Spittin Chiclets - Spittin' Chiclets Episode 330: Featuring Bryan Trottier & Matt Murley

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

On Episode 330 of Spittin’ Chiclets, the guys are joined by Bryan Trottier and Matt Murley. Bryan joined (45:45) to discuss the Islanders dynasty of the 1980’s, playing with Mario/Jagr, winning the Cup a zillion times and tons more. But first, the boys open up the show talking about the recent news about the change in NHL TV Rights and what they are looking forward to with TNT and ESPN. The fellas are then joined by our gambling guy, Matt Murley (02:30:08). Murls joined to talk about his recent European hockey hot streak and to tell some funny stories. The guys wrap up the podcast talking about the Oscars.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/schiclets

Hey, Spittin' Chicklets listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode 330 of Spittin' Checklets, presented by Pink Whitney from our friends at New Amsterdam Vodka and the Barstool Sports Podcast family. What's up, everyone? We're another week closer to the playoffs. The number four seeds are still up for grabs. Lots of matchups to be determined.

We had a big Oscar winner in the house Sunday night, but let's say howdy to the gents first. Producer Mikey Grinelli looking fresh in the tie-dye. What's up, AI? Thank you, RA. What was that? that yeah what happened at the end there what was the end i couldn't tell if i said what's up a guy or if i skipped or not because i've been having some audio we'll just pretend i'm italian this episode what's up a tie guy guy that's the type of shit i do on the coyotes broadcast like sometimes i'll like fucking not even finish my sentence and like i hate a sentence. I hate take twos, though.

I don't like taking twos. It's almost like you ran out of breath there. I am great. Weather is gorgeous. Got myself a new pair of rollerblades, so I was buzzing around New York City this weekend. Blade game season is in full tilt, so I'm a very, very happy producer. Gonna be cruising

down in NYC, the streets, rocking the new Speedos. Pink Whitney Speedos coming out with your rollerblades on. Skating over rats and just trash everywhere. Some bicep tassels like Ultimate Warrior. Pink Whitney bandana like my pushy muncher bandana. Let's start the branding. Let's go, baby.

Let's go. The voice of Paul Biznasty, Biznette. What's up, my man? How we doing? Things are going good. Very, very relaxing day so far. Big Coyotes matchup tonight. They're playing San Jose.

They're in the hunt. They're playing this little seesaw battle game with St. Louis. And St. Louis, that's a tough strength of schedule. And the Coyotes, man, I tell you what. Let's wait to talk about the Coyotes because I'm about half hard right now. And fucking one other thing about the Coyotes, Jacob Chikrin should be mentioned in the Norris conversation

to a certain degree, and we'll get to it later. All right, all right, all right. Last but not least, the wit dog, Ryan Whitney. What's going on? What's up? A couple of things to bring up right away. Coyotes quickly, biz. Yeah, you're fighting for the fourth spot. You guys are

4-17-1 against the top three teams in your division. I'll say it again. 4-17-1. So even if you get in, you're four and out. Suck on that. Grinnelli, the shirt does look awesome. Nice to see you. R.A., how have you been? My octopus professor takes it down. Congrats to that.

Partly because of you and mainly i am in a phenomenal mood couple different things going on this weekend this upcoming weekend i'm going down or even thursday i'm leaving i'm going to sea island georgia on a golf trip 12 guys team trash my team versus the bantams a bunch of losers that went to trinity college this nerdy college in connecticut the geeks the bantams they call themselves so last year i was the mvp of the trip i hit the winning pot i played amazing so i'm really looking forward to this year elbow issues if you don't think that i'm going to mention an injury that i'm battling you don't know me because i've been doing this since this podcast started five years ago and i mentioned everything fell apart because of my

ankles it wasn't my fault so right now the elbow is a mess. There's tennis elbow and then there's Whitney tennis elbow. And I got it to the extreme. I'm working. Cortisone didn't do anything. I'm PRP in it right now. I wouldn't pass a drug test if they tried to give me one, when we get down there, but I'll tell you this, I'll be playing through the pain. I have not played golf though. So I'm kind of really setting myself up. If I play bad, it's not your fault. You haven't played golf. I have not played golf. So let's see what type of game I have not played golf though. So I'm kind of really setting myself up. If I play bad, it's not your fault.

You haven't played golf. I have not played golf. So let's see what type of game I have. Let's see what type of painkillers I get involved to try to get the thing going. And let's go team trash. We're going to have to send you to some like holistic healer. I've done everything. I've done everything.

But you know what? It's just all I have to do really is not do anything. And it's just turning into May. So it's, you know, it's impossible all i have to do really is not do anything and it's just turning into may so i it's you know it's impossible i haven't done anything though you say everything you're you're okay with needles you've done acupuncture yeah but acupuncture yeah i've tried everything i've tried it all and my right elbow i had tennis elbow real bad three years ago i got a cortisone shot i've never felt a thing since but this one sometimes it just doesn't take and then you can't do cortisone again cortisone isn't great right you can only have i think two shots a year in like the same spot it's not good

for the future of that joint ligament tendon whatever's in there but i didn't i don't want to i don't want to be complaining i don't want to sound like that guy but right i'm ready to go i'll be ready for my team nfl they're doing two a week. Brian Foley, Falls. Falls is doing. So Falls has this Instagram account. It's Fairway Falls. His name is Mo Norman Jr. For people who don't know, Mo Norman's a Canadian.

This guy was, what Tiger Woods said, one of two human beings to own a golf swing. Mo Norman and Ben Hogan. Mo Norman was kind of crazy, though, Biz. I don't know if he had a touch of asperger's he was like a little different he went to augusta and i think he had to leave because he hit so many fucking balls on the range the day before he had blisters he couldn't even play at the masters don't quote me but i'm pretty sure it's true so foley has made this instagram account where he has put up uh check it out fairway falls f-a-i-r-w-a-A-Y-F-O-L-Z. And he's given the write-ups of each player.

This is mine. Ryan Whitney. Team. Team trash. Sponsor. Self-sponsored. Handicap. Point one.

Notable honors. 09 Granite Lynx member guest champion of the women's flight. That's right. Foley and I were so bad at golf, we played in the member guest at Granite Lynx. When I was a member there, I get to this tournament, Biz. I get to this tournament biz i get to this and i look up at the board and all the names of each teams are on the flight and i see brian foley ryan whitney i've told this story before i see gertrude marie i see just women's names i'm

like what's this the guys like your handicaps are both so high you're and i was like dude no i'm not playing in this tournament and he goes no no no, no, no, you have to play. You'll ruin the whole tournament. I'm like, are you kidding me? So I get up to the first tee, and I unzip my ball to get a bag. All the guys from the pro shop put pink balls, and what do they use for their period? Women.

Tampons. Tampons in my bag. We ended up dusting all these women, though. We won our flight. So so fully mentioned that that's my notable honors what the experts have to say we're terrified sea island caddy master the other one hey listen i don't want to hear any more about the elbow injury this kid is a hockey player i've seen him lose teeth and go back into games this elbow thing will be no issue at all pierre mcguire and last i hope he loses michelle terrian so it's a great time six on six i gotta battle check out this kid's fucking right oh how do i

recover from this i think i'm done for the pod it's just you guys friggin funny dude one guy in the chip john john crone and our buddy crow he has three daughters and his wife's pregnant with their fourth child who's also a girl so he's gonna have four daughters foley wrote for the sponsor notre dame academy and hang a mass it's an all-girls school all right so yeah oh my i'm trying to unpack what was the funniest part of that whole i had one more thing michael michelle terry michelle terry oh fairway fairway falls on instagram get get over there folks what like do what a perfect ending dude he puts like old videos he has in me like six years ago one of them i'm putting he's videoing me practicing

putting on the green and then i put the last one in the hole and then go to reach to put another ball down. I don't have a ball in my hands. It's the craziest video. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but check it out. All right. We get a little more golf talk later in the show. Some major heartbreak for yours truly on the gambling spectrum. First, I do want to mention we have a pair of guests today. Our buddy Matt Murley is going to join us to talk about his gambling, his European stuff, the streak he's been on, EBR.

And more importantly, we have Hall of Famer Brian Trucci. He's won six Stanley Cups as a player, one as a coach. It's a fantastic interview. We're going to get to that a little bit later. But first, the big news story, I would say, of the week, and it happened today. We found out NBC will not be the second TV partner for the NHL's next deal next season.

And our pal Bobby McKenzie tweeted that it's, quote, not official by any means, but I'm hearing NHL's new secondary broadcast partner is likely to be TNT. So if Bobby Mack's hearing it, it's probably true. Assuming that's the case, this is going to put the NHL on the same footing as far as the NBA in regarding television, basically. They're going to be on ESPN, TNT. I don't know.

What do you want to see first and foremost change from this year to next year as far as TV with the NHL? I'm not exactly like the guy to ask in terms of what I want changed. More than anything, I'm happy. I think it's going to be $600 million a year. The league's going to be making $625 million now. Is it $625 million already? Yep. Yeah, John Orian, I'm happy. I think it's going to be $600 million a year. The league's going to be making now. $625 now? Is it $625 already? Yep.

Yeah, John Orian, Sports Biz Journal. $625. So good for them. They've been able to just take it to the next level. And if it is TNT, talk about mastering a way to do pregame and halftime shows with Shaq and Charles Barkley and Ernie. I think he's an Ernie Johnson. Yep. The guy's a master host. So right away you see names being thrown around.

Like who could they do this for hockey? I think you're listening to them, but biz, they might try to throw the bag at you either way. You're looking at what will be improved. And I love NBC. And I actually hope that, like,

I think like most of the people there that do a really good job, they'll land somewhere, right? Like whoever gets hockey is going to have to be hiring people. They know who's good and those people are great, but I think you can improve on what they have. I think sometimes their intermission reports can get a little bit stale and it's, it's just, it's not easy with hockey, right? You're talking about the game and you're,

and you're kind of dealing with in the history of hockey, like there not much humor in broadcasts you know it's there's it's it's seems to me it's always been pretty serious right and and don cherry and coach's corner he made it interesting with kind of hot takes and being able being willing to say anything nbc you don't really see them saying much right i mean they're giving what's going on in the game but they're not making statements that whether people love them or hate them they're going to get people to talk about them right and so maybe that can change and maybe wherever they end up going now with tnt or cbs whatever it is um there can be improvement in terms of just letting guys be a little looser at the intermission more laid-back vibe as opposed to just really rehashing the entire period and

what happened? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's a nice little rundown there, Witt, and thanks for the little tire pump there. I never even thought about that. I was actually thinking maybe, like, get JR back in the mix, maybe bring in some of the more old-school guys. Like, I think that, like, so one of the issues and the fact that I don't think that's been able to be established

is the fact that all those people with like a lot of credibility, like Hall of Famers who have rings, there just hasn't really been enough money in the past. And or you had to start out so low at the bottom where it was like, bro, I fucking won four Stanley Cups and I'm a Hall of Famer. I'm not fucking getting to the desk for 150 K. And if I'm letting it fly, I ain't having you fucking tell me how to let it fly. Why, why would they? Right. So I don't think there's ever really been an opportunity. I think maybe, maybe what you're saying and where they're prepared to take it. Although I guess you could argue like, like has there, I mean, Don Cherry used to let it fly quite a bit i mean that was kind of like one of one of the things and why people talked about him so much but as far as guys still

around like i mean i'd love to see jr jr back in the mix obviously like with what with what happened in the last situation like like it's it's in the past you know with let's move forward here and and you know i think he'd be a good a good host uh who else uh chris verstig i think would be awesome i think chris i mean kevin bx is doing it for hockey night in canada like i don't know if like i mean i don't know how long he's got left there i don't and and i don't yeah i don't know how long the contracts are for the guy who's guys who are at the top in canada so like that verstig's already doing that with hockey night in canada right i'm i'm saying is is i don't know how long all of these guys' deals are locked in with the Canadian networks, whereas, like, well, all of a sudden,

like, well, Bieksa lives in California. I mean, if TNT's throwing him a fucking sheet, he's probably going to do it for USDs. I mean, and he gets to live and commute. I don't know exactly where the studio is going to be or how it's going to all be done, but, I's u.s dollar speaks for itself and he lives in the states i'll leave it at that you can't tell me that after shane corson was on here that guy wouldn't be unreal it's another guy like plenty there's plenty of guys now it's a great point by

you that barkley and and shack are making bank doing that. Oh, I think Barkley's making $8 million a year doing that? Yeah, whereas NHL is just not that dope. Even at NHL Network, it shares a building. MLB Network is there, and those guys make more just because it's – there's more money in the NBA and Major League Baseball than there is in the NHL. So it is hard to get a former legend the way those two, Barkley and Shaq, are to get on to do it if they're not making huge coin.

It's a good point. They basically just show up and like, say, oh, things are better when we play. This guy sucks. And like people love it. They don't do like a shit. I agree with you. I don't know. Really?

I'm very entertaining. They're entertaining. But I mean, like they they just seem to like kind of give, I don't know, off the cuff opinions. I don't know that they're doing a ton. That's what they're like. I know. I'm just saying I don't think they I think they're they don't do a ton of analytics. I think like that girl can't the woman, Candace Baca, who goes on them. She's like really good at the analytic part.

Like she breaks. But that's the whole point of it. So here's also what's funny, too, is the dynamic between someone who might be a little bit more educated with the times and the fact that she's getting to dunk on these hall of famers who might've just showed up to the panel. There was one show where Barkley. So did you guys watch the behind the scenes documentary on how it all came to be? There's a documentary on it.

It's really good. All right. I mean, I know mine aren't, my recommendations are not up to your fucking standards. Cause you've been on flag. Oh, and we'll get to that a little bit later.

You gave me zero, zero, zero. We'll get to that later. Go ahead. Okay. Thank zero zero we'll get to that later go ahead okay thank you i gave i gave zero zero zero i think the one night candace was on there i mean there was a few times she did have the upper hand in arguments at least from what i saw on social media and it creates dialogue whether whatever the opinion may be and whoever thinks who won the argument and then going back to that documentary uh i think there was a i think there was a boxing match going on.

And Barkley clearly had money on it. And there was a massive upset. And the TV was on. And they just go live on TNT to talk about the basketball game. And Barkley's in his chair. And he's like, oh, my God. That was the biggest upset in boxing history. And they're like, Chuck, we're on here live. I love that, though. He's like oh my god he's like that that was the biggest upset in boxing history and they're

like chuck we're like on here live i love that though that's like i don't care he's like and then basically the entire segment they were talking about this boxing match that i'm sure barclay had just lost six six figures on so it's just it it like when you get these types of personalities together it can take on a mind of its own. And ultimately that's what's going to drive the conversation in interest. And that's just my opinion on it. That's what I like. If people like watching just to hear the breakdown of exactly what's going down on the ice with no other outside factors or different emotions involved that might be like connecting it to prior games that they might've even been playing in at high at that highest stakes, then, then that's, then that's their opinion.

Yeah. I think, I think that NBC did a fine job. I think that sometimes it was, it felt too safe. Like, like what we're saying now there was, you know, you know, you're going to what you're going to get before the games, during the games, nothing controversial. You get a few scoops here and there, but I thought, I don't know if hockey was necessarily a priority with them they didn't really emphasize the stars I mean how many nights this season did we have maybe McDavid versus Matthews and instead on NBC we're getting Chicago versus Detroit or two other teams that are subpar I think they need to prioritize the

stars over the geography and not worry about oh we're gonna have Chicago versus LA for the ratings it's like no let's get the two best players that that are going to bring in the most eyeballs and also two biz I think NBC I used to say this all the time they drop the ball by not having a national game Saturday night I mean hockey night in Canada is an iconic thing there are games on every Saturday night it's the biggest no-brainer in the world to have a fucking national Saturday night game here in the United States as well I mean I think there's plenty of places they need to bring it who are now getting the hands of it all. I mean, TNTs, you know, I'm sure they're going to have ideas as to how you're going to draw out the personalities because everyone always talks about the league, the league, the league guys, it's the players. And as you just mentioned, RA, the personalities

that, that drive the bus, that's, that's, that's what drives the bus. You talk about the individuals. I mean, guys, I don't think that NBA product is anywhere near of what the NHL is. I mean, I think playoff hockey is in a total different stratosphere than a lot of things. But they have very, very, very high-end personalities. If you go look at Instagram followings and some of you people are like oh and social media guys that's what the next wave in the next generation that's where they hang out mostly that's why a lot of these networks who are taking over are trying to move a lot of what you're consuming to smartphone capabilities how many people are signing off of cable for for that matter but at the end of the day, you look at, I think LeBron James,

I'm assuming he's got what, 100, over 100 million Instagram followers? Well, the teams have like four or five million. The people are following the people, not the teams. So if they can do a better job of lifting that up in hockey, which I think that over the years they've done an excellent job of allowing these guys to to be themselves more and more and more do i think that we're a little bit behind in that yes i think we're getting there these networks are going to be the ones that have to drive that and or help the brown james the brown james sorry for sorry for going on a little bit of a rant there that's that quite all right. That's what we do here. Andrew

Marchanda of the New York Post said that ESPN's going to have four Stanley Cups and we'll have out-of-market games on ESPN Plus as well as exclusivity on regular season games. Like I said before, I know people, hockey fans, have had their issues with ESPN and I get it, but we can all move past that. I think this is a fantastic

day for the league. Again, it's not official yet, but when TNT comes into the fold, you know, we're on the same footing as the NBA. And if you're an NHL fan, that can only be a good thing. Yeah. More eyes.

Yeah. And they're going to do cooler things with it. And it's going to be awesome. No doubt about it. Well, gang, summer is just around the corner as are the playoffs, horse races,

pool parties, and much more. So make sure you head over to your local liquor store today to find the Pink Whitney and the new 375 milliliter Mickey size bottle. It's the best drink from pregame to the after party. So be sure to check out the new Mickeys of Pink Whitney at your local package store. All right, boys, we're going to take a look at the North division first. Toronto had a two in one week. They pretty much got a stranglehold on that number one spot in the division. It'd be a shock if they gave it up at this point i would say winnipeg edmonton is the only real series we know that's most likely going to happen at this point uh biz i know you thought

want to talk about joe thornton he's been playing pretty intense uh it's great to see it's been fun to see but that clip of him in the penalty box alongside nick eelers and they put play the ape simpson audio from the simpsons. I sent it to you guys. Yeah, that was just – was that a Winnipeg fan fucking around? I think it just might have been a random hockey fan. But it worked so good because Ehlers just wasn't really paying attention to him. So in the mouth match, not perfect. Oh, I was dying when you said – so I was excited because when you sent it over,

I was waiting to watch it because I was doing something. I actually thought they were going to have the audio. So when I turned it on, I was like, ah, fuck. I thought it was waiting to watch it because I was doing something I actually thought they were going to have the audio so when I turned it on I was like ah fuck you know I thought it was going to be actually I actually am curious as to what he did say but you know we've the Leafs are rolling I think the one storyline right now is the fact that you know Thornton's obviously developed into a different player and what he thinks is going to help the team and and and they're thrilled about it and it's I mean I mean look at the trajectory of his career. By the way, that's my word, Witt,

so I'm going to use it first here today. And he's gotten to this point where he's willing to do anything he can to help that lineup, and as I said, I think Keith touched on it, Jake Muzzin said it's fucking awesome, and he's going to do whatever he can to help that team win, Witt. If you've ever played against Joe Thornton, for the of you out there or watched him for that matter this isn't hard for him to go find this anger he's a mean bastard and always has been on the ice like he was the number one center one of the greatest players of his generation and still had no problem cross checking

somebody up high or just really going at anyone so I think now he knows that maybe he's got to amp that up a little bit, you know, playing on a bottom, bottom six in a bottom six role, but it's not tough for him to want to be a prick out there because that guy was, he was a mean bastard. He was in a grumpy mood, a lot of games against the opposing team. So I think that it's probably a little easier for him than maybe others that go from a top two line guy to a bottom two line guy later on in their career great to see Simmons doing that too you know that's our team coming out of the north Winnipeg loses Ehlers for the rest of the regular season they're saying

that he'll be back uh for the playoffs which is huge and I guess there is a team who can lose you know a forward of that caliber is Winnipeg they're very deep up front if they lost the defense and they'd probably be in a lot of trouble. But they do need him to have a chance in the playoffs. Yeah, I mean, I look at the North, and I'm watching the warm-ups here of Montreal. They're playing Calgary, and we have a little grind of a battle going on. And it looked like there was no chance that the Calgary Flames

could catch the Montreal Canadiens. Or, I mean, forget even Vancouver with all their games in hand. But Montreal can't score. Now, tonight, they're showing Cole Caulfield skate around. Finally, he's playing. R.A., can you explain to me why he's just now playing for this team? In a nutshell, salary cap gymnastics. The Canadians had to move somebody else to the taxi squad before they could

bring up Caulfield. So I think they were just waiting for either a couple of days to pass. I'm not sure I was, I had a doctor's appointment today, so I'm not sure if they sent Caden Primo down to the taxi squad, but I know that was the one of the situations that they, that needed to happen for them. So if they use them as an emergency call up, you still have to send someone down or no?

Well, you still have to be cap compliant. And I mean, in every day, it's like, that's why, I mean, up you still have to send someone down or no well you still have to be cap compliant and i mean in every day it's like that's why i mean the teams are sending players to the taxi squad just for money purposes not even necessarily for roster purposes so basically they needed the money to line up so montreal they need caulfield to do what he does and oh my god has he looked good i think he's gonna score and i actually just took Montreal. I think they get it done tonight. They have two or less goals in nine of their last 11 games. There's no chance you're going to. And by the way, I,

it probably sounds like I'm dog Montreal and dogging their front office, but like the moves Burger Van made already. I can't believe I call him Burger Van now because of you, the moves Bergevin made. Anderson has 17 goals. He's been sick. Toffoli has like 23. He'd have a 40-goal pace right now in a regular year.

Jake Allen, he's starting the biggest game of the year tonight, Monday night, against Calgary. So moves have happened that have helped. It's just they don't have a ton of skill. They have guys who work really hard, but they don't have people who create now so caulfield comes in you should play a lot of minutes and at least maybe get them going goal scoring wise i guess i under underestimated his uh craziness a little bit jumbo yeah he was he's he's i just i did maybe because i was in anaheim and got to play it against him a little bit off more often that

one year in the same division but yeah dude he, dude, he was mean as shit out there. Was he saying mean shit out there too? Not really. I don't remember. He just didn't even bother talking to me. He's like, I don't need to say shit to this guy. Did he ever give you a little sticker across, Jack? I didn't shout out Marleau last week either for the most embarrassing moment

I had against Patrick Marlowe is the first game of the year so I got traded to the Ducks in the deadline in whatever year the Penguins won the cup what was that oh oh nine RA um yeah oh wait yeah so I get traded and then then then that you know Pronger's there and then the offseason Pronger's gone so I get a chance in the next year to be on the number one power play. First game of the year, we get the Sharks at home. First power play of the game, I get out there. I'm up top of the umbrella. I get a one-timer pass over me from Getzath.

If I had any awareness whatsoever, Patrick Marleau was perfectly in the shooting lane. I rip a one-timer off his shin pads. It goes right past me. He buzzes by me and buries. I'm like, oh, my God. So I should have shouted him out for that but um yeah thornton was on that team he probably was on the ice for that kill hey uh biz what you said there were like telecommunications issues up and up in canada

last week because niland he said he didn't get a a text about a meeting or an email or something what was what was going on yeah there was like a meeting change and but there was actually like no cell phone service for all of rogers in a couple days in canada last week for a couple days or at least a day excuse me so i don't know the full situation but like jeff my buddy who's up in vancouver he's like hey if you want to get a hold of me you got to like facetime me basically anything like wi-fi related uh but yeah the service was out but apparently they like changed the time of a meeting and then he was late and then the the media caught wind and there was a chance he was going to be a healthy scratch but it's just like it's like toronto media stuff so it caught fire it's a guy

who doesn't have a history of blowing meetings off guys usually don't just like so basically half the fan base on twitter wanted him traded with him They got a hat on for him anyways. So basically the other 23 guys on the team got the text message that the meeting time was at 5 o'clock and he didn't. Right. But the reason I wanted to bring it up, and we've talked about it before, have you ever had a situation where you completely slept in or missed the meeting?

No, but in college, holy shit. David Klima from Roseau, Minnesota what's up kleems he was a freshman with me and this kid was so skilled but jack parker bu could not stand him and um you know he turned over once a while but a really good player so freshman year we all lived at shelton hall is it shelton hall and like four of the guys four of the freshman guys lived in the in the four bedroom or the two bedroom, two beds. And then I was across the hall with my buddy Brian Miller in one bedroom. So we go to a meeting. We got work by UNH and we go to a meeting and we're at the meeting and Jack Parker's got the got the clips on and he's stopping the video and it's dark in

the room. And he's like, and look at fucking Klima here. Going for a skate. What do you know? Klim's just nowhere to be seen. What do you think of that, Klims? And my boy, Justin Meiser, I mentioned, he's like, sorry. Well, Klims wasn't at the meeting. We're like, where the fuck is he?

We'd been calling him. We'd been texting him. So we're covering up for him. He's not there. Somehow the lights turn on and Parker never realized he was gone and sure as shit he was lucky enough to not get caught we go back to the dorm we go into the room he's sitting at the computer now northern minnesota he looks at us hey boys where you guys been

he was playing snood he was fucking obsessed with snood dude this kid played snood for nine hours a day he missed the meeting where your boys been what's what's snood which one's snood it was this game it was like these weird creatures and it took a hold of the internet in like 2001 ish yeah 2002 ish and you'd have to like get three of the same shapes like monsters together and then you'd hit them and they'd knock apart like tetris but not like tetris basically it took a hold of klima's brain it basically it almost it almost got him kicked out of school i'll say i don't even think he was studded anymore. He was just snood all day and night. Was he at least really good at it?

Was he like a snood champion? Dude, he was probably going to like tournaments in Minnesota. Texting people, send snoods. All right, have you ever played snood? I've never heard of it. Yeah, me neither. I was a Duke Nukem guy. Yeah, I never heard of it.

What was that? It was some computer game. it what right grinelli was were you a duke duke him kid no idea does anyone do you guys remember oregon trail for original computer games no oh my god all right did you guys hear that burp that was that was that was what they did in oregon trail when they were literally on the oregon trail that was like after eating a bison. I was already muted, and I went to go mute myself, and I unmuted me. So that's why he's got that pleasantness.

I apologize. Excuse me. I haven't done that in five years. Let's sell that as an NFT. Actually, if I could say where I came from, we could have a potential advertising partner here. Lots to buy R.A.'s burp on an NFT. Can we do that? Can we sell burps as NFTs?

Cause I can make a bunch of other noises that we can sell as NFTs. So I will say one of the funniest pizza reviews I've ever seen with Dave. Um, it was just so random. Uh, he sold it as an NFT with, uh, just recently,

right? Grinnelli. He did. It went live today. Okay. What's that going for right now? What's the highest bid there? I don't know, but it's the one with the guy without arms.

And he was pulling a bag somehow. I remember that one. It was unbelievable. Maybe with his armpit hair. We also want to give props to the Maple Leafs as well, Biz. Per Luke Fox, he said that Jason Spencer had an idea to pool some of their money to help out all the Mollies players who obviously weren't able to play a

full season this year. So just a cool little thing to see these guys, especially some like Spezza. Obviously, he's made a shitload of dough, but he is making the rookie minimum in his position right now to come up and have that idea. It just speaks to his character. That's class. That's a guy who's been around pro

hockey for over 20 years now. Because when I heard the story originally, it was hush-hush. They hadn't announced how it all happened. It was just a very vague statement. That's awesome, though. So he was the one who initiated all that, eh, Whit? Yeah, I guess so. I already just said that.

I wasn't aware of that either. I didn't read the outline this week, though, so sorry about that. But, Spezza, I got to go to a camp in Vail before preseason one year. Actually, it was the craziest fucking camp of all time because James Shepard. You remember James Shepard? Yeah. Really good player for the Wild. I know.

He had a horrible, horrible quadding accident. We were quadding on this trip, and there was like a pole. I don't know what happened. He was kind of like speeding a little bit, hit the pole, and went up over the handlebars, his his femur into the handlebar we get over there and his fucking bone was sticking out of his leg it was oh my and you know we're getting ready for the season great young player it was an awful thing to experience he was a great guy too but great that same that same camp the reason i just thought of that is because i got to go um one day

people went and did something but uh spez is like hey you want to go uh fly fishing and i had a blast i'd never done it i had no clue what i was doing i don't remember if he'd done it prior i think he knew what he was doing a little bit but i was lost right situate mass i don't know how to fly fish i don't even know how to regular fish and i was born on a town in the ocean brutal spezza is just telling me stories and he's my age right but he's just such a good guy that i'd never even gotten to know and then i spent this day with him you could have auctioned off the day i had with him for fucking fifty thousand dollars this guy is the nicest guy going and he's just had a great career to think about him actually taking into consideration

ahl guys and what they're going through no No surprise. Class act. He went fishing with me. You can bundle up some cash. What a guy, man. What a guy. Stick taps. Let's go stick taps for Jason Spezza. Not too many. Not too many.

Never too many. Sorry. Sorry. Calgary lost defenseman Noah Hannafin for the rest of the year due to a shoulder injury. He's going to need surgery for that. So get well. No, no.

Get well. No. Sorry to hear that. A friend of the program a couple times man rocket no doubt um biz how about conor mcdavid very chippy this season uh we've seen him tossing some elbows to the canadians way he looks like he caught cory perry that night and your word the goonery continues the goonery continues oh my goodness so it was funny it was it was funny seeing the connor connor haters come out but it was also it was also funny

uh seeing everybody comment the league thanks you because because it was cory perry so i mean it was i mean listen i love when when anything's happening connor related and when he's giving the sweet chin music to a guy who you know maybe maybe deserves a little from his uh all his antics back in the day uh yeah i don't know it was it was funny and something i wanted you to mention did you see it wit it was a bit of a little bit of a flop no oh yeah perry threw the head back he did a great job you were texting like paros you wanted mcdavid suspended though biz it was embarrassing you were all over that yeah no i did i i think that as i said no no place in the league for that. I think McDavid should have got two games.

I think they should fine him 100 grand. I think 50 should go to me. And then we can move on. And he should have to go fly fishing with me. Also, shout out to the stat I read online of fucking McDavid. I think this season, with him on the ice five on five, the team is like plus 88 scoring chances or whatever it is. They're minus 180 five on five when he isn't

on the ice it's the most dominating one of the most dominating seasons you'll ever see he's a runaway winner of mvp yeah they're gonna give him the norris too no i'm serious no i heard i heard gary i was on a conference call with gary the other day he said we're just gonna wrap it all up and a big fat fucking bow and give it to mc jesus uh vancouver connects uh what was it last week april 21st what day was that i believe wednesday the they actually flew a banner in vancouver hashtag fire uh fire benning which is hilarious because they just beat toronto two games in a row to sort of kind of get back in the in the run i mean they're five games i'm sorry they have five games in hand on montreal They're eight points back. Guys,

this isn't over yet. I know Calgary's got a tough uphill climb, but I think Vancouver's going to make a run at this biz. I think so too, and I think that they're playing. Are they playing Ottawa at least a couple more times? They got Ottawa again tonight, Monday. Yeah, that's right. They're no walk in the park, bud.

No, they're not. And I'll tell you what helped was Calgary beat Montreal. So they're making things very, very interesting. As I said, I think that as far as rest is concerned, how many days and games they're going to have, I think Montreal is going to end up securing that position. But I tell you what, man, I really respect this team because as soon as they were coming out of their whole shitstorm travis green was like no we're 100 still going at this

thing guys and and they've done everything they can to keep in this race no doubt we just mentioned the sense and they had a couple i guess sort of viral moments this week first off our buddy brady kachuk through the all-time like tyson punchout uppercut. He's lucky for Travis Hammond. He didn't catch it, but boy, memes get on that. You've seen that, right? I mean, straight-up shot. He punched one of the banners in the rafters. Yeah, I mean, neither one connected, but it would have been a KO.

But this was fucking hilarious. Brady Kachuk fights tough people, by the way. He doesn't give a fuck. Him and I think Shea Weber were going at it a little bit. Even Lucic, I believe, in one of the replays. He chucked him with Weber. He kind of got the best of him, actually. That's right.

He's a killer. Just like his old man. Saturday versus Vancouver. Artem and Anisimov. Well, technically, there's not e-bugs this year because of the taxi squad situation. Anton Forsberg was supposed to start. He got hurt in warm-ups. Then Matt Murray left the second with a lower body injury.

So Marcus Hogberg had to go from the taxi squad immediately into the game. Artem Anisimov was on the taxi squad. He became the number two goaltender, which is absolutely hilarious. He's like, what, 6'5 or something. Colin White was asked where to shoot against him. He says, anywhere, I would think. But I guess they had a bunch of fun in the locker room. He tweeted it out.

Was, you know, playing around with the pads and stuff. Just one of the goofy little moments. I'm sure broke up the season for them. Although, like we said, they haven't been nearly as bad as people thought. And shout out, shout out Rinkrat right there for dropping the funny. Great line right there, Rinkrat. Anywhere, I would think. Yeah, quotes don't always fucking

sound as good when you read them here uh let's see moving over to the east congrats to all right thanks you just didn't laugh congrats this is it this is dano charo you guys done or can we keep going tell me i was saying what white said was funny not all right i thought it was a great quote all right thanks for bringing it up. Thank you, my man. Zidano Chara, 1600 NHL games. Congrats to him having a great season down in Washington with the Caps. Pittsburgh, though, they're the squad playing hard as hell in that division right now. They've won four straight games to pass the Capitals.

Jeff Carter, Biz, he's looked outstanding so far, not only in that uniform, but with the team. I already mentioned Crosby's 200-foot empty netter. But, Biz, I know you wanted to talk about Cotta for a sec. Well, I mean, I think I saw him in the third jersey, so I wrote him down in my notes. How about big of a fucking man, Rocky, looked out there in warm-ups with no bucky. But, hey, he's been rejuvenated.

He's fit right in. And I'm sure that going to a team that's on the rise and, and, you know, heading into the playoffs the way they are, I'm sure he's looking at it like, Hey, you know, this could be, you know,

one of my last years where I'm able to compete for a Stanley cup. So, and, and I, I believe he's playing third line center right now. And I forget who they had him with. I think they had him with McCann and somebody else, but just from like reading on social media I can't watch

every game right they seem to really like the line and and they you know seem to bring a lot of energy and they've been clicking well early so it's cool man I'm excited to see how the East plays out because it is is it is tight as a I don't even need you to to beep it out this this episode Grinnell I'll do my own work. Don't say me. I went to hoop talk the other day. Oh, yeah. Everything all good?

Everything's all right? Yeah, this was nothing like alarm stuff. You had more maintenance stuff, but it's kind of like, oh, I was like, you guys got to buy me a drink here first. Next thing you know, Cole plays on the radio. So one finger right up your hoop all the way, tickling around, seeing what's going on? Yeah, yeah.

Which finger? No, the little – yeah, well, they start with that. But they do give you a heads up first. But, you know, these people do it all day. Honestly, God bless medical care professionals who, you know, deal with maybe the unsavory aspects of the human body because they've got to sit there and look at, you know, people like me all day showing the – Hey, so when I i said thumb and you said yeah that's actually which one they

use no they it whatever they an instrument they put in there oh it's yeah it's good there's no like no cause for alarm just kind of like getting old type of shit yeah basically but it was funny i was sitting there laying on like i just because they're like just relax for a minute so like everything relaxes and all of a sudden the radio's on i'm fucking a slow cold play comes song comes on i'm sitting here i'm like a johnny with like fucking god knows what up my hoop with fucking cold playing i was like oh this just got awful no i no no this is this is great our fans should hear about this stuff you gotta go for your regular checkups everyone oh yeah i'm a huge advocate of that, especially guys, because we're hardos.

And this wasn't even like colonoscopy related. I know we're going deep here. But they say 50 years old. But if you feel like something's wrong, don't be afraid to push for an earlier age, because I've had to do that with doctors, because sometimes they put numbers on. But sicknesses don't know how old you are, so they don't wait for you to turn a certain age before they invade your body. So always listen to your body.

If you have coverage, then there should be no reason not to. That was the most organic ad read ever on Spit and Chicklets podcast right there. Yeah, already spit and fact. You guys didn't even know. Back to Chara, fifth defenseman all time to play 1,600 games. So that's quite an insane stat to hear. Pittsburgh, Crosby, man. This guy has not slowed down down i've never really pumped his

tires on this show and i think it's about time to really step up and say that he for him to get if he could finish third in league scoring this year without malcolm getting older getting up there in age it could be one of his best years you've ever seen him have and if you look at his line i don't know i didn't do the research is there another line uh in the nhl where every player has 20 goals because genzel's over 20 crosby's got 20 and brian rust is over 20 and brian rust dude last year's last year i don't think he's as big enough and physical enough as kunitz but i mean dudely, last year's a point per game guy, like 56 points, 55 games this year. He's a little bit under that, but he's got 20 goals. So he's gels perfectly with

Crosby and that team is good. I mean, I think that you got to give a lot of credit to Tristan Jari. The Tangs had a season where his name is being discussed as the Norris possible winner and the team under Mike Sullivan. And then when Berkey and, Berkey and um why am I drawing a blank who else came with Berkey Hextall Hextall showed up the entire season turned around so if they can get Geno back and healthy I don't know what's going on there who's to say that they can't go on a run seriously that's like uh Tampa adding Kucherov yeah and they're playing way better than Tampa is right now also we got to mention about Sid. This is going to be his 16th season,

which he's going to average at least a point per game. Only two guys ahead of him on the list, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. He just passed Lemieux, Messier, Francis, Marcel Dion, and Joe Sackick. So just another thing he's done that we're going to make note of because Crosby's pretty good, if you haven't heard. New Jersey Devils, man, just a disaster lately. Lost 10 straight. Oh, three and one of the week.

They could end up in the bottom spot. We can't say the number one spot through the lottery, but just a rough sled for them. I was I was talking to Pasha, who's a hardcore New Jersey Devils fan. Yeah, he said they'd be really good this year. He's an idiot. So so he said this. He goes from a Devils fan perspective. He like perfect he's like we're entertaining early kept me interested long enough and now we're bombing and there's a chance we get a very very high pick

and he said based on all their young guys that they're hoping are the ones in the future in the core group of their team if you look at well so posh is a bit of an analytic guy. He also, whatever, he always makes the next thing going to be the great thing. He's a great salesman for the Devils. Yeah, he's bringing you that mental pretzel where he's saying to me last year, like, why it's all good and rosy. He's never just like, yeah, it's not good right now. And he was very, very happy that the fact that they're probably going to get a better draft pick as a result of all this, and they're young guys,

which they're hoping are going to lead the way, continue to progress in all categories, as he would say. He's very happy. He's in a good place. So according to Devils fans, they're laughing. Hey, right now we do get quite a race to the bottom. I mean, Buffalo's been playing much better lately. They still are in the 31st spot with 33 points,

but Anaheim and New Jersey only two points ahead of them. So it's going to be a race for number one. Of course, you don't get that number one spot automatically anymore. A couple more notes here. Buffalo, their goaltender, this is their prospect for the future. Uko Pekka, Lukonen, Lukonen? Is that how you say it? That's a tough one.

I don't know. That's why I texted it to you. I just wanted to hear you try to say it. Yeah, Uko Peca is his first name. Then Lukonen, he beat the Bruins 6-4 in his first NHL start. I know he's a highly touted prospect. Second-round pick back in 17 for the Sabres, 54th overall. So let's see what happens with him going forward.

I would imagine they'll get him a few more starts, considering they're not going to get to the playoffs this year. And we did mention Pittsburgh. The Islanders are also in the same division. Those, of course, are two Patrick Division teams back in the old Patrick Division days. And who played in the Patrick Division? Brian Trottier. So we're going to bring him on very shortly.

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So be sure to check him out at Larry Flowers Jewelry on Instagram. Once again, at Larry Flowers Jewelry on Instagram. He is the trusted jeweler to the pros. And now we're going to send it over to Hall of Famer Brian Trudgier. Well, I think this intro might need an intermission. It's so long. Our next guest won six Stanley Cups, a Calder Trophy, a Conn Smythe, an Art Ross, a King Clancy, and a Hot Trophy in his 18 NHL seasons,

in which he missed the playoffs just once, put up 1,425 points in 1,279 games and another 183 points in 221 playoff games. In case you're wondering, that's enough to get you into the Hockey Hall of Fame, as he did get in. And he also has a ring as an assistant coach with the 2001 Avalanche. Just an absolute legend of the game that we're honored to have on the show. Thanks so much for joining us on the Spitting Chicklets podcast. Brian Trojie. Now that's an intro right there.

You forgot handsome, intelligent, debonair. There are a couple other ones you should know. No, I made him take those out. I made him take those out. I made him take those out. I proofread it. We've been watching all these 70s Islanders clips. You guys are wild men off the ice.

So, you know, you guys are up to a lot of activities, watching Battle of the Network Stars, the Superstars. We were watching those videos, man. You guys are wild. I was the guy that made sure everybody got home safe. So designated driver, whatever you want to call it. Last guy at the party? Same fella, yeah.

So you grew up in Valmarie, Saskatchewan. I'm a bit of a map geek. Look, that's just above Montana. Did you go to the States a lot when you were a kid, or was it always in Canadamarie, Saskatchewan. I'm a bit of a map geek. I look, that's just above Montana. You got to go to the States a lot when you were a kid or was it always in Canada? No, we were chasing cows down the States. We were there that close to the border. Our cows got out. We'd have to go find them in Montana somewhere.

And we blend them with some of the, some of the Montana best bulls, you know, like just to let them run there for a few weeks, come back with, you know, all impregnated cows with some better bloodlines. But it was really fun. Like being, it's kind of Badlands. It's very remote. A lot of farmers, a lot of ranchers. We were a little bit of both.

And, you know, the great little community. I mean, it's dynamic in a sense that it's energetic. You know, everybody kind of grabs a hold of the rope. And there's always fundraising going on in order to do your sports and uh you know we had that christmas cheer basket ready to go to get us to those hockey tournaments and you know filled with the mickey of this and a little eight ounce of that and it was really kind of uh kind of a fun place to grow up you know some of those guys are still my best friends now i read you a piece in the players

tribune a few years back you said you learned to skate later in life so what's that like six years old in canada well i was six i was six years old and everybody had been skating for two or three years prior to that but we lived down the states for a while and dad was working road construction and uh when we moved back to canada in december of 62, I was six. Everybody was skating. I loved this thing. It was great. But, you know, we had a little creek by the house, and I'd throw the skates on, walk down there with skates on, walk back up to crawl up the bank, river bank,

to get back to the house and warm up and roll back down there again. But there was a little beaver dam down there to get fresh ice. Dad would chop that thing open. And I thought every kid in Canada had a beaver dam. They to get fresh ice dad would chop that thing opened and i thought every every kid in canada had a beaver dam they get fresh fresh ice um so it's really kind of a again unique in that aspect but um special for a whole bunch of reasons because it was cold enough from like december january february early march to start warm up southwest corner of saskatchewan but uh no there was lots lots of kids playing hockey we had probably eight nine kids of my age uh and then we had a couple kids older a couple kids younger

that got to play on our team um and we kind of stayed together all the way almost to midget and then everybody just seemed to take off started chasing girls they started doing other things and I was like all of a sudden I'm playing in senior hockey playing junior hockey uh playing on two or three different teams there was a town that my mom was from Climax about 40 miles away and we we joined forces Willie Disjardins is from there you guys know him from coaching in the NHL and what a scoring machine he was growing up but we just had a 50th anniversary our midget hockey team the Saskatchewan Provincial Champions back in the good old days just had a 50-year celebration so we had about 12 guys on a zoom call so that was kind of fun a lot of guys on that they didn't change much other

than their hairlines and their uh the hair color got a little whiter but uh it's kind of a fun little event to to reunite with those guys were those guys that that throughout your career and winning all those cups and and like your entire life you really stayed close with or is it more you're just catching up with a lot of these people for the first time in quite a while well thank goodness like we do keep up like willie and i stay in touch mike kirk there's quite a few of us at uh grant goodall uh smithing kim kindle all of us really they're all they're all farmers and from that neck of the woods i get home we try to get together but we stay in touch you know through texting and and cell phones mostly.

But, yeah, it's a great group of guys, Bernie Saran, Claude Jensen, that whole group. We grew up together and, you know, it seems like from grade one till today, it's the same old jokes, the same old this, that, and other. But it's just like locker room. But the NHL, when you play with guys, Ryan, Paul, you guys know this, you play with guys in the NHL that reminded you of the guys, Ryan, Paul, you guys know this, you play with guys in the NHL that reminded you of the guys you played with when you were in minor hockey. And it's just so

comical. It's like, oh man, that guy reminded me of Jensen. But that's the fun part is like kind of reminiscing with those guys and sharing some of the NHL experiences with those guys and vice versa, you know, sharing stories with you guys of me growing up with these dingbats from Saskatchewan. That's how everybody gets 10 nicknames. They keep referring them to the guys they used to play with so they can remember their names in the locker room. Next thing you know, the guy's got 10 names. I read something that you got homesick at one point when you were playing junior, of not being home.

And Tiger Williams helped out with that. Was there any truth to that? not being home and tiger williams uh helped out with that was was there any truth to that yeah it's one of those uh moments and i think it kind of defines you uh to a degree because you know i was so homesick and i was just getting ragdolled it seemed like every other game some guy was thumping on me and i was 16 years old you know 160 pounds playing against 19 20 year old guys that just asked me you want to go I go go where you know I didn't know they wanted to fight and I just like so naive from from the farm and and next thing you know the guy's wailing on me and I'm going black eyes to school I'm just so embarrassed

all the time but Christmas time I went home and I wasn't going back in my mind I wasn't going back I didn't tell the coach I didn't tell my teammates I was just going to figure out a way to stay home and of course mom's got all my favorite you know like turkey pies everything ready for and I just couldn't I said you know December 26th boxing day we had a game up in Saskatoon and I had to get on the road by 10 and there was no way I was getting on the road dad said better get going you better get going uh no I think I'm okay the coach called he said you gotta get here it's 2 30 like the bus is leaving in an hour and I'm like no I'm not sure I don't know maybe something my voice maybe something my dad saw I don't know but next morning Tiger Williams knocking on the door and it's like

seven o'clock in the morning in a blizzard of course he's got a GTO mag wheels he makes it all the way down to the ranch and mom goes hi tiger what are you doing here oh would like some breakfast he goes oh yeah thanks mary i come to get brian taking back swift curtain i said no tag i said i think i'm good home darren dad looked up from his coffee and he said i think uh you know you can always come home and that's probably all i needed to hear uh were those words because next thing you know i'm in the car driving back swift curtain and blizzard with tiger williams and he's going hey look I'm going to play left wing with you for the rest of the year no one's going to touch you for the rest of the year

and hockey was fun again but like having a big brother on the ice some guy would look at me and Tiger would just beat the crap out of him I felt so bad for some of these guys because they're probably saying you know hey nice goal kid or whatever but Tiger just and and no one touched me that whole year and of, Tiger gets a few goals and both of our careers kind of take off from there. And, you know, he's been a best friend ever since. That's when Tommy Sticks was created, Whit. When Tiger Williams joined his line,

everybody's trying to make buddies with him all of a sudden. Yeah, exactly. Hey, was he riding the stick then? Or was that later on in the NHL? No, he rode the stick in junior hockey and nobody said a word to him. You know, if you celebrate it too heavy, on in the nhl no he rode the stick in junior hockey and nobody said a word to him you know like you know if you if you celebrated too too heavy you know guys are like oh yeah next shift

guys are all just beating up on you nobody bothered to hire you like the only guy in junior hockey that could like go over the top celebrating and it's so funny because he had this tippy toe like pump your dance that he would do sometimes and he'd change it up and just almost like in your face i double dog dare you to come and like you know challenge me it's just but in flin flon he got challenged a few times um and he but he always came out of there you know unscathed but he's uh he was fearless and he made us all feel fearless because he wasn't a big man he wasn't like six six 260 pounds you know those days you're like 5'11 185 pounds but he would take on anybody and uh that that gave all of us we had Terry Wachowski was not big tough

you know Prince Albert kid we had Brian Back from uh bigger Saskatchewan New York's big but this is bigger and and it's really kind of cool to have those little tough guys that were just fearless and tough and Ian McPhee and Willie Friesen good M Mennonite out of Ross, but we had a good squad of guys. And you gain confidence and you feel bigger. And Tiger would grapple with me every practice. Like, he'd just beat me up, maul me. But he taught me how to grapple and protect myself. And it got to the point where he couldn't hurt me after we grappled in practice.

But he kind of taught me how not to be afraid of those great big monsters that we were playing against in junior hockey. Going back to Tiger, like off the ice and as a teammate, he seems like the most unbelievable guy when he would get on the ice, when he put this like mask on, because you see all these tapes of how like he would, he was a short wick. I mean, he would just snap and, and go crazy. Was he like on the ice? Was he like snarling at guys and shit?

There was, there, there was, I think a tiger that played hockey and a tiger who was your friend, a tiger who's a dad, a husband, you know, I think there's, there, there's multiple tigers, but you know, I know him as tiger, my best friend. And even on the ice he would stay that that come on kid we got to go we got to go let's go come on we need to go come on let's go and that kind of encouragement like he's a little older than me but i used to say to myself it was wonderful having a guy like that who was so hungry all the time and he found a way to make the nhl

because like he used to say to me like hey we're going to practice skating hey we're going to practice snapshots hey we're going to practice this we're going to he found a way to make the nhl but by doing that he kind of pulled me in and made me feel like oh there's a little extra work that has to get done here in order to to improve and i think those hours of working together you know him uh teaching me how to protect myself and me and him working on different skills, I think really helped us both. But he was an impressive guy. I think for our younger listeners, we should know Tyga Williams as the all-time penalty minute leader in NHL history with 3,971.

Just, I figured we were thrown in there. Now, I know you said he taught you how to fight a little bit trots, but you must have had to prove yourself at a certain point at that era of hockey, correct? Oh, without a doubt. You know, I scrapped in junior hockey all the time, but I don't think I won any. I used to be so happy with sitting in the penalty box and be like, ooh, not too bad. Good, good.

I'm still together. You're not too bad. But I got to the NHL. I had a couple of scraps early, and guys would be bringing my equipment over to the penalty box you know helmet or a couple gloves and a stick or whatever and you know i'm thinking i did really good i'm huffing and puffing how exhausted you are after your scrap and i'm barely lift my arms up and i'm like hey god and the guy and guys would be saying stuff like that was the ugliest fight i've ever seen don't you better not fight anymore you're giving the other team too much inspiration

i'm like what i thought I did really good. It's really, my own teammates were ripping on me. I'd sit there for five minutes and going, those dirty dogs. They're like, I thought I did okay. But yeah, it was comical. Clark Gillies came by one time and he goes, you ever have another fight?

I'm going to kick the crap out of you. I'm like, what was that all about? He's like, well, you know, you break a hand or something, you know, and you miss eight weeks. You know, like, I think I'm going to like beat the crap. I was like, okay, I know, you break a hand or something, you know, and you miss eight weeks, you know, like I think I'm going to like beat the crap. I was like, okay, I never thought of it that way. But when I got a couple of scraps, I wouldn't try to punch somebody's helmet. I just got to get in tight and do the noogie punches, you know,

the little short ones and try to get a couple like short and stiff ones and take a couple of short, stiff ones back. I remember Gary Nyland was saying, you know, like he said, your head was just going back and forth. Like as often as that guy's fist was I was like thanks Gary I thought it was you brought up your dad was he like who got you into the game and like you know where you really found like your love of hockey from I did well mom and dad both yeah they both very encouraging and for activities school work important, but they were very supportive in all sporting activities. Anything that we try to do, music, rodeo, gym, Canada, whatever it was, they were right there.

And dad was a very good athlete. Mom was, too. But it was really kind of neat to be able to have your dad as a coach and a guy to drive you and kind of, I don't know, mentor you on the way there and kind of like rip on you and critique you on the way home but it was um it was pretty special he was important all the way through to the NHL and even after the NHL he still wanted to be a big part of that and so I'd you know call him up and what do you think last night okay 20 minutes later on the phone he's he's done critiquing my game and hockey night in canada but it's really kind of neat to have him always in the in in the uh in the mix um you know mom was always the one that kind of like gave me like the uh um the good guy uh you know aspect of a game you know like oh i thought you were fantastic oh you passed the puck so well oh you worked hard you back checked really

hard she was always looking at the good where dad kind kind of nitpicked at some of the things I got to work on. But I think you have that little good cop, bad cop in parenting, I think, really helped. But, no, it was very important for all five of us kids. Mom had five kids, and all of us felt like we were her favorite. Brian, you got drafted by the Isles in 74, but you were also drafted by the Cincinnati Stingers of the WHA at a time when they were offering guys a lot of dough. Was that ever a real option for you, signing with the WHA at any point?

Well, they pulled the contract. They offered me $50,000 for 10 years, which is $500,000 more money than my dad was going to see his whole lifetime. It had to be tough for dad, but to uh but he found but to dad's credit he found a local intern attorney in swift current and that local attorney uh which was his personal lawyer said this is beyond me why don't we go find somebody who's a player agent for you and so we interviewed two or three you know ali engelson i think it was shadi and a fellow named sorkin and a few other guys out of saskatoon I think it was the Pinder brothers.

But we went with this group from Montreal, Larry Saison and David Chaudier, and same ones that Dennis Potvin had, ironically. But it was really kind of neat because they said, don't say anything. We're just going to go to the draft. And Cincinnati ended and said, go in the draft. We're going to pull the contract. They pulled the contract. And, yeah,

I would, I didn't care. I didn't have money anyway, but the Islanders end up offering like, you know, on the way there, this is a fun story. Dad, dad was like, okay, whatever they offer us, just remember we're not going to take it because their second offer is going to, going to be better than their first, you know? So I was like, okay, good. We've got a game plan. So we flight to Montreal, you know, mom and dad get looped on the plane, three booze and everything in first class. And uh they're they're buzzed hey but they're

trying to shake the cobwebs off we get off the plane in the limo up to the thing there's bill toriel hi mr and mrs trotcher okay brian here's your contract we're going to give you a fifty thousand five hundred thousand dollar signing bonus hundred hundred grand for five years uh my dad goes where's the pen i'm like dad what happened to the plan he's like oh nobody's gonna crazy offer you more money than that that's way more than the plan he thought they were gonna offer you like five grand yeah exactly they're crazy to offer you this much we're gonna sign this poker thing the thing thing is dad had to sign that contract because i was i turned 18 in july we signed that thing in june i had to sign that contract because I turned 18 in July. We signed that thing in June.

I had to sign the contract after my birthday in September later on. It was really kind of fun. You know, Dad signing my first contract. You know, probably proud as a peacock. Who knows? But, you know, and they say, okay, and you get a car of your choice. And now they're looking at me, and I said, a car of my choice. And they're probably thinking, a Lamborghini or whatever.

And I look at my mom and dad i go chrysler new yorker we're gonna chrysler new yorker and my dad's just beaming so and i went for new york i tossed the keys and he got the chrysler new yorker 74 chrysler new yorker and just bells and whistles everything on their leather seats and everything i came back the following spring and the car's gone i'm like what where's the car he goes i traded in for a van i couldn't fit all my musical instruments into it i was like oh whatever his car to deal with it's just fun fun stories your rookie year you come in and just dominate and what's funny about the islanders they had been potfin's rookie year i think was two years prior and they weren't very good and then the second year they improved and then the third year he was outstanding 100 points he wins the Norris you win the Calderon and the team just took off

like I can't imagine the feeling for you coming in and knowing what they'd been through and immediately making that much of an impact was it overwhelming how good you were playing your first year well you know it was it was kind of fun to be a part of that early success with the Islanders. Like to come in, you know, you have confidence, but you don't know, you know, you're just dying to contribute somehow. But, you know, Al Arbor put me in a situation, put me in a good player, Clark Gillies, Billy Harris the first year and then on the power play and we're clicking, clicking along. So things are happening and we're riding that wave,

but they had had a little success in the playoffs year before against the Rangers and Pittsburgh and then Philly. They went to seven games in those two series and lost against Philadelphia. So they were kind of riding the wave themselves. But that team was young, and, you know, they were building through the draft, obviously. We get Mike Bossy the next year, and it just kind of just kept snowballing from there. And all of a sudden, Kenny Morrow and John Tonelli and, you knowave longevin duane sutter more guys are coming on and big trade with butch

goring but that growing year that that rookie year was kind of special for a whole bunch of reasons because like you know no one anticipated i i was not a high um polluted draft choice i kind of snuck in under the radar you know second rounder you know pat price was the first rounder that year and there was a lot of hype going in about a bunch of guys and i snuck in there next you know i'm kind of bouncing around the scoring championship and the scoring lead and it was really kind of fun to finish like i think top 15 or something that year and you know be competing against like the geese there's your bear perot's and the gila flers and but it was you gauge yourself all the time, right? That's what you do. You just keep gauging yourself to, Hey, I can play at this level. All right.

Whoa. Darrell Sittler. That was a tough game. Oh, Bobby Clark. Oh my God. Now that's a, that's intensity, you know, and you just keep gauging yourself and finding yourself next thing, you know, you know, you're, you're a level where people are respecting you and you don't want to lose that respect. So you kind of, kind of keep, keep fighting, banging away the best you can. And, obviously I wasn't a heavyweight or a middleweight or a lightweight when it come to the the dukes but you know you gain a little respect when you're hitting guys clean you're hitting guys

solid you know you're not hitting the guys that aren't hitting you kind of thing and you know I was banging guys that were banging me and so like that kind of thing you kind of ebbs and flows you kind of kind of find yourself through that but was a, it was a fun year. You know, and obviously you're, you're dodging bullets not trying to get your neck broke because everybody's out to break your neck that, that rookie year. I mean, I'm telling you, if it wasn't for Clark Gillies and I'm saying this because I went from Tiger Williams and junior to Clark Gillies in the NHL.

And I remember I was in a show kind of a stare with uh Jerry Korab and Jimmy Schoenfeld in Buffalo and they're both coming at me I'm like backing up a little bit I'm like I have to fight one of these monsters and all of a sudden I bump into Clark Gillies behind me and he does everything all right and those two guys just kind of peeled away I was like yeah it is now thanks big boy thanks big boy oh my god that's so funny so when you get to training camp that year do you 100% think you're making the team because you said you I mean you were 22nd overall so like I mean I don't know how common it was back then for a guy to get drafted and boom step right in yeah I didn't have a lot of pressure um because I could go back and play another year junior so I still had a year

of junior left and Bill Torrey and Al Arbor were kind of friendly about it they're like look come come to camp you know do your best whatever and we'll see where you are if you go back to junior you'll still have early Ingerfield to coach you in junior again and so I had that I didn't have a ton of pressure on me and there were 60 rookies at camp that year and we're all in one large locker room at Rack and Rink on Farmingdale in long island and every day two four five six eight guys would leave so after that first that first week or two we're down to like 12 guys in this big locker room and at the end of like the month i'm in there all by myself with you know all the gatorade and the gum and everything on i'm like where did everybody go and uh they moved me down

to the weight room at the big room down with the big guys and all the guys are ripping on me they're saying okay kid you see it's getting closer to the exit door and so you're always like being teased and you know but you're feeling a part of it and you know I went through training camp I didn't get a point not an assist not anything but I was generating stuff I was bumping bodies anything that moved had the puck I kind of got a piece of them and Al Arbor came up to me at the end of training camp and he goes kid we're going to keep you around for a while so I had a few games I think in the NHL to just to play it before they sent me back to junior so being I come out of the blocks and being first home game we get five points three goals and it just kind of took off from there bang bang bang bang and um I don't know you got to be lucky to be I'd rather be lucky than good

you know decent start a decent start what was so what was your relationship with Al Arbor? I mean, because we thought we had Sutter on and obviously he's kind of like that father figure, very stern. Did he kind of nurture you a little bit more because you came in at such a young age? Yeah, I think he definitely was a father figure for all of us, all us young guys, especially. We had such respect for him. He treated us like like a dad like he said that he always said this I said Al Arbor said the same two things my dad said to me you know smarten up and bear down and those two things like I said like talking my own dad like like but he was just really firm very fair um you know he he didn't yell at me if I didn't deserve it and like for example he'd say you know bear down those

face-offs I'm like well what was I last night he goes it doesn't matter bear down I'm like well what was I in the defensive zone what was I like on the power play he goes just bear down I'd look at the stats and I'd be like 50 55 60 percent and I'm like but that's overall you know like some of those ones that neutral zone they don't sometimes we just let those go to go pressure the clunky defenseman. Sorry, Ryan, but. Oh, I love this shit. Keep those coming, please. Keep those coming. I got nothing for you. I got nothing for you.

Not that Ryan was a clunky defense, but you know, Billy Joel, but I got nothing else. Sometimes we, sometimes we pressure, we pressure the defenseman and just lose a draw, you know, depending where it is. But he would always make sure that I was kind of like focused all the time. But, you know, I have great respect for Al. The power play was fun because he'd say, you know, we go for 0 for 5 or maybe 0 for 10 the last two games or something.

And then he'd go, you guys go down there, work on the power play, figure things out. That was the power play. We're like, okay, here we go. So we go down there, we pass the puck, and he goes, I want anybody to hold that puck too long, move that puck quick. And that's all he would say. And that's the fun of Al. He kind of left things up to you, and he'd send two of us on the ice sometimes

and say, okay, you two guys go take the faceoff. And Butch Goring and I would be looking at each other, are you taking it or am i taking well you guys figured out we're like okay are you are you good against him i'm doing pretty good oh he's a righty you take him and it's really kind of that kind of thing he kind of gave you that that opportunity to kind of like figure things out yourself rather than constantly harp on you and uh so that we i think we we all gained a little uh maturity because of that and a lot of respect for Al because of that, I think, and vice versa, we hope. But he was a great mentor to all of us.

Brian, your fourth season, you're just 22 years old, 78, 79. You end up winning the MVP, led the league in scoring with 134 points. Did it almost feel like everything was easy for you that season, relatively speaking? Well, Mike Bossley was on fire. I think he scored something like almost 70 goals i mean he was just red hot and we're we were riding that and the fact that he wanted to like uh he was trying to go 50 and 50 and a whole bunch of things were happening and

it was just really kind of a unique opportunity to kind of like take advantage of a scoring championship in the last couple weeks al was double shifting me and you know, things were happening and I was kind of neck and neck and all of a sudden I got ahead a little bit. And then Guillaume Fleur would have a five point game. Marcel Dion have a five point game. I'm like, Oh my God, this is kind of fun. Just to be in the race was, it was interesting. And then the last game, I always say to Jimmy Rutherford, he shut out Montreal, won nothing in Detroit. He was the goaltender for Detroit. And I always thank Jimmy for, for helping him win the scoring championship

because he goes, well, it took you long enough, you know, to thank me, 25 years, whatever. And I'm like, hey, yeah, but we couldn't talk. There was no, like, you know, fraternizing with the opposition back in the good old days, Jimmy. But it's really kind of neat that that last game, Marcel Dion got five points that night. And he finished like two points behind me.

And then Guy Lafleur and I were neck and neck. And I got a couple points that night. So I finished a couple points ahead of Guy Lafleur. So it was really kind of magical for a lot of reasons. And it's nice to have your name on that one trophy. But it reflects on all the guys, that whole team. Because everybody was pulling for me. I remember Mike Kaziki came up to me and said, Trotz, get out there.

I'm like, okay. I just come off and bing, I get an assist. So, like those kinds of things, you know, like you appreciate your teammates for those moments. Biz, he's like, it's nice to be on that one trophy. Like, dude, your name's on 14 trophies. Hey, what about Bossy, though? Playing with him that year or every year he played is it

put up forehand backhand put it in his feet doesn't matter he's scoring exactly it's a scoring machine like it didn't matter where you threw it at him like you throw a knuckleball you know a grenade at him he'd knock it down slap it go in the and then find a hole and it's really kind of cool playing with a guy like that who has that scoring confidence. And then I roomed with him on top of it. So we'd talk about it. He'd go, hey, just, you know, next time put a little more in front of me. Or like, I'm just throwing it at you somewhere. Sometimes you just threw it to a space and let him walk into it.

But those goal scorers, they just know where to find themselves. And Clark Gillies, their left winger, gets so mad. He'd say, how come there's two guys checking me? And Bossy gets 50 goals and no one's checking him but I guess he just kind of lured the guy by and next thing you know he kind of sneak away and find some open open ice and it was just kind of the way the magic of a Mike Bossy but special special uh hockey player underrated playmaker stick handler underrated speed just underrated on a lot of things and so the two of us we kind of giggle

about it because you know we would never say oh yeah mike's the goalscorer yeah i'm just kind of a little pillion maker but you know we both kind of finished up with a lot of goals we both kind of finished up with a lot of points and we did oh yeah we're lucky there or whatever because we don't want we want those checkers to concentrate on him and not take him seriously on his on his playmaking and his speed because he was, that was our deception. And me on the other side being kind of deceptive anyway, I like to, yeah, and I'm just going to kind of be the Louis T on here, throw a knuckleball at the net when, you know,

when Mike's throwing these grenades, these fastballs, and I come in with that changeup, the goalie waiting for it, and it drops under his glove or something. But it's special when you have that kind of yin and yang with one guy and then the trio of Clark Gillies, the power forward, the big brother. And he was massive and he was a good hockey player. To have that kind of that trio grande, Clark Gillies called us, and that unique magic of three guys.

And it was special. I mean, we rode that way for a good 10 years. He come up with that nickname, Gillies? We were going to ask you about that trio grand that's a trio grande yeah the trio and andre yeah yeah it feels like the further we get away from that time people don't know just how good guys like pot van and bossy were and bossy didn't you know his career was cut short with with his injuries but i mean he could have probably put up 700 800 goals if he didn't have his career cut so short you think oh with without a doubt I mean he's on pace I mean he still I think holds a record for goals per game by a long shot it's not even close I mean you know there's some guys like like Wayne is a special hockey player you know scores 800 goals I mean

that's unique and there's guys like you know Mike Gardner 600 Marcel Dion 700 there's guys and you got Ovechkin now it's goal scoring machine um but they're not even close to Mike yeah I don't believe but I think Mike is just one of those individuals and you know he just loved scoring goals he had a knack for it and uh you know uh prided himself on it. And he just really made it. And guys would sometimes, I think, misunderstand him. Like, oh, he's nothing but selfish. Well, there's a good selfish in that. You know, that good selfish, he wants to contribute.

He feels a goal scorer should find a way to score goals. And, you know, if we won the game and he didn't contribute, he didn't feel happy. He was happy about the team, but he didn't feel happy individually. And guys misread that sometimes, but no, he's, he's a great guy, great friend. And, you know, obviously just a tremendous, tremendous hockey player. You guys said you said you were roommates together on the road or, or when you, even when you're on long Island.

No, he roomed with me for a while. He was, he was a newlywed. So he and his wife, Lucy bunked in with us for three or four months till they found their apartment. And, but we were roommates on the road for all 10 years. Yeah. All 10 years. It was just kind of unique when you walk into a room, you know, what bed to go to, you know, what TV channels you're going to watch. It just, you know, married couple. Yeah. It's worse than a married couple. You know, the little bickering that goes on is comical, you know,

the teasing and, but you know, the little bickering that goes on is comical. You know, the teasing. But, you know, lots of laughter. Always had a backgammon thing or some cards or something, you know, just because we'd find little things that amused us or kind of passed the time a little bit that, you know, both of us really enjoyed. And same kind of comedy on TV or movies or whatever. And it was same kind of food choices. Like sometimes, ah, room service night. Yeah, okay, room service. Okay. We're going out there. Okay. We're going out where

we're going. Okay. We're going for steak, whatever. And it was never an argument. It was just like, oh yeah, that sounds good. Boom. And the same thing on the ice. I mean, sometimes I just look at him. He'd look back at me. We'd nod. How the heck did you know what I was thinking? I don't know, but it was just that kind of a friendship or unique magic or whatever you want to call it, chemistry that kind of works between a couple guys. It's funny, like two guys, you could probably point at the equivalent of a Motel 6. Now you couldn't get two superstars in the same room at the Ritz. It's funny how much things have changed in that regard.

But when you guys started winning, even though you're based on Long Island, you must have started owning New York City at a certain point because you were so much better than the Rangers. Well, New York was where the that was Ranger country. And we didn't we go in and watch a player or go to dinner or something. And since an arranger fan would say, what are you doing here? And they kind of do it to kind of tease us. We knew that, hey, just visiting, you know, but we didn't try to go into own New York City. It was a respect thing

like that was that was kind of ranger territory we love long island we spent all our time on long island most of it 99 of it and but we love going to the city for for the events or like for charity events or dinners or a play or something that was really fun uh but we didn't try to own new york city that was definitely ranger ranger territory, you know, like the rivalry with us was always on the ice because the Ranger guys off the ice, we always blend. And like, like we do now with the NHL alumni. And it's really kind of nice to get along at a golf event or, or share some of the same kind of fun events and community and that kind of fun, but on the ice, it was rivalry ice it was rivalry it was go time and there

was no friends it didn't matter if you know we're golfing buddies you know two months ago in the summertime it's all going rivalry time and now we're trying to like you know win a hockey game so it's uh you know gloves off and it was great and it brought out the best in both teams there's a there's a magic of having those rivalries we We even see it today because it's a carryover for years and years and years of rivalries that just seem to go on and on and on. And the fans are the beneficiaries because they see the best – they see intensity from both teams. What are your memories of the first cup run?

Because to break through and then get that group to just really take that next step and little did you know what it was the beginning of. But what are your memories of the first one, the celebration and all that? That was pretty fun in Long Island because everything was fresh and new. We were young. So everything that happened was a first time. So we go against the Triple Crown line first round. Boom, we sneak by those guys.

And what a series. I meany smith was fantastic in net but we got some key goals from you know butch goring went nose to nose with former teammate he wanted to go against the on the whole time and basically shut marcel down you know five on five and power play whatever but um we got butch goring that trade was unique in itself and we lost two good guys to get him. But, you know, then we go up against the Bruins, and obviously, you know, they are tough, and they're going to challenge us. And, you know, we had Gillies, Nystrom, Gary Howitt. We got Gordie Lane and even Smitty. I mean, we battled, and we battled, and we stood up,

and we found ourselves confident. You know, we did really well against the Bruins. all of a sudden you know uh you know Terry Riley and Clark Gillies had a couple rows and uh you know we felt all right you know our big guy beat their big guy and I'm sure the Bruins said well our big guy beat your big guy but we kind of like we try to try to grab whatever you can in order to to keep that confidence and that but our power play was was rocking we get up against the french connections in buffalo and uh you know we lose first two games win the next four straight and it was it was like all of a sudden we're saying you know we're we're on a roll here this is this could be magic time and we meet the flyers and the finals our our division rivalries and they're they have the best. They went like 37 games in a row without a defeat.

I think that a few ties in there, but Pete Peters was on fire. Their goaltender, a young rookie. And you know, we, we, we, our power play was that they took penalties to thank goodness. They were, they were trying to like make us retaliate and that kind of stuff, get us in these scrums. And I would just say, Hey guys, just, just keep the hockey and boom, boom, boom. Our power play was just stayed hot and boom next thing you know we're we're bringing out the Stanley Cup and we're pumping it up in the air but it's so fun like Long Island we all didn't know how to celebrate

eh we just didn't know how to celebrate and there was no day with the cup and there was nothing like that but I think I wanted my time with the cup and so so we're at the Beaver Dam Country Club that night. And I said to Bill, Tory, I said, Bill, where's the cup going after that? He goes, just going back to my house. I said, can I take it to my house and I'll bring it to the parade tomorrow? He goes, yeah. And I didn't tell anybody else. I just grabbed the cup, took it out, threw it in my car and took off.

But I wanted to wake up with the cup at the end, put it in my bed to be the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning. So I opened the drapes and I knew the sun had become in there. I couldn't have worked any better, you know, got all my eyes. And there was that the holy grail of hockey just shining like it's like you like you dream about. And I always say it was like probably like magnificently perfect in that sense sense because there's nothing like it i just always say to myself that that moment with my cup at you know like when i you dream about as an eight-year-old and now it's that reality i've got my time and you know i can remember wanting to hug this thing

you feel the names that are etched on and you read the names gordie howe jean belabo you know stan makita bobby all those great names bobby Orr and you know they're gonna put my name on this thing forever and it's gonna be there so it's it's it's magic were you spooning with the consmith did you win the consmith that year I I did win the con I didn't spoon with it I should have I should get a picture of me spooning with my like the consmith but that that trophy it's it's a big maple leaf and it's it jean beliveau won the first con smite and to me like jean beliveau gordie how those are like the two biggest names i could think of when i was a kid you know there's nobody bigger um and i used to say to myself here's jean beliveau's

name great gordie how's name on this thing and i'm like wow i cannot believe this little kid from saskatchewan but it brings you down and, it's so humbling to think that you're a part of these great players that, you know, you, you, you, you, they were like your, your heroes as a kid. And, but it was again, that reflects on your team. You know, they could have picked five or six guys that year to be the cons might on our team. And everybody would have said, yeah, great choice. And then every year after that, I mean, Butch Coring won a year, Mike Bossy and then Billy Smith. And every year we all said, yeah, great choice. And then every year after that, I mean, Butch Coring won a year, Mike Bossy and then Billy Smith.

And every year we all said, yeah, great choice. And it could have been Dennis any one other year. It could have been Clark Gillies, anybody, Bobby Nystrom. Like Bobby scored all the overtime goals. And like he and Mike Bossy. And if somebody would have said John Tennelly, we all said, yeah, because that's how you need everybody. And everybody feels like they're such a big part of it.

And whoever wins the cause, Smythe where they were as happy as a clam for them. There's an old, old, old clip of you guys. I think it's a fundraiser or a fashion show. It looked like something out of Slapshot. Nystrom has a fur coat and a speedo on and someone's up there doing Elvis. Like you guys look like a bunch that had a lot of fun back then in addition to the winning.

Well, they did. They had these fundraisers and in a contest and you had to come out and try to be uh your bring out your best talent other than hockey and oh my god it was just comical because john tonaleta was such an elvis fan he did a great elvis impression and butch goring did kind of he tried to do the uh saturday night fever guy danny terrio or whatever And I was cracking up. John Travolta? John Travolta.

And I'm like, oh, my God. Was it brutal? Oh, he had the big, loud shirt and tight pants on. He did it. He actually really put his heart and soul in it. It was really kind of great. And Clark, he did the gambler. And I was trying to play guitar.

But it was really – those kinds of things are fun because people get to see another side of you, you know, that's not hockey related, but it's kind of like funny fun. And so the comedy of it was more, was better than the talent. Believe me. What was your talent? No talent, but if I tried to strum a guitar and pretend I was like a country Western

star, like, I think I tried to sing a Johnny Cash song or something, and I didn't get booed. I think I got a polite hand like a golf clap. Yeah, exactly. Just keep winning us cups. We'll give you a hand here at your dog shit performance. I got you one back, Whit.

Yeah. Hey, were you guys doing beers after like every win or every game at this point or no? You know, it was really calm in the locker room because, you know, guys were sneaking beers. Everybody like back in those days, you know, like Eddie Westfall was the captain. He'd give somehow magically we'd all we'd have 48 beer on the bus going to the airport and a couple in the locker room. And then finally, Al just just said you know what you guys are going to sneak it you know we're just going to have we're going to put two beer in

everybody's locker after every game win or lose and uh I think it just kind of calmed everybody like this sneaky aspect of it was gone and uh but I did I don't drink beer because beer makes me feel bloated and uh so I was a very popular guy post-game because Clark DeLizzo just kind of walked by my stall. I'd hand him one. He was right across from me. He'd give me the eyeballs. I'd say, okay, you get one too. But it's fun.

You know, those are just fun memories of beer time. You know, a wine guy? I don't mind a glass of wine. Yeah, a little vodka. No Amsterdam here and there. Yeah, it's all good stuff. Nice plug. The Italian restaurant, Borelli's, next door.

You guys stop in there frequently? You know, we had a lot of places on Long Island. We stopped post-game at practices, like after practices. Like out in Farmingdale, you know, we had a little place. But I was 18, 19, and 20 years old, and it was 21 to get in those bars. I'd have to try to sneak me in once in the blue moon but uh you know but I hit some restaurants like you know the Wheatley have tavern in that was kind of like a family place I could I could I could go in and

not have to hide and you know um Chubby Zeno was the owner and um you know he'd always have a stool like a little booth quiet booth ready for me and those kinds of things but long island was special because they treated us like we were kind of golden boys to a degree uh at the same time i think the guys didn't run with it they didn't take advantage of it it was pretty special time like the not just the fans the hockey fans but the people of long island were just really good all the businesses and you know the community they they all appreciated us because well eventually we all had kids going to school so we're a big part of that community and Long Island is just a bunch of little towns put together so it was like a bunch of little Valmarie Saskatchewans all pushed together to

make one big town like you know Huntington was a big city I mean it had 50,000 people or 100,000 people but it was you know you go out to smithtown and way out to port jeff and i mean every little town was unique in a sense but no long island special place good people i know you said you didn't go to new york too often but did you guys at least make it to studio 54 once that was during the heyday oh my god studio 54 we went to studio 54 a couple times and it was just like uh the beat beat would hit you it's all like a boom boom boom boom boom boom boom you know and then they had this plant and i had no clue what the heck marijuana was like but but they had this plant that stood by the door you walk in and people would be like

diana ross walked by she grabbed hunk hunk of leaf and started chewing on him like what what what is that oh some kind of hemp plant or something like whatever so people are like i have no clue what's going on is i'm on a hit from saskatchewan um i didn't try any of the leaves i'm like no no thanks i gotta i gotta hockey game tomorrow yeah no way no way could save brian yeah i mentioned it after the intro to this the superstars on abc that you appeared on i mean you guys were obviously you know big athletic celebrities back then. What would they do fly down the Bahamas for like a weekend? You go against like Moses Malone and Lou Frigno and stuff like that.

It was great. It was great. We go against the basketball players, the, the boxers, football players, baseball players. And, you know, to, to meet some of these guys they they're they're not just great players they're just really good people and god we had some fun down there but but i came in uh third the the one year uh wayne grimditch he was a uh he was a water skier what an athlete he was and then uh the following year i came in second to a fellow who was a paddleball champion. And what an athlete he was. But I picked all the tough events like bowling, you know,

something that didn't require a lot of athleticism. You know, I snuck a big win out of that. But it was really kind of special because they had golfing. They'd have this rowing machine. They'd have an obstacle course. And it was kind of challenge yourself a bike race i remember doing the bike race and uh there was taller cranston was a figure skater and he was a favorite and they all they said you know this is what i do

this is what how i train you know i'm on a bike all the time they were they so he's he's gonna win it and i'm like well i better stick stick close to taller you know like I'm gonna not let him not get him out of my sight and uh so he was all the interviews before and uh we take off and I'm trying to like let him go in front of me and he wouldn't he's trying to draft me and I'm like oh so I just kind of peeled off and my back tire hit his front tire and I hear and he gets a flat tire and he's kind of holding his bike off to the side I came around about the second time and he's standing there giving me the dirty eye as I go by the last story dollar I was waiting for you and so we had a good laugh about it afterwards I said why didn't you go in front of me because I want to draft you and I want to draft you because you're the favorite

but uh there's a really fun stories and I that with a boxer. What was the name? Banks. What a monster he was. And he just pumped weights. And he just, like, one hand put, like, 250 pounds over his head. And he won the weightlifting, no problem. Brian, as the dynasty kind of rolled on, like, did you guys, like, feel internal pressure mount? Did it get too hard to manage all the personalities and like or did it

just stay even keel the entire time like as in the first cup right to the fourth yeah there's always a little something different uh every season whether you know a new player comes on the chemistry whatever uh we had um you were very little change there's 14 guys or something like that were on all four cups so the the nucleus kind of stayed together it was it was kind of like the the deeper players you had to make yourself deeper you know you want to get you want to raise that level of of you know one guy goes down and when you have somebody to replace them really strong so we had mike mckeown come on we had brent sutter come on for a couple and and we got deeper uh LaFontaine and Flatley came right at the end and but the

thing that I noticed the most Paul is you just the wear and tear like on reflection like through it you don't even think about it you don't think and man I'm tired I'm I'm wore out but on reflection it's it's just wear and tear on on on your whole team and your body and this and the amount of games you play and um you know, the intensity of the playoffs. But we felt comfortable in that skin as far as playoff time. You know, you get more comfortable with the pressure, you get more comfortable with what's expected, but it was wear and tear on the body. And, you know, I think even management felt there was some wear and tear. So they're trying to, you know, infuse younger younger players like Lafontaine and Dineen and Flatley and those guys and um but we were we're still

getting some great play like Kenny Morrow was scoring us a big goal and you know Mike Boxley was still scoring big goal but it was just that kind of thing more so than than expectations expectations was great um those creepy oilers came along, and uniquely, we'd meet them in the finals back-to-back. And great guys, great champions. If you're going to lose to somebody, lose to great guys and great champions. But to their credit, Gretzky tells that story about walking by our locker room, and we're not celebrating.

We have ice packs, and we're all beat up, and there's a price to pay and that kind of stuff, which is kind of good. But that's not the story that we remember because they had to go by our locker room to get to their bus after the game. And hockey players, we're not going to rub salt in the room. So we had a kid waiting out there, like, and he would say, hey, two guys are coming. So we just kind of, like, stopped celebrating for a second.

They're gone. And then we celebrate, move and holler some more. They're gone. Yeah, they're gone. Oh, here comes a couple more. Not doing anything for – they're gone. Yeah! We started celebrating again.

But, you know, maybe it's our own demise that we didn't celebrate and rub it in their noses as they walked by. But, no, that's the story I remember. That's interesting. Did you get a chance to play against Gordie Howe when he came back for that last year? I'm guessing he got some snarl still, huh? We did.

And he was still Gordie, which was really good. And he got into tug-of-war with Dwayne Sutter because Dwayne Sutter, Gordie will go around and whack your stick, you know, to see if it was. And he whacked Dwayne Sutter's stick out of his hand. So Dwayne grabbed Gordie's stick and tried to pull it out of his hands, and they were at a tug-of-war by our bench, and the referee, let go of the stick. He knocked my stick. I'm going to give you a two-minute penalty for a hole.

It was just so funny, and Gordy's like, no, no, cool. Call him a cucumber. You know, just Gordy, you know, like just so in control, like so smooth, just snapping pucks around looking not out of place. Here's a 50 year old guy who has all the respect in the world of everybody out there. Not because he's Gordy, because the guy can play and the guy can still perform and the guys out there doing things that, you know, you saw him do is when you,

when you were a kid and here he is playing against you know Mr. Hockey wow beyond belief uh Jean Beliveau was the other guy you grew up idolizing you must have been watching him on TV non-stop because that was some of the only games that were being played right well yeah we get Hockey Night in Canada we get Toronto or Montreal on TV and so we got a lot of Montreal and we saw Montreal raise a lot of Stanley Cups. And I can remember when Jean Beliveau was so smooth, like he's like Mario Lemieux, like before there was Mario,

like the big, tall, graceful, just smooth stick handler. You know, nobody liked him at the time. And, you know, he gets to raise the Stanley Cup for Montreal every year. And I remember turning to dad, I was like eight years old, I said, I want to raise the cup over my head like Jean Beliveau. And dad says, well, you better start practicing.

But, you know, like, or get your homework done, or will you take your skates away? And I didn't always make sure my homework was done. But I think those kinds of players, those Jean Beliveaus and Gordie Howes and the Bobby Orr they they inspire young hockey players and now you got the Crosby's the McDavid's and the Canes that are doing the same things and they're just good ambassadors for the game and you know we all want to stay good ambassadors what you guys do here with with the podcast I think is is is ambassadorship because

you're you're able to like share experiences share stories and the great great stories and unique individuals that have played the game so it's fun being on the show with you guys thanks no it's awesome it's so true that you you get to hear so many stories that without podcasts and the way that media has changed that you just never would never would even get to hear so i i think it's great talking to you and hearing all these old old time like memories because for people my age like i knew about your dynasty but right i wasn't i wasn't old enough i wasn't you know into the game yet so i didn't know much about the team you start looking at the numbers it's like i didn't know anything about john tinelli i was like holy shit

this guy was unbelievable oh johnny t yeah johnny was the tasmanian devil like elbows stick everything's going in the corner. He'd come out the puck and ding to the front of the net and jamming things. And we love Johnny T, and he's just great. But, you know, every one of the guys on the Stanley Cup team, like each guy is special for a whole bunch of reasons. And, you know, Wayne Merrick, people, Wayne Merrick, well, Wayne Merrick, we called him Bone Man because he had no, there was no meat on his bones.

He was just like pure bone, but strong like orangutan, you know, just like one arm guys off, you know, and one shoot the puck with one with a wrist shot with one hand. Like people didn't know his strength and his speed. And he's like a river skater. He could just skate and skate all day. We do, we do line rushes or ladders at at the end and bone man but just be like skating like not even breathing hard and the rest of us are like what is with this guy like because he's just he's lean he's so lean and he's just like such a smooth skater but big performer like they they find ways to contribute and play big games and um you know you can go up and down the list and guys

that probably didn't get a lot of headlines but we don't win without those guys you know that's that's the part of the game that people don't understand like yeah you know trotchy or bossy or potpin they get a few headlines but man the appreciation factor having you know the guys that don't get the headlines you know like that they are special people and um i'm glad you bring up names like John Tonelli and my, my buddies like Dwayne Sutter and cause they, they would play big, big games for us to Stanley cup finals and throughout. I want to mention the 1984 Canada cup where you played for the United States a few years before that you actually played for Canada and they, they really let you have it during those games, huh?

Yeah. And you know what, it's, it's all, those games huh yeah and you know what it's it's all all good because like you know i think the i always say you can't you can't make people understand because um you know there's just this wonderful thing called the the media that just won't let things die but uh the people that do understand like they understand the fact that you know i i have dual citizenship i can i i can work on both sides of the border i'm north american indian and uh people look at me sometimes they're like so what and i said well i just want to give back to the states that you know kids are born down here and you know i make my living down here i'm probably going to retire down here it's okay like it's not the end of the world you know plus it's for the pension it's not like it's for it's

not like you know where i'm playing to beat anybody up but there's a the pension. It's not like it's for – it's not like, you know, where I'm playing to beat anybody up. But there's a pride involved, and there's a national pride. And, you know, you think you're doing it for the right reasons, and then all of a sudden it comes back to bite you a little bit. And I said, oh, you know, I've got to take it on the chin, play your heart out, play the game you love, and let the chips fall where they will. And it ended up Canada won anyway.

They got Peter Stastny on the team. They had a couple, a couple of Stastny's play for him on the team. So I'm saying it, what goes around comes around and it, you know, nobody, nobody said to Peter that he was a traitor, that he was, you know, playing out playing for his Slovakian team anymore. And I was like, it doesn't matter. You know, it's kind of a backhanded compliment. Cause if I was like a low life hockey player and I went, I went and played for us, they wouldn't care.

But you know, the fact that I was maybe, you know, one of the, you know, Stanley cup, you know, champion, I'm going to play for the U S team. They're a little bit mad at me. So you take it on the chin and you move on. And somewhere I think Canada has forgiven me. I was just saying, it's like a, like a jealous ex. Like they ran out and get a couple of slow backs that all of a sudden Canadian. So they basically were flipping it on its head as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. It's all good. Like it's just, it's the, I think the media has, they, they take their, their swipe at it. And some, a few fans take their swipe at it. And then, you know, when Canada won the Canada cup, I was like, okay, you guys forgive me yet? No, no, it's still not a matter of you, but we're sure happy Canada won the Canada Cup. I was like, okay, you guys forgive me yet? No, no, it's still not a matter. It's still not a matter to you. But we're sure happy Canada won. See, you should have stayed with us.

I said, you know what? It was all for a pension. We're trying to raise money for a pension. So, you know, all good. So as if the four cups with the Islanders weren't enough, you end up going over to Pittsburgh and you compared the Bellevue comparison to Mario. Like, how did that all go down?

You know, the offseason ended up signing there. That must have been a crazy ride. Well, it was a little bit ugly in New York because I had two years left on that contract. They bought me out, which is kind of a kick in the butt. You know, after 15 years, you kind of, you know, you lose that identity and you don't feel appreciated. But, you know, Craig Patrick was great. You know, Bob Johnson, the coach, they come here,'t feel appreciated but you know Craig Patrick was was great you know

Bob Johnson the coach they come here you feel appreciated all over again the city made me feel like I had a little something left and the players here were excited to see me so I think as you know when you get traded it's devastating or when you move teams it's devastating and I signed on as a free agent and I was you know a little concerned well how's it going to be and it couldn't have been better I mean like to like in a sense you feel vindicated not because you know I'm riding the shirt tails of of this team I'm not like I'm not the uh the engine of the locomotive I'm like the caboose now keeping everybody on the tracks but um it was really kind of neat to be able to like come to Pittsburgh win a champion back to back and then feel like man you know I did have a little something left and man I did accomplish what

I wanted to do and I signed a one-year deal came to win the Stanley Cup it was really fun because Craig Packer was like okay we're gonna give you these bonuses for plus player plus this and I'm like well that's good Craig but I said I really want one bonus what's that said win the Stanley Cup and just come in there win the Stanley Cup with Mario and that's it he goes well we're giving you a bonus for for the Stanley Cup you know ten thousand dollar bonus I said well that's that's nice but I said I want a big bonus I want that big bonus well what do you want I said I want the same thing as Mario he's like I can't do that i said well give me half then so he wrote 50 of uh mario's lemieux's uh bonus for winning stanley cup and then you forget about it it's in the in the contract day

and all of a sudden i get like uh like a 250 000 signed uh bonus in june that came out i'm like what's this for he goes well you got 50 of mario's oh my goodness that's nice i'm like thank you mario well i mean i i gotta bring up i mean i must have watched 5 000 times the clip of you and arty stevens kevin stevens just giving it to brian bellows like when that first hit the internet and you started realizing people saw that what was your reaction and it's amazing shit talk i mean we used it in the sandbagger recently you know what's what's comical is i go to schools and i talk to the kids and you know tell them make healthy choices you know and like you know stay in school continue your education and then some little kids say oh i

saw you get you and steven giving it to bellows and i'm like uh that was computer generated if you read my lips actually what i'm saying is and and and the kids kind of buy it a little bit uh but when so you gotta you always have to be careful you know what what what you're gonna you don't know where that mic's gonna be and so i don't know how they caught that but yeah no that wasn't one of my proudest moments even my mom was like is that really you saying i said i don't think so mom i think it's computer generated so the kids and my mom thinks it's computer generated but uh we all know a little bit i don't know that's how it was i mean there was the stanley cups on the line it's it's it's a it's a nasty sport out there it doesn't

mean you didn't like the guy off the ice well that i was gonna oh yeah brian bellows and i we've done a few events together and you know it's just water under the bridge no big deal like you know his buddies are like like hey you know they're a little bit jealous of me i'm like okay good good good or whatever you know like uh some of the names that get called i might we all get called names and not a big deal and i think uh you know the that moment where you're like intent trying to get in someone's grill or get them off their game or unfocused or whatever. I remember Rick Taka was screaming at Brian Marchman one time. You know that dreaded face-off by the bench when you're the defenseman by the bench, you're the opposition's bench,

or you're that winger that's by the bench and they just start ripping on you? Getting water squirted on you. Oh, I know. And it's just so bad. And Taka was like, Marchman, you touch any one of our players, I'm going to hunt you down this summer. I know where where you live and i'm like after the game i'm like talk do you really know where he lives like he goes nah i was just trying to like get i believed you i was like holy cow but uh no there's that moment that's uh it's intense out

there you're right ryan yeah you know you could just tell the young kids it's a deep fake that's that they'll buy it this day and age. But were you generally a chirper on the bench or on the ice? No, Kevin started that whole thing. He was like, give it to him, drops! Give it to him. It's a bystander, Nick, you know, but it's... I got revved up.

Got caught up in the moment. Oh, man. Now, when you get in the locker room like that, you know, you're an older guy toward the end of your career, but got a shoot well two superstars and mario and jagger like you're gonna do play like a de facto captain role do you kind of like mind your business for a bit how does that work out when you have such a a super player in the locker room like that or two of them well it's it's it's it's so good because like if there's if there's a more gracious person in the world than mario i i've yet to meet

him but mario's respect and like he was really he was good like i i found a way early like with with mario and uh we had crisscrossed paths a couple times before and there's always kind of a polite nod and um that kind of stuff and on the ice it was always kind of a polite thing like i never hit mario i think i've bumped him once but and vice versa like Mario's a purist he's one of the players you know you play hockey and that's just the way he plays and and he has that respect and uh but when I went to Pittsburgh I told Mario I said Mario you got big mad presence you know he's like and he's a really quiet guy and uh I said you got to say something just before the game stand up and go let's go boys and just see what the room does so he looked at me winks up and go, let's go boys. And just see what the room does. So he looked at me, winks, and he stands up,

let's go boys. Oh, the, the, the room just electrified. And so I think that that was kind of our immediate bond. And I kind of explained to him why I came to Pittsburgh. Cause I wanted to win a cup with him. I think you're that close. Then we win. So like with Mario and, and, and young Yager was, was my roommate. and he's just an 18 year old kid. He called me big Brian, which is hilarious. Like he's six foot four. I'm like five to 11. And he's this monster with big hair and a big Brian,

where we go by breakfast. And I'm like, okay, young Yarmour, here we go. Let's see if you follow him. But he was just kind of a, I was a little bit like his mentor until we got Yuri Hordina. And then Yuri kind of took over because he could speak the same language. But Yarmir's English wasn't that good. And my Czechoslovakian was horrible. But, you know, we communicated just because we played together. And, you know, he kind of had a general respect. But Ron Francis came and, you know, we had we had a a whole bunch of leadership in that room and it was really kind of

wonderful and it didn't fall on one person. It fell on a group. And I think that's, that's what happens in a locker room. You guys know that it's, if it's one guy wears the seat, it's not just one guy. Like there's a whole bunch of leaders in that locker room, whether you wear a letter or not, you're all trying to, trying to accomplish the same thing so smart talk smart leaders know how to go either inspire by performance inspired by just saying the right

thing at the right time and that's what it's all about and that's what that's what made it special in pittsburgh and new york because there's a whole bunch of leadership in the locker rooms a little different than having bossy as a roommate when you come back and yag has got a strip polka party going on in the locker oh my god he was hilarious because he learned all his english from mtv so like i'd walk in the room he'd have mtv blasting you know and and it's so comical because like when he'd do an interview the next day they say something something armor like yarmir how do you like pittsburgh he goes i like cherry pie i think it was motley crew or morant or somebody that was it was the music at the time i like cherry he's so comical were you trying to get him to cut his salad when when you're with him oh everything everything he said didn't matter

where had a line from a song like it was just so he he memorized all the lines from the song and he'd be walking through the locker room and trying to speak english and he was just so he he memorized all the lines from the song and he'd be walking through the locker room and trying to speak english and he was just basically singing a line from a song and it just but he was uh no he didn't need any help when it come to but he loved sugar you know you know that movie elf like when you know he's like do you like sugar he's putting syrup and sugar and everything on his pasta, drinking straight Coca-Cola. That was Jarmer. Like he had these sugar buns.

His mom made him sugar buns. It was like eating sugar. Like I had one bite and I was wired for the whole game. He'd eat six of these things before a game. And I said, no wonder this kid's like high performance. He's like on high test sugar. But no, he's a great kid. Love him when he's 18. I still love the kid.

What is he now? 55 or whatever. Still playing, man. He's still getting it done in check. What an athlete. Yeah. He's a great kid. He's like the Euro version of, of how just getting it done at all ages, man. Yeah. Just loves the game. Did people not talk to Tom Barrasso on game days when he was playing or any day for that matter? We didn't talk torasso on game days when he was playing or any day for that matter we didn't talk to billy smith on game days because billy smith was in the zone and he didn't bother him he didn't even eyeball him on game day um tommy was tommy was i sat next to

tommy locker room in pittsburgh and i got along great with tommy and you can misread tommy and tommy can kind of kind of put you off if he wants to you can kind of send you off thinking you know I don't like you but um Tommy's uh Tommy's an intense person let alone hockey player but he's a goaltender what do we say about goaltenders a bunch of wackos they're special but Tommy's a great guy. Again, good dad. I loved him as a teammate. And he's just one of those guys, you know, big hearts. Every Christmas he comes in, he's got a bottle of this for you, a big bottle of wine for you, a bottle of bourbon for the coach.

And Tommy's just a great, generous guy. But he can be misread every once in a while. You were there for that celebration i i think it might even been at mario's house when the the cup ended up at the bottom of the pool oh my god that started that started at at the point park we started the point park with celebration and what it would you know 100 100 000 people down point park they probably fit 10 000 people and we had a big celebration down there and then I don't get home for three days. And I'm under every bridge with Phil Bork. And you know, we're rafting on all these boats and going to another party. And I'm seeing another

sunrise. And I'm like, I'm going to be yelled at when I get home. Anyway, we end up at Mario's place later that one day to go to Mario's now. And's now and there's the cup and there's phil bork at the top of mario's waterfalls at a 20 foot fall he goes i want to jump on stanley with the pool mirrors and we're talking off that because he's gonna die basically he comes down and everybody in the pool and then we all jump in the pool clothes whatever we have on and ladies everybody's in the pool we all pull ourselves out of the pool after the picture or whatever and we're in there for quite a while and uh no cup it's at the bottom of mario's pool we had to dive in and coralloni and i dive in and get that pool we're pulling it up it was very tarnished the next day it had a little bit of chlorine tarnish on it but that thing if that

thing could talk and some of the stories that it could i'm sure but that's one of them at the bottom of mario's pool from from the top of the waterfall of's one of them at the bottom of Mario's pool from, from the top of the waterfall of Phil Bork to the bottom of Mario's pool, that thing, that thing had a wonderful night of celebration. So was that cup experience in Pittsburgh far crazier than, than on long Island? Because there was a crazy story about the airport scene when you guys arrived back in town, right?

Oh my God. Yeah. Well, well there's 40 000 people at the airport and again the airport was a tiny little airport and uh but this this city was so hungry for a championship in hockey and they had had all these these championships in baseball in the 70s obviously and then football in the 80s with with the steelers and so this city knows how to celebrate and uh like we thought we celebrated, and we did on Long Island. We took the cup everywhere, at every beach bar, every local cavern that we knew on Long Island. We celebrated hard.

But this crazy town of Pittsburgh, I mean, they really celebrate to the end. But, you know, the Point Park, the airports, both times were really unique. And then we had the second celebration at Three Rivers Stadium. And there was a rain delay, the gold figure rain delay for championship celebration. It's drizzling rain. And Craig Pachter comes up. He goes, hey, grab the cup, run around, you know, just get the fans a little frenzied here. So I grabbed like four or five guys like Jay Caulfield and Troy Loney and Bobby.

And I feel like, come on, let's go. We'll just pass the cup back forth to each other. We'll run around the infield here in the ball diamond and have a little fun and get the crowd going crazy. And I run off the stage with the Stanley Cup. I look back and they're going you're on your own kid i like you bastards and so like i'm looking and they have the tarp down and i said i wonder if i can slide it's he rain delayed guy slide so i grab the cup and i slide i go about four feet i'm like i can do better than that so i race and the crowd's going nuts and i race and i get like about an eight ten foot slide and i'm trying to gently hold the stanley cup so it doesn't break it's got that little tone of chlorine tarnish on it but i'm like hold on to it really nice and gently and

so i got to slide at three river stadium which is and it's still talked about so yeah celebrating i was older then but i still had that youthful enthusiasm i wanted to celebrate so so much and to be able to like have those four cups on long island and that's seven eight years in between and have back-to-back stanley cups here in pittsburgh with with the city that really knows how to celebrate championships it was very very fun right one of those years when you won in the uh with the islanders did a cleaner lady take it home some night and put a plant in it, or is that just hockey law? Like you guys had a photo shoot and somebody forgot the cup,

and supposedly a cleaner lady took it home? Go figure. I don't remember that story, but there's lots of stories where that cup got forgotten, and everybody thinks, oh, he's got it, he's got it, he's got it, he's got it. But what we didn't have was a day with the Cup. So what we did on Long Island, the second, third, and fourth Cups, not the first one, but the second, third, and fourth Cups, is like the group. As a group, we decided we're going to have a little time with our families with the Cup.

Because I got to do it the first year by myself, and I think a couple other guys did too. And I think what we wanted to do is have that half a day or a few hours with the cup so we could have it for ourselves and then we wouldn't tell the uh the hall of fame the keeper of the cup where phil phil pritchard where the cup was he go hey brian where's the cup i'm like oh i don't know tinelli had it i think i'm not we wouldn't tell on each other and then he'd be chasing it for like two or three days because it had to get back to Toronto for the awards banquet. That was shortly after the Stanley Cup. And we'd have it for two or three days more than what they really wanted to have it on Long Island.

So we'd have the parade, then it would disappear for two or three days. So everybody could have like a half a day or a couple hours with it with their families. One other vet from the Pittsburgh squad I want to ask about, Joey Mullenullen he's another guy i think is probably a little unheralded certainly one of the great u.s hockey players of all time you are you know basically the same age on the same team what was that experience like with joey young joey hell's kitchen like he like great great hands like just a another one of those guys that just finds a way to snipe goals but uh you know underrated on a lot of things very very uh soft hands when it comes to like just making the right pass making the right play um there's just no um

he's always composed like he's got poise you know he doesn't get caught up in all the hype he's just mr cool and he and wendell Young were in charge of the hospitality suite at the end of every game on the road. So we go to Joey Mullen and Wendell Young's room, and everybody gave him $20. They'd load up the bathtub with beer and ice, and everybody had to stop. That's team guy. That's team guy.

Yeah, that's Joey Mullen. And Joey would be the last man standing. Like he could – he had two hollow legs that guy i don't know where he put all of you but he was like last man standing not a stagger okay boys good night he was what a guy great guy hey so he he coached me for a little bit in wilkes-barre with uh wit and he i had him in pittsburgh oh that's right and he came up to me one time he's like he's like you're like too wound up before games. Like just like sit in your stall because he used to just sit back in his stall

and just like sit there until game time, right? Oh, my God. Yeah, you couldn't get – you just couldn't get him hyper. Like you couldn't get him excited. Most of the time he's like, yeah, let's go, boys. Then you kind of go back to sleep. They called him Smo because he's just like so like low key and just but always ready like didn't matter like who he's going to play with he'd play right wing left wing didn't

matter who center iceman was he'd contribute he'd find a way to contribute kill penalties like smart player like you're just a very very intelligent hockey player and a good coach too everybody that that like yourself that had him as a coach loved him because he just always like ready to mentor ready to give you a little advice and you know just one of those guys that did a lot of things really well uh before i forget to ask you so you got something uh new coming out these nfts and i want you to dive into them a little bit we talked about a lot of these amazing memories and now you can kind of capture them on nfts which is? Oh, you know, I'm learning all about this stuff too, but they're the newest rave in digital cards that you can get.

And when I was approached, I thought it was kind of fun because anything that has the word fun attached to it, I'm in. So these NFTs are collectible commemoratives, I believe. And you can, you know, I'm coming out So these NFTs are collectible commemoratives, I believe. And you can, you know, I'm coming out with a couple of my iconic moments, so to speak. So in my career, I think, you know, they're digitally signed and numbered, which really makes them unique in that regard. And I think if you go to bryantroche.com i think you can get a good taste of what my collection is going to look like there's going to be three

different moments um there's an eight point game uh that happened back in uh mid 80s i think it was a ranger game in the garden um so that was kind of six points from one period i think still a record and there's some original audio and uh some real life experiences that'll happen if you bid on them if you win the bidding i think we'll end up having like uh but there's only one of these cards so that's going to be kind of unique and special about that eight point game there's only one of those cards um so we'll see then there's uh the second one is is uh I think they call it the first cup win. There's going to be five of those cards, five digital cards there.

So if you bid on that, win it, you know, you had an experience with me as well, as long as winning one of the card. And then there's going to be the four in a row with the Islanders. There's going to be a hundred of those cards available. So, again, they're digitally signed, digitally audio. So I think they're special and i think they're unique in that i hear more uh football players are coming out with some i think uh the kachuk boys came out with one early and i think they're going to be the new rave and i you know i'm excited about it and uh so yeah go bid let's have some fun get brian dot com right brian trache dot com that's pretty easy even i can't fuck that one up Yeah. Go bid. Let's have some fun. Get Brian. Dot com. Right.

Brian. Dot com. That's pretty easy. Even I can't fuck that one up. Got to get that bellows clip up there. The password. Password. Tit fucker.

Hey, Brian, thank you so much. Where does that stuff come from? Hey, get the, get the bellows clip up there. And I bet you that NFT would skyrocket, buddy.

You would. No shit. There you go. Then I have to cut Brian in on that. I'd have to cut my buddy Brian Bell in on that. And Artie. And Artie, yeah. And Artie. All right.

Hey, well, congratulations on, you know, what a career. And you also won a Stanley Cup as an assistant coach in Colorado. I mean, it's just, it's an honor to have you come on the show. And we really appreciate it. Pleasure, guys. Always a pleasure. Hey, continued successes, guys. New Amsterdam, vodka.

We'll get you a shipment out, and we'll have to get you on again live, hopefully, and we'll talk more about you as an assistant coach and winning that seventh cup. Not a big deal. Yeah, but is it Paul Bissonnette or Paul Missonnette? Time for Hardest Shot. Time for Hardest Shot. Hey, if you've seen our acting, we need you in the next commercial, man.

Oh, my God. Especially for target practice. I'll bring my music. Bring Tiger Williams, too. Guys, thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much, Brian.

It's been an honor. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Brian. Take care. Huge thanks to Brian Troche for joining us. Just an absolute honor and a pleasure to have a guy his caliber on. I mean, six Stanley Cups as a player. Can't say much more than that.

One more as a coach and some great stories. Hopefully you enjoyed it. We certainly enjoyed doing it. Listen, gang, if you've got a student loan out there, say goodbye to stressful student loan payments and take charge of your future with Earnest. Earnest offers low-rate student loan refinancing, and you can check your rate risk-free in just two minutes with earnest you get radically flexible payments and you can pick your loan term by refinancing you can reduce

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California financing law license number 6054788, 303 2nd Street, Suite 410N, San Francisco, California 94107. Visit earnest.com slash licenses for a full list of licenses. All right, gang, moving right along here. How about those Rangers, Whit? You think they're going to sneak in the playoffs or what? I know you had a chime in your mind. We have to shout out the Rangers. I do not think they're going to sneak in the playoffs.

I think Boston's kind of turned a little bit of a corner. And yes, they lost Sunday to the Penguins, but it was a great game. I don't think they catch Boston. They are four points back and I think have two less games. So I still need to shout out the run they've been on since St. Patrick's Day. The player who leads the league in assists is Adam Fox, who's a defenseman. We'll get to him in a minute. The player who leads the league in goals

is Mika Zibanejad. And am I correct in saying the player who leads the league in points is Artemi Panarin? Connor, isn't it? What? Yes, Artemi Panarin has 38 points since March 13th.

38 points. So, if Zibanejad starts the year a little better, and there were some questions as to what was going on, I don't really know. He wasn't playing his best. He wasn't playing the way he has since the Philly explosion. And Panarin didn't have to take the time away for the issues back home,

which was so much like bigger than hockey, right? I'm just saying if they had him all year, who knows what you're looking at with the Rangers because they had a tough stretch, and this is what they did two years ago before COVID in which they caught fire late. I just, I can't believe looking at that team that in the next few years,

they're not going to be competing for a Stanley Cup. And that's as you see Lafreniere look even more comfortable in his splits the last 20 games. I don't have the numbers, but they're way different than his start. And Capo Caco, I know fans aren't happy with him. It's early. I'm not going to say I'd be thrilled either if I was a Rangers fan and he's the second overall pick and the guy that, you know, you were kind of counting on it to maybe come in and dominate right away.

Unfair or not, I don't think he showed exactly what you hoped for. But still, he's young. That's what I'm saying. And then Adam Fox on D. And that's where I get into watching this guy and hearing Brian Leach talk about him. You're looking at like an actual great defenseman already in the National Hockey League. He's taken over D'Angelo's role in the number one power play. He's taken over Trouba's role as the number one shutdown guy. He leads the league in points.

He's playing 24 minutes a game for defensemen, excuse me. And he's right at a point per game. The only player with a higher average in points per game on D is Makar. And he hasn't played as many games. So Adam Fox, people saying, is he going to be up for the Norris? He should win the fucking Norris. This guy, watch him play and i had this sent to me one of the 15 guys i had on my list you had the deep list you don't want to piss

huge fucking list man somebody sent me um this video it's youtube you're on it with stride envy hockey adam fox the habits watch this it talks about what makes him such a great player, like his feel for time and space. He's not overly physical, but what a player they have in this guy. So I think this year is a little bit too early, but I could not be happier if I was a diehard Rangers fan as to where the future is headed. Yeah, I'd be rock hard too.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rangers fans, for listening to me. The island is still so. What a breakdown that was. Oh, my God. I forget sometimes I'm like a host. I'm just like sitting here enjoying your rants, bro.

I just, guys, watch Adam Fox. He's always like head faking everyone. Sick. Those Harvard guys, they get such an advantage to what they can always play that. Oh, I might play for one more year and lose the right situation. I mean, he got traded twice and ended up where he wanted,

but Hey, if you got the leverage band, he was probably negotiating his own deals. Cause he's a fucking lawyer too. He's like the teams will fuck you anytime. So like you say, if you got the leverage and you can, you can manipulate it,

then, then by all means, you got like a cut of the Rangers guys, like cut the sickest, you fucking Jeff Bezos over there. Biz, we're going to get to your division next. Right now, the only three teams that have clinched a playoff spot officially are Vegas,

Colorado, Minnesota. The number one seed still in doubt. Lots of games left. Colorado got two games in hand on Vegas, four points behind. The three California teams are all toast, but Arizona and St. Louis, a bad one for that fourth spot. How do you see it playing out, Biz? Tonight is huge because I believe that St. Louis,

and they've probably already kicked off their game at this time, and Grinnell, you can give me a scoring update, but don't tell me until I'm done talking, please. Game hasn't started. Coyotes, oh, hasn't started? Okay, they're playing San Jose tonight, and this is a must win because this could put them three points up depending on what happens in the St. Louis game.

And if St. Louis loses, that burns one of their games they haven't played, although they'll still have, I think, three games in hand. But given strength to schedule, if the Coyotes are up three points with St. Louis having three games in hand, I think it's a 50-50 race, so I'm happy with that. As far as the players are concerned, Darcy Kemper got his, what, 20th career hat trick the other night. First one ever away from Gila River Arena with the Coyotes. He's looking good, so they finally got him back and healthy.

Shout out, you mean, right? Did I say shootout? He said he got a hat trick. I was like, well, that would have been say shootout? He said he got a hat trick. Hat trick. I was like, well, that would have been the lead story. No, he actually did. He scored all three goals and got a shutout. But it was in Arizona, so no one saw it.

Oh, fuck off. All right. Excuse me. That's what happens when I get talking about my Coyotes. I get excited. He had his 20th career shutout, and he's back. He's healthy. That's huge for the Coyotes. They finally got their ace back.

On the back end, Chikrin, we have to talk about him. He now still, once again, has taken over as the league leader for defensemen scoring goals. This guy has been lights out. And as far as his offensive production, the reason I say that being a biased Arizona fan, I would say that his name should be in consideration or at least get some votes is because Arizona I think goals four on the season they're 21th in the NHL every other guy you're talking about in the conversation his team is far superior offensively

and he's still having to go against the big boys every night to shut them down defensively he's putting up this insane offense based on the percentage how the rest of the team's able to produce it and he's been an absolute fucking rock star on the back end so as and and i've been kind of hesitant to say anything because you know i don't want to fucking jinx it either but he's still putting the puck in the back of the net and why why are you giggling all right it's not just me it's not just am i getting too excited about the fucking coyotes you said 21th instead of 21st i was trying not to laugh i was putting the beer in my face so you wouldn't that's a lot of numbers though that's a lot you look at adam fox i think new york's in the top six as far as goals for.

Like Shea Theodore might be another name, the headman. Name all those teams. Their fucking teams are pumping out goals left and right. This guy has been getting it done on a team that's not able to fucking put the puck in the back of the net. I think he deserves some fucking votes. Respect on the name, dog. He'll get some votes. Yeah, for sure. And then moving up front, front i mean kessel's still getting it done he's fucking playing well at a at an older age i mean they've had a

awesome bounce back year from him so go fucking coyotes as far as their west the rest of the west i'll hand it over to wit 21th can we get 21th in the league with 20 21th in the league guys can we um get kessel for a sandbagger, please? Can you get on that? You're living near him. Just start getting in people. If you play 50,000 bucks a hole, because I heard he's an absolute degenerate. We'll do it.

I love it. I love him. You're not going to make the playoffs because you don't have what St. Louis has, and that is Ryan O'Reilly. Saturday afternoon, I had nothing to do because I can't play golf because of my elbow. And I watched that game, St. Louis, Colorado. He had three goals.

That's a hat trick. Unassist, four points, and played 24 minutes. And they had an enormous win over the best team in the league. So looking at Arizona, they don't have that player. And I think that that's not to say in the future, in the next few years, they won't keep getting better and better. But even if they get in, like I told you at the beginning, it's going to be the most embarrassing lopsided first round.

So wouldn't you rather maybe get a little bit higher of a draft pick? No. All right, buddy then you want a colorado and you're somebody who's a 20 first 24th i'll say this if so they're in a battle right now for first place uh colorado and vegas like they're they're hammering it out they match up way better against vegas so i think vegas is an absolute juggernaut yes do i like the way that the way we've matched up against Colorado in the last 15 games? No, it's been very lopsided,

but you just never know. And I'd like to see some playoff hockey. And I think it helps the young guys learn how to win. And, and, and, and no, the draft pick thing has not been working out.

Like we can't drop. I don't even think you have one this year. We don't even have one. Exactly. Thank chica all right this is actually a pretty big story uh in the last week uh regarding robin lennar and the vegas golden knights well more so robin lennar in the league this is from jesse grander and the athletic uh robin lennar said the players were told that protocols would be relaxed once players were vaccinated, but the league didn't follow through. Bill Dilley, the vice president of the league, he basically said that no such promises were made regarding relaxed protocols. It kind of had a he said, he said.

Laina also spoke about the mental health aspect, and he said, being lied to about things, again, these are his words, being lied to about things changing to kind of force us to take the vaccine is unacceptable, and now that've taken the vaccine to say now we ain't we aren't changing because of the competitive advantage is outrageous uh one unnamed prominent agent said players are not having fun playing the game they're surviving uh laner also said i'm not trying to start anything bad for the league i'm an nhl player i play in this league i love this league i want this league to be the best league in the world you know he's spoken about his own personal mental issues and the mental health issues in the past as well as everybody else and i think you know everybody's been going through this quarantine and these guys they're

only going from their house to the rink there are still very strict protocols in place for a lot of these players that you don't have to abide by or me or another just regular citizen so uh you can certainly understand the frustration that that lane has right what yeah for sure and right off the bat this is something no matter your opinion on, for sure. And right off the bat, this is something, no matter your opinion on it, you're going to piss somebody off. So I really don't give a shit in saying what I truly feel. And I completely understand where he's coming from. I have all the respect in the world for him.

One, because of how open he's been with his mental health struggles and what he's gone through. And two, because he's played around long enough to really prove a point to everyone. I don't think he's making this up. Now, Bill Daley, I have no idea. I was not, I have no, I don't know the truth because I wasn't involved, but it, it seems insane to me that he would be saying that they were told these things and that they weren't. So taking his word for it, I'm going to look at it and say, why can't these restrictions be loosened? Okay. If these guys are vaccinated, right? Why are they not allowed to live their life a little bit and take

away that they're NHL players and they're millionaires? How about the people who need to start living their life a little bit who are just regular citizens or kids? It's like, it's been over a year and this has been a grind and a battle and an awful thing for many people. But now you have to start thinking of people's mental health and minds and getting back to life. If you're indoors, wear a mask 100 percent. I'm outside. I'm not wearing a mask. I don't judge you if you are. Don't judge me if I'm not. It's my decision. But my point is, these guys are being stuck at home and stuck on the road and not even able to be in the room with their teammates. And they're in the locker room with them all day. Nothing makes sense. So if they're vaccinated, why can they not start living their life, going out to dinner on the road and enjoying

themselves a little bit? What the fuck? Why did they have to take it if they can't, if nothing changes once they did? And so you understand like nobody's gonna cry for these millionaires but when you talk about mental health and what people are going through right now going back to life a little bit and being with your friends especially if you're vaccinated should not be an issue for these guys and i i just i feel bad for them and i feel bad for for a lot of people who just need to get back to living their life a little bit they need to be around people it's not healthy to be by yourself all the time yeah and take i don't need to rant but yeah and take the the millionaire athlete out of the equation like anyone who has to be in an environment where they're kind of like you shuttle

to the rink you have to be there do that job you shuttle home and you can't leave those two environments i think that if you forced anyone to do that it would drive them like a little bit crazy at least in some like guys if i had if i was being forced to do that to tell you that i wouldn't have already broken a rule right now i it would be it would be i wouldn't be confident telling you i wouldn't have already broken a rule by now. And if you want to judge me for it, judge me for it. I just like, that's, this is probably, it kind of goes back to how hard the experiences was for the bubble it was. And they also, a lot of these guys have also been through that, which was clearly a worse

situation, but it's like, hey, they battled through it. They've had to do that. Now they're kind of been through this and they're just expecting, hey, can we start living a little bit of our normal life back a little bit? That's all we're asking here. Can we have what can we get here? All right. You and I, I think sometimes tend to like disagree on certain things. And I have no idea where you stand here.

But can you tell me this? If people are vaccinated, right, anyone who's vaccinated, why would you give a this if people are vaccinated right anyone who's vaccinated why would you give a fuck if anyone else isn't you're vaccinated i don't get it yeah i don't either i don't either i don't get it yeah i yeah if you are then you should be able to if you are if you're not any going to be any harm or danger anybody else you can still wear a mask and go out but yeah i i don't get it and i don't know either if you've had the vaccination if you can you can be a carrier and and give it to someone is that maybe why ra i think p i have read stories and again the point of the vaccine there's so much info that people have gotten the gotten the vaccine and then gotten covet after i don't know

if there's a lag time from when it actually fully kicks in i haven't gotten it i haven't i'm not the most up to date on all the information, frankly, I'm not, they sound like an insensitive prick, but I'm fucking, I'm fucking over it. I'm up to him.

And I don't mean it's like an asshole, but it's like when people talk about around me, I leave the room or I tune it out because I'm just, I'm just fucking. So exactly. And that's why we don't try to talk about it much on the show. We're just saying this is like a mental health thing. Exactly.

Bucking with some people. Exactly. It's not just these NHL guys. Leonard speaks for a lot of people out in the world right now. So I understand where he's coming from, and let's hope that more fans are getting into the building. When I left the Bees game, they're at 12%. I was talking to a guy, an usher, and he mentioned they're going to be 25% soon.

So that's all great signs. But I did feel for Robin Leonard, if he's looking at this thing, like enough's enough. So we can move on. Yeah. And, you know, you add the physical aspect on top of the mental, man. And these guys, you know, you can see all the millionaires. But it's fucking not easy, dude. So they have our empathy.

Minnesota, like I said, they clinched a spot. Seven straight wins. I know we've stroked Caprizo off and up. 22 goals, 19 assists, 41 points in 47 games. What this kid has been doing is unbelievable. Minnesota also extended forward Ryan Hartman. Three-year deal worth $5.1 million, $1.7 million AAV. Biz, I know you mentioned Parise.

Parise, right. Well, I got to see them play against the Coyotes. I think that they're the real deal. I love the way that they play. When they get the lead, they lock it down. And just Parise, like, you know, I know there was a bit of the rift there. We ended up being a healthy scratch, but it's just evident from his play. He's buying into what the role he has now is. He's trying to finish every check. He's buying into what the role he has now is. He's trying to finish every check.

He's playing his absolute bag off. I've been looking at the game sheets even beyond. He's around that 10 to 12-minute range, which is he's playing that bottom six role, but just the fact that they have him buying in now, obviously, I think that they have a very, very mobile back end that's very underrated. Talbot has played out of his mind.

And you talked about Kaprizov. I mean, somebody was making a joke because Robertson in Dallas has been creeping up in the scoring and playing pretty well. I think everybody realizes that it was Kaprizov was going to be the runaway winner anyway. But I think a few headlines came out, and then he's just been on this fucking tear. And one of the goals he scored was the one against L.A.

where he just came down between the legs. It looked kind of like a backhand toe draggy kind of thingy. I don't even know how to describe it. Off his skate and then buries the thing in highlight real fashion. So this guy has been – you said earlier, Witt, he's changed their organization. Yeah, he's so sick. And their goaltender, I mean, Talbot's been awesome when he's played,

but then the other rookie, Kapo, is it Kakanen? Kakanen, yep. That guy's like rookie of the year possible numbers. I mean, he's not going to win it. I don't think he'll be a finalist. But, yeah, the whole team has been switched around with two guys first year in the league. Robertson also like for people who are really bitching about Kaprizov's age, we talked about

that last episode, I think about how people say he's too old or he's played pro hockey too long to win rookie of the year. Robertson is like also, I think turning 23, he's not, you know, he's not 18 or 19 to a little different, but he's looked great and he caught fire but it was pretty great timing to see uh the argument for him to really be considered the winner and then just the week to just take off and the russian to do what he did the the goal he's able to like it looks like he's gonna stop or slow down he does he's changing directions so well change of speed because the d-man there had had no chance on him, but he had perfect gap and everything. It's just a perfect move.

I was also going to say they're built big. They got that Greenway, who's a monster. Marcus Foligno, who I messaged him on. I think I mentioned this in the Murley interview. I messaged him on DM. We're going to get him on, hopefully before playoffs, because that whole team's been on a roll. But definitely built for the postseason, too, with how big they are up front.

And I know Whit mentioned Billy Guerin earlier, but he's obviously a huge part of this. He's come along. He didn't have any emotion to any of these guys, no connections to them. So he has no problem saying, hey, we love what we did here, but we're going to move on. He's kind of making his team in his own image. And we've picked on Minnesota, Whit, for the last five years,

but it's nice to actually compliment them and uh be able to put a game on and enjoy it these i could see a first round upset i mean yeah no wonder colorado and uh in vegas are battling out that first seed is is going to be very important i know they're both wagons but minnesota is going to go down with a fight and also mentioned mentioned, we should mention head coach Dean Everson as well. He's been pretty instrumental to what's going on there as well. One last note from that division. It was a pretty good scrap. Sons of some maniac players from the 80s and 90s.

Club Lemieux's son versus Dave Charlie Manson's son. You got a good look at that tilt, right, Biz? Yeah, I was actually surprised how well Lemieux did against them. McManson's tough and and i thought lemieux got the upper hand and and yeah that's a fucking great bout more of that please uh lemieux definitely making his presence felt in his early uh stint with the the la kings that was a legit knockdown manson's tough and like lemieux i saw one angle so yeah it looked like a pretty good knockdown to me.

I don't want to piss Manson off, though, because the fuck if he sees me, he'll punch me out. All right, shifting over to the Central Division. Congrats once again to our boy KY. Keith Yandel is now the number two Ironman in NHL history. Also, Spencer Knight had his first NHL start. He got a W. Did you get a chance to see him play at all? I didn't get a chance to see his first game, Spencer.

I didn't see the game, but huge prospect out of BC. And congrats to Jans, one more guy to go. And I think that that just shows what he's done. To get number two is a pretty cool picture with the puck with the logo on it. So keep it going. The Cats are for real. I mean, you kind of were waiting for them to slow down all year. And Huberto and Barkov, we always say they don't get talked about.

They don't enough. And I just couldn't believe the way the teams played in the recent games since Ekblad went down. I thought that would be really what hurt them. And they played 7-D a lot, which can be frustrating for the defensemen, but they're winning. They're continuing to put up points. And right now I think they're in second,

right? They're ahead of Tampa going. They are as of this moment. Yep. Couldn't update it. I really liked the moves they made at the deadline too. They did what they could without giving up a ton. And Bennett is like,

you know, he's playoff Sam Bennett in Calgary, but all of a sudden in different spot playing bigger minutes, he's producing offensively right off the hop. And then, you know, once the playoff starts, that's even more his style so you're right that is a great move and when you take a look at the central division too you can't help but notice the top five teams are all southern teams carolina florida tampa national dallas so

i mean beating an old drum that's dallas will not go away dallas is getting in there not going away and realize right now dallas ruintz can't even practice. He's playing so injured. And then the games start, and he's like the Tasmanian devil on the ice. He's sick. He's so fast. Yeah, he is. And so playing through injury, right, that's hard.

And then also the other thing with Dallas that's odd is Sagan's been skating a little while. Everyone says he looks great in practice, but the team has told reporters it's his choice right now. He says he's not ready. So I don't know what's going on. Maybe he doesn't feel ready still. Obviously he doesn't. He's not playing.

But if they could ever get him back, they could go on another run when they get in the playoffs. Flood warnings. Flood warnings in Dallas. Yep. Dallas two points back in Nashville rightod warnings. Flood warnings in Dallas. Yep. Dallas, two points back in Nashville right now, but with two games in hand. So, yeah, I think some of these divisions are going to go down to the final wire. Congrats to Chicago

Blackhawk, Andrew Shaw. He officially retired. He obviously had some concussion related issues, hadn't played for a bit, but he made it official on Monday. He had, I think, 10 NHL seasons, two Stanley Cups, so congrats to Shaw. Fantastic. And let me tell you, R.A., sorry to hop in there. I just didn't want to glance over Shawsy. Maybe the coolest picture is that guy raising the Stanley Cup. The fact that he had a cut on his

cheek, stitches and blood dripping down as he raised the Stanley Cup could not personify, if that's the correct word, his career any better. Yeah. Because he was a dog out there. His first NHL game in the, you saw if you watched his Twitter video,

his goodbye video, I don't know how he wasn't crying. I was nearly tearing up. His first NHL game, he fought his second shift. He fought out Ronaldo spirited boat and then scored the next period on a nice goal and then went on to win two Stanley cups. So a guy who, uh, I think Blackhawks fans will forever remember as just the exact type of player you need to win a Stanley cup. He hangs him up at a young age. It's a tough decision to make right but he's listening

to the doctors and making the right one um so congrats to him absolutely uh columbus bluejack it's been rough sledding for them eight straight losses uh elvis merzlikens he got pretty honest in his post game talking about how frustrating it is and they're trying and they're trying now i don't know if you guys saw the game um shit, I bet it. I forget what night it was, but it was versus Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay took a 2-1 lead, but right before the goal, Merzlikens got hit with a high stick, and Torts didn't challenge it. It was like, wait a minute, how do you not challenge it? And then they asked him in the postgame, why didn't you challenge it?

And he said he can't challenge that. And one of the other reporters was like, well, can you elaborate? And he's like, no, and he walked away. Now, I think he didn't want to get himself in trouble bitching about the refs, but it was like, I didn't understand. When you say earlier, like how earlier in the play before he got high stick before it went in the net? Probably two seconds, because if you're watching real time,

it does look like Merzlikens gets set in position to make the save, but it's so quick. I think that he could have possibly been overturned. And again, I only cared because I had money on the game, I'm being honest here. But Torch never really gave the explanation. Like he said, I can't challenge it. He could have just said, hell, we don't want to put him on the power play if we lose the game.

But that's why I think he felt he was being baited by the reporter, who I don't think was baiting him. Yeah, he's probably walked away. Fair enough. That's why we didn't get our explanation. Yeah, well, I still want my explanation for why he didn't challenge him. Okay, well, here, I'll give you Torch's number. You can text him.

It was clearly a high stick, man, no matter what. They didn't call it, but I think they would have taken it down. But either way – Well, I'll talk to Gary, and we'll get you your money back. We'll give him a ring, Biz. You give that guy a ring. I'll give him a ring. Venmo that shit over.

One last note here on the division, Biz. I know you want to talk about the Detroit-Washington deal. Jacob Vrana had a four-goal game. He's got five goals and an assist so far. Anthony Manta, same amount of points, four goals, two assists in Washington. What was it you wanted to bring up on this trade, Biz? Well, no, just when he had his four-goal game there, I was just like, oof. I mean, initially the reaction was people thought that Detroit

had fleeced the deal. And the way that this guy's popping off right now. But, you know, Manta's holding his own. I'm just, you know, why are you laughing? Because Manta's been doing good too? Well, no, no. I honestly wasn't sure because when I wrote your notes down, I tallied up like, well, they do have the same amount of points.

I mean, Manta's been a pretty good force. He had, I think, goals in his first four games down in Washington. But, yeah, but hey, you know what? That's one of your opportunities to dunk on me, and it's awesome. It's awesome. I know. You're like fucking... What's his face? I'm trying to think of someone who would set up somebody for dunks all the time

for my era, but I can't right now. An alley-oopsman like John Stockton? Yeah, there you go. Boom. Done. All right, gang. We're going to bring on our pal Matt Murley shortly. We're going to talk a little gambling with our old buddy. But first, if you're a business owner who's hiring, you probably face a lot of challenges when it comes to finding the right person for your role. Lack of applicants or experience,

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Well, this handsome guy is making his third appearance on the show, joining a very select club, I might add. He played pro hockey all over the world for 17 seasons before retiring in 2019. These days, you can catch him giving out Euro picks and NHL winners on Ari's Gambling Corner, in addition to some blogs he's been adding to Barstool Sports. It's a joy to welcome back to the Spittin' Chicklets podcast, our pal Merle's Matt Merle. How's it going, buddy? Going good. How you doing, fellas? Merle's, Merle's, Merals murals great to talk to you and for

everyone for everyone that's wondering why i'm saying his name three different times there this week we had a crazy week full of action we were gambling all week and we were doing great but on wednesday night we had what will go down as both of the worst beats I think we've ever experienced with Nashville, Chicago. Oh, my. I'm sitting there laughing, laughing at four to one scoring chance, scoring chance, scoring chance. Then all of a sudden one should have been seven to one, seven to one. We should have known right then we were in trouble. No, I knew I was in trouble because I got the text.

Why didn't I put 20 grand on this game? This is the biggest lock. We got money line, puck line. I'm saying the same thing. I'm like, we are absolute losers. Because turns out, if you don't know what happened, Chicago scored three goals in two minutes and 10 seconds and then went on to win an OT and we lost both bets.

But still, it was a great week and it's great to catch up with you even though you are the true mush in the group. Yeah, that was the first bad one in a long time and i'm just happy that you were on it with me it's funny it's funny he spent all this time in europe and he took two better things away from it than hockey his wife and knowing how all these leagues work so he could take advantage of him on the gambling side what is happening with this whole EBR crew so you become our our full-on gambling guy overseas RA and you collab on the North American side what is going on right now yeah I don't even know um yeah I sign on you know just let's do some NHL picks and then the one afternoon I was bored I'm sitting there I'm like I'm gonna put out one of these KHL picks

but they must have won five or six nothing. All of a sudden, everybody starts going crazy. Merle's, Merle's, give another one. So I do it the next day. And just, I mean, the first few, you get lucky. Like, it's gambling. You're never going to win. But boom, that one wins.

And I was winning by large amounts. So people were just laughing at it. Like, holy cow. Every game was a shit-kicking, Merle's. It was 7-7-1 half of these games. And to go back, as far as KHL is concerned, usually you know when certain home teams are going to win because you know they're going to get a few favorable calls, correct? Correct. And in the KHL, you know, you're looking at that kind of stuff.

Like the big clubs are always going to get the benefit of the doubt, especially at the end of the season. I think we talked before about is that the the smaller clubs will sell off their big players so that their best players to the big teams so then they're even weaker but the odds makers don't always catch up with it right away it's funny because the khl is like nobody knew a thing about it the ebr crew comes along and now I I'm getting messages from people. I haven't talked to in 10 years. Tell your buddy, Merle, I owe him a couple of beers. He's made me millions. I'm becoming rich. Thank you to Merle. I'm like, it's the EBR crew. Just make, make sure you include that little,

what is the thing called? Money sign. Is it the money sign? Money sign. It ain't right without that. We started with uh it's like everybody rides was this legend coach jay pagney i used to train with him down at the peltz's house in westchester and every time anything like say we had to do a little skate or anything or go for a run it was everybody rides like it's all together or or nobody and say you're at the casino and you like whit, you're a guy that would put 500 on black. It's everybody rides.

We better all get on it or leave the table. If you're the dickhead who puts 500 on red and you're in the friend crew, you're basically getting isolated for the rest of the trip. I want nothing to do with you. Yeah, exactly. Are you like Ace Rothstein on the phone texting people when you're up getting late scoops or what?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I've gotten older now. This could have been a lot easier a few years ago, but I still have a few buddies on some of these teams. So I catch some inside scoops from them and, you know, and it's made me always keep track of some of these teams. But I think my biggest thing is, well, I've played in every league because I'm a suitcase. But, you know, what kind of rinks are tough?

Like if it's a home game, like which rinks are tougher for teams, which ones are. Well, they don't have any home ice advantage. Like that place is so easy to play. And so that helps with the handicapping of it. And what do you think? What do you think the overall units you'd be up or down? I guess if you're taking that first game against amore after the teams are having to fly 13 hours across russia to the that team they must win the first game a lot yeah well they they should but they're they're such a weak team that you know it's tough

for them to win games and a funny thing about cage i don't know if anyone's ever talked about it is when a lot of those teams from moscow will fly there and it's the 12 hour time change or whatever. They won't change their clock. They'll stay on Moscow time. So yeah, I never made that trip. Yeah. They'll they'll do crazy stuff like that where they'll stay on Moscow town. So the guys will be getting up at like two in the morning or say whatever in a more and having their pregame skate and their pregame meal going for the nap and like teams try everything to try to get away from that travel

no way did you ever experience that no we always changed our clocks the teams i was on so okay yeah that's that's an interesting to go back a little bit like a lot of this interaction is happening on twitter and also Instagram through social media. So when you brought up the everybody rides, that's something that we hashtag and it gets tweeted out. I mean, for those of you who are on Twitter and social media, you've probably seen this already. And R.A., I'll go to you. What do you make of Merle's North American picks? Do you guys often get in the kitchen and cook a little bit on the gambling side? i think merles is similar to me in that he likes to make his own picks i

mean he might solicit some info overseas but i think when it comes to the nhl he likes to make his own and because a lot of times i don't read his copy that he sends over until i make my pick and sometimes we pick the same thing and other times we go opposite so you know if we're riding together it's great then everybody jumps on board and it feels like we're on the caravan but at the same time you know i'm not going to switch my bet just because he's on the on the opposite it's like yeah i don't know i would never i would never go the opposite side but we were just talking about bad beats a second ago we have to give props to merle's old roommate sydney crosby who had the ultimate good victory the other day he scored a 200 foot empty netter with 0.1 seconds left in the game i mean

if you were laying pittsburgh one and a half that day it was probably it was first jersey so you're probably laying a buck and a quarter so you ain't even making shit on it i mean three seconds two seconds and he fucking ices it from behind the goal line dead on right fucking middle of the net 0.1 seconds puck line cover and i actually saw a tweet i think it might have been elliot free he's like oh that was a bad beat if you had new jersey plus one and a half i was like who the fuck would bet new jersey plus one and a half on that game plus one and a half is the worst bet in hockey yeah all right because it's because it's usually like huge you're laying big money but jersey was probably like getting money on plus one and a half that game it wouldn't have

been that bad then but let me still bet New Jersey versus Pittsburgh. Oh, I know, I know, I know. And Pittsburgh's on a heater right now. I don't call it a bad beat when I end up getting a push out of it. A bad beat is a loss, but I had the under at five and a half. No, no, no, no. I had the under at six. That's what it was.

So I ended up, it wasn't a win, but it was still, it was a bad tie. I'll say that. But Merle's, we also need to know about, we got the EBR crew with the money symbol. What is the Merle special or the Merle system? Because I'm kind of confused on this one. Well, the Merle special was when I was with you guys in Philly a couple of years back and we hit that draw bet. I think all five of us crushed that, the draw bet.

Which is 300. Crazy. You pulled that one right out of your ass. That was insane. And what's really crazy is that when me and RA, when we were really doing the blog early on, I was hitting a ton of these Merle specials. The game I picked was Merle special and I, and I wasn't betting it, which was driving me nuts. I wasn't picking it out for the crew, but the Merle system is this system's you know it's been going on for years and everything say i say uh i bet a team i say i bet pittsburgh i bet them big

they lose that game and i'm so mad so all of a sudden in two days they play again i'm like no i hate pittsburgh i'm done with them they always win the team always wins the next game. That's how we won on Nashville. After that Nashville bad beat against Chicago, next game up, go right back to them. Early system, hammer Nashville, and they did. They crushed that game. We all hit that one, I think. That's why I hate stepping up to a roulette game when, like, 10 black if it's straight, and you're like, I'm the fucking guy.

I'm going to put it on black, and it's going back the other way it's also just yeah just being in our own minds like it it doesn't matter what's been happening dude it's the same odds it's gonna hit black or red yet we get we're like oh my god this coin was given to me by a stripper the other night so this one's definitely lucky oh this one down loss so i think the whole is this the sound of uh one of your guys prior trips to vegas no no we stayed at the tables i was actually we were swimming around one i think i told this we were literally on the ground doing the breaststroke in the money we were making playing uh craps it was merle's taught me how to play craps that night and we couldn't lose a great night at the sls and that's the same thing with everybody

rides like if there's a guy that comes over that crash table and we're on a heater like that and he starts playing don't pass like buddy how much you're trying to win here's 100 bucks like get out of here like you're with us or you're you're not like get off our table and i remember this quickly i got a craps table after this one. Okay. That same trip. All me and Merle said for a month up to this trip, it was March madness opening weekend. All we said is Michigan state wins the first round game every fucking year. I'm going to go put on an entire paycheck from the KHL. So I was just coming back from Russia.

He was just coming back from slow van. I'm going to go put an entire paycheck on the Michigan state. I don't know know i made like 600 grand i was there for like three months so whatever that i got i got paid every month i think okay i was like michigan state doesn't lose the first round never let's go we're gonna have a big vegas trip and it's all about that getting us off to a good start because they're playing thursday not friday sunday thursday saturday oh yeah so me and morris hit it hard with migs uh the first to a good start because they were playing Thursday, not Friday, Sunday, Thursday, Saturday. Oh, yeah. So me and Merle's hit it hard with Migs the first night.

Like, I mean, right, you get into Vegas, everyone knows how that first night goes. Oh, my goodness. We wake up. I check my phone. Merle's hasn't texted me, so I text him, you awake? The Michigan State game had already started. We didn't get to the start of the game.

We didn't get to bet on the team. The only reason we went to Vegas, we missed the whole fucking game. And obviously they won. Because it was like a 9 a.m. start in Vegas, right? They had the noon game. We didn't check it. We figured we'd get up. Time game messed us up.

And, of course, they won and covered. Yeah, and the story gets worse. And then it was all downhill from there. What did that weekend cost you? No, the story gets worse because they won. So now Yeah, and the story gets worse. And then it was all downhill from there. What did that weekend cost you? No, the story gets worse because they won. So now we get another chance at them Saturday. Like, okay, we missed them Thursday. We'll get them Saturday. They're going to win.

They always go to the final four with this coach. Same act. We overslept and missed it again. Embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing. I thought you were're gonna say they lost overslept again just bet at the night before you're an absolute clown if you think you're getting up at 9 a.m in vegas unless you haven't been to bed yet hey how about this one so we're

at the bruckheimer hockey tournament and uh we come in after the pool party and common or is there that trip and craps table all the boys are stopping and playing and i have another um scenario on my hands which i decide to go the other route go back to my room and a little tomfoolery uh later on at dinner that night that whole table absolute lit the lamp commodore went on like an hour roll he won 20 grand they said it was the fucking most insane thing a bunch of them had videos i i've never regretted a sexual experience in my life other than that one i'll tell you he went he won i think he won just under 20 grand i think it was like 19 and change i mean the thing is that i experienced that weekend i'm talking about is it's just everyone's winning right so everyone it's just the table is having so much fun like

the whole vibe right the one guy's rolling you're all backing them it's just yeah everybody ride cruise then the loser comes in you gotta get them out take a hike but i would say having i would imagine a type of experience like that at the craps table would be similar to when you when you initially win the stanley cup and you're all standing around everybody gets to pass it around i would say that's a very similar experience correct oh you're hitting points and you're all getting together and hugging and jumping up and down it's it's unbelievable it gets the okay so we talked about the kh, which do you assume is the easiest league in Europe to bet on? Yeah, especially during the regular season. This finals, we're having a little tougher time.

You know, it's down to the two best teams. What happened today? Did Avangard win? Yeah, they won again on us. Wow. That series is tied? Rising. No, now they're down.

CSK's down 3-2 now going on the road. I call CSK the what the Chelsea and they're they're the they're the Manchester City. Yeah. Yeah. They're Manchester City. The Yankees. You know, the Yankees. George Steinbrenner was a mob boss. So everybody in Russia, like you, you get bonuses for a regular season. When you get bonuses for each round. And then if you win it all,

you get a big bonus. Seska, they don't do any in-season bonuses or any playoff round bonuses. They give a big dog cash. If you win it all, that's the only bonus structure they have. So Seska is playing for their livelihoods and their bank accounts. So, I think they still get it done in seven.

You think like 100K cash? I'm not even going to go into it. I know it, but I'm not going to say it. Keep going. You know the exact number? Keep going. Keep going. Oh, a million bucks?

But just imagine. So, this same team, that's where Kaprasov from Minnesota came from and Sorokin from the Islanders. So they've had the hemp them two on that same team the last two years. So that's how they swept the series. The finals two years ago, last year, they would have wanted if it wasn't for the COVID and then they're back

this year in the finals again, without those two guys. So you can imagine the wagon. They used to be that Kaprasov. Oh my God. He is fucking. Well, we've been doing good on the wild wits. those two guys so you can imagine the wagon they used to be that kaprasov oh my god he is fucking well we've been doing good on the wild wits the wild another team that i've been riding for but i think they what have they won seven in a row yeah they're on some but they've just been such a good team overall the last two months that guy's changed the whole organization we've

said it on other podcasts it's like a different vibe around that entire team now now they need new uniforms bill garrett probably did the opposite of the dry island he's probably like everyone's boozing everyone having beers hey post game you gotta do a six-pack in your stall i actually was i'll tell you a great story about that my brother i don't know if i told the story my brother was the trainer in boston assistant trainer for ray borks last season and he was just a student like intern assistant trainer one of his jobs every day go get the six pack of coors light put in ray bork stall for after the games that's that's old school what a job that on a resume that's the pool hockey i thought i was going to play. Oh, boy, believe me, Merle, you did. Hey, actually, speaking of legends, I was talking to Malone before this one,

and he said the one day after, I think it was training camp, after practice, Mario just came up to you and was like, hey, you want to go upstairs and eat? And Malone said that you were so nervous that it was laughable yeah i mean that i was so nervous i like that that was like the legend growing up and then that's what those old guys did though like remember in training camp you'd see them all up there in that old rank that we and they would all be bellied up eating lunch crushing beers every day and then like i think the one day i started i finally like was making the team i got the invite and then i was like i don't is this a test like are you seeing if i'm gonna like go drink or if i don't drink that i'm a nerd and he's gonna send me down these are the thoughts

you're gonna send me down you're a pigeon just sweating at the table did you say a word were you stuttering and shit probably yeah i probably sound like i do on here just stuttering and shit? Yeah, I probably sound like I do on here, just stuttering and nervous. Hey, Bugsy's ordering Jager balls. Oh, Bugsy's like shoe checking Mario. My first meeting of Mario. I'll never forget that one, too. I was so buckled. Bugsy brought us to remember that bar we went to like two nights before camped on the water. Yeah, something like Wet Willies or something.

Yeah, something I remember in Pittsburgh. It was an absolute gong show. I was like, I didn't even know I was doing this tonight. I thought camps in a couple of days. Well, sure enough, I get Bugsy and I throw up. I pop the blood vessel in my eye, same way I did after I signed the contract in New York City, and I meet Mario the next day walking to the ring.

First job pick two or three years prior at a pop blood festival because I got Bugsy. He's like, are you Yandles, buddy? No wonder I didn't make the team. Hey, Merle. Bugsy's doing his three drinks. He'd line up the three whiskeys and one, two, three or something he'd say. Let's go.

Merle, this is the first Saturday of May, making bets on Kentucky Derby Day. Are you a Ponies guy? I don't think we discussed it. I'm 20 minutes from Saratoga, where I grew up here. Never won a race. I used to have a huge Kentucky Derby party

when I lived here in the States. Last spring, I was in... Well, it got canceled last spring, but when we're in Europe, but this year, yeah. And I actually got a good tip for everybody here. Last year, Edzo gave us the winner. If you've ever been to Troy, New York, or like Albany, New York, we're famous for these like mini hot dogs. All right. Mini hot dogs. You put mustard sauce and chopped onions on them.

And the best place for them is hot dog charlie's and this year the one of the horses and it was actually a barstool guy that wrote a blog about it too it's called hot rod charlie and that's getting a lot of a lot of talk and uh that's going to be my pick for us i think edzo had a better breakdown of why he was picking his horse but yours is the connection between these little mini hot dogs. He's like, Rod and Dog both have three letters. And we love them.

Oh yeah, and he's getting needles in the ass every night. So a couple years ago, I won big on it because Nyquist won. Oh yeah, that's right too. Name for a hockey player, name for a Swedish hockey player, my wife Johanna, Swedish. And we all were figuring it out and we're like, Hey, this is it.

Let's go for it. It was, I think four to one, it went off that we all made a bundle. So sometimes you got to use that kind of thinking. They'll get a winner in the horses. For people who don't know. And I've mentioned this quite often, but when, when life gets back to normal or hopefully it's this summer if you want a good spot for a bachelor party and you don't go to saratoga springs in new york you have no idea and like i said a million times you tell your wives and your girlfriends yeah i'm going to horse track they're like all right loser see you later

they have no idea what that place is really like so go to saratoga springs when the track opens up and enjoy it yourself that's me and merle's favorite place uh keith yandel when i was playing with him he went there one time and i was like why why would you go there what is that you've been any good his fucking jaw drop he goes buddy he goes you have to experience that place one time in your life he said it's one of the best places he's ever been i think he tries to get there at least once a summer or used to just betting the ponies all day and there's like 10 11 races you're going back up in between you got about 40 minutes you bring your own beers and that's one of the coolest things is that you're allowed to bring your own coolers in and ra i've

seen him up there a bunch that's one of your spots but unfortunately we just don't win money the one year we did i think blew it all. Well, we went to the Racino afterwards playing video craps with. Yeah, that was a loser move. Yeah. You go home Sunday with no money. I told him early, I said, listen, I go next year when I was leaving, you know, that next morning you're leaving, you're hungover. See you, buddy.

Next year, if you go to that Racino after the track and you go and play video craps and poker, I'm going to walk right in there. I'm going to sucker you right in the face. It's a known fact. And then last year it got canceled. So the next time we go, if he's there, I'm allowed to just straight up sucker him. I'll probably break my hand. He won't even feel it.

Last call is like four o'clock in the morning up there, too, right, Merles? Yeah. I mean, that's all around here. It's not needed at all. 4 a.m., we don't need that. But one of the best things, the track. So you're there all day. You're buckled all day.

And then right across the street, there's three or four different spots with the outdoors venue. They got the bands rocking, and it's all the sing-along songs. You're just there going nuts. It is so much fun. Plus, I think every female within a 100-mile radius of Saratoga travels there Friday, Saturday night to get some men because there's certainly plenty of them up there.

And it's mandatory you wear a sundress when you get within the hour radius of the track. So it's a good location for you single listeners out there. I got a question for you. Do you still have a lot of buddies in Albany? Oh, yeah. So you got the Albany River Rats poster behind you. How many of them are going to watch when McGilney got sent down to the AHL?

Yeah, my friends are not really hockey people that are from here. Most of my friends were, like, basketball guys growing up. But I remember hearing some stories about him from when he played here he was he was commuting from uh new jersey still and when he got sent down he walked into the room i think he handed like the who's in charge of the fine fund handed the guy like 20 grand he goes i'll probably be late a few practices i'm commuting from jersey no what he did was he walked into the coach's office and he told the coach, he said, what's the fine for missing practice? And I think I think the coach said two hundred and fifty dollars.

So he wrote a check for the rest of the remaining practices in the year and he handed it to him. That's even better. That's even better. Hey, but yours is probably the true one. Mine's the bigger fish. I actually ran into him my first year when I went over to play in the cage. I went over to that crazy team of more and he was like the president of the team. So I got to hang out with him a little bit over there, and he was a beauty. Wow. Rose, you got any cup futures?

Any teams you're going to be pulling for come playoff time? You like me, but you bet like half the field just so you can say you won. I haven't really done any yet, but one I've been really eyeing is the Winnipeg Jets. I really like that team. really done any yet but uh one i've been really eyeing is the winnipeg jets i really i really like that team we all know the story of how toronto can never get past the big bad bruins right and that that that way the winnipeg reminds me a little bit of the bruins some big bodies you know not easy to play against a real good goalie and the eels i know you guys are big leafs podcast this year but they're gonna win the cup joel

thornton's gonna joel thornton will fucking fist fight you in a back alley right now for a stanley cop i would love i would love to see joe it takes you know who uh who i'm gonna throw a futures on is the goddamn caroline hurricanes they're nasty and like i bet you their odds are pretty decent right now that's a decent that's a decent uh little little wager for you at least you'll get some odds back like tampa bay even though they're not even playing great that's my pick i want the leafs but i'm picking tampa bay just because they're that good but they've struggled and i bet you their odds are what are they a six to one ra it's not even worth it yeah tampa is like the chalk tamper in colorado basically the chalk right now.

Even at the beginning of the year, you weren't getting great prices on those teams. But, I mean, the Bruins, though, like when we recorded last week, they were 16-1 in some places, and they actually went down to 11-1 over the next couple days just over the victory over Washington and Buffalo. So you've got to jump on those numbers quick because, you know, they get one huge bet, then they're going to drop pretty big. And also, everyone should know Merle's our next trip or one of our next few trips. Merle's is going to be joining us because this man was born for a live stream.

All he does is talk about every play, how he got screwed. And he had that guy to score the first goal. Then he got benched by the coach. And then he's talking about an icing call that fucked him over in the second period of a game three weeks ago. So Merles is built for the live stream. We've seen a lot more of him. But we appreciate you hopping on, buddy.

Yeah, I was hoping to get down to Florida, but I was busy. I was coaching a high-end Bantam team out in Rochester. And it was our last weekend. So we had almost, it was basically a national tournament because of COVID and everything. They got all the teams put together and we had a big tournament. And so I couldn't make it down there. but I'm definitely in for the next one. Are they 15? They were 07 birthdays.

So 13, 14 year olds. So some of these kids, huh? Just ridiculous. Yes. Just complete studs. They went up to Quebec last year, your Quebec peewee tournament. I've heard of it. Finals.

I know you were a champion. I lost in the finals too. Did you? Not like the grand final. I was in the double. You know how there's double international A in the two NHLs, so there was four divisions. We lost in the final of our division. And then Syracuse won it a couple

years after me. Our team went back up with Tim Conley. And they were the first American team to win it. That's when it was on and they were the first, they were the first American team to win it. That's when it was on ESPN too. Yeah. They were, they were trading our hockey cards in the, in the balls of the rank and selling them at McDonald's. Was caught.

We think Conley, you think we can get Conley for a sandbagger? He loves golf. Well, yeah. I mean, he's playing out at Oak Hill every day. So, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if he'll travel. You guys might have to travel to him to get him. He's not allowed to travel.

Well, Morals, we love you and we appreciate you hopping on and everybody check out the Everybody Rides crew. It's MattMerley19 on Twitter. Yeah, I think so. I'm still a rookie in the game. I know I'm trying to learn from you still, Whit, on it. We're going to need some videos.

You're going to need to send out some videos with your pics once in a while. But that's the merch. Yeah, we're having a blast doing it. I got the consigliere out in Vegas helping me. And it's just so much fun. Like every morning, I know what it's like. People are at work. Like they just want something to check their phone on all day.

And, you know, if it breaks up the time and gets you to dinner. But the problem was I got so hot. I mean, I was going on some of those 11 and 0, 13 and 2 streaks. Now if I lose a game, it's like a big deal. Everybody's like, what's going on? You lost. Yeah, like, hey, dude, I've been losing for 20 years. Yeah, I go 7 and 0.

Everyone's like, they're texting you at 4 in the morning. Where's your picture tonight? It's like, buddy, I don't even know who's playing. Like, give me a fucking second here. But I'll give one. This is going to go Tuesday morning. This will go up, Mikey. Tuesday. So Tuesday afternoon, we'll go to the Swiss League

and we're going to take Zug. Zug three-way. I think it's like minus 130 or something. And for all these, and you see how many questions I get about this three-way and regulation. Because three-way regulation, it's all the same. That's what I missed the crap tables for.

Wait, so isn't it – No, keep going. Keep explaining. Three-way, you have to win in regulation. It's the same thing. Yeah, it's just the same thing. Or sometimes it's minus a half, you know, let's say in regulation minus a half, which is the same thing.

And then, so that's why, like, you do the draw, a.k.a. the Murley special. So you get just better odds on everything. And if it goes to OT, you can always jump on and live it. Live bet it. Live bet your original team. I don't know. I'll be on here maybe. Maybe I'll have to do a little tutorial on sports gambling

and then I'd really like to do one on the craps table. You know, teach everybody how to play that and play it the right way. We're in. We appreciate it and we'll talk to you soon. Merles, can I ask you one question? Scud's told me about the time Orpik drilled you in the nuts with a shot out of frustration.

Yeah, Scud's texted me about that. I thought it was Vandenbush. I used to play with two – like Vandenbush and Andre Waugh would be out there, and we'd just be just mucking around. And, like, we couldn't get out of our zone, and I think Orpik was just so mad. He took a slap shot after the whistle and hits me right in the nuts. In a game.

Yeah. In a game. Yeah. Like after the whistle, like it was just weird. Like that's what that, who was on that Sabres on that losing streak. Like that's the kind of team we were. We couldn't win. Hey, you know, what's funny. I just saw that. I just saw that Vancouver, when they came back from the COVID break, they were the second biggest underdog in the last 20 years. The first was our team in Pittsburgh. And we went up against – we were plus 400 that night against Ottawa.

That year they went to the cup final. We went up 1-0 and then lost 7-1. Live bet. Let's hope somebody live at it. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on guys. Good seeing you guys. Everybody's in your Merle's take care of Merle's buddy rides. Huge. Thanks to a handsome buddy. Merle's for coming on and talking gamble and I'm such an absolute beauty.

I was so happy. He joined us in Dallas at the, I went to classic last year. Whit called them handsome on the way year. I hope you call them. What? Call them handsome on the way. And you just called them handsome. Is Merle's known as this handsome guy? I didn't call him handsome, but he is a good looking cat. And he's dude.

He's Peter Pan. He doesn't age. Yeah, it's fucking nuts, dude. He looks the exact same as he did when he was 20. It's a nice Merle's. Yeah. Rocket Merle's. Well, where's the same T-shirt the whole weekend in Vegas did when he was 20. It's a nice skill to have. Man Rocket Merles. Yeah. Man Rocket Merles. Well, you've heard of him.

Wears the same T-shirt the whole weekend in Vegas, but he is a man rocket. Yeah. It's not something I'm going to pick on a man for. Hey, most guys have tried different ways to last longer, but thinking about Oscar winners and playoff seedings do not always work. Well, the folks at Roman, an online men's health company, are changing the game with Roman Swipes. The secret to longer-lasting sex. It's not a secret anymore.

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Here we go. We got to switch. Merle's would wear the same T-shirt in Vegas for four days straight. No, but he came to Boston for a weekend one time and stayed for four weeks because he said he was too hungover to drive home to Albany. It's like four and a half hours. Stayed for 26 days, I think it was, after coming for a weekend. And 23 of the days, he wore this yellow T-shirt that had one of the things from where the wild things are. So it's like noticeable, not like a black one, you know?

No, it's just like, Merle, you know, that T-shirt's been on you dead straight three weeks. He chucked a couple washes in there, but he's like, things are working well. I'm doing well here. I'm not going to change my shirt. Absolute hot streak with the same shirt. Oh, my goodness. I forget how much of a fucking capital district accent he has until he comes on. So he's going to get albany's connect

troy accent yep guys i also need to talk to you about um a podcast in saskatchewan so since i talked about saskatchewan and the people who make up that providence and how solid to the core these people are a lot of people reached out almost saying thank you i appreciate it and you know i said of course you deserve it you guys are wonderful people out there it reminded me a couple uh months back a podcast from saskatchewan it's called the the monday nooner podcast yeah they reached out to me too well arms colby armstrong reached out i said hey i'm gonna give them your number um i said are you fucking kidding me army i hate doing stuff like that but no no no they wrote an email and they're real nice guys. And I said, listen, guys, I'll come on the show if Army comes on our show again. So it's pretty simple.

Army set it up so you can get on him. Colby Armstrong is one of our first guests. Before Biz was on the show, one of the funniest, greatest guys I ever met playing pro hockey. So I'd love to have him come on again. And he just keeps dodging me. So Army's buddies, he connected you know, he connected us. You come on Army. I'm on Monday Nooner.

They've had a bunch of good guys. Brian Burke, Theo Fleury, Scotty Hartnell's been on there. Kelly Chase. So they're crushing it. So good looking out for the Saskatchewan pods. But I'm not going on until Army comes back on with us. You heard it there. Same here.

And we got to also talk quickly about about g4 i don't think people understand how comfortable these shoes are g4 there's some golf shoes out there and they have all the fancy bells and whistles but they look like a grandpa's shoe and then there are other shoes that look sweet but they do nothing for your game and then there's g4 it's got this huge technology with sleek modern design to make some incredible golf shoes. You got to check out their site, g4.com slash chicklets. Biz, you were rocking these in the sandbaggers. You love them.

They'll give you 10%. Yeah, you're rocking them today. They'll give you 10% off of your first order. And I'm telling you, you're going to love them. You can get the classic look. Check out the gallivanters. I love that word. Merle's used to say that word.

We're gallivanting around Vegas. Or if you're digging shoes that more look more athletic, like maybe you could go, you know, you go to a bar after. And I'm not that you should necessarily do that in golf shoes, but you could. The MG4s, that's that's what you want. So there's a bunch of different there's an MG4 plus that's super sleek. It's athletic looking. There's 3D molded external heel cap for lateral support. That's very important in the game of golf. You need to be using the ground. That's how you

get the swings. You use the ground with the lateral force of the G4 shoe. So no matter what kind of statement you're looking or trying to make with your look, they will hook you up. Check out G4.com slash chicklets for 10% off your first order. And also while you're doing that, Thursday, I believe,

Spittin' Chicklets, we're dropping a new line of Peter Millar golf gear, some spring colors to kind of hop into your rotation, some, do I dare say pink, some light purple, some blue, some nice-looking gear from Peter Millar, who I believe owns G4. It's all big, one happy family with the great Chicklets logo on the breast and the Barstool Sports logo on the sleeve. So you can't miss. Check that out Thursday, please. R.A., do we have anything

else? A couple other things. I forgot to pimp my Vegas shirt, the one I created. Sin City Morning. Oh, I like that one. It's got a little metallic gold to match the helmets. And if you notice, instead of the joust, the top of that's a hockey stick. Shout out to Mrs. R.A. for coming up with that concept.

Come on. Really? Mrs. R.A. Way to go. That's gorgeous. Yeah. You know the hashtag is Vegas born. Well, I didn't want to copy them.

I respect what they do. So you're Sin City born. You can make it out there. Well, they stole your mascot. They stole Chance. True that. True that. But but either way check that out and uh biz the mouthy sweatshirt sold out basically the mouthy thing that sale could use the roman swipe to last a little longer yeah we we made a hundred it was a very small drop the quality of these sweaters are amazing yeah they sold out very quick uh thank you to grinnelli

liam from noble gentlemen and a few of the girls can you say their names Grinelli from the office Alex and Allison they're the best thank you very much as well and I think we in Pilar and we we sold out in uh what two hours three hours two hours real quick and then you know I uh and and Whit you have a story about somebody who did write you an essay. I wasn't an essay. I asked for a book report on the octopus professor and. I received a lot. Needless to say, there was I'm going to say 35 to 40 book reports came in. I'm going to go out. Actually, I his name again i lost well well here's the problem so wits lost the name so the guy who actually won the book report was a mountie himself yeah yeah

oh here he is jay spen um i've been a mountie 13 years the boys would love it at our next mountie hockey tournament imagine how much these fucking guys drink at the Mountie Hockey Tournament. It's basically Vikings. It's modern-day Vikings at their hockey tournament, just getting waffled in a – what does the shirt say again? Unapologetically Canadian. Unapologetically Canadian. Something I could never wear.

So congrats to J. Spen. I'll be sending that out to you. And we'll send a few bottles of Pink Whitney as well. And you guys can enjoy your hockey tournament tournament and we hope you like the sweater and actually we'll get back to the oscars in a sec biz there were a couple of the hockey notes we did want to get out there first we just talked about matt murley not aging at all um how about freddie breath weight he's the goaltending coach for the henderson silver knights vegas's farm team well he was forced into a backup role the same situation sort of what was going on in Ottawa.

Their goaltender was sick. They had to bring him in. He's 48 years old, I believe. Hasn't played in years. He suits up for Henderson, Silver Knights. He still has his original Atlanta Brash's helmet. Doesn't have a mark on it. Thing is still gorgeous.

But, man, that guy looks fantastic. When I seen the picture, I was like, which one was from 20 years ago when he played and which one's from recently? He still looks great for his age. I'm trying to think of athletes that have aged tremendously. And when that picture popped up, I'm like, damn, this guy still looks like he's fucking 25 years old. Absolutely.

And one other big story we want to get to. Unfortunately for the women, their world championship in Nova Scotia, it was supposed to start May 6th. It was canceled yet again. They didn't play it last year. And I'm using the word canceled because it hasn't been postponed because there's no makeup date yet. Now the players were only given a one day notice before teams were set to

arrive for their quarantine. Some reportedly the Russian and Japanese teams are already on route. So these women are obviously understandably pissed. The IIHF and hockey Canadaada who was running the this year's tournament pledged to try they quote pledged to try to find new dates later this summer which really doesn't mean a hell of a lot um basically the players are pissed because there was no contingency contingency plan like okay if this gets canceled canceled what do we do next and they had absolutely fucking nothing lined up so um these ladies man

they bust their asses they don't make pro salaries some of them have to rely on generosity of friends and family and for them to get treated like this man it sucks it's they get treated like a second class citizen and they frankly deserve a lot more than this and a lot better than this you couldn't have said it any better it's ridiculous that that's like you can't tell me if that was the men's world championship that's how it would have gone down and's like you can't tell me if that was the men's world championship that's how it would have gone down and you can you can argue about pay and how it's not fair well there's different arguments in terms of that but treatment of people in their time and what they're looking forward to that's non-negotiable right so that was a joke to see that it's just i

mean it's just disrespectful to treat people like that and i know people said texas i know they will hold an under under 18 tournament that they weren't originally supposed to. But again, this is a Hockey Canada gig. They want to still try to have it in Canada. So that's why it's not going anywhere else. So hopefully the women can get their world championship because it's great hockey. As far as sports is concerned, the ladies have absolutely taken it out of the chin during this COVID situation. have absolutely taken it out of the chin during this COVID situation.

So let's hope that when everything's back and running, we show them the support they deserve. This is brutal. One last hockey note. I'm not sure there was a clip from the Federal League. A lot of fights. They let guys wear baseball hats during the warm-ups. Did you see the clip?

I don't know if you guys got tagged or not. Guys just skating warm-ups like baseball hats on backwards. Like they're basically going to play roller hockey. I don't know. I know it's a federally. They got some fucking wild animals playing that league, but I thought it was a pretty funny clip. We got to go back to the golf for a second. This past weekend was the PGA Zurich Classic down in New Orleans or Louisiana.

And it was, it was a, what, how do you, how do you call that when two guys are playing? I know a team play is that is as simple call that when two guys are playing i know a team play is that is as simple as that yeah it's a two-man tournament it's the only time they do it on the pga tour season thursday saturday is best ball and friday sunday is alternate shot and for anyone who's ever played golf alternate shot is hard you know so guys teams are going out and shooting eight to ten under best ball when you're both just counting the best score you both you make but then when the guy hits the drive and you hit the iron and the guy hits the

pot and you have to putt the next one it's just taxing on like your game and you feel bad for somebody that you usually don't feel when you're playing alone so it's hard so leading into that i had no idea rear admiral had big action on a south afric African squad that was right in the hunt come Sunday. Brutal. Yeah. Oostie. I was at Oosties and Oosties and how do you say? Louis Oosties and one of the most beautiful swings in golf.

And Charles, and Charles Swartzel. I didn't, you know, I didn't bet him because there's South Africa. I just, he's one of those names. I just kind of chase. And yeah,

they were up one going into Sunday. You know, you're not guaranteed nothing. They had been flip-flopping like guys each hole, but he choked on those last few holes, man. Oosties and Oostausen, I don't know the fuck you say his name. He gagged a couple shots. And then that last one on the playoff, he put right in the drink.

Couldn't believe that. I was more stressed through that. And, I mean, it was only a couple hundred dollar bet. Obviously, he stood to make a nice chunk of change. But I was a stress factory watching that for fucking three hours Sunday. Going back to the days. So, on the Sunday coming home, it would be the alternate shot. Yes, dude.

Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yes. So meltdowns are way more like. Yeah. Fino and Cameron Champ were right near the top of the lead. I think they shot like 77 or something. Alternate shot is just it's something it's really hard to describe, but you're so used to hitting the drive and getting ready and hitting your shot into the green whereas you're hitting your drive and you're

not even thinking about anything until you're either putting or chipping if your partner misses the green it's it's it's a stress factory that's for sure and i think that when they got into the playoff who stays in swing he's won the one the british open like 10 years ago like ran away with it at saint andrews i had no idea who he was then. He's never won in America, though. So it's like this guy's made a fortune playing golf, but doesn't have that killer instinct, I don't think. And that's having said he's got an open championship, so fuck that.

But lately, and then Biz on this playoff, it's a par five, gettable par five. You can miss a mile left. He just blocks one way into the water where he didn't even he didn't even get it up the fairway and have it like fade into the water it was just dead right so you had to re-tee you couldn't even go up and drop and hit your third so just a choke he had to re-tee himself oh no because then it's alternate shots and then your buddy's gonna tee up so schwarzel actually striped one and they they had a chance still, R.A. It got to the green and they did. Yeah, it was.

I mean, I think that's my fifth, second place in this last five or six months in golf futures. So I don't I don't know names in golf, like only the top end ones. And I'm sure this guy was you probably know who it is. But the one meltdown that I could think of happened at the british open and it was on the 18th jean vanderbilt and it was in the he hit it in like the little river thing where the british they call it the burn he hit it in the fucking burn dude and and he what he put up the last hole like an eight or nine he made a triple to force a playoff he made like a five foot putt for triple to still get into the playoff.

All he needed to do was double bogey the hole. It was at Carnoustie, one of the hardest courses in the world. And if go back and I'm telling you, if you are a hockey fan or a baseball fan and you've never watched or played golf, go to YouTube right now and watch Jean van de Veldt on the 18th hole of the British open, because it is one of the most incredible collapses. I didn't play or like golf and my father didn't play golf either,

but he always watched the majors. And I remember 78 Vernon road, situate mass, the room I was in, I have the worst memory. I remember watching that. And my dad going, this is insane. What is this guy doing? Dude? He gets in the water like he's going to hit it out of the burn with his shoes off. I remember my dad going, look at this idiot Frenchman. What is this guy doing? Because he looked like Mr. Bean.

He was so lost. It was like, it's the funniest. Go watch it on YouTube. And the guy lost. And I ended up watching something on it years later. Like, it was difficult for him, right? I mean, this guy's life was oh yeah no it's the reason i can laugh about it now and i didn't even watch it in real time the only time i the only reason i knew about it was because i think that they got him

back years later and he actually shot a better score on the whole with one club with a playing with a putter yes i think you're right and he was willing to do the video, and he did it. And he actually doubled it. So it was just funny. He seemed like a great guy. You're right. Yeah, so I think years later, as much as it might have affected him at the time, at least he could laugh at himself.

And he did a little content piece where he played the 18th with a putter, the whole hole, and beat his score of the meltdown. So the out-of-bounds is left. The whole hole is out-of-b score the meltdown so the the out of bounds is left the whole hole's out of bounds left like up near the green too and right is like a burn that like slithers along the hole and the guy takes out driver and the announcer for like bbc which is even better i think he's like what what the fuck's he doing with driver like and and then he hits it dead right and they're like that's dead in the water. Well, dude, he landed on like a little patch of grass and still ended up making triple. Like he got the break he needed

after picking the wrong club off the tee and still made the triple. But yeah, go check that out. This has been a long episode, no? Yeah, we're deep. Yeah, we're almost done. Speaking of futures, a lot of people thought, going back to the Oscars biz,

a lot of people thought I bet that my octopus teacher was going to win best documentary professor and it and it did and it did uh sunday night but first off i didn't have the option uh well i guess where i put my wages and i didn't have the option to put any documentary plays in but i guess it was a pretty good favorite it was like five minus 500 that's not odds i would have played anyways but i was surprised the one i didn't know those were the odds i just thought the academy would have went with like one of the most social socially conscious leaning uh documentaries that was the competition but i also think people just like the kind of the feel-good nature of the story where it was sort of an escape from real world problems and real world issues and i think that had some a lot of appeal for

people last year so i think that's why it won i think considering what was so negative we need to get him on and we need to talk to him and have an open conversation so wit can really open up to this movie because i agree 100 with you ra this changed my life i saw a movie i tried to watch a couple of nominees uh the sound of metal, like this movie was like crazy. Like watching it is, it pulled on all the feelings you could have. This guy was so amazing acting in this movie. I don't know his name. Holy shit. Biz watched this movie.

I swear to God. I was like, I cried a little bit. I was like thinking about like, it's just a weird, I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying? All right. Like, yeah, well, it was such an, it's a story I've never like seen or dealt with and somebody, should I give it away? The acting captivated you into the whole story of it where you felt like you'd watch the sky. Yeah. I don't even know what it's about.

No. So I won't ruin it, but the is um it's a drummer and he's in a band and this band isn't exactly like killing it i'm not but he loses his hearing and that's all you need to say yeah and i'm sorry what i don't know no no no no no i'm really looking for your opinion on it did you agree with that no i thought i thought it was excellent i thought it had a shot at best picture yeah it's about a rock drummer who's slowly losing his hearing but what they they the way they the filmmakers did it was they kind of put you in his shoes like how he was losing his hair you were kind of going through the same sensory and like oh and how you were almost annoyed by it just even being through the experience it's like well imagine this guy annoying isn't even the word i was legit so heartbroken for this guy. And it was a movie. And to feel like so upset for a person that isn't even it's not a real true story. It was like, that's what the noise is that he was hearing and what he was going through the panic and you see somebody like panicking and

like you think of like imagine losing your hearing like it's just so for some reason it just it just really struck a chord with me and he's like trying to pop it yeah i won't even give away but check it out amazing acting by this guy and just to go back when i said annoying it's just like your kind of experience i know what you meant yeah okay thank you um what else it's on amazon prime and he he lost um brisamed he lost the best actor to anthony hopkins who won for the father and that was a huge upset i know anthony hopkins is a legend nobody really thought that was going to happen they thought maybe two or three other guys were going to win i don't know if you saw the father bit uh wit but i didn't see it because honestly i read about what it was about yeah and it was so sad that I couldn't watch it. It's very heavy.

And I saw already quickly, he woke up. He didn't even know he won the Oscar, I read. No, he didn't. He was asleep. He was sleeping in the morning in Wales. He didn't care. That's like Employee of the Month for Tony Hopkins. What a baller.

Yeah, he woke up and found out he won the Oscar. That's Employee of the Month. Hey, what do you want for breakfast? He's like, and you won the Oscar. Eggs over medium. He reads it in the paper. like, and you won the Oscar. Eggs over medium. He reads it in the paper. Doesn't even respond to the Oscar. With his cup of tea.

It was a similar thing in that way. Like, obviously, it's about Alzheimer's. It's not a spoiler thing or a dementia, whatever you want to call it, a guy getting old. But they do similar, like, movie-making tricks. But what they do for a guy losing his hearing and the sound of the metal, they do the same thing with memory with the father.

So if you see that, like kind of put you through it. It's like losing your memory. It's very well done. That's why it won Best Original Screenplay. But yeah, as far as the Oscars in general, I wasn't too enamored with it. I thought it was kind of dry. Not a lot of laughs. And Nomadland, man, I thought it was boring.

I didn't think it was that great of a movie. I don't think it's one of these movies people gonna look back at 10 years and they go yeah that was a classic it should have won best director I'm a best picture I mean spoiler alert uh it's about a woman who decides to just live out of her fucking van down by the river uh I wasn't all that enamored with it I haven't heard one good word about this movie I'm not kidding I've listened to a couple podcasts i've been on like listening not one person has said they like this movie yeah i wouldn't i mean i didn't dislike it i just was like that's it it sounded like dude dude dude dude dude your description was of

disliking a movie okay yeah in fairness you're right i didn't i didn't i didn't praise it for sure i wouldn't say it's a bad movie. I just don't think it was anywhere near best picture worthy, I guess is what I'd say. I was going to say the only other movie that I saw about losing appearing was It's All Gone, Pete Tong. And it's about a DJ. Same thing.

He lost his hearing. And I think that this one might have a bit more of a humorous approach to it. And I would assume that this one that you just described is not bit more of a humorous approach to it. And I would assume that this one that you just described is not. There's zero humor. Yeah, yeah. So it's called All Gone Pete Tong. I think it's like a cult movie.

That's not true. There's actually a couple moments that I laughed pretty hard. All right. Oh, we got to talk about the bench simp. That's the last thing. Oh, my God, guys. If you haven't seen it, this kid. I don't know how the hell this picture was made public, but he's in his gear.

He's got his fucking fishbowl on his face on the bench, and he's got his cell phone down at the bottom, taking a selfie up at his chin with his mask on. cell phone down at the bottom taking a selfie up at his chin with his mask on and then he writes babe i stuck my phone on the bench to keep talking to you i mean dude maybe the toughest look that i've seen for a kid ever grinnell this is more like what do you think of this? Grinnell needs to hop in on this. I need to hear his opinion. Imagine the feeling when it went into his group chat

with all of his boys the second he saw that, like the second the girl sent it out. How viral has this gotten? Oh, I mean, it's our most viral post on our Instagram in the past month. Let's have him on. Reach out to him, Mikey. Reach out to him, and we're going to talk to him,

and we're just going to get his side of the story, and we're going to probably realize that he's a great guy and knew he made a mistake, but wow. Let me say this. It's very easy for his buddies to create, to forge that. That's easily, easily forgeable. So there's a chance that this kid could have just got sandbagged by his buddies. So this could be bench.

Well, no, not in a sense. Yes, but also he took that picture. He still brought the phone on the bench and took a selfie on the bench. But yeah, he could have been like, you know, having a few beers tonight. Going to get my pee pee. Actually, you're right. Maybe he's sending that selfie to a bunch of babes. Hey, I'm at Men's League.

I just got another goal. And then they put on the tag to make it look like a simp. This is why we got to get his story. All right. All right. We're going to have him on. But what a funny image to see a kid on the bench. I can imagine if I was a freshman at fair.

And the seniors saw me with my – Oh, there was no phones then. Jesus Christ. All right. What was that song? Those are the Simpsons. Yeah, I think it's time to wrap this up, guys. Yeah.

Actually, G just texted me one last note. Super League? Oh, yeah, guys. I don't know if you saw. Big Cat had the funniest meme, couple of memes today about how he got the Super League canceled, but we talked about it as well.

Canceled. And not only is the Super League canceled, but we talked about it as well. Canceled. And not only is the Super League canceled, like some of these fans, they want these owners gone. This Kroenke guy owns Arsenal. I think he owned the Rams and he moved them out of St. Louis. Not a well-liked guy, it sounds like. Arsenal fans, there was, I think, thousands of them up at the stadium before they played last week.

Like Kroenke out, Kroenke out. So Chelsea week, like Cronky out, Cronky out. So Chelsea was the first team to hop out, just all class by my boys. And tomorrow, 3 o'clock Eastern, or today as you guys are listening, you want to watch a world-class team play soccer? Check out Chelsea playing Real Madrid in the first leg of the semifinals of the Champions League. This is the best soccer you'll see in the world besides the World Cup. Maybe the Euro is better.

league this is the best soccer you'll see in the world besides the world cup maybe the euro is better but talk to me after chelsea goes up on the first round of this i think it's a two-leg semi-final i love chelsea go blues subscribe to our youtube episodes can be found there check out our merch and our swag anything else boys if i was the owner of that arsenal team i would have sent out a tweet saying if you guys don't shut up, I'll move you too. I think someone would have gone, though. No, there would have been a hit. Oh, my God. All right. Love you guys.

That's why I want to own sports teams. All right, everybody. Have a great week. We love you. We love you. As always, we'd like to thank our awesome sponsors here on Spit and Chicklets. Huge thanks to our longtime friends over at New Amsterdam Butker and Pink Whitney. Big thanks to our buddy Larry Flowers at Larry Flowers Jewelry. Check him out for all your jewel needs. Huge thanks to our friends at Earnest. Take care of your student loans with them.

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