantee me 80 games,

then I'd take the over all day long, but... I got to take the under, yeah. As, again, as much as I like him, I think the injury risk is there. He's going to be 30... Yeah, he's 32 years old. He'll be 33 in February. So, you know, guys don't get healthier at that age,

generally speaking. So, yeah, there you go. Can I ask you about one guy that we didn't... Like, do you have the full... list. I do not. I only have the top. Well, let me, let me scroll down and see if I can. If you can find it or even if, I did find the whole thing. What are you got? Because I want to ask us this, if people listened to my other show last week, we were talking about Rocket Richard odds. And this is my dark horse. David Pasternak.

David Pasternak. This is alphabetical. Hold on. I have to. Scored 40 goals last year. The Rocket Richard in 2020. So we're talking like two years ago. This guy. won the Rock of Richard. I'm going to need you to absolutely fucking hammer the over on David Pasternak, 37 and a half. Yeah. Like, miss 10 games last year, he's in a contract year. He's in a contract year.

Yeah. Now, I guess the thing to say is no, no Marshan for the first little while, no Taylor Hall, no Charlie McIvoy. Burjuron's getting older. I get all that. there. I think, like I said, I'm hitting the over on this one with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs. Yeah, that's the one that I was just stunned with the, with the Roger Richard. And I just stunned on this too. That's crazy. Yeah, again, they think he's going to score fewer goals than Jake Gensel, David

Pasternak. No way. I know it's tough whenever. Well, some way, obviously. In hockey and sports, whatever, there's always this thing where it's like, all these guys are injured. So the offense is going to get. And yeah, some goals obviously disappear when you're taking the talent like that out. But not all of them disappear. Some of them filtered other spots in the lineup. To me, like, if I'm David Pasternak, this is my chance where I'm kind of sitting there going.

This has been the Bergeron team forever. It's been the Marchion team for it. Like, yes, they were around to win the cup and all this. But this is my chance, the first few months of the season, to plant a flag and be like, it's my team now. This is, yeah, we all love Bergeron. This is last year, but this is my team going forward. And, oh, by the way, I'm still pissed off at my GM and all of that stuff.

And so if you want it to still be my team, you're going to pay me a ton of money. Oh, man, I'm, yeah, I'm hammering the over. Yeah. All right. We're going to do one last thing, and then we're going to take a break. And then we're going to come back and, as you probably see in the episode description. who he played for coming up after the break here. But before we get to the fun thing,

we've got to do the bummer thing. We've got to say these Hockey Canada people seem nasty. Yep, yep. Just further, yet another chance for the Hockey Canada leadership to appear in front of Canadian government committee. And it didn't go well. They were any sort of sense that maybe they would come back to the table with some sense of responsibility,

apologies, you know, whatever you were hoping for. It did not happen. They're digging in their heels that they were essentially playing the, hey, this story has been misrepresented. They didn't say fake news, but it had that vibe. Like they are definitely running from that playbook. And I mean, look, I've said before, I feel very strongly. when you accuse people of wrongdoing or incompetence or whatever else, they have a right to

defend themselves, they have a right to stand up and say, no, you've got the story wrong. Here's how it really is. So I know, I know a lot of people were very disappointed that there wasn't far more contrition on display. I get maybe why there wasn't. But the one comment that is really kind of standing out was that Andrea Skinner is her name. She's the interim. chair of the Hockey Canada board.

And she had a comment basically saying that they were asked. Like, why are you not all resigning? Why are you not cleaning this out so that, you know, and start over again? And she said, well, you know, who knows what effect that would have on hockey in Canada? Will the lights stay on in the rinks? I don't know. Yeah, I feel like Canada would find a way to figure that out. Yeah.

Andrew, I'll let you know if you want to know. They would. Yeah, the lights would stay on. You could, you could just convince any, like, 70-year-old Canadian. You'd be like, here's a picture of Gordy Howe. He would do this. You need to do it, too. And they're like, okay, help me find, like, the big crank I have to turn outside the ring to keep the lights on.

I'll do it. Like, the idea that, like, and again, I get it. These people are getting hammered in the media, social media and fans, everything. I get them standing up and saying, no, this is this is not how it went down. Let us tell our side of the story. I've had people who are smarter than me say that, as an example, that these funds and there was a second fund discovered this week that were being used to pay out settlements, that that is not as outrageous as it sounds, that that is maybe not standard, but is not unusual in the kind of corporate governance. So I get that. If they want to sit down and say, you know, this this wasn't some slush fund of hush money, the way it's been represented and this is why we did it. Okay.

But you, two things. First of all, you don't get to stand up there and say fake news. You got the story wrong. And then not tell us what the actual story is. Well, can I talk about you there? My favorite thing that they said was, oh, really? Hockey's bad? Well, society's bad.

Nobody's doing anything about that. So that, that to me is, that's the greatest, you can say that about literally anything. You can't. And she, like, I mean, her skinner apparently said something along the lines of, like, well, there were two politicians accused of sexual misconduct in the last week. So, aha, like, throw it back at them. Which, you know, what's their point? She's got, hey, got him there. And it's a fair point.

But, you know, you are the head of hockey Canada. Right. So is there a problem in, you know, the agriculture business? I'm sure there is. It is a societal problem. But you're not in charge of the agriculture business. We'll talk to the agriculture people about that. We're talking to you.

You're the hockey person. Yeah. We're asking you to help fix. I just, man, like, I just wanted to be in the room for the meeting where they were like, what if we turn it around on them and we say everything's bad? You think that'll help? what? Everybody's like, yeah, it's a great one. Write it down. Because that's the thing, right? Like, this is, and because this is my other thing. I tend to be somewhat forgiving of things that

people say when they're either put on the spot or if, you know, some, some athlete right after the game says something that they shouldn't have said. Yeah. Okay. But this is, you know, these guys, they've hired their crisis management firms, their communication firms, like they had the chance to strategize everything. They were in the lab on this one. Yeah, for sure. The amount of work and thought that went into the messaging around this. And this is what they came up with. And again, the idea that there would be, that we're not going to be able to keep the lights on if these people that none of us

had ever heard of until this story broke, that if they're not around, oh, that's it for hockey. Like, you know, we're going to, 10 years from now, it'll be, in the Olympics and it'll be like, Russia will be playing America for the gold medal and we'll be like, hey, why come Canada doesn't have an entry? Oh, remember, we got rid of. of that guy we never heard of yeah anyways even since then the two developments since have been apparently the quebec federation basically said they're withdrawing now from hockey Canada

whether that actually happens or not but basically said we you know to be fair quebec talks a big game about that kind of thing every like 15 years or so too soon too soon man um and then the other thing was i guess um justin trudeau was just uh in the last little while was asked about it and... Didn't see that. Probably not good for... It was critical saying, you know, I can't believe these guys are still digging in their heels and everything.

So it's... This is going to end with the leadership being swept out. Yeah, for sure. The question is just how much. And apparently, you know, there's going to be further hearings and further meetings. And apparently one of the people that is getting hauled in is Bob Nicholson, which will be interesting. That's the name that he had been in charge of hockey Canada,

but that's named familiar to NHL people because he went on to the Oilers. Yeah. Yeah, we will see. So it's a mess and it doesn't show any signs of not being a mess. But at this point, after yesterday, I feel pretty confident saying that there is no path to surviving this for the various suits and heads of this. They're going to be forced. One last comparison I want to make, and this is to the comments that they made about, like, Look, people don't know the full story here. They don't see what we're doing behind the scenes and all this kind of stuff. And I wanted to very kind of, I don't know, if flippant is the right word, but like, in AEW, in professional wrestling, there's this guy named Sammy Gavara.

Do you know about the Sammy Gavara drama that? I know that he's tweeting with somebody and being an idiot on Twitter. Yeah. So a few months ago, he was in this feud with Eddie Kingston. And he called, like, during an in-ring promo, he called Eddie Kingston a fat piece of shit. And he goes backstage and Eddie Kingston's like, you can't say that about me because it's like bad for the fucking business. Like if you call me a fat piece of shit and then you're like going to lose to me, which was how the match was supposed to go, it makes you look bad. Like it makes me look bad because you're calling me a fat piece of shit.

But it makes you look bad because you just got your ass beat by a fat piece of shit. and Sammy Gavarro was like, whatever, dude, fuck you. And so, like, Eddie Kingston pie faced him, like just, you know, shoved him in the face. You've seen him a million times in hockey. And they both ended up getting suspended for it. And then, like, they had to delay the blow-off feud,

or the blow-off match for that feud by, like, a month. And when asked about it by the wrestling media, Eddie Kingston was like, I shouldn't have put my hands on him. I fucked up. I don't, I, I don't want to talk about it any more than that, but know that I was in the wrong. And then Sammy Gavarro wrote this big thing about how people, they only, they only hate the character, Sammy Gavara. They don't, they don't hate the real person. They don't know the real person. You know, that kind of stuff, right? The real me, I'm like a regular guy. And then it comes out this week that a few months ago, or maybe a little longer than that.

Andrade, who WWE fans would know, had a match with Sammy Guevara, and Sammy Guevara, like, went up to him backstage complaining about, like, oh, you hit me too hard during that match. Like, working too stiff, whatever. And Andrade was like, what are you talking about?

And so Sammy Guevara was, like, just started badmouting in backstage or something like that. And so Andrade was like, yeah, I got a big problem with this guy. And then Sammy was like, you're a loser, you're a job or you're nobody, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, no, it seems like a ton of people backstage actually really, like, legitimately don't like this fucking guy. Right?

And it's the same thing with Hockey Canada where it's like, oh, you don't know the real me. And then everybody who knows the real him is like, oh, yeah, that guy sucks. Yeah. Really incredible shit to me that, like. Please bring out all the character witnesses who will. That's exactly right. Or, like I said, again, you can sit there and go, you guys don't have the real story. All right.

You know, the media is not perfect. I mean, the media is certainly dug up most of this stuff. But okay, so tell us the real story. Anytime additional, they go, they say that kind of thing. And then anytime additional information comes out, it's like, no, it's actually even worse than you thought it was. Oh, all right. Great. Thanks.

Makes me. Like, that shit is so funny to me when people go, well, look, you know, uh, you know, uh, uh, I have fake friends out there. You know, like, come on, dude. This isn't fucking, you're like, you shouldn't be talking like one of those people who deletes their Facebook every six months. Like, I got fake friends out there. I can't be on social media with these fake people anymore.

It's the same thing. I got to say it. And I don't say this lightly. That is the single best hockey Canada slash Sammy Guevara metaphor that I've heard. Hey, you know what? I really appreciate that coming from you, a guy who knows who Sammy Guevara is. definitely do. All right, well, we'll take a break.

We'll come back and we'll talk about who plays for who. This week's episode, Puck Soup is brought to you by Athletic Greens. And folks, I say it every time. Same song and dance, right? I started taking Athletic Greens because they sent it to me. And it was a thing I'd never thought that I wanted or needed or anything like that. And, boy, I've had it for a long time now. Months and months, they'll send me a re-up every once in a while.

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therapy can help get you there. Visit betterhelp.com slash puck today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash puck. All right, we're back. And before we get to the game, I forgot we got to talk about the nasty Seattle mascot. It sucks. It's really bad.

We were talking about how bad it could be last week, I feel like. It came in way worse than that somehow. It's weird looking. I get that that's probably what you just do these days because you're chasing that, like, that gritty vibe. Yeah. I'm not huge. I mean, you know, whatever.

Is it... It's not for us, right? Like, we're grown adults. It's definitely not. Is it... How do you pronounce the name? Booy. Is it...

Booy? and not boy. Because I saw, I, I, I, boy and buoy is one of those words I don't actually know how to pronounce because I've heard it both ways. It's booey. And it's, it's come up in our house because, you may have realized in, as a new survivor fan, Jeff Probst loves to really lean into the buoy pronunciation. Yeah. But I saw a bunch of headlines that was like, oh, buoy, I guess, which doesn't really work as or. you know, boy oh, buoy.

Yeah, that's one of those things where it looks good written out, but if you pronounce it, you're like, oh, no, they missed the mark on that one. Now, this comes with the caveat, I could be wrong. I'm like 99.999% certain I'm not, but like, could it be? Booie is a better mascot name than boy would be. I mean, boy. For sure, yeah. But, of course, it does open you up to the, I was saying, booee.

Yes, exactly. Well, that might be the marketing strategy, right? I mean, the Cracken are bad, and they still have Dave Haxell as a coach. So when they're being pelted with just be like, they love the new mascot here in Seattle. They can't stop chanting for him. Yeah, look, he brought out his little junior mascot named Fire Haxstall. I wonder if they'll chat for him too. But, yeah, the Seattle, the mascot is like, again, it's not for us.

But you, like, with Gritty, you're like, okay, I see what the appeal is. I don't see what the appeal is with this one. It looks like, it looks like it's supposed to be a troll, first of all, because there's like some mythical troll in Seattle, like, lore or whatever. Seatroll inspired by a Seattle landmark, the Fremont troll. I'm clearly just reading that. Yeah, for sure. No.

But it looks like the troll from like those trolls world tour movies. Yeah. Yeah, like if you if you like grabbed it between your hands and spun it, the hair would like fly out and then you would put it on the end of your pencil. Yeah, no thanks. Nobody under the age of 35 has any idea what I'm talking about. And I think 35 might be pushing it. Okay. But all right, now we get into a little game called who he play for that again, we have just straight up stolen this from inside the NBA because famously is it, I can't remember.

is it Chuck or Shaq can't remember? Oh, I don't. If you don't know, I don't know. I think it's Charles Barkley is the guy who just like has no idea who anybody plays for. Okay. And the thing with it on inside the NBA is they're going deep on benches. You know, they're not saying like who's Pascal Seaccom play for, which is the kind of like upper mid-level guy. Sure.

Like he's the kind of upper mid-level guy. They're like, you know, who does Jay Crowder play for? And you're like, oh, shit, Jay Crowder, that guy's bounced around. I think he's on the Suns now. And even Jay Crowder's like, is that true? So we're going to start with some easy ones. I'm just going to ask Sean, a guy's name. This is the segment where you find out that one of the guys that you've come to know and trust for hockey knowledge doesn't actually know as much about the NHL.

as you think. You're going to say Johnny Godreau and I'm going to be like Fires, obviously. I mean, come on. I'll say this though. I'm starting easy. Okay.

And not all of these guys change teams this summer and there isn't going to be a situation where I ask you like if we say a team early, if we say the Boston Bruins early, ruins will never come up again. Okay.

Oh, okay. Nothing repeated. All right. So let's hit, let's hit the ground run in here. This is, like I said, this is the easy one. John Klingberg. And on him. That's right.

No problem. Here's a slightly harder one. Oh, boy. For sure. Andrew Cop. Andrew Cop was one of the Red Wing signings. That was one that I saw it in a headline this week and I was like, oh, right. Guys on the Red Ways down.

But he's from Michigan. The whole, the whole Red Wing's. wings offseason was sort of. Yeah. Hey, we signed eight guys. Name them. Now, what about a disgrace Washington Capitals goaltender Vtec Vanichek? Where'd he end up?

Oh, the guy that the Washington Capitol is famous for having bad goaltending, told to hit the bricks. He is the guy New Jersey decided would fix their goaltending. That's correct. Yes, that's true. The other one ended up in. New Jersey and the Leafs both did the thing of, What if we got a team with bad goal tendings, worst goalie?

And that would fix it. What about former New Jersey devil, Will Butcher? Where'd he end up? Oh, man. You know what? No idea on that one. Dallas. He ended up in Dallas.

I couldn't have told you that without looking it up yesterday. Tyler Mott, where did Tyler Mott end up? I do not know where Tyler Mott is. Easy way to remember this. This is a little mnemonic for you. Tyler Mottowa. He's a senator now. Oh, okay.

He's here in my town. He might be outside my window right now. I still would not help me because I couldn't. He just egged your house. Jack Johnson. Where Jack Johnson end up? First of all, Jack Johnson has an NHL contract. That's headline one.

Yeah. He's with the Blackhawks. This is like, Exhibit C and they're We are obviously tanking. Yeah. We're not tanking. We just got Jack Johnson and Peter Marazek.

They will be playing. Peter Marzic will start every game for us. Jack Johnson playing 29 minutes a night. No, not tanking, though. Luke Cunin. I do not know. San Jose. He went there last year.

He didn't change teams. Oh, okay. Oh, tricky. Like I said, not all guys changed teams. Dylan Strom Okay Dylan Strom One of the

One of the Strom brothers went to Washington Have we said Washington yet? No, we took a goalie off of Washington I'll say Washington You're correct, it's Washington Yeah I was wondering if you were going to get tripped up

And forget the no team's repeated rule And say Anaheim where Ryan Strom went That okay, yeah That was a little bit of a trick question Let's go with Martin Jones Oh, Martin Jones went to, he went to some team with really bad goaltending. Seattle.

Yeah, he made it worse by going there. Yeah. Yeah, Seattle, again, they looked at their lousy goaltending and they're like, you know what would fix this? A guy who is uniquely remembered as the worst of the goaltenders. Yeah. Jeff Petrie. Jeff Petrie went to Pittsburgh. He got traded to the Penguins.

I almost said Mike Matheson instead, but I went with the American team thinking you might not have talked about that on your other podcast. Yeah, no, I remember that because I feel like that is not, I realize they kind of traded two bad contracts, but I feel like for a contending team as bad as Petrie was last year that we're not talking about enough about how dangerous that contract could be for the Penguins if he still stinks. Because it's like three more years, six million. Yeah, it's a tough one. They're all in. They have no... They don't care about the future. They just are trying to make it work.

One last one here. And you did really well. This is better than I think you did last year. Proud of myself. Yeah. Zach Cassian. Oh, he got dumped on the coyotes. Correct.

You did it. Yeah, I think you only got two or three wrong there, so pretty good. That's... Excellent. And some of them were like... I mean, really. Tyler Mott I don't know

Yeah he moved in Across the street from you I don't know how you Yeah he's literally Right there You remember You remember you helped him carry That box of kitchen stuff

That's right Remember this? I did do that Yeah Yeah So yeah that's it I didn't put any more guys down That's pretty good

Because you got you got to really When you put this together You got to walk the fine line Of saying like A guy Sean, who played like three years of college hockey, who I think of as, oh, of course, everybody knows that guy. But Sean would be like, I've never heard of this man. Exactly.

You know, and, you know, obviously like a Johnny Goodrow or like, you know, a contract where it kind of stood out for one reason or another. I'm going to walk a really fine line. But I feel like I fell on the wrong side. I made it too easy. And the other piece of this, I have to say is, you know, again, we're in like season preview season. I guess. If you had given me that same quiz two weeks ago, I probably get like three, right, if I'm

lucky. For sure, for sure. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's the last thing we do before the season starts on this show. So what are you wanting to be on me? Anyway, yeah, that's it. Sean, why don't you hit them with some plugs, brother? Lots of preseason stuff.

This week at the athletic launched the prediction contest. We've already got about a thousand entries, so we will probably cruise past last year's. You have until next Tuesday to enter, real opening night, not the fake Europe opening night. So if you want to hold off and see if Roman U.S. he blows his ACL, go ahead. But this is the easy contest, 10 questions. Very simple stuff. Just tell me who's making the playoffs. Who's not?

What could go wrong? And then at the end of the year, we will all point and laugh at each other for getting all the questions wrong. and I'm going to have probably tomorrow my annual attempt to find hope for the 10 most hopeless teams, which is especially challenging this year since some of those teams are trying to be hopeless. And oddly specific predictions coming early next week, Monday or Tuesday. Great. And then for me, elite prospects, go to E.P.Ringside.com, sign up for an annual subscription. and you get all the articles and we're still in the midst of the prospect pool breakdown. I think we're finally into the top five as of today.

And we'll have, you know, the rest of the league in the next day or three here. So check all those out. And then the other thing that I should say is if you really want to be a prospect sicko, The other thing that's good about EP premium is that, like, you can, like, put together lists of all your team's prospects and, like, track them and, like, game by game, game logs and all that kind of stuff. Like, that's all there, like, for just about every league that you're going to want to get a prospect from. So, like, sign up for all that stuff. And you can, and you two can become a real freak who's like, no, actually, all the guys we signed are the best ones in the league. We should be the number one pool.

Very cool. And then when you sign up, use the offer code, I love EP, all one word, all capital letters. And they will add three months onto the end of your annual subscription. Do not DM me and say, I tried to sign up for a monthly subscription. The code doesn't work. That's right. It's only for the annual subscription. So.

Oh, can I, let me throw one more thing that I forgot to mention is that one. Yeah, of course. My podcast with Ian Mendez, Thursdays at the end of the other. athletic, we're doing a thing where, like, for the two weeks leading up to the season, they're having each show focus on a specific question. And my question with Ian tomorrow that they have assigned to us is whether Matt Murray is the right goal for the Maple Leafs. I'm trying to get out of it.

No intentionality on that one, huh? I am trying to call in sick or something. But if you want to see how much I can fake enthusiasm. Did you have to? Like, is it like a point-counterpoint thing where you drew? No, I don't think so. I think it's hopefully not. But, yeah, it's going to be, you're going to be a lot of quoting of preseason statistics because those are very predictive.

When I worked for a newspaper, we had a point-counterpoint in the Sunday edition every week. And it was always like a topical sports thing, you know. This week it would be like, is Aaron Judge the real home run king now that he's hit 16? or whatever, and someone would be assigned point, and someone would be a signed counterpoint. And, you know, like, it doesn't matter whether you believe it. Somebody has to be like, Aaron Judge absolutely is the real home run king. And I gained a reputation for just absolutely beating the brakes off whoever, whoever drew opposite me. Nice.

Where, because it's just like, brother, I grew up arguing with people online. What are you talking about? It's over for you guys. I can take any stance and make believe I really believe it. I feel that in my core. So, yeah, you know, I think even if they did it, I think you could have done a good job. Obviously, you could have done a good job for this is not,

but I believe in you for this one. I think this is easier than you're making it out to be. Well, let's find out. Let me say this. If it's up to me, I'm going, give me counterpoint. on that one. He stinks. Did you see Dom's season previews came out? He has the Leafs number one.

Yeah, I did see that. They still rank a D plus in Golden. Yeah, well, the best part about that was, I don't know if you actually clicked on it this morning yet, but it opens with like six or seven paragraphs with being like, I know, don't get mad at me. Do not, you're not allowed to get mad at me about this. And they will still absolutely get mad. Yeah, they're, they're, as they say, beaten his ass in the QRTs or whatever, you know. And also, for each of his teams, he has like the best case scenario, the worst case scenario.

And his worst case scenario for the Leafs is graphically detailed to an extent that was not necessary at all. If you're a Leaf fan, don't read it. Like, close the, I read the article, but when you get to the worst case, just close the browser window. That's right. But yeah, that was a very funny one. Anytime you have to couch it with, look, I know, don't yell at me. Please, for Christ's sake. I've been through enough.

Yep. That's how you know you've written a good take when you're like, please do not email me about this. We should close every show with that disclaimer. Don't contact us. We don't want any feedback. I think the thing to say, and I don't think I'm telling turns out of school here, is that's the implicit aspect of this podcast. Don't do it. Don't reach out.

Don't comment on this in any way. Perfect. Unless you think it was like really, really good. And even then, don't, I don't need that in my life. Like, I don't, I don't need the pressure. Well, I'm saying I don't need the pressure of now next week. I've got to be that good again. No, thank you.

That's true. Yeah. So, all right. Thanks everyone for listening. Check out the PuckSoup Patreon. Patreon.com slash Puck Soup. And a bunch of bonus episodes coming your way this month, like every month. So check it all out.

And we'll hop over there now. and do the mailbag. See you later, folks. Bye-bye. Bye. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slap shots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to what if you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's in tunes. It's your weekly bowl of Hagi and Nancet. Park Sue.