Spittin Chiclets - Spittin' Chiclets Episode 425: Featuring Zdeno Chara

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

On Episode 425 of Spittin’ Chiclets, the guys are joined by Zdeno Chara. Big Z joined (01:02:28:20 - 02:37:51:05) to discuss growing up in  Czechoslovakia and overcoming the odds, playing in Boston, Patrice Bergeron and tons more. But first, the guys open the show discussing the recent Vancouver Canucks drama. Are Canucks owners the most hated in all of sports? The guys also touch on all the other news across the league, including Ivan Provorov, Steven Stamkos's 500th goal, Robin Lehner’s snake farm and tons more.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 425 of Spittin' Chicklets, presented by Pink Whitney. From our friends at New Amsterdam Vodka here in the Barstool Sports Podcast family. What is shaking, everyone? Hope you had a nice week here. We had a busy week in the NHL. We got a new coach, a whole bunch of new all-stars, a whole bunch of other shit to get to.

But let's check in with the fellas first, like we usually do. Producer Mikey Grinelli, missed you last week, buddy. But let's check out the fellas first. Like we usually do. Producer Mikey Grinnelli. Missed you last week, buddy. How you doing, my friend? I miss you guys as well. Yeah, tough week for the Grinnell family last week. We lost my amazing grandmother to cancer. So I appreciate the kind words from not only you guys,

but all of Chicklets Nation. It meant more than anyone will really ever know. But I'm happy to be back. I'm happy to talk some hockey today. But yeah, I appreciate you guys and appreciate Chicklets Nation more than anyone will ever know. but i'm happy to be back i'm happy to talk some hockey today but yeah appreciate you guys and appreciate chicklets nation uh more than anyone will ever know fucking right well said we love you buddy well said buddy you guys next up mix it up go to the wit dog ryan whitney how we doing my friend how was your weekend it was great uh pretty low key uh as i think we said last week we biz and myself, we're heading down to Florida to shoot some Pink Whitney commercials.

Two, to be exact. I don't think we're able to give away kind of the premise of each commercial, but two fun ones. I think they're going to turn out great. Shout out to Rob at Barstool, right? I mean, this guy directed them all. He ran the show. He knows what's up. And he was able to kind of figure out our humor and make a great script along with Biz and some other people.

So I mentioned on McQuaid was down there with us filming. I mean, acting is a joke. Acting is way harder than people think. Now, granted, when I say acting, I probably have three total lines in two different commercials. But it's like it's just so difficult to turn it on and then take, have all these takes. And I think the second commercial we started at 6.00 PM and left around 2.15 AM. That's a 30 second commercial. So, um, it's, it's kind of a grind, but I think the final product will be hilarious. And by Stanley cup finals, once it, once the commercial has been on for two and a half months, you guys will hate our guts against, similar to time for hire to shot from the first commercial

almost four years ago. So we're not on ice in this one. So I won't give anything else away. But it was nice to get home. And I think we got a crazy month here coming up. We got All-Star Scottsdale. I mean, All-Star Fort Lauderdale, Scottsdale Super Bowl. I'm going skiing this week, shredding time.

Actually, if you notice, we dropped some new merch. Grinnelli out of the clouds. Whitney's Ski Club, which kind of cracked me up because like my ski club would probably be like betting windows. Pink Whitney, a golf simulator, like basically be indoors. So I'm going to give it a go here this week up at Okimo and shred a little bit. So I'm looking forward to that. Nothing like Pink Whitney nips on the mountain to either way.

They're like the perfect mountain nip. Oh, they had a cameo in the commercials. That's all we're giving away, though. Yeah, they did. They had a great cameo, actually. Biz, behind you. That's not your usual spot. Paul Biz, Nasty Biz.

Where are you and why are you there right now? I'm in Atlanta here a couple of days early for the TNT broadcast. I wasn't actually supposed to do this week following the commercial for Pink Whitney. He's supposed to get a little bit of rest, but obviously with talk getting hired by the Vancouver Canucks, they needed a couple seats to be filled in throughout the rest

of the year. So I will be on full grind mode between the podcast and TNT going back to the commercials filmed. We were in Delray, right? That's the area, Delray? Delray Beach. Very, very fun area down in Florida.

Up and coming Atlantic Ave. We saw a lot of Chicklets fans, so shout out to all the people who stopped us and said hello. You touched on it. Rob Langevin, is that how you say his last name? Langevin? Oh, yeah. I nailed it. He was a rock for us he battled through both of those commercials those are long days for him we set we show up on set and we're

there for like you know six seven eight hours whatever it is both days he's there fucking two three hours beforehand and probably an hour or two afterward getting everything not only set up but then taking everything down so everybody from the barstool side all the extras who had to hang around all the people who work on lighting it there's a there's a lot that goes to putting in the sauce uh what's the saying this there's a lot that goes into making the sauce oh yeah everybody's shrugging their shoulders like what the fuck no i got you on that you guys know what saying i'm talking about but with to start off that trip, it was funny. You had another airline story, which seems every time you fly, something happens on your phone about that guy, his fucking guy,

man. He was cracking me up. So I'll hand it back over to you for the story. Yeah. So I was flying Delta. Delta is a great airline, in my opinion. I seem to have a lot of success in terms of flying there, getting your bags, just actually touching wheels down on time most of the time. So I had a first class seat and I sat down and just an absolute, just a truck of a man, a unit. I said it was like Elio for anyone who knows Barstool, Elio, Mr. Ice, showed out his new merch, three plus three equals seven in terms of hitting the overs. He bets overs every night. The guy reminded me a lot of Elio, Mr. Ice showed out his new merch. Three plus three equals seven in terms of hitting the overs. He bets overs every night. The guy reminded me a lot of Elio.

Same size, monster, unit, but he had a big old beard. So we get there and the guy knows a woman flight attendant. She said, can I get you guys a drink? I was like, no, I'm chilling. I wasn't going to have anything to drink. Whatever. He's like, yeah, I'll do a Tito soda. Sure.

No problem. One times it basically. She's like, can I get you one more? Now, mind you, we're still on the ground, but first class, they'll give you a couple before takeoff. He's like can i get you one more now mind you we're still on the ground but first class they'll give you a couple before takeoff he's like yeah i'll take another one dummies it to sipper i'm like this guy's an animal get up in the air so as soon as they can give you a drink he probably the woman probably helped him out even a little earlier she could get you one more like really nice you know and that's two in i don't know 15 20 minutes gets the third gonzo she gives him a fourth so we're now i'm gonna say we've been in

the air 40 minutes we've probably been on the plane for like an hour he hammers back the fourth so once he finishes it she's walking by he He says, excuse me, miss. Very polite. He says, can I get another one? She's like, sir, I'm sorry. Not right now. He's like, what? She's like, you've had four where like the flight isn't even like one eighth done. Like he's like, are you kidding me? She's like, sir, I'll give you another one.

Just, you know, wait a little bit. He's like, this is this is fucking bullshit. You know how much money I pay for this seat? This is fucking bullshit. And she's like, I pay for this seat? This is fucking bullshit. And she's like, I'm sorry, sir. I'll help you out in a little bit. You're just going to have to wait a little bit. And he turns to me.

He's like, you believe this lady? I'm like, that's so fucked up, man. I'm like, you want me to order you one? He's like, yeah, please. So she walked by like five minutes later. I'm excuse me, Miss. Can I actually do a Tito soda? She's like, sure.

So she gives it to me and I hand it over to him. He's like, thanks, bud. Dude, she walked like right back behind. She didn't see me do it. But as she walked and saw, she's like, what are you doing? Like yells at me and then yells at him and takes the drink away. But he was like, and like hammered it before she could. So she's giving it to me, giving it to him.

He's like, you know what? Fuck you and fuck Delta. i'm going to sleep dude this guy was asleep in 20 seconds snoring his dick off i actually got a great picture of him i'm like this i'm like i texted my buddies what was going on he was like but i really kind of thought i was being a good guy getting the drink she was pissed off at me. That's just a classic stir in the pot though. When he's like, can you fucking believe it?

I just wanted to get wrecked, which, which I mean, there's no chance he wasn't because you, you want it to be the guy recording a video where, where a pedestrian is getting kicked off of an airline for being a dickhead in first class. Didn't you?

Yeah. You want it to be the, the Odell Beckham jr. He was my Odell. and kicked off of an airline for being a dickhead in first class, didn't you? Yeah, kind of. You wanted to be the Odell Beckham Jr. He was my Odell. He was my Odell. I was like, I'm going to make this guy get booted off this plane. But then I started thinking, like, if I'm giving him booze, I guess I could somehow be held responsible. Actually, on the way home, I met a great guy, too.

He's a big-time soccer agent. We had a great discussion. He was reading a FIFA packet, and he actually noticed, like me, he's a big time soccer agent we had a great discussion he was reading a fifa packet and he actually noticed uh like me he's a big listener at chicklets so me and my and my soccer fandom i asked him a million questions all the way home it was it was two very entertaining nice travel downs for me so he jumped out of the exit two hours in he's like enough of this guy he's like oh my god oh my God. Oh, my God. I'm like, hey, you want a Tito soda? Trying to get the guy crippled. Hey, we're a fucking Pink Whitney New Amsterdam podcast. I know they don't have it on Delta.

They don't have Pink Whitney on any airline. That should be like a thing for New Amsterdam to get maybe involved. Oh, we would fit in perfect with spirit. I was just going to say we should get on spirit or frontier. I mean, it is a spirit. They drop off a full 40. Just fucking have at it. Yeah, you need a spirit to fly freaking spirit.

Need a handle of fucking Pink Whitney. Tons of laughs down there. I mean, Nick Turney was in one of the commercials as well. One of the funniest guys at Barstool. Not only does he do his own stuff, he helps write for other people. I won't divulge which shows because I don't want to throw guys under the bus bus for their lack of humor although i might start using them um so after the the shoot though on saturday i ended up going to spend a few days with keith yandel so the last didn't stop and i tell

you what laughter it's medicine guys and hanging around with keith and a guy that i played with for five years it was such a blast uh we ended up going. And hanging out with Keith and a guy that I played with for five years, it was such a blast. We ended up going golfing, hanging out with his local buddies. So I'm a little bit hurting. Definitely had some cocktails. But back in the saddle here in Atlanta, ready to go talk some hockey. A couple big stories broke just after we recorded last week.

So I know we're going to have to hop into them pretty soon here. But all in all, boys. Quickly, before we go, Nick, um, we had a nice hot stove that, that commercial Friday night. It didn't end.

We didn't get back to the hotel till like two 32, 45, but, um, me, you and Nick and Quader, we couldn't just shut her down. Like,

let's just have a beer or two in the room. And we were shooting the shit. One of the things that cracked me up, I don't know how Facebook came up. Like, I don't know how I was like, do you still have Facebook? Nicky goes, yeah. The the only reason i have it though is to see the kids i went to high school with get arrested just something like that like just we've talked about it before

he's originally from wheeling west virginia so there's not a lot going on there other than of course some chaos uh for his buddies who probably find themselves getting into trouble week in and week out. So, oh, my God, is he a funny fucking bastard, though? He had me dying laughing the whole time. Well, Biz, we already mentioned why you're in Atlanta already. Huge news over the weekend. It's been a long time coming. One of the strangest and probably most disrespectful things

we've ever seen in the league. The Canucks, they let Bruce Boudreaux twist in the wind. They finally let him go. They hired Rick Talkett, made him the coach on Sunday. He's the 21st head coach in franchise history. The third in the last 13 months. They're paying Bruce Boudreaux $2 million, Travis Green $2.75 million. And Weeksie reported that Talk signed a three-year deal in the $2.75 million range.

Adam Foote will be an assistant. Sergey Gonchar is going to be the defensive development coach. But I don't think I've ever seen a fan base this angry at an organization the way they've handled this whole thing from soup to nuts. What you talked about last week, you had a big tweet about it. But they're fucking irate right now. Biz, we'll go to you first. They're paying Travis Green still?

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Dude, how about he's making $750,000 more than Bruce Boudreaux. That's what caught me off guard. I think that was Green's second or third job. Bruce has been around. No, they had this season, though, where they ended up going a second round of playoffs. I want to say it was in the bubble.

They ended up upsetting somebody in the first five games, winning the first round, and then going off the second. So maybe he was re-signed after that. But, Witt, I'm going to go back to what you said last week. he was re-signed after that but when i'm gonna i'm gonna go back to what you said last week i wasn't as hard on the canucks because i felt like it was this built-up thing and everybody was aware of it then you started seeing the clips where i guess more and more news was breaking that he was going to be canned and they were finalizing a candidate which was talk and obviously things took longer probably than expected given the fact that he had the TNT job and, and just, you know, picking the right candidate, of course, too. But all right, you said it like, this is, this was like so brutal

for Bruce Boudreaux and such a likable guy, like a bunch of his former, uh, former players were interviewed about it. Like Andrew Cogliano was asked about it. He said, he doesn't deserve this. I love Bruce. He was huge in my development, incredible coach. So I would have to agree where the fan base in Vancouver has seen enough through the years to be irate. And there was a situation with Trevor Linden when he was there, when I think that he was very adamant that the team go through a full rebuild and tank and get really bad in order to rebuild and get back to their glory days when they fucking went to the finals against Boston. I think that ownership just refused to do it. And they, Akalini has his hands in all over it, basically to the point where it does fuck with what guys in charge want to do. And it just has led to now even more hatred more so than i can believe wit like have you seen have you seen an ownership group more hated than this in in your time being alive

i don't know i i i've never seen anything like this since i got into pro hockey i i i mean the whole situation as one like the ownership now let me say this i owe a big apology to the vancouver canuck fan base because i said last week i don't know exactly how i worded it maybe half the fans want to rebuild half them don't more than half yeah i must have i must have gotten a thousand messages like a very crazy fan base that i've called out before as being toxic and maybe a little painful, but I'll re I'll rephrase. I think they all wanted to rebuild. I think they still all want to rebuild. And I totally misspoke from a fan base who's sick and tired of middling along

the middle of the road. Did that make sense? Is it middling along? All right. I like it. We're going to, it can't be today. Yeah, I guess middling along in just obscurity, just like no man's land,

just flyers lands of all those years of finishing just so-so. And so now you see, like, not only do fans want a rebuild and a full teardown for a while, well, all of a sudden this year you had the possible chance to make it happen with the Vancouver kid, Bedard, coming around. Not Vancouver, but BC kid coming. And they still, like, the JT Miller signing, the Besser re-signing, the decision to not give Horvat a contract.

Like if you're going to re-sign one guy, why isn't it Horvat? And so there's all these things that have happened with this organization over these years where people have been like, tear it down and start over. And then it all ends up with just disrespecting a guy who's been a big part of the NHL for fucking 25 years, it seems like, coaching in Bruce Boudreaux. So the fans have a right to be furious. And I've been so hard on Rutherford.

Now, mind you, like, Alvin is... What kind of job does he have? When you remember... If you remember Brian Burke being the president of hockey in Calgary, Tree Living was still making the decisions. This Alvin doesn't do anything. And I'm not even chirping him. Rutherford's just like,

all right, I'll hire this guy, but I'm still going to make every decision. And as hard as I've been on Rutherford and this guy, I mean, look at what he's accomplished. Three Stanley Cups. He's done it all. He's been successful everywhere he's gone.

And I've been hard on him. But the more I hear rumblings, I think he might have actually fired Boudreaux. It was this idiot owner. This owner is despised. Oh, my God. And it's not just about the Boudreaux decision. And it's not just about the rebuild. It's about all these messages I'm getting and take it for what it's worth. People could be lying to me, but when you hear it enough, I don't think they are. It sounds like this guy treats people like shit. And all you want is somebody to treat their employees and to treat people around their businesses, whether it's hockey related or not. You just want them to treat them well. And this guy sounds like he treats everyone like complete shit. So it kind of makes sense when you see what they did with Boudreaux and you see how things have gone.

It's like you look to the top, you look to ownership, and when there's a failure, you have to end up blaming the guy that's in charge of it all. So fans are disgusted. And Biz, your original question that I've rambled on, I don't remember seeing an NHL owner hated by their fans this much. I really don't. R.A., if you have anything in mind, I don't know.

No, I can't recall anything similar to this where a guy had to sit there. I mean, he thought he was getting fired in November. Boudreaux said it himself. And have you ever heard a coach name who his predecessor is going to be, the guy after him? He said, I think it's going to be Taka. That was maybe the strangest thing I ever heard Boudreaux saying, who was coming in after before it was officially announced.

Well, not only that, R.A., he even said they even said, he's like, they pretty much teed it up for when the tough part of the schedule, like he, Boudreaux finally started speaking up. And I wouldn't say taking shots back, but just being open and honest about how maybe as big of a gong show as it got. And in the press conference, Rutherford did comment about how he probably went too hard in on Boudreaux, which, you know, definitely media-wise,

where you could have pulled him over and said this, but, you know, I guess if a coach is maybe coming into training camp a little bit unprepared, but maybe he's the type of coach where he eases into the season and gets a feeling for his players, and I think it's always been the case of where he lets them play a little bit. I don't pond hockey ain't the word, but just free flowing, right? Lack of structure, lack of systems. And I could see where, you know, a GM or a president with championship pedigree, where that would frustrate him day in and day out, where he's not seeing the hands-on work with the individual

players that they are going to be keeping in the organization and seeing any form of growth. Instead, it was kind of a, you know, it's a results league too, right? He's trying to win games, rolling out your best players 23, 24 minutes every night. In my opinion, what it's going to do is it's going to create bad habits, especially in that playing the pawn hockey style where, you know, defensively you're throwing turnovers,overs you're missing assignments this and that so

the the going back to last week and we said it and i was like couldn't they just have fired him and had an assistant take over like yo he's been a head coach before he's there you're still going to end up paying boudreaux his full salary so to to drag it out and make it in an embarrassing situation for him, given with how much he was liked by the fan base and how, how psycho they tend to be in their feelings about stuff. And that's not an insult. They care about the organization. They're passionate. They're passionate people.

So with that, now you get the backlash and I don't know, I don't, this isn't just going to go away either. And the worst part about it, and guys, I love talk and I don't know. I don't, this isn't just going to go away either. And the worst part about it. And guys, I love talk and I'm happy for him. And I think he's going to be a successful coach with the Vancouver Canucks. It puts him in a horrible situation. I know.

And it's not his fault. It could have been Scotty Bowman himself stepping in there. And it was a talk. I don't know. Some people saying that he might even get booed his first game where it's like, what the fuck did he have to do with this? He was waiting to make a decision on seeing if it was the right fit for him

and just an overall shit show. But you have anything else to say on the situation? An overall shit show is the perfect way to describe it. And it is unfair to talk like this guy's getting a chance to be an NHL head coach again. I think he's going to be great and you've become real close to him. But in my time with talk, what a great guy. And now he's going into this

hornet's nest of fans, which I hope fans are smart enough. You can't take the hatred out and talk. He's done nothing wrong. And he was pretty open. Also, I wanted to bring up Rutherford. He kind of said, listen, my whole career,

I've been really honest, which is a good thing, especially for guys like us and media members, gives the stuff to talk about. But he said, I got to zip it a little bit. And a lot of times I just spoke so freely and open with how I felt throughout this season and throughout how this year began with Bruce.

And I wish I could take that back. He said they're friends. I don't know if they'll still be friends, but he kind of took a little ownership in terms of like, I probably shouldn't have been speaking about certain things the way I did in terms of like around camp and shouldn't have been speaking about certain things the way I did in terms of like around camp and all that other stuff. One positive out of this is that who drove ended up getting a pretty special send off. And you saw him at the end, the last game, crazy amount of

cheers, the horrible Bruce, there it is champ. But at least he got to, I think he got pretty teary out of the bench too, because he's 68 years old. I don't think he'll be a head coach again in the league. And so to get a goodbye like that, if you're going to look at all this bullshit that's happened in terms of how he finally got fired, if it was a quick one right after a loss on the road, you don't really get to experience all the love from the fans. And in a case where a guy's probably never going to coach in the NHL again, it's nice to get a send-off like that. You could tell it meant a lot to him. So, yeah, it was a horrible way to handle things. I think for a long time, it'll be looked at and discussed

as maybe the worst way to fire a guy in NHL history. Is that crazy to say? So, Bruce Boudreaux, what a run you've had. Congrats on all the success you did have. You didn't deserve to go out like that, but I'm glad he got to feel the love from the fan base his final game and on the flip side of that guys uh you know we wbd turner tnt whatever you want to call it the broadcast loses uh a great one in rick talk you mentioned becoming friends with him uh very closely over the last two years

uh what a professional he was so passionate about the broadcast and allowed us to view things through a different lens too. Like every time a play would happen, he would have the coach's hat on and see it through the poor defensive play. And, you know, we'd get to Josh back and forth about structure and positioning and, you know, what he would have done differently.

And, you know, sometimes we'd even argue in the back about how we want to present it on air, but not for, you know, not for a lack of friendship or lack of passion. You know what I'm saying? It was all because he wanted to teach and, and you could tell he still had the itch to coach. And I'm really happy that he found a great situation with a guy that he's won two Stanley Cups for, or with before in, in Rutherford and Pittsburgh, right? He was, he was the assistant coach there. So to have a guy that you can work with that you have in the past to, to get Vancouver, hopefully back to their winning ways, it'll be cool.

I'm really happy for him, but I'm in the same, same breath, very sad that we've lost him. So that seat is now open. I think Hank's going to be in a little bit more. I think Yans is going to be in a little bit more. You and Yans on together. That hasn't happened yet. And I think that could be big time. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to happen at some point. I'm not sure who else they have planning on coming in,

maybe Jonesy for a couple. So right now it's going to be a mixed bag of nuts, but looking forward to adapting and keeping rolling with the punches. Cause this year, man, TNT has got the Stanley cup finals. So we got to, we got gotta make up for a tough loss is any funny stories from talk from behind the scenes at tnt that you want to tell us i told the one about when we were arguing about a defensive play at tnt like we were there and sullivan was dogging you in pittsburgh too he said i was wrong about it which i was maybe it was the old school way of communicating when I was the fence where I pointed to the guy that I wanted the back checker to take. And he says, you don't fucking do that.

So we kind of got in a heated debate and then we ended up showing up to the hotel after. And, you know, he ended up pulling up the clip again. And then sure as shit, we ended up arguing for another 30 minutes that one 30 in the morning outside of people's hotel rooms on the 17th floor of the fourth season. So just shit like that. But, no, just it was awesome just hearing about the old school stories and the old days of how things went and, you know, not leaving right after the game and, you know, you're staying in town. So a lot of which I can't share on here g a lot a

lot of laughs of stories that will be kept in the vault but uh you know just being able to to enjoy stories from him and wayne together was uh you know a situation where you just shut your mouth and listen and you're just in awe about the fact that uh you get to listen to two legends hey whit do you think this will be an actual deterrent till guys going to Vancouver? Like, is that just kind of people saying it's still money? It's still Vancouver, right? Yeah, I think in the end, you can't gas a player that way. Although I guess you could let everyone know you're going to trade a guy. And then it's just different.

Like, there's no situation like what happened with Boudreaux that could kind of happen to a player. At least not that I could think of right now. It's going to be different, though, because guys knew the entire time. Like, all right, I don't think Boudreaux is going to be here. Guys know what's going on. And now talk comes in. It's like, all right, this is the guy. So I better start playing in terms of like this guy's not going anywhere.

So talk was very open in his first press conference. I think he might have mentioned Miller in terms of like needing more out of him and getting back to the player he was last year. And he also mentioned how much ice time guys had and not maybe having these star players, Pedersen, et cetera, killing penalties. So there's going to be a lot of different differences happening. Adam Foote, what a decision that is to bring him in. And Sergei Gonchar, who I mean, talk about a hockey mind. He is so smart with the details and the little things. And he's so good at even playing with him.

He's so good at describing what he needs from you and looking at things that maybe a player wouldn't see. And a guy who played long enough as a great defenseman can kind of teach you. So I think the team is going to show improvement. I don't know what's going to be the deal in terms of the Horvat trade. He's going to be gone. I don't know if they're going to look to move other guys and try to actually rebuild. Nobody knows what's going to happen now, but they do know, at least for the fan base and the players, this entire ordeal is over with and they can kind of start anew.

One other thing that Toc mentioned was adapting more conversation with the players and getting to know the personnel, whether it's grabbing them for a cup of coffee, 10 minutes before practice, and just keeping in touch with all of them to see how they're doing on a personal level, because there has to have been some form of adaptation over time and how you interact with the players. Like the tough love is cool and all, but there has to be a fine line of balance with that, with how this just the next generation, they, how they are. That's just, if you, and if you don't adapt, you're going to be out of the league. So he, he mentioned that that was one of his priorities coming in and making sure he establishes the relationships with the people, not just the players.

Well said, well said biz. Okay. Before we go any further, here's a few words from our friends at Pink Whitney, man, it's the middle of the winter time. You need a few cocktails. You want to huddle to a local bar. Make sure you grab yourself from Pink Whitney,

the pink lemonade flavored vodka from our friends at New Amsterdam Damn Vodka. Grinnelli, I know what you like, this stuff, spring, winter, fall, whatever. You loaded up on this stuff or what this time? Of course, I'm loaded up

on this stuff, RA. It's ski season. It's apres ski season. There's no better apres ski drink than a little Pink Whitney nip. You're on the ski season. It's Opry ski season. There's no better Opry ski drink than a little Pink Whitney nip. You're on the ski lift. You're heading up there. Boom. Pound a nip. Like you said, winter,

fall, summer, it doesn't matter. Pink Whitney is the best drink on the market, but it doesn't get any better than a little Pink Whitney on the ski hill. I'll tell you that. No doubt. Also get some big football games next week, and you might want to stock up for those. And of course, hockey.

It's always hockey season, which means you want some Pink Whitney. So order a shot of Pink Whitney at your local bar. Get it with a little mixer. Either way, enjoy some of that fine Pink Whitney. We hadn't actually mentioned that guest yet. We're not bringing him on right now. A little bit later. Big Z, Zidane O'Chara.

We told you before we sat down with him in Boston for about an hour and a half. So we got that coming up a little bit later. Big Z, Zidane O'Chara, we told you before, we sat down with him in Boston for about an hour and a half, so we got that coming up a little bit later. Just want to throw that out there. The other big story of the week, last Tuesday, Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, he skipped warm-ups versus Anaheim because he didn't want to don the Pride Night jersey that the Flyers are wearing. Had the rainbow number and the rainbow nameplates.

He cited his religion as the reason he became the first NHL to opt out of wearing the rainbow for 15 minutes to essentially cited his religion as the reason he became the first NHL to opt out of wearing the rainbow for 15 minutes to essentially give a shout out to LGBT fans. He said, quote, I respect everybody. I respect everybody's choices.

My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion. That's all I'm going to say. Proverov is Russian Orthodox, which does not perform or recognize same-sex marriages. And the head guy in charge over there, he supports all the anti-gay legislation in Russia. Coach John Tortorella said Provy did nothing wrong just because you don't agree with his decision

doesn't mean he did anything wrong. Why would I bench him? Because of a decision he's making based on his beliefs and his religion. It turned out to be a great night for Pride Night. It was a whole hullabaloo in the media. I think the media made more of it than maybe actual people in real life did.

You heard EJJ. Raddick with a pretty outrageous suggestion. They say he should go back to Russia and maybe take up arms in the invasion of Ukraine, which I thought was crazy because the guy who brought Provorov over here was a Ukrainian who actually was his translator for a few years. So he was way off base saying that.

On the other side of the coin, his jersey did sell out in a day to probably people who never heard of the guy before, so they were maybe supporting him for that particular reason but uh kind of a weird couple days also uh what did you know you can still get guillermo's jersey for 175 dollars on the flyer site i thought that was kind of funny they're still asking that much for the guy but anyways what was your take on the whole thing and uh it was you know kind of a shitty couple days for hockey anything yeah i mean not not not not an ideal or fun topic to discuss, I would say. But with it being news, we must.

And I got two sides. I mean, I got two sides. And I'll say I think most people, most normal people kind of agree with me. The first being, if I'm pro-rub, I'm wearing that jersey. Not just because I support anyone's right to enjoy the game and want to be a hockey fan and take part in being an NHL fan, but because it's just it's what your team's doing. Right. And I would have worn it and every other guy but him did wear it. And so it's a little selfish in my mind to sit there and say, no. All right. You make that decision. I don't agree with you.

No other guys around the league that have worn those jerseys agreed with you, but it's your decision. The other side of it is if I'm looking at this, it's like every other guy wore the jersey and every other guy was willing to support any group, any person that wants to be an NHL fan or be a hockey fan or want to play hockey themselves. So the real story to me is how far the league has come. And I've seen this set a bunch of different places in the sense that this would never have happened before. And now we have teams honoring any person out there, anyone in the world who wants to watch the game. You have a place. You have a place. We want you as a fan, no matter who you are. And all these guys are supporting this.

And I know Scott Lawton, I think his brother's gay. And him and Van Riemsdyk met with a bunch of the people that were at the game to take part with the festivities. And it's a great thing. And there's all these good things happening for different groups that have never felt like they were included in being an NHL fan. And now they are. And it's getting better and better. But the story becomes this one guy this one fucking guy decides not to wear the jersey and the and the world explodes the twitter world okay whereas i look at it like i think this game's come a long way i think this game's going

to continue to come a long way and no matter who you are what you believe in you have a place in this game so this one guy who decides to make this decision, it's like, all right, well, fuck him. It's like, oh, I mean, you know what? If I look at this, I think when I see all these people in this jersey warming up, that's a great thing. And like, all right, I don't even think anyone would have noticed if it wasn't turned into this enormous story. And it's kind of hard to get your words across in something so sensitive to so many people. And I understand that.

But like, all right, one guy didn't wear the fucking jersey. Like, I don't know. Do people out there really think every single person is going to agree with them on any single topic involved with being fans of the NHL? What planet are you living on? If you think every single guy is going to conform to your beliefs?

Whether the beliefs are completely right or incorrect, people make up their mind on every subject and every topic in the world. And for some reason, the hockey world thinks every single guy has to completely agree with this. If you don't, I don't agree with you, but it's your decision. I don't understand how this

wasn't looked at like all right the whole team's doing it and you know what that sucks there's one guy hopefully he changes his mind but every other guy was down with it yeah it was disappointing that all the attention went to the to the negative aspect and i just i just don't understand it where like if if you're if you're a you know a checkmark or a reporter and you have an issue with it, maybe go down to the locker room and have a conversation with the guy instead of dragging his name through the mud online and saying he should be sent back to Russia or he should be suspended. It's like, why? Because he doesn't agree with you? Every single guy on this podcast right here too, would believes in same sex marriage. We all support exactly what the league is doing.

And for the reasons of guys, like going back, I mean, even to, to, to now, like, like there are people in the gay community who suffer for like,

you know, there's people who pull out violent attacks on them because they don't agree with it. Right. So they are oppressed to a certain degree. So the league is taking a stand and saying, we support this. We want this community involved in our sport.

And I love it. And I think it's a good thing. So now this, all of a sudden, this one guy, and keep in mind, Provorov, guys, he knows two things pretty much. It's his religion and hockey. I don't think he, he's probably never hung around with gay people.

He's probably doesn't have the type of world skills that most people who are typing online, who are criticizing him for it, have gone through. So it's Bain Pettinger said it best. He goes, this is not a step back for what we're trying to do and what the league is trying to represent. It is disappointing. And the reason it's disappointing is because it's created so much division online to all these people arguing and taking the focus as to what's important. Like I have, I mean,

I'm friends with Bain Pettinger and I think that most people listening and you talk a bit about the people who like more, most normal people. I think most normal people saw this as a nothing burger story in the sense of yes. One guy doesn't believe that, that gay people should get married. Well,

as much as we could all disagree with them, we don't think that he should be sent back to Russia or have faced any fucking punishment. And some of the best times of my life have been hanging around with fucking gay friends. I don't care at the end of the night who Bane Pettinger goes home with. I don't care who my guy friend gets married to. There's no weight on my life and how my life is going to play out. So I don't understand why anyone would care. And I think that's probably where most people sit.

I don't know why people would have such a strong opinion on either side. So, Ari, I could throw it back over to you. You touched on most of it. It was obviously a tough week for, for hockey with the Boudreaux situation playing out and then this thing playing out online. So it got pretty ugly. Yeah. Because I thought, you know, basically Gary Bettman statement in the NHL statement,

we're pretty level-headed. They were, they were kind of like, okay, you know, players are free to decide which initiatives they want to support or not. And, and I think with the, what they were kind of saying between the lines is like, Hey, now you can have an opinion on that guy. He didn't want to skate. He became the first guy to want to skate with a rainbow on his jersey. So you can think what you want of him, but we're not going to force somebody to feel

a certain way. And I thought they conveyed that point pretty well. Like, okay, you know where a guy stands, basically. And you can't really force somebody to feel that way. I thought it was pretty overblown as well. And they raised a ton of money for charity and what you already praised JVR and Scott Lawton. Those were the guys who put it together.

It didn't come from the team. It came from those players. And I'll also say, Biz, I can't imagine that Pro Rob was the first guy who was reluctant to do this. I would think over the hell of many years they've been doing pride nights. I'm sure there were probably guys who did it, maybe feel the same way as Pro Rob, but they didn't want to rock the boat team-wise. And, you know, they just put the jersey on.

So, you know, he doesn't deserve to be shipped back to his home country and forced into war. And, you know, I don't think he should be put on a pedestal either. It's just this day and age. When you say the pedestal, you mean as far as, like, his jersey selling out where all of a sudden, if you don't know who the guy is and you go buy his jersey, I guess maybe there's a handful of people that bought it because he had

the balls to stand up for what he didn't believe in. But in the same breath, it's like, are those just the lunatics on the other side stirring it up just like the lunatics on the other side are? Yeah. You didn't know who the guy was a day before. Now you heard he doesn't want to support that community.

So you got to buy a shirt to support that. So not a reason I would buy a shirt, but free country, whatever you want. You just want to spend your money on. This was another thing I had a question on. Now, I didn't realize skipping warmups was an option business. That's is that a standard thing? I can set out warmups guy just skip warm-up and then play in the game. I think that this thing would have been overblown maybe got hey i would say the season's probably a wash i would maybe say hey do we set the guy this guy out tonight maybe maybe say he had an injury or something that he was attending to like i don't know man like just would do you agree or disagree with that they could have handled this a little bit better um Yeah, but it's kind of a tough one because it's what this guy believes in. I mean, I don't agree with it, but Tortorella was getting absolutely raked over the coals. He's sitting there.

He's like, yeah, he doesn't believe in it. It's his religion. I don't really know what you want me to say. I guess they could have done some things different. So one of the things they try to use against Torts, in which he's since, Ari, and I want to say you might even have the quote, as to where he said, I was wrong about my comments. We're saying that if any of my players kneeled for the American National Anthem,

he would have kicked them off the bench and sat them out. So reporters asked him about the situation of him saying that, and now all of a sudden somebody's making a stand, and now all of a sudden you're OK with it. So he walked back those comments saying that he wasn't educated enough to comment on that at that time and that he regrets saying what he said. So in that situation. Yeah, that's all. That's all I got for that one. Actually involved in all this reminded me of a funny story. And Ned Haver and one of my good friends, his dad was was a state senator for a long time and and he was somebody who backed gay marriage i believe ra correct me if i'm wrong massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage or one of

them i think yeah i wasn't sure it was massive them off but it was okay so i am right near the top and and you know he was he was a part of believing in that which as as biz mentioned all of us believe like marry anyone you want. So Ned has a hilarious story about his dad. He's speaking at the Senate or wherever, wherever he was. And I'll just read. He says, I've had a lot of my friends and former teammates reach out to me. And they've mentioned that they're having a tough time with the sexual aspect of gay marriage.

So I assured them that we should certainly encourage them to get married then because we all know there's no sex after marriage. That says mom wasn't exactly thrilled with that one, but just a hilarious line. And it's something that is just like such a such a joke. If you actually are that upset that two people are getting married, like fucking get over yourself, marry who you want, Live with who you want. Be a hockey fan. I hope everyone thinks they can be. And in the end, none of

these nights, none of these pride nights, none of these nights helping groups that have never felt comfortable within the NHL. None of this stuff happened years ago. And it's happening now. So we're on the right path. I truly believe that. And let's move onward and upward, right? Onward to a fun hockey talk.

Congratulations to our pal Stephen Stamkos. He scored his 500th goal, then added two more and a 5-2 win over Vancouver the other night. He's the third active player after Ovi and Sid to hit the number 500. He thanked his teammates in the interviews and then in the locker room. I thought it was pretty cool. Coop brought in the equipment guy

and the trainer who have been around for all 500 of his goals. Pretty nice gesture to give of give a little spotlight to those guys. And Mike McKenna, another guest of the show, he wrote a column saying basically that Stamkos was Stevie Y 2.0. I wonder if you agree with that, Biz. I didn't get to watch enough of Stevie Y play to be able to make that. I mean, that was your favorite player growing up. I would tend to lean to say no yeah i don't i don't necessarily see that i know eisenman is kind of known as like 150

points superstar offensively and then changed his game a little bit when they started winning cups in terms of kind of sacrificing some points for the greater good of the team and defensively i think stamkos has always been been really reliable at both ends of the ice, and his stats have stayed pretty consistent. 90-point guy. I think he had 100 points one year. So I don't really see that. I surely respect McKenna's opinion.

He's got some great takes in terms of hockey and goaltending and everything. I don't know where he came from on that one, but I was just so pumped for Stamkos. I got to know him just a little bit in the lockout. We did some lockout camps. The year half the season was canceled. And once in fail, played golf with him a couple times. Just a great guy.

Like a true guy's guy. Everyone loves having him around. A hell of a teammate. And his career has been so incredible to me. Just the adversity he's dealt with and battling back from injuries remember this guy would have had 500 a lot sooner had had he not dealt with some pretty significant brutal injuries one cost him to miss the olympics you remember the broken leg in boston uh coming back and scoring that goal in

the cup finals where he then wasn't able to participate in the rest of it in the bubble when they got their first cup and this guy scored some all-time great goals. I mean, you think back to the one where he's laying down and he knocks it out of midair in Anaheim. That was one of the best ones. He got both goals last year in game six in the clincher in a 2-1 win over the Rangers. I think the second one was about 10 seconds after Petrano had tied the game up in Tampa. He's had such a dynamic career. I mean, this is a first ballot Hall of Famer, one of the greatest players of his generation that Coop actually mentioned. He's a generational talent. And just like the way he approaches the game and his teammates, it's somebody that's so easy to root for. And man, you look at Ovi, you look at Stammer and, you know,

And man, you look at Ovi, you look at Stammer and, and, and, you know, Tage Thompson and pasta now, but top of the circle power play. Holy shit. I mean, that, that, that's what you'll always think of is Stammer spot. And so it's just a career that's, that's so impressive, not only with the cups and the accolades and the 60 goals one season, I think just him and Matthews and Ovi are the three to do that in the last, what, 30, 40 years, it seems like. It's the injuries and the battling back from that

that has been so impressive to me. And it was only a matter of time until this guy got 500, and I think he'll probably get 600 too. Woo! I mean, he's already, what is he, has three more since? I mean, he's not going anywhere soon. Yeah, that's true. The way he trains in the offseason with Gary Roberts, fucking protein shakes.

Oh, grilled chicken. No carbs. Just healthy as shit. But I was still no pink Whitney. No big deal. Brewing kale shits. Oh, God. Yeah.

Sweet potatoes. Did you want to add anything to jump in there? And I couldn't tell what you touched on and i mean i mean yeah it's just an unbelievable career and like at some points there was talks of maybe he was going to be on the way out in in tampa yeah just based on the salary cap and where it was going and you talked about those injuries and all the adversities came back from just a a true professional now he's in the acting game fucking he's the way he's coming out that's a great commercial actually a great commercial so he's gonna Now he's in the acting game. Fucking he's the way he's coming out. That's a great commercial, actually.

A great commercial. So he's going to. Yeah, he's probably got a few more left years left in the tank. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually gets 600. You're right. Yeah, hell of a career he's had so far.

I wouldn't be surprised if he gets to another final after he's already been to four of them. So there was a pretty good scene of warmups the other night is tampered Edmonton game during the warmups. Pat Maroon summoned

Evander Kane over for a chat, but we couldn't hear the audio. But assuming he was, I don't want to say apologizing, but it was Maroon Skate who accidentally cut Kane, put him on the DL for a while. But they had what looked like a pretty conversation. I think it conveyed the respect that these guys have for each other, that they're about to do battle.

Maroon calls him over, has a chat. But then, of course, during the game, Maroon fucking whacks fucking McDavid's foot from underneath him, gives him a little crack after, ends up fighting that kid, Klim Kost. And so it ended up, you know, going right back to that aspect of hockey. I thought it kind of showed the whole world of hockey there in a few show-up minutes.

Klim Dross? Klim Dross. No, no, great moment. You know, obviously those guys compete, shift in and shift out when they're on the ice together, no matter what game it but when something like that happens it's pretty even when it ended up happening the original injury you saw patty maroon waving for the trainer so nobody likes to see that shit and uh a great tummy sticks moment at the beginning of the beginning of the warm-up to see them chum it up but uh no friends out there when the puck drops i'll tell you that one um such an inadvertent thing like there's no chance anything was on purpose it was good to see and

and for for uh people who have called me out um i mentioned last year i think if i i don't know what i said if cane got done when he came to the oilers i'd get his jersey well no shit wow an authentic An authentic Evander Kane, Royal blue home Oilers Jersey. And I'll tell you right now, the Edmonton Oilers are buzzing. I think as, as of recording time,

there are three points out of the top spot in the West. As business Calgary flames just flounder and their coach makes fun of a rookie for playing his first game and not doing anything. The Edmonton Oilers just win and win and win. And McLeod looks good. These young guys are coming. Kane's back. Heads up. Heads the fuck up in E-Town, baby.

Six in a row. It's an 82-game season. You don't have to light it up the entire time like the Bruins. The Oilers are peaking at the right moment, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them win the Pacific Division. I agree. What a bad scene that was with Sutter. Yeah, and for people who don't know,

we're going to have you play the clip right now. Play the clip. What did you think of Jacob's first few shifts in the NHL? Jacob Pelce. What number is he? 49. 49. Six minutes, 35 seconds, 13 shifts, average 30 seconds a shift.

Got 43 seconds in the power play, played 5 minutes, 52 seconds, had one shot, goal, and one hit. Beyond the stats. What's the best thing you learned just from being on the bench and seeing what the veterans on the team are doing? It's the NHL. 21 years old. Got a long ways to go. I don't even know where to start on this one. Like, this guy just had a dream come true. He played his first game.

And things in Calgary are an absolute struggle right now. And when they're like this, it probably is even tougher to play for Daryl Sutter. You know, last year they're running through the league. They're dominating everyone. It's probably easier right now. It's like, oh boy. And it's just so unnecessary. I don't, I don't see the point.

What number is he? And just read through his stat line, which wasn't anything great. Like what, what's wrong with, yeah. You know, good effort by the kid. He's got a long way to go. Yeah, exactly. A lot of work to do but very happy for him to get his first game pretty easy

off the glass and out like yeah you end up like the kids like all right I mean I and there's nobody that thinks that's that funny like players in the room don't think it's hilarious it's just it's just kind of unnecessary it might be it might be running its course a little

bit with the way the things are going this season. But back to your Oilers. I got to congratulate them six in a row, and they got one on a tee coming up on the TNT broadcast this week against Columbus, so they should make it seven in a row. They've been going with 7D lately. Every single win in the last six wins in this win streak, they've been playing 7D.

And I think that nurses numbers as far as minutes are coming down a little bit and it's served them well where sometimes when you're playing 28 29 minutes there's a few d-men in the league who can handle that many minutes but all of a sudden you see some glaring mistakes come out where the game gets a little bit sloppy so I feel like he's definitely reeled things in and slimified his game with that. And with having six other guys, you know, it's like if you're making too many mistakes, they'll just go to the next guy. So maybe it's smartened up the back end. I'm not really crazy about the 70-11 forwards because all of a sudden your forward lines, I mean, I'm sure they love it. If you're getting, they're getting the fourth lines, getting a couple of reps with McDavid at center ice. I'm not sure how much that's happening, but I liked a little bit more consistency and a guy where I knew what was going to happen. What's the term I'm looking for when you're like,

you know something's going to happen. Hmm. My brain is not really working today, guys. That's what happens when you spend two days in Fort Lauderdale with Keith Yandel drinking a zillion fucking drinks. Predictable. today guys that's what happens when you spend uh two days in fort lauderdale with the andy and i'll drink in a zillion fucking drinks um predictable i liked playing with guys who are very predictable where you knew exactly where the puck was going to go a fourth line center off the glass and out off the glass and in for check stay in your fucking lanes so it's a it's served edmonton

very well they're playing you know very, very good hockey right now. And as a as an oiler hater, just because I'm on the Calgary side, it sucks to see. Yeah. McDavid, he got his 40th goal the other night. It's the fastest among active players. He got it done in his 48th game. Matthew said the previous record at forty nine. He's got 40 goals, 48 assists, 88 points in 48 games played. And he was also the quickest to 40 goals since 96

year when Jagat did it. So unbelievable what he's doing. That's crazy. It is. It's almost like you had a different mindset. The best playmaker in the world just broke a record for fastest to 40 goals in the last, whatever, 20, 32 years or whatever it is, 36 years.

So it's like, you know, this all goes back to biz. Biz might be the reason this is happening. The question is off that much. The mindset coming into the season. I think he's got more, more, more shots so far than he did through like 60 games last year. So of course it's a, it's a, of course it's a different mindset.

I've noticed a lot of the goals lately. He's it's off the rush where maybe before he tried it and he can beat so many defensemen and then cut it on the goalie. I've seen goals these past few weeks where he's just ripping it top of the circle. And with how fast he's moving, changing that angle at all with how well he shoots the puck, it's like

crazy. I've never seen the guy take a slap shot either. He's got a horseshoe up his ass too. 20% shooting percentage right now okay that's high very high tie you think he could fizzle out come playoff time no you don't yeah you don't want to waste all the good ones now with dog no no that guy's a gamer we saw him in the playoffs last year i'm not worried they're not the only team out west that's heated up as well uh colorado's they've won five in a row after their two to one shootout went over um seattle that night that was

an awesome game saturday night They've outscored the opposition 23-6 in those four games. They're now the second wild card spot at just a point behind Minnesota for third in the Central, and that's going to lead to our next one. Now, Matt Dumba, he got scratched for the first time since 2016, was scratched two games in a row. Minnesota went 0-2

in those two games, and Mike Russo, the very excellent beat writer for the Wild, he doesn't think it's a coincidence that the two games they scratched down by the team loses. He thought it really had an effect on the team. People thought he was going to be getting traded, but it turned out to be about his play lately. So, Biz, have you guys ever been on a team where maybe a popular play

gets scratched and it sort of rattles the team? Do you buy into the validity of that or what? Sometimes you can definitely throw the mojo off. I don't know what's going on pre-game if he's the guy getting the boys going beforehand, but I think we've talked about it a couple times when his names came up on the trade box

where he'll go through windows of games and windows of times where he's kind of a riverboat gambler. That's not their style either, Biz. No, it's not so if the feng shui is off all of a sudden you could see games where you're like holy shit dude like where what planet's this guy on right now but then when he is in rhythm it looks unbelievable and he's

playing great hockey so sometimes the fact that you're well liked will definitely keep you in the lineup where the coach is very aware of that but at a certain point if the game is just not there and they have enough guys who can fill in a piece and and you know be stable and and maybe not have as many mistakes where they're fucking ended up with high danger scoring chances on against yeah sometimes you got to teach a little lesson you can get a couple good practice days in reset the mind and or maybe they can look for a way to move him. I mean, that would be a nice chunk of change to be able to go spend on a piece that they think that they could fill in and help their team right now.

I want to say he's making five, maybe five and change. I don't dislike Dumba either. I think he's an unbelievable guy and he has stretches of time where he's a great player. It's just, you know, sometimes he's a little bit inconsistent. I feel like we've had this conversation on our podcast probably three times now, Whit. Well, he's been he's been rumored to be getting dealt for what seems like two to three years. So this was the first time they actually scratched him.

What's interesting is you scratch a guy like that, you lose one. Usually he goes back in, but it was two in a row. I would be shocked if he's not in the next game they're playing. I believe it's Tuesday night. I don't know, Ari. You started it with asking, have you ever seen a player get scratched and the team ends up kind of being rattled and struggling? I got scratched in Edmonton.

The team started fucking winning. Go figure. Guys were celebrating popping bottles of Dom when I got scratched finally. I think it can affect the team in some ways, but once the game starts it really doesn't because you're out there to do your job and win a game and you don't really give a fuck who's in the lineup.

That's just a fact. I mean, you see guys leave with horrific injuries and the team's got to keep playing. That's just how it goes. So that's on them if they're letting something like that affect their team. But it's a guy who, when Biz said it perfectly, when he's on, he's dominating. And when he's off, it's just the decision-making with the puck

that I think coaches can get a little frustrated with but Minnesota ideally wants him in the lineup playing their best because they are a better team when he's going um a quick answer to your first question though RA I mean Yans went through it last year when he was on the Ironman streak and then Hazy this year and I know that those guys were extremely well liked in the locker room so I know the game that Hazy was scratched this year, they lost. I would imagine there were some poopy pants in the locker room that night. Hazy's heated up too. He had the hat trick recently.

He had two goals Saturday or Sunday night. So he's playing awesome, very happy for his all-star. And quickly on Colorado, it kind of all turned around. Remember they lost to the Blackhawks and it was like, what the fuck's going on? And since then, boom. I think that's one of those things where it's like, enough is enough. We just lost to a team blatantly trying to lose games. Like,

what the fuck are we doing? And McKinnon's back. They're going. McCarr's missed a couple games, but things are turning around. There's no worries for Colorado in my eyes at all. What worked for New York Rangers when Trouba chucked the helmet after they lost to the Chicago Blackhawks. Blackhawks get teams going.

If you lose to them, you're just an absolute loser. You got to go. As for Dumba, he's in the last year of a five-year, $30 million deal. He does have a modified no-trade clause. He can name 10 teams he don't want to go to. A 28-year-old is in his 10th season, so I think that number is probably going to maybe be a deterrent to a lot of

teams that possibly picking them up at a $6 million cap. Russo also doesn't think his trade value is too high right now, but obviously we'll see what happens there. Meanwhile, and part of it is that Garen's made it clear. Like I'm not giving you him for a draft pick. Like I want, like we're trying to win a Stanley cup. So if you want them, you're giving us something that'll help us right now.

Exactly. Exactly. We got to give a shout out to Bru Bruins goalie Linus Olmach, the prohibitive favorite to win the Vezina Trophy right now. He set a new NHL record for the fewest decisions needed to win 25 games. He had 28 decisions, won 25 of them. The prior record of 29 was held by Bruins legend Tiny Thompson way back in the 1920s.

Olmach, look at these numbers. 25-2-1, 182, Mark, look at these numbers. 25-2 and 1. 1-8-2 goals against 9-3-8 save percentage. Two shutouts. Stunning numbers for a guy at any time of the year. The Bees continue to haul ass as well. 37-5-4. They're on pace to break the NHL record. I also want to

say congrats to Assistant Equipment Manager Matty Falconer. He worked his 1,000th game Sunday night versus San Jose. So always like to shout out those guys. What do you got? What do you got in the bees for us? Great guy. Maddie's an awesome dude.

I used to see him a lot when I lived in the Navy yard in Charlestown and just an awesome dude. You saw how happy the guys were for him as well. And that's just an amazing accomplishment. We've said before, those guys keep everything running smoothly. So congrats to him. The Bruins Sunday night, just an all-time gambling. What's the word? Dominant performance by yours truly.

I had them. They were like minus 380 to win the game. In regulation, minus 220. Puck line was like minus 200. Just no value. So what does Witt do? Takes him in the first period three ways. So if the first period ends in a tie, I'm a loser.

Boom. Crush that one. Second period, I took him three-way again. Crush that one. Second period, I also took a minus one and a half. They won that period 2-0. Hammered that. So I didn't even have to watch the third period.

All my three bets were winners. McAvoy, with one of the goals of the year by a defenseman, just a beautiful Bobby Orr-esque rush through center ice, walked a couple of guys, scored a beauty Lindholm with another one, just a dirty toe drag. Last guy back of the bull on blue line shelf down. The team is it's outstanding. It's just incredible to watch pasta. Um, so many different factors that have led to this success. All market Swayman being the biggest ones, I think with just the goaltending forces they are. And,

and I, what is slowing this team down? What's going to slow them down is Toronto or Tampa in the second round. Even some of my buddies are like, Oh no, well, first round, you know,

you're going to get Pittsburgh. You're going to get possibly the Islanders. You're going to get possibly Washington. It's like, they're going to smoke. Whoever's the eighth team, even if it's Pittsburgh, they're going to smoke them. And then the second round, you get T.O. or Tampa,

and that's when the real test starts. So if you're the Boston Bruins, you don't make a move at the deadline? You do what you can. I've been very clear with mortgaging anything you possibly can. Now, the problem is they don't have prospects. They don't have draft picks. I don't know what they're going to be able to do being up on the cap. But this is one of those examples of like, we're letting it all go.

We have no idea what the future holds. And this is it. So no matter what we have to do, if it's possible, we're bringing in whoever we can. And I mean, I know we talk about them every podcast, but just like we talk about McDavid, what they're doing right now is you can't not. You can't not. They're about to shatter records that you were putting them up towards the Tampa, the year,

the one the president's trophy and got beat out in the first round. Was it the 90? What year did Detroit just have an absolute juggernaut of a team? 95 and then they lost to the devils. 95, 96, 94, 95, 94, 95. so it's one of those types of seasons guys and and they haven't slowed down one bit even to the point where i i would have took the rangers a few nights ago when they beat them three nothing just at some point we were in florida and biz and i were talking about getting some bets in and we both agreed like ah the rangers are buzzing like this could be one

it's like they just go in there and suffocate them in MSG. It's a crazy team right now. And I guess people are laughing at me considering what Tampa did to lose four straight to Columbus a few years back. I think it's a little different. I think there's guys there that have been there and done that. And you're not going to see that happen in the first round of the Bruins. But that second round, no doubt they could lose to either one of those teams.

I think you asked about trade deadline. I think depth defenseman is probably their biggest need, like a Luke Shen, someone like that. Like a five or six. Yeah. Just in case of injuries down the line, their D always get hurt in the playoffs,

especially with Carlos. As a Bruins fan, I saw Carlo ended up fighting Timo Meier after a little skirmish in the corner. It's like Carlo is so solid. One of those defensemen, when you don't say his name, it's a good thing because he's just so, so easy to watch. Like in terms of a Rob Scuderi, he's just not making many mistakes.

He's shutting guys down. But the concussion issues, you know, Neely and Sweeney were just kind of watching with holding their breath, him fighting. You're not looking for that with a guy who's dealt with all that head stuff. Definitely not. It's a paragy where I'm busy. I think, yeah, depth. That's basically the bees, all they can really deal for.

I mean, unless they get someone to take some money off the books, I don't see why they would do that. Bringing depth forward, depth, defensive depth. Just, you know, get a little more, a little more through guys in there because guys are definitely going to get hurt in the playoffs. But I wouldn't expect any splashy moves or any of these big names. I mean, I would shit my pants if they ever got Horvath. I just don't see where that's going to line up at all money-wise.

But we're talking about the Bruins, so boys, what do we say we send it to one of the Bruins legends, Zidane O'Chara, right about now? Yeah, this is perfect. And I mentioned after we interviewed him after the Winter Classic, like, the whole interview is great, but I think the first half in terms of what this guy did coming up and how he

became a pro, it is incredible. I think everyone, um, hockey fan or not, we'll enjoy this interview. This interview is brought to you by Labatt. There's a little bit of Canadian kindness in every sip of Labatt blue light.

How did it get in there? They're Canadian. That's how you can spread the love yourself by sharing a Labatt. When you share a labatt when you share a labatt you're not just sharing a beer you're sharing an experience that'll pair with anything from hockey to a hoedown jeez you have any labatt blue light over the weekend or what yes already uh the labatt blue lights were flowing this weekend uh my dad's all my dad's buddies uh they all got together obviously with the circumstances this weekend and they're all

their favorite beers is Labatt Blue Light. So we were definitely pounding a few of those and, you know, talking about all the good times. No better way to talk about the good times than over a nice Labatt Blue Light. Yep, I love getting at my favorite pizza place in Boston has Labatt. Always going to grab a couple of cold ones when I have my pizza. And the next time you're watching Hockey With Your Buds, be sure to share a Labatt. Always going to grab a couple cold ones when I have my pizza. And the next time you're watching Hockey With Your Buds, be sure to share a Labatt. Because while you might not all root for the same team,

you can all enjoy a Labatt blue light. Labatt, the pristine Canadian pilster. Share a Labatt. Let's bring it to Big Z right now. Thanks again to him and Matt Cater. I couldn't be much more excited to welcome our next guest to the show. A third round pick by the Islanders at the 96 draft, this player went on to become this century's premier shutdown defenseman in the NHL,

playing 1,880 regular season and playoff games over 24 seasons with four clubs. He won a Norris Trophy and was a finalist five other times. He made the year-end All-Star teams seven times and played more games than any other defenseman in league history. And in addition to being the tallest player in NHL history, he was captain of the 2011 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins. R.A. Shaking, folks. It's a real treat to welcome this future Hall of Famer

to the Spittin' Chicklets podcast, Zidane O'Chara. How's it going, Big Z? Good. Thank you so much for having me, guys. It's a pleasure, and congrats on your success with everything you guys do. Okay. Thank you. You didn't mention the greatest free agency signing in probably National Hockey League history, R.A.

That's what you always say every pod that Z's mentioned. Yeah, I saved it for a little later. I figured we'd get to it later. Yeah, no doubt about it. He took my line, man. How's retired life treating you? Good. Good. It's been life treating you? Good, good. It's been obviously a little bit different, a little change.

I got used to being kind of like home a lot and spending a lot of time with my kids, which is great. My boys start playing hockey, so spending a lot of time at their hockey rinks. And, yeah, it's been good. Getting kind of like new ideas. You know, it's adjustment, but so far it's been good getting kind of like new ideas. You know, it's adjustment. But so far, it's been so good.

I'm curious because the legendary work ethic. Have you started eating a little dessert occasionally? Are you still in the gym as much as you were before? Yeah. No, I enjoy staying active, you know, in different ways. Obviously, I don't lift heavy as I used to. But, you know, I love going outside and go for runs and riding bikes and so you still run even your height never yeah yeah yeah yeah i ran this morning wow imagine seeing this guy right now is it true you don't

drink much or if at all and the first time you had a sip of alcohol in years was when you guys won the stanley cup and it was a red wine. Um, I don't know if that was red wine, but yeah, I don't drink much, uh, almost kind of none. Um, you know, it's, uh, something that, uh, um, you know, it happened in my family, uh, in the past and I tried to stay away from it and, uh, kind of, uh, you know, a few, few kind of, uh, um, and kind of a few kind of, I guess, life standards that I try to stay away from. Do you get any new challenges going on? I know you took a real estate course a few years ago.

You like to give yourself something to do. What do you have going on like that? Anything? Yeah, I'm always kind of open to learn something and kind of know, kind of experience new things. So I signed up for a few courses just to, you know, expand knowledge. Just nothing for degree or anything I

want to kind of maybe use for the future, but just for myself just to stay active and keep my mind busy. What subjects? Financial literacy and some of the stuff that... Oh my God. I don't think I'm prepared

for this interview. Yeah. I'm mining my pretzels here. Yeah. And some of the stuff that the Harvard Business School offers as a correspondent online courses.

So you've just been always addicted to learning? Just constantly... I wouldn't say addicted, but something that i'm willing to always kind of uh expand knowledge about you know i i kind of don't like sitting at the meetings or sitting at you know interviewing or having dialogues with people and and all of a sudden you just don't have idea what they're talking about so i want to be at least in in a picture

and have some somewhat idea what they're talking about and have conversations and expand basically knowledge because you never know what could be in the future for you to be maybe working at or using it for your advantage. And then what do you speak? Seven languages I read? Well, it's kind of, I feel like it's almost every time somebody's mentioning the languages, it's not a language. He said eight at one every time somebody's mentioning the languages it's not he said eight at one point 11 and three years adding right so i grew up uh basically with a slovak and

czech language my dad is czech my mom is slovak then grew up under the communist regime the russian was mandatory in school so right there you know you you kind of growing up with three languages then i went to the high school and when the curtain went down we were actually able to use different languages as a subject so i pick up on german and english and then i played in 2004 in sweden uh in about four or five months i was able to you know no way speaking in swedish so still now if you want well yeah it's kind of getting harder i mean if you don't you use it you lose it kind of like i still understand quite a few uh you know words and all those sentences but but if you don't speak with it you know you kind of you're losing a

little bit so it's getting harder was there even like was there rosetta stone back then like would you would you listen to learn the language or is it just from just speaking to teammates? Just speaking, yeah. When I was in Sweden, I actually had a tutor. It was a friend of one of my best friends, Radek Hammer, who played here. And that was one of the reasons I signed with Ferjestad because he was on the team. And one of his best buddies got hurt. I think he torn his ACL and skiing or something. And he's like, listen, like if your friend wants to kind of like, you know, expand knowledge about, you know, Swedish culture and all that stuff.

So we started hanging out and, you know, he just started bringing me books. And we started like kind of, he started tutoring me basically. And by the end of the season, I told the coach, like, you don't need to speak English. I'm okay with Swedish. And then he was like, oh, that's great great and then we started speaking swedish and that was that was it was great that's incredible wow have you been watching the boys much this year i know you've had a couple teams after the bruins but were you local you've been keeping tabs on bergy and stuff yeah i i didn't uh i i came to see about three games, four games, but not a whole lot. I mean, it's kind of late

coming home after the games and I like to get up early in these days, around 4.35 and go for a run or bike ride and then get my boys and my kids ready for school. It would be tough to come home at

11.30 after the games. But I went to about three, four games. So by watching them, it's just incredible. They're just beating everybody. I think we should probably go back to the beginning. You were born in Trencin, Slovakia. Is that how you say it? Trencin? Yeah, Trencin, yeah.

What was your childhood like? Was the work ethic that you have instilled in you by your family? How did you – your father – I know I've heard stories about you training with him and he was a wrestler right we're going to get into this crazy regimen that you ended up having and obviously growing into an nhl star well i don't know about the star but i was born and raised um born and raised in actually czechoslovakia back then um you know we became our own country in 1993 but um you know we i i had a great childhood um you know as a kid we were always playing outside um you know we were family of four i have an older sister my dad was uh basically working um you know when i was young he was

still active he was a greco-rom wrestler and he pretty much took me to to the gyms and all these uh sports events so i was always around kind of like athletes and and sports environment my mom was a hairdresser her stylist hairdresser and uh my uh my my uh sister she went to a school to be a tailor and um yeah we were you know living pretty humble lives and and nothing special you know we we play outside a lot and all different sports all different sports all the time you know that was that was great about you know uh back then that you know you went outside and in one hour you play soccer next hour you tennis, next hour basketball and street hockey. And it was just so much fun.

And I think that that's something that in these days you don't see much. So your intro into hockey, I'm guessing your father never played? My father never played. And he kind of got me at an early age into wrestling, the basics of the wrestling. at early age into wrestling, the basics of the wrestling. And I think that gave me very good foundation on agility, abilities, conditioning, a little bit of gymnastics,

flexibilities. And then one day he came home and he asked me, hey, you want to try playing hockey? How old are you at this point? I started late. I think I was around 7, 8. Okay. So he said there is some recruiting of youth kids for hockey, which he didn't tell me that my kind of age group

was already playing for probably a year or so. So when I came on the ice, I was basically just going along the boards and just trying to learn how to skate. age group was already playing for probably a year or so yeah so when i came on the ice i was basically just going along the boards and just try to learn how to skate and guys are flying around and my basically age group was just flying around with the pucks and skating and shooting and i'm like oh i'm way behind so at first it was very you know um you know tough to kind of blend in you know you're always behind you're always kind of struggling and and uh you know um you know tough to kind of blend in you know you're always behind you're always kind of struggling and and uh you know kids were probably making fun of me and uh but my dad said

hey just uh you know keep working um working at it and we're gonna be working off of the ice a lot and and so you can catch up on other things and eventually, you know, it will happen. And, you know, so that's what we did. During that, because granted, seven years old, you're seeing these kids fly around, but you still loved it? Like, were you ever like, I don't want to do this anymore? No, no, no, no. I fell in love with it. I remember very first time he brought me to the ring because our neighbor was working as like the ice crew preparation team.

And he opened up the ring one night. I remember it was night because it was dark. It was only one light, kind of like a spotlight in a corner. He turned it on. And right before that, kind of like the first day I stepped on the ice, he's like, put the skates on, go try it. I stepped on the ice. I fell down face first, knocked my two teeth out.

That was my first experience. Oh, God. So my dad didn't even have a helmet with a cage. It was just a helmet without a cage. Go ahead, bud. Yeah. So I went down, knocked my two teeth out. And that was my first touch with the ice.

And I'm like, oh, my God, this is like – This is awesome. Most kids would have quit and said, fuck this. Give me the basketball, Dad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that was – But I just – I remember the smell of that hockey ring, you know, that smell of the ice.

It's just a different kind of environment. I went home and I said, you know, I just love it. I just love to be kind of in that environment with the kids and playing, you know, on a team. And so that was something that, you know. Because your father didn't have the hockey background, like who did you lean on to continue to develop your skills? Were there pro players around that had hockey camps there?

Was there anyone from there that like was off to the nhl would come back in the in the summer that you would look up to um well my my dad was kind of like uh my main uh coach i would say uh not officially but he was obviously tried to guide me to to work and and keep working and doing the extra stuff but i was lucky because trenching was a very strong base of a hockey hockey team the reason for that because uh there were at the time when i said czechoslovakia there were two army uh um based teams and what i mean by that was dukla yihlava which was in Czech Republic and Dukla Trencin in Slovakia so whoever was eligible to serve the army or military service and while he was playing he was able to play and serve at the same time in this in these two teams also Slovak Slovak good players went to Dukla Jihlava Czech players went to do Klagihlava.

Czech players went to Slovakia. So it was kind of like exchange. And international events, they'd almost combine the best players. But at that time, it was one country. Yeah. So basically, they were basically serving the service, which was mandatory at that time. It was two years.

Well, it was easier service because they were playing hockey. But they were gathering the best players on both sides and playing so we we had that you know privilege to watch these best players you know playing in the extra league you know every other night and you're going to the games you're going to the games as a kid so you were inspired you were motivated to play you know we we saw you know you know future, future NHL players playing right in front of us. Rurzycka, you know, and all these players who made it eventually to the NHL. Svehla and those guys. You actually played center very early before your career as a kid, right?

Did you learn some skills playing center? Yeah, I started as a forward. Then I've been moved to play defense. And then, you know, at age 13, 14, I've been cut by junior teams and coaches. And that's when I played for junior B teams and in B leagues. And that's when we didn't have enough players. players and at that point the coach you know said hey you know we need to have somebody playing for so i would play forward and i would play the one shift i would play forward center or whatever and then i would play the next shift and because we would have 12 kids how were you as a center probably good i was actually i loved it imagine this guy i love the nhl just clobbering guys on the floor yeah no i loved it i was uhing guys on the forecheck. Yeah, no, I loved it. I was very motivated, believe it or not.

Despite all the cuts, all the challenges and adversities I faced, I have to say those days were one of the most memorable days I had with those teammates, with those guys, because that was the end of it, right? That was the last chance we had. We were cut. We were just, you know, nobody wanted us. And we played for each other. We had so much fun.

We had such a, you know, camaraderie, such a strong bond. And until today, we stay in touch. We kind of like sometimes see each other or we text each other and we just, you know, like it's it's it's a great feeling when from basically that type of a environment or group you still have such a strong bond and uh yeah i played with the guys who were like you know much smaller but i was trying to protect them so it was it was it was great it was great learning too was this a point where you're already getting up at 4 35 a.m you're working out before school like was your dad into that like we were already really

starting this training early as early as then uh not as early uh and the reason for that because the practices which we had as a junior b teams or b leagues were very late. So at that point, when I was cut and I was, I had to play for different teams, which were away from trenching. And I had to commute. I had to take trains. I had to take buses. So I had to go and I would play, you know, one year in Piestiani, which is about 40. Isn't that the capital?

No, no, no. Oh, no, it's Bratislava. Bratislava. See, I know my shit wit yeah yeah no pish tani is about uh i would say 45 kilometers from trenching and uh that was one year i played there the next year and next year i play in dubnica which is uh closer but i i was just basically commuting by by trains or buses and you know when you're on the b squad you are having practices after eight squats so you know there was like hey you know there's some you know 9 30 10 p.m you know open ice okay let's give it to the b squad and that's what we did we just skated it so late so by the time the practice was over your gas taking i'm taking the train and coming home at 11 30 midnight and i had to get

up at six for seven o'clock school or 705 sometimes you know so it was like it was tough but you loved it you didn't you and it wasn't even even about making the a squad or you like you had those goals or are you just loving the game so much you're just enjoying every day in a sense i didn't love it but i didn't want to give up i mean it's a it's a kind of a balance that despite all the you know like i said challenges or people telling me you know you should give up you should quit you should play basketball and you are not good enough and this and that i just hated to satisfy them or please them by this and that i just hated to satisfy them or please them by saying okay i i had enough i just kept kind of like believing it i i stick with it and uh it was very good that that i had very few people who said you know stay with it like don't listen to them you know it just gives you that

little hope it gives you that little you know a match that that you kind of like burn later on but i was just like so committed to like prove them wrong yeah that i said i'm not gonna give up and eventually it it just you know it happened so you're telling me when you're playing there and for the b team there's no doubt in your mind that you're gonna find a way to get to the nhl no no i mean i i just had at that point you nhl that's like yeah that was that was not even like in a picture i mean that was like for me personally was just like i'm not gonna give up like i didn't know what was ahead of me so you didn't know the goal what the end goal was yeah i mean my vision was was or or the goal setting was was. It was like, hey, stick with it, keep working, finish the season,

and be as good as you can, and keep working, keep trying, you'll never give up. And then, you know, all of a sudden, like, I got a break. And the break came when we had a game, our B squad, we had a game right after the A squad team Ducla and we played in trenching so all the scouts who came to see the A squad um went to the you know buffet or the restaurant the the ring restaurant and cafeteria whatever you want to call it and while they were having whatever meal or or coffee and they were making the notes about the players we

came on the ice for warm-up they're forced to watch it and then all of a sudden they're like wait a minute like there is this kid like he can skate he's big is this and they're like who is this why is he in b squad so all of a sudden like that words somehow must have spread out right and now the coach from b squad is telling me look like i'm having scouts nhl scouts asking about you all of a sudden my my attitude my my hope my my you know it was i was so encouraged i was so happy i was so motivated like all of a sudden like what like okay it's working like it's something right like there is a hope. There's hope. There's something, right? So I kind of like, you know, I got it. It was a little bit of that reward in the distance.

But I was like, listen, just keep going at it. And then it was pretty regular now that my dad even was telling me like, hey, we're getting phone calls from these people, scouts in Europe, coming and asking me when you're going to play the game and they want to come and watch you. And so now it's on, right? I'm like, I'm in the basement. I was always working on it, but I'm like,

now I'm going twice as hard, you know, twice as long. And I'm just like, I'm extra motivated. And eventually came to the point where we took the registration hockey uh license uh as a player and i got uh transferred or we we took like you know the the the registration and we went to sparta prague and i was able to practice with the men's team and play for the uh sparta prac junior a team which is like another level from yeah did that mean moving like in like living there yeah i i moved i was living in in prac did your parents go is it just you no just me i was staying in like a one one room one bedroom apartment um was like a size of this basically hotel room

on my own no car 17 17 years old 17 18 years old yeah yeah went to czech republic and just uh yeah that was it i just finished basically high school i graduated from high school and ran and went right to the um prague and when you're talking off ice you're in the basement, was it always lifting, working out, or were you stickhandling, were you shooting pucks, or was it more just like for your body? Everything. Yeah. You know, I was able to, under the guidance of my dad, you know, develop pretty basic regime, workout regime.

It was like, you know, Monday, upper body, Tuesday, you know, shooting, Wednesday, legs, so whatever it was. But I always had three times a day working out. So it was just basically running, biking, skipping, shooting pucks. So we created different drills, different tools, and it was constantly working, working, working. Was it in Prague where you were maybe – I don't know if you were drafted to the WHL, but how were you discovered to come over to North America?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, once I was in Prague, it was kind of, like I said, it was already out there that there's a lengthy kid with potential. That was it. You were like William Wallace. You were this like – That was it you were like william wallace you were this like that was it you know there's no cell phones back then it's just like there's this guy he's fucking 6 11 7 1 7 8 lightning bolts out of his arse 50 but yeah i mean so 50 it was like you were a project but there was so much potential they saw. He tow dragged 50 men. I guess so. But no, in Prague, directly in Prague was a scout named Karl Pavlik,

who basically recorded on VHS tapes. I remember those. So he kind of recorded me skating, practicing, me lifting in the gym. And he sent those tapes to, obviously, the Islanders. And Mike saw them. And Chris Pry was the director of player development. And based on that tape, I got drafted. No way.

Yeah, that was it. Nobody saw me really from – I was under the radar. At that time, Yuri Hanisch was the agent who was working with another agent here. And they brought me to the draft. And basically, they said, look, we believe if we take you to the draft and you go through the interviews and they see you, it will bring you up even more. And somebody is going to take a chance. And sure enough, that's what happened. It was totally unexpected. And I was so grateful. the interviews and they see you it will it will bring you up even more and somebody's gonna take a chance and sure enough that's that's what happened it was totally unexpected and i was so grateful and and honored and it was such a privilege to be drafted like i imagined that 12 months prior to that i was playing on junior b team b squad with 12 guys with no sticks

and outside the ring with no glass and just the nets behind a net like it was just crazy like it was i i uh thinking back now i was like what what what happened like it's just uh yeah i have so many like different questions i want to ask from here so so mike milbury saw these videos. Now, do you still have these VHS tapes? I'm sure they're somewhere. Oh, man, I would love to see you just chucking weights as a young guy on these videos. No, it was, yeah, I remember because when I showed up

at the men's team in Prague and we went to the gym, I was pretty much outlifting the men because I was just so much, I was used to just lifting and being so strong. So, obviously, these guys were like, this kid must be on steroids. Like, what is he doing? Like, this is 18-year-old kid and lifting this much. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm on steroids, whatever. And so, yeah, in these days, Mike saw it.

And he told me later on that he didn't really want to take me in the 56 overall. But the scouts, the Swedish scouts convinced him. Like, you got to take him because if you don't take him, I think Phoenix was next or somebody was like, yeah, want him. God damn it. They said, like, yeah, we're going to take him for sure. They had some word. It was probably not a Swedish scout working for Phoenix.

Like, we're going to take him for sure. So, they convinced mike and mike said like okay but he never saw me live he never basically just saw it you know vhs type so were you drafted to the nhl before you were either drafted or invited to go play in the whl yes so it was the islanders that probably set that up or so yeah i got drafted They wanted you to come over, I'm guessing? So I was already over. I was in St. Louis. And then we got a call from WHL because I told my agent, like, I want to stay here.

I don't want to go back. I didn't tell my parents, too. I went to the draft. I had a small bag, one pair of jeans. Like, I'm staying here. And I said, I decided right there and then that I'm staying. I don't want to go back because a number of reasons. Mainly because if I go back, I'm going to end up,

I have to go serve at that time, 18 months, the mandatory military service. And I didn't have a guarantee I'm going to play for Duke because I already left, right? I took my registration card and I went to Czech Republic. So now they would be probably upset that I left. I would be maybe ending up in different spot that some base that didn't allow to play hockey

while you served. So 18 months would go be i'll be i'll be done like yeah you know and at that time i think that um to ask uh new york islanders organization to pay whatever the uh the bounty whatever the fee whatever they need for for me to to to get me out of it would be almost impossible right they wouldn't be willing to pay it at that time so i yeah of course and then so i decided to stay of course you know a few weeks later uh my dad's phone like hey there's like military service looking for you you deserted the yeah the uh you know the service the the the country uh obligation it's like i know but this important. So I couldn't go back home for two years. I stayed.

So going back, I got drafted, got a call from WHL, and Denis Polonich, you might guys know him, he was a GM at that time for Prince George Cougars. And he's like, we have a, I think it was like third pick or second pick, whatever. He's like, we want to know if we pick you, if you're going to come to PG. I'm like, yeah, of course. He's like, are you sure?

Because I don't know if you know where PG is. I'm like, I don't care. That's probably the best case scenario. I have been. I always heard it's in the middle of nowhere, right? And I had no idea where it was. And I didn't care because I just wanted to stay. I wanted to have a chance

and you know learn the culture learn the hockey style learn the language better um so i said yeah for sure i'm gonna stay you know okay so that's what happened they they chose me they picked me for um you know and i went to uh stay the summer in edmonton had Had a beautiful Billetts family, Jonathan Aikens family, who was with the Bruins in 1996, first round. So I stayed with them. It was a great setup. Worked out at the

Edmonton University with Pete Friesen at that time, who ended up actually, he was working with the Carolina Hurricanes for a long time as a strength

and conditioning coach. And then before the season went to Prince George and played the season in Prince George how was your English at this point so uh yeah it was kind of like that's been weird hard moving over it was hard because back in home uh we were being taught uh the English English right it's not the North American kind of a slang you know getting used to the you're talking like a brit yeah and then all of a sudden you come over here like i can understand anything i'm like well this is kind of gonna take some time and you know it took probably two months three months by the time i get kind of like hold of it um so you at that point you never had a fight on the ice correct no i had fights oh you did no no no he's protecting the guys in junior

so the the only difference which is big difference back in junior b we had cages right so you're kind of fighting with the gloves on okay and you're punching guys in the head but it's like you know with the cages on but i had a number number of fights, and I was actually obviously boxing and doing correct ground wrestling as a part of my workouts, but not the real, real fights when you actually drop the helmets like we did in juniors back then and go fist fights. So that was the first time I had been challenged to the fights in juniors. That first year in PG, had you learned more in that one year

than you'd had maybe in all your years of playing just based on the talent pool? I believe Stan Butler was your first coach over here too. Did he have no sideburns back then too? No. This guy had the worst haircut. I love Stan, but oh my God. His sideburns came up to basically his forehead.

No, he did a great job with me. I think the whole, you know, I think him and Dennis Polange, like I said, they did a great job to kind of changing the team and how we were playing because until that point, Prince George was always out of the playoffs, you know, losing records. And when they both came in, you know changed it up there was it was we started to play better we actually um end up making the playoffs and uh upset like top three teams i believe so we went almost to the memorial cup we were like maybe one series away from being in

memorial cup but yeah i mean it's uh it was very much humbling and very learning experience because the bus rides right like i oh man the first time i i i sat on the bus and they said you know we're gonna go to colonna i'm like okay come on five five hours in six seven i'm like where are we going and that was the shortest that was the shortest. That was the shortest trip. Seven hours to Kelowna. Seven and a half, eight hours of scum loops. And then, you know, next ones were like Spokane, Port, 17 hours on the bus. So that was very humbling for me to go through this. And as a first year guy, you don't get the bunk.

You're just sitting there. You're just sitting there. You're 6'9". Your hip flexors are just toast. You can't sitting there. You're just sitting there. You're 6'9". Your hip flexors are just toast. You can't even play. I'm like suffering there on that third row seat, doubling up with somebody else. But no complaining.

I didn't complain. I was happy. I was on a team. I was making progress. Were you playing a big role then? Were you playing 20 minutes or i don't know the times uh the stats but regular shift yeah you know i i play power play i play pk i played um obviously five on five all that stuff and uh yeah i was uh i think i was probably around

yeah on that but i i uh i saw a story this morning when I was reading up on you that you ended up staying in PG after your first season there. And then you worked as a car washer. And the guy from the car wash said it was awesome because he was so tall, he could wash the roof with ease. He'd be washing it in no time. No, like I said, after the season, I couldn't go back home. I knew I was like, okay, I can't go back home.

I'm going go back home. I knew I was like, okay, I can't go back home. I'm going to get arrested. So I talked to the billets, Barb and Irv Mann, beautiful family, beautiful children. And, you know, with the help of Danny, Stan, we found a dealership. They were willing to kind of pay me under the table. It was like a few hundred bucks a week. And then I found another job. So I had two jobs, landscaping. So basically during, you know, from I think it was like 7 to 12 or 7 to 1,

it was like a dealership, washing cars. I made a deal with them that I could go to a gym for two hours. From 1 till 3, I was in the the gym i remember i was eating like lunch in a car in this van like even before i went to the gym just work out then after i came back dropped the car got picked up and it was another kind of a crew that were were kind of just letting me know okay we have a job we have to plant trees we have to dig holes we have to cut along so i went with them whenever they needed so i had like kind of a two jobs and i would ride a bike commute to the dealership was probably you know probably less than 10 miles so each way so every every day i probably rode you know close to 20 miles on the bike went to the gym and then

you know on we you know after or before I did some workouts. So I was constantly working in two jobs and just giving the money to the family. Jesus, man. That was incredible. Yeah, because you're staying with them. I'm staying with them. I'm eating like – Don't stop.

They're like, oh, we took out a second mortgage because of how much chicken breast you've been dumping. No, but they were so nice. I mean, we stay in touch still today. They came to see for past 25 years. They came to see. Z, this is remarkable, buddy. This is what it seems for. You weren't skating, right, in the summer then?

No ice? No ice? No ice. Just, I mean. But then it wasn't calm. Yeah. No, I went for swims i went for work you know runs bikes but no no skating i mean pg has you know i don't know if anything changes now but

they had only one one rink so when we were done obviously yeah i mean we haven't even touched the nhl yet but it's so good i think for all the kids listening like the work ethic and like what you had to do uh and endure in order to get to the how bad you wanted the nhl so i think we should hang it over our a here you want to start with that well actually i your pre-draft interview with mike milbury he asked can you fight do you remember what your answer was back to him i don't i think you took your shirt off and challenged you want to go mike that's why you said better not to fuck with me. And you want him over with that. Okay, no, no, no, no, no.

Now I remember. See, now I remember. I said, better not piss me off, I think. Okay. That's the Boston translation. I think I remember. Yeah, now I remember, see? But was it Mike?

Could be Mike, yeah. Well, he's notorious for his interviews with draft picks. We had Terry Ryan who came on. Very different type of story. We don't need to get into it. Okay. Now, so at Prince George, like you just told Biz, you fought before. Were you getting challenged a lot by guys because you were a bigger guy?

You know, your skating hadn't been fully refined yet. Were guys coming at you frequently? Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, I think the first, you know, whatever, five to ten games, I must have had a fight pretty much in every game. I remember that there was, I guess, the standard that I had to set. Because Ronald Petrovic was on that team and he said, Look, you're going to get challenged.

There's going to be guys like Rob Scurlack, Scott Parker. It will be coming. be coming they tough yeah so i was like all right like i i knew that i'll be challenged and i knew that for me to again make a progress i gotta answer the bell and i gotta i gotta show them that i'm not gonna be pushed around and i'm gonna be standing up sticking up for myself and my teammates and so yeah first whatever um i must have fights in every game were you fearful like did you like you know what was coming like let's say pre-game nap were you like no no i i didn't know and that was probably a good thing i i didn't know these guys i was like okay well somebody okay so whatever it is yeah i was like so but then you know obviously, as you go through the first rounds of fights and, you know, through the league, then you go, okay, so this guy's obviously much bigger, strong, and this guy's, you know, different type of fighter. So you kind of like prepare mentally for that type of a game. But I remember my first fight, I didn't even have my arms up. You know, Ronald is screaming at me from the bench put your arms up put your arms up i'm kind of like going to the fight and i'm like swinging my arms like

conor mcgregor i'm going towards the guys so he's like you got it i mean i did well in that fight i i you know i i believe i won the fight but but then he's like listen you gotta put your arms up like you gotta actually set you know so then he was actually the next one they're over your head yeah no it's right here yeah i remember that so it's kind of like these little things um yeah that's amazing did many of them come back for seconds or they learned their lesson the first time no it was it was i i have so much respect for for the guys i fought um regardless where um you know it was it was it was tough league You know, it was a tough league. You know, the W was very, very tough. I believe at that time, you know, probably toughest league.

Oh, for sure. From the Qs and O's, OHL, you know, it was definitely W. Probably every team had two or three guys that could fight like heavyweights who end up being actually at some point in the nhl as in forces when you ended up you know becoming like the norris trophy all-star say you were 240 245 at that point were you still much lighter like when did you become the size you are now in terms of the overall build so i was very careful adding my weight just because I knew that I didn't want to slow down. I didn't want to weight caused me being or the weight being an issue of kind of causing me more bad than good.

So I remember I was in Prince George. I was 237. And then I remember in New York, I was uh 237 and then I remember in New York I was about 247 so in span of maybe year and a half I gained 10 pounds which is not bad right and then slowly you know 250 to I think the heaviest I ever been was 263 oh you were that big I didn't know you ended up getting that heavy what was the transition like to pro like first first camp, like all that, right? Because you didn't really spend much time in the minors. You were up with the Islanders pretty quick.

Yeah. So after that year with Prince George, that summer I signed the entry-level contract with the Islanders. So I got invited to the camp in September. September it was like yeah I was like that was that was quite the biggest shock I guess for for someone who didn't know what to expect at that at that time as you guys remember you could probably invite unlimited number of players yeah and we had four teams four full teams mike had four full teams uh team a b c d we had practice then you play scrimmage with next team and then you had another practice and and and workout yeah there was no time limit it was no three-hour rule back then and i was like after three four days i was like this is this is hard this is not easy like you know

this is the nhl this is like man but i remember like in this uh you know uh these games uh in the squad games like there were fights left and right it was like non-stop i mean we had mick mccord out kenny belanger steve webb there were guys everywhere and there was like fighting it was like wow like crazy crazy like think about it what it was like then and and what it's now i mean uh to appreciate it and and how much you have to like um what you had to go through to earn it, it's humbling to really think back. What was this, like 97? Or was this?

96. 96. Did you have any thoughts of making the team out of that first camp? No, not at all. Not at all. I was completely fine. I've been sent to Kentucky. So back then it was AHL and IHL.

I guess I probably remember. And so IH uh was obviously the west west side ahl was east side and i was in kentucky and it was a great uh great experience as well uh but to your point i'm thinking okay full year i'm gonna stay here uh november i got called up it's that quick yeah november. There were a few injuries. I think Richie Pilon got hurt. Somebody else got hurt up front, more like a physical type of player. And I got called up, and me and Steve Webb, I believe, we got called up.

Jason Stradwick got called up as well. I think three of us got called up. I ended up playing my first NHL game on November 19th. The one thing that stood out when I was looking at the HockeyDB, I think you were there for four seasons. You ended up having five head coaches. Was that weird seeing all that turnover and the chaos with that Islanders organization?

Yeah, it was almost disturbing. It was every season and the whole coaching staff got fired. New coaching staff came in. I think probably the best reward would be

lack of patience, I guess. But that was also with the players too. Like you saw so many players coming in, so many players

leaving, traded. At one point, I remember it might have been my third year, we got probably 12 players dealt. We were in Vancouver and we just, you know, guys even didn't get a phone call.

They started reading their name in those bottom lines on whatever the TSN, whatever. They were like, oh, I got traded. Pocky's back. Next guy, oh, I got traded. It was like, I believe we didn't have enough, almost didn't have enough guys to to play the game in vanc we were in vancouver and then so yeah it was uh it was one of those things that um i guess i guess also some sort of experience i guess you know going through that it just uh makes you realize that

that it's a business as well. And it's a hard business. If you don't perform, if you don't do well, it's kind of next. And eventually it was your name on the bottom of the headline there. And, R.A., I'm not sure you can list off the trade. It was a blockbuster deal. Is that the draft, right? Yeah, yeah. It was Z and the first overall pick that turned out to be Spezza

and Bill McCall, Alexi Yashin. So best free agent signs ever yeah yeah it was uh z and the first overall pick that turned out to be spezza and bill mccall alexi yashin so best free agent science ever and probably one of the biggest ripoff trades ever no very good taken to the cleaners but when you mentioned that before when you're training you know prince george in the summer there was no skating but at some point your skating became so good was there a summer that you were on the ice a lot or was it more just as you grew into your body you finally were able to skate the way i think a little bit of both yeah um i was uh able to start skating on the uh treadmills uh i remember there were there was like a first treadmill skating treadmill in edmonton and uh at the same time your body start to yeah filling up right like i believe till 17 16 17 you're still growing you know you're still

kind of like you're still being teenager really i mean for i guess for some uh some kids it comes sooner for some maybe a little bit later and i guess because of the length and the size of mine it just came later because it just takes time to fill up that body right if you six two six three you're probably gonna be you know almost like a man uh quite sooner yeah if you do the same regime workouts and nutrition all that stuff but for me it just took longer so i was maybe like a late boomer but yeah eventually just uh kind of and having like good skates and all that stuff right like that that helped that was that was for me that was something i appreciate so much to be able to just you know having you know a new stick like i was in journey

to b-squad we didn't have enough sticks we played with broken sticks we had tape up so they must have been too short for you too short and long and it was like you were not allowed to we had some we had maybe like two three practices a week but nobody shot a slap shot because you can't break a stick right so when you were on the a squats and back then because of the regime like a lot of these clubs were sponsored or financed by government. So the stakes were no issues. The gear, you always kind of hand out the gear from older teams to the younger. But when you're on the B, nobody cares about B squads, right?

So it was like we were getting those used sticks used gear that nobody wanted and that's what we play so for me to all of a sudden like go to you know whl or kentucky now have unlimited he was like this is a dream come true you know it was awesome among all those coaches on long island one of them was was mike milbury what was it like having him for a coach? How was your relationship with him? I had a good relationship with Mike. Obviously, he's very intense. He wanted to win.

He's emotional. But, you know, I think that, you know, he meant well. He wanted to win. But it just probably didn't work out, out you know as well as he wanted to and and you know he ended up being obviously a manager and then he was hiring a coaches and he was trying to find a obviously the fit that would be quick fix as you want to call it right like win now right now we need it but that's takes time i guess right So especially with the young group we had, we had, I don't know how many years in a row, we had first-round picks, right?

Eric Brewer, Roberto Luongo. We had Payet, I believe. Taylor Payet. Taylor Payet, JP Dumont. And then there were some young players, Berard, McCabe. We had so many actually you know good players young at very young age but it just takes time probably for them to um mature yeah i guess if you might

call it and be be you know kind of in their you know effective year away and then being impatient just kind of ended up being the demise of them. I guess that's what I kind of think. It was kind of like, yeah, let's move on. Let's trade this guy. Let's try a new field. We want to have a goal scorer. Let's get Yashin. You know, like, all of a sudden, boom.

Summer of 01, when that trade went down, did you have any idea? Had you been hearing things? Or was it just like, holy shit, I'm traded? No, no. I've been, you know, we had the exit meetings. And, you know, it was one of those, hey, you know, we're going to build this team around, you know, a few of you guys, you know, young guys. We're going to, you know, try to kind of build this franchise. And so I'm kind of going home in the summer like, okay, I'm getting ready, you know, the normal way as I would always.

And then I remember being on a cottage with my friends. And then the next day I came home and my dad, hey, there have been a lot of uncles from whatever and I don't understand English. And then I found out that I'd been traded. And probably the best thing for you, I mean, that's where you started advancing. What allowed you to all of a sudden become a two-way defenseman there?

Was it a couple of players taking you under their wing? Because all of a sudden you saw that offensive side of your game start to develop and all the other skills come out. Yeah. So, at that time, I already had a different agent, Matt Cater. Who's here with us. We'll get him on in a little bit. We're going to get him on.

I call him Bob Sugar's super agent matt cater and i i'm kind of like asking him like when it happened like is this good like i don't know like is this good i'm being traded i i guess i'm not wanted but i guess i'm wanted on the other side it's like no this is really good you know you'll see ottawa it's gonna be different style different it's not gonna be just off the glass and I'm like okay so I came to training came in in Ottawa and right from the get-go go go jump jump you know support the attack I'm looking at what what do you want from me like so that's different that different x and o's were much more detailed every every every aspect of the game was broke down to the details, so you knew exactly where to be, how to play positionally better. But most importantly, it was encouraging me to play a more offensive game, which to me was like, hold on.

And I remember exactly that was like first or second preseason game. And we break out of the pocket, I'm kind of like straight-legged, and I'm watching what they're going to do. And Jacques Martin is screaming, go, go. And I'm like, go where? So he's like, go, support the attack.

Right, I got the four-checkers beat with the pass, and then so I start skating. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, it's like, they yeah you know all of a sudden it's like they're encouraging me to play offense to jump up to support the attack and then you know next thing like okay you have a good shot you're gonna be on second power play you know just bombing you know just shoot from blue line you know like and that kind of again expand open up another another doors for me to like okay i gotta learn how to play a

more offensive you know game and so again learning and you know watching and i started became obsessed with nick litstrom just watching his game just positioning and you know like oh it was it was so easy to watch and i'm like okay i i watch every game every shift he was on the ice just picking his kind of habits positioning whether he had stick this way that way how we move on the blue line try to really uh understand you know how even that's it's it's it's impossible to copy him or be like him but i tried to be myself while he was i was trying to use one of you know some of the the things he used and um yeah and i you know and i remember first time they actually put me in front of an ad too like

no sudden i was oh yeah on the power play i remember that yeah so yeah and the first time they tried it because we were in la we were down one goal minute left in the game and jac like power plays like no he took somebody off the ice, put Z in there, and we scored. I scored. Right in front of me. First time they tried it. All of a sudden, it was a big article the next day in Ottawa,

Sanova season, trying for an net. Jacques Martin, smartest coach, boom, boom. Now, they had the option to use me in front of a net or on the um uh on the blue line but they also had redden too right so it was like they had reds you know it's all your center iceman experience coming back full circle yeah but alfie played back uh on the power play i remember was uh alfie and reds on the first pp and then all sudden that spot on the second was wide open so i was playing on the second, you know, PP. Sometimes I played the first PP.

You know, it was just different combinations, right? So, yeah, it was great. And you started then, I think that's when you started 25 minutes a game, 27 minutes a game, and you must have just loved it. Yeah, yeah. No, I can't complain. I was happy that I was in a rotation. I was, you know know frequently being used and

you know i took a lot of a lot of pride to play that's the kind of like time when i start playing real detail attention to playing certain guys because that was my job okay they told me you're gonna play this line this guy top line top player you know and i start again that was not a step right try to watch in players habits you know skills toe drags what they did what they didn't like you know and i became real a student of the game because i just i love you know learning how i'm gonna be defending you know different type of guys plus on top of that like worry about guys like this, right? It's like, you know.

Yeah, right. Yeah, fucking chirping me from the bench. Yeah. So, no, it was humbling, but at the same time, it was such a motivation to, like, okay, like I have these responsibilities, the team relies on me. I'm becoming more a leader in in a way of of playing certain way to help my team win yeah you didn't want to take advantage of that i was just gonna

ask did anybody tell you to watch lidstrom shifts like was that like advice that maybe jacques martin had given you like one of the players because i mean like obviously a smart move to watch one of the greatest of all time yeah yeah I'm sure somebody mentioned like you know there's certain guys you watch closely you know they they they play you know these big big minutes and they play always top lines on Chris Pronger you know like there were different guys but I just came to kind of like a realization that Nick has something that obviously so unique and so intelligent that that I didn't need more Chris Pronger. Don't get me wrong. Yeah.

Obviously, one of the best defensemen played the game. But I thought, okay, like, I have enough meanness. I'm physical. I need something more that needs to complete me more, right? So that's why I chose to have a little bit more skill, intelligence, smart type of player who kind of had that, and I chose watching that more than a guy who is physical, who is mean.

I just wanted to add more to what would be good for me. I love how you said when you were younger that it was just like kind of immediate goals in front of you so i don't know if it ever came to a point in auto where you realize like holy shit like the games become easier to me like did you ever realize like wow i i haven't made it in a sense but like i'm playing a number one role now like it must have been cool to feel some sort of relief like it's all come together a little bit, right? And you're in the same conversation for the Norris.

Yeah. Like Ledstrom. Do you remember a moment or a season when you're like, holy shit, the game is a little easier for me than it had been? I would not say easier, but I came to realize that I'm entering a part of my career or a time where I'm becoming… A star. Not star, but a force a difference maker right yeah i i started noticing like okay like i can change this game by me being me yes i can i can add i can just i can do things that then i can dictate right and and that's when you started having like realization like okay like I can take this game over.

I can take control. Not in a bad way that selfishly goes do something stupid, but in a way that if I do this to him or I make the pass to them, or if I fight this guy, I can change the momentum. I can add, I can put real difference footprint on the game. Whether that would be momentum or doing some different type of things. Right. So I always take a lot of pride in being very fit and always prepared physically. And I think that that was one of the things that,

that I realized that if I do that, that will never be causing me. You always make mistakes, right? Like you're human by playing because you're trying. You're trying to make a right play. It's going to be happening, right? You're going to make mistakes. But I never tried to make mistakes because of lack of conditioning.

Yeah. Or fatigue, right? And that was kind of like, I think, for me, the biggest difference. Because I took so much pride that i'm not gonna be making mistakes or or doing something you know that it's gonna be causing us game like no no dad i ate a lot of desserts but but being fatigued or being not conditionally a good enough prepared for for the game or the season right i don't know if you i know it's just i was

like okay like that will not play a role if my if i made mistakes gotta be basically you know somebody either against me made a really good play defensively or you know heads up he he was really good it won't be lack of preparation though yes you also uh your first taste of the playoffs with auto were you surprised that the the huge increase in intensity when the playoffs rolled around yeah yeah i was i'm not gonna lie I was wow this is this is different because obviously now you're dealing with a lot more emotional emphasis on every shift of every game uh you know the pressure it's just uh it's just a different animal right like so so you know experiencing you know those uh series against Toronto like they were bigger, stronger, physical, more physical against us. And we were obviously very skilled team. But noticing like, okay, playoffs is different animal because it's just a clutch and grab back then just like very heavy. And all of a sudden you realize like, okay, like, this is not always about the best skill team, but it's a grind, right?

It's just every shift grind. And they, you know, got best of us every year. Did you have to adjust your game much when the playoffs came around? And if so, how long did it take you? Yeah, I mean, it's a marathon. So now you're, like, dealing with knowing that, okay, you're're gonna play the same team uh possibly seven times right so it's a you know you you have to realize how you manage the game how to manage how you manage the series it's not about just one period or one shift it's it's not about one game it's like okay we we just gotta kind of like stay even keel like all those emotions

you start realizing you have to learn how to uh handle them um so that was that was something uh quite learning no no you turned into like this force like you're mentioning and you're a team first guy but at some point it comes up like reddening your deal was ending at the same time right and so it's it's like am i gonna be here did you start wondering like wow i don't know if i'm gonna continue to be here did you want start wondering like, wow, I don't know if I'm going to continue to be here? Did you want to stay a senator? Like, how did that all go about when free agency finally came? Yeah, I mean, of course I wanted to stay. we realized that the lack of communication between the management and us became quite obvious.

Yeah. And we saw it coming. It was kind of like, okay, because of the salary cut, because of the decision to keep probably only one of us kind of play a big role. And, you know, obviously, you know, we realized right after the season that it's not going to happen. Yeah. Now, was Boston a spot right away you'd look to?

Like, how did it come about when July 1st came? Yeah. So that's a good question, probably. That would be also good to bring Matt with us. But I didn't know what to expect. Obviously, that was the first time I would be, I'll be a free agent right yeah ufa ufa unrestricted free agent and what was mad really good at uh he said look like you

you need to um make a chart of of a teams and and prepare because it's gonna come it's gonna come very fast not like in these days that you can travel to the cities and and prepared because it's gonna come it's gonna come very fast not like in these days that you can travel to the cities and and visit the teams see the facilities do the interviews prior your decision back then it was like okay July 1st it's a it's a opening the UF UFA Market and you have five minutes you know you're gonna have uh 10 offers on the table and 1205 they're all gonna say we want to have your answer back because if you're're not going to go with us, we're going to go and move on and sign somebody else. So, that was tough. So, probably, Matt, you can add to that.

But it was, to me, it was like… Absolutely. I was like, how can I make a decision on my future in five minutes? This is crazy. So, what we did is we tried to create… We did all of our work ahead of time. You know, we wanted to be prepared. Like, we try to with, you know, anytime you have a free agency or a player movement, you've got to be prepared, overprepared.

I like to be. And so what we did is we created a chart where we put all the teams on the left side of the Excel sheet. And on the top, we created a criteria. Like, what are we looking for in an organization? Stanley Cup, opportunity. And we look at the coach, we look at the GM, we look at the city, and you kind of like grade each one, A, B, and C. And we rated basically everyone that made sense, basically. And, you know, through time, I think we were able to kind of narrow it down to three to five teams. And, you know, so we knew going in that we had an idea of three to five teams,

hopefully, that we'll call and that we can deal with. And, you know, I think in the end, there was L.A., New York Rangers, and Boston were like three of the teams that we – Toronto was there, I think. Toronto was there. Well, they saw what you'd done to them. Yeah. I mean, I was pushing Arizona, but, you know, Phoenix, hang out with Biz. Let's go.

Anyway, if you had been there, I'm sure you would have done it. Is there any truth to the season before that they actually tried to make a move, but Dave Skatcher was involved in the trade because of his community tie? I think that was with the Islanders, right? Yeah, that's what the Islanders traded. Oh, okay. When did you guys start working together? We started working together, I think, in 98 or 99 range.

He was interviewing other agents, and I caught wind about it, We started working together, I think, in 98 or 99 range. He was interviewing other agents and I caught wind about it. And Michael Hanzus, who's a longtime client of mine, you know, kind of hooked us up. And it was a Monday. I'm minding my own business. And I remember talking to Z and he's like, yeah, I'm looking for a new agent. Are you interested? I go, how about lunch tomorrow? You know, hey, nothing else going on.

Fucking right. You know, I was like, you know, he was about a six, number six, seven defenseman, you know, at the time. And off the glass and out, he did well, you know. And so we just basically, I just, I think he was like, whoa. And I jumped on the car the next morning, drove down and went to his house. He had the off day and met him and Tatiana, his wife. And we spent, I don't know, five hours together, six hours together. And at the end of the meeting, he gave me this four or five page letter that he had written, like, what his career meant to him, how much hard, you know, this is a written letter. How hard he wanted to work.

I think by the end of the day, I think he wanted to go with me, but it was really nice. Like, I wish I still had this letter. How do you not? You goon. I know. I know.

What was I thinking? Could be read at the Hall of Fame in Dutch. Yeah, I was thinking the same. Yeah, I can remember some of the quotes, but it was really touching because it was all about, like, how much this career means to me, how hard I worked and everything else. And, you know, I think the big thing that families and players need to get out of this interview and get out of Z's journey is not just how hard he worked, but that this is a journey, not a race. Yeah.

You know, he was never in his mind elite like so many of these parents are trying to climb over each other try to get their kid there early get there you they always want to be the first one there the idea is not to stay the first to be the first one there it's to stay the longest marathon not a sprint right exactly and i think he's the epitome of that you know and i think at various points along the way here he put a chip on his shoulder and was like you know'm just going to prove everyone wrong. He remembered the coach that cut him from that team. It's no different than Brady.

Brady does the same thing. Brady, for years, had that chip on his shoulder. And what is he going to do to prove everybody wrong? And I think that that's fueled Z for years. Wouldn't you say, Z? Definitely. It's something that that's fueled Z for years. Wouldn't you say Z? Definitely. It's a, it's something that I use as a motivation.

You know, I think that at the end, like, you know, all these disappointments and challenges are, you know, only, only information,

right? If a hundred percent information, if you use it in the right mindset and use it for something positive and something good, right? Like you can either quit or or or you can just give up and be mad be frustrated be whatever depressed or you can say you know what like i i still believe in myself and whether it's gonna come something out of it as a as ayear career, or it's going to be the greatest 25 days of my life. Like, I mean, it's just the way you look at it. I know everybody wishes to have an amazing, long, and I wish everyone a long, successful career.

But probably it's not going to happen. But I think that the approach should be like, like doesn't matter what he thinks if i believe in myself and i still going for it then you should i mean you never know like who would knew that when you started the podcast right it was for fun right look at now like you guys have probably the most listeners viewers uh you know sponsors like it's it became huge but you you probably thinking like okay like all these people like you know thinking what am i starting like yeah yeah like congrats that's that's awesome you guys have it i mean i still don't know what the fuck i'm doing yeah yeah i think you do i think you do he asked me on the way down he's got zero credibility.

How the fuck does that come over? It's amazing what can be accomplished, right? Like, it just starts from basically nothing, but it just all of a sudden it's a great thing. And I think it was what drove you, too, is like, I'm going to max out my career. Like, I'm going to do what I can to maximize this career. And I think a lot of that, you know, going back quickly to Ottawa

before we talk about the free agency thing is you were going to do whatever it takes to max it out. Like this guy, he'd work out in the mornings before practice. He'd work out after practice. And then he'd work out at night. And, you know, he was going two or three times a day in order to max it out. And then he'd try to drag teammates along with him. He had a great rapport with Danny Heatley, you know,

and I used to watch these guys go back and forth. What was the bartering? He would go train with him if he enjoyed a six-pack with him? Tell about, you know, Heatley. I don't know. You tell. I can't remember. I mean, these guys, like, literally would be after games,

and Z would be chirping them, you know, and he'd be like, Danny, come on, let's go, let's go work out. He'd be like, no, Z, no, I'm going to the bar with the boys. It was just classic, kind of the interplay between the two. When you signed with Boston back to that summer, was it told to you at the time of the offer that you were going to be captain? Because that was pretty cool, right? And I don't know if that was intimidating or overwhelming, but it must have been exciting for you thinking,

am I ready or I am ready to be a captain? Obviously, we didn't know who's going to, you know, we kind of had idea, Matt, had some small conversations with the teams and they said, but you never know till they actually send the offer, right? And then once we had uh you know multiple teams and then it became kind of like a okay a process like which we already kind of like did the uh pre-work and uh i was looking for the opportunity to um be a leader okay like i

i didn't really anything nothing was guaranteed um but But I knew that Peter Chiarelli was going from Ottawa to Boston as a GM. Okay, so I knew. Okay, so he knows me. He knows who I am, what kind of a player, what kind of character I am. There was obviously captaincy was vacant. But to me, it was I got a call from Ray Borg, some former players telling me about the organization and about the opportunity to,

and they all said the biggest need was changing the culture. And I said, you know what, I'm going to embrace it. Like, I can't tell you that I was comfortable because it's a huge challenge and it's a huge amount of responsibility. But I was excited. Like you said, it's an original six franchise. It's a beautiful city. And I saw the opportunity to grow.

But I also know that to be able to grow, you can't be comfortable. Those two don't coexist. It's going to be uncomfortable. I got to make it that way. And I got to obviously be myself, be a leader who I am. And it's going to be some sort of constructive criticism and implementing the passion, the energy and vision that I had through discipline, determination, desire to win. And that's when we signed. I signed with Boston.

And so that first year, it was a little bit of a struggle, right? For the Bees, would you guys... And at that same time, Ottawa was still playing real well. Was that hard or you just knew going in, this is what has to happen? It's a process. As much as everybody would love to see the change right away, first year, it's not going to happen. You have a new GM. You have new coaching staff.

You have new free agents. It was me and a number of guys. Marc Savard came in. So everything was kind of like finding a way. The pieces were all over the place. And we were just kind of like finding way the pieces were all over the place and we we were just kind of like finding the right fit and like i said it was it was a responsibility that i took maybe too hard at first because i was trying to um obviously make a difference right away and change but it just takes time you know like it's not gonna be built overnight right and it's it's it's a process that you kind of watching players how they behave you know making

sure that you're setting the right attitude you know like you kind of uh have to at certain time just watch and listen instead of you know having too much words and it's it's all kind of they took time and after that first year obviously it was disappointing because everybody's expectations like oh we have a disfavor agent signing we have a new coach we have a new gm let's go we should be winning stanley cup right then in a demanding city it is city and and rightfully the fans still wait you know at that time they're still waiting right they're passionate they're still waiting and and obviously now i've been named captain and it's like i'm taking i'm taking a lot of that that weight on my shoulders but it's it's a learning it's a learning and and after that

first year it was more changes we we brought uh claude julian and and that kind of like brought more stable stay stable uh in our game and uh you know had conversation with him you know i don't want you to worry about this that did you know just play the game you know like so it was it was uh yeah another learning yeah and and like i'm sorry before you go no no no i'm curious like guy like uh i played with pronger he was this way joe thornton i've heard almost at intermission they're like, need more out of you. Like, were you a guy that's telling guys, hey, that first period wasn't good enough? Were you calling out teammates in a sense that, like, we need you to wake up?

Yeah, it was needed. And, yeah, I mean, it was, like I said, it was confrontations. You know, it was not being, picking on on guys but letting them know that this this is this got to be better we got to be better you know if you're not you know doing your job then you know everybody else is suffering because of that so like i say we we we were kind of like weeding out i guess if you want to say like guys who are in who are out yeah so you kind of like you you start like monitoring like okay like but the biggest thing for me was i tried to put a lot of emphasis on uh getting rid of the complaining you know making excuses that was that

that was to me was like as soon as i saw that, I was like, on, guys. But I tried to really set the standards or, you know, changing culture by being me. Basically, I came to training camp and I said, I'm going to be the strongest, the fittest guy. And I'm going to let everybody know that. Because that's the standard. I want to set the standard so everybody's like, oh, okay second i talked about the attitude and and bring that attitude in the practice so we start practicing hard yeah you know and i had great help of trees and glenn murray and pj axelson at them so they were they were very helpful because we start practicing differently i started to play as hard in the

practice or even harder than in the games so yeah it happened there were some some fights in the practice but again you're setting some sort of like a footprint that okay this is gonna change and we're gonna change it and we're gonna do it together and who is in he's in who's out is out so that's kind of what was happening and then we added more guys with character sean thornton came in luch kind of brought you know the his presence you know nate horton boy chuck ferran cider mary we we start adding pieces and guys who play with a lot of heart yeah you know and and all of a sudden it was like okay now we have we have foundation we have that culture foundation and we just started to, like, make improvements, right? And obviously, Claude was a big part of that.

Peter was, you know, making good deals. Quickly, the craziest story I heard from you, you mentioned Camp coming in as the strongest guy. So, a lot of times there's a test of pull-ups. So, people who don't know, you know, you got to straighten the arms or they don't count. One time I did 11. That was my max. I was told you did 33 with your shirt off at your height. Like, do you remember that?

Like, guys, just I remember people telling me, everyone just sitting there watching this guy do 33 pull-ups. I remember that was the first training camp. And I remember John Whitesides, our strength conditioning coach, walking up to me right before i went on he's like please don't embarrass me make you make sure your arms are straight and i'm like don't you worry just count him just count him and then yeah i got off i got off and i could see i could see like guys were like shit and then you know what and that was okay. I don't like to show off. I don't like to do that. But again, it was a purpose behind it, right?

And going years back, that purpose paid off because whatever, six, seven years later, I end up being fifth. Really? Which is, I was like, okay, of course I would like to keep winning it, but I end up being fifth with 39 pull-ups. So we had guys who caught up and started doing,

and I was like, now we have it. This is great. Fucking great. It worked. We have something. We are the best conditioning team, which we were. We were the strongest, fastest, skilled. Like, we were toughest.

We had what we wanted to build we had the culture now z you also if i'm not mistaken been the word rookie from the locker room and you kind of put away with any sort of hazing adjacent things shenanigans i guess what was it that made you just come to that decision like we got to get rid of this stuff uh probably what i dealt with uh at a very young age um you know growing up we we you know it I don't want to talk about the details, but the bullying was part of growing up, maybe back home a little bit. And I said one day,

if I ever have a chance to change it, I'll make sure I change it. I don't like to do it. I don't like to put anybody down. I don't like to embarrass anyone. I think that you got to realize that if you point a finger at somebody, there's three, four fingers pointing back at you. So I just didn't like it.

I know that it was probably used. It was not like, okay, this is going to completely get out of the locker room. They still got to pay for rookie dinner, though. Yeah, of course. But I try to be very respectful and try to help young players to actually feel comfortable because regardless of the games or the age, we are on the same team. How do you expect somebody to play hard for you

if you're going to be mean to him or disrespectful it is ass backwards you you gotta you gotta realize like once you're on the ice you're on the same team you wear the same shirt your teammates like why would you act differently off the ice or in practice and then all of a sudden expect the guy like okay like give me the puck or block a shot for me because i made a mistake like you know like it's got to be some bonds got to be some you know a strong team uh structure and so I I didn't like it you know you start like you said building this culture in Boston the team's getting better you got new guys coming in and then you have that that Philadelphia series right you're up 3-0 and then up 3-0 in game seven you lose

anything said to the team or that summer, anything you thought about, like, this is never going to happen again, we're going to win a Stanley Cup. Like, was that a changing factor in how things went? That was probably the biggest, biggest learning we could all get. Because we, at that point, we had that team. You had a chance that year, yeah.

We were there. We were the team that we felt like okay we are built to win but we let off the guy you know the the foot of the pedal like we we we took easier and that was learning for us that was the biggest learning for us and now probably the best learning we we could have got that it's never over till it's over almost had to happen and almost had to happen and i think if you if you look at back uh you, all these teams that won championships, at some point prior, they have some sort of a big upset. Something that happens to them that makes them, you know,

it just gives them the energy and gives them that extra, you know, pissed off and kind of like, okay. Yeah. Look at Colorado. Look at Washington. All of them. okay, we will. Look at Colorado. Look at Washington. All of them. It's payback. It's not, you know, something that you're going to say,

now it's our turn, right? Like, oh, we see that game next year. I want to know some of these, maybe some stories that you remember about Z that he doesn't remember. He was too focused on the conditioning and winning Stanley Cups. What are the funny things that were going on behind the scenes with this man? I mean, honestly, like people see Z and he's this stoic, you know, guy, but he's not. He's one of the funniest guys I've ever dealt with.

I mean, honestly, it's like pure comedy, you know, like just watching him interact with his teammates, how he like what he's talking about, too, on the you know, in terms of the culture with practice and everything else, he also did it away from the ice. You know, I've, I've watched him over the years, whether it was like, we talked about Danny Heatley interacting with him, or I remember, you know, him running into Marchie in the North End. Cause we'd be walking around and, you know, Marchie would be pushing a baby carriage and Z would be like, is that for you or your, you know, just like just some great chirps, you know, March, you'd be pushing a baby carriage and Z would be like, is that for you or your just like just some great chirps, you know, that he's got. And, you know, sometimes they don't see that, but that's what brings teams together. Like all of my clients that I have, you can see that tight teams are the ones who get along well off the ice. And I think he's not only just a practice

and the work ethic, but it's the fun that he has with these guys. And I watched it later with Washington, the Islanders, when I had clients there, and they'd call me up, and they'd be like, oh, my God, this guy's funny. Because they didn't know him as that. So you try to be funny? Well, going to watch. Or it's a different role now.

I guess if i look back maybe i i wish i i could done more of that be more looser and more open but i guess as your career went on i just i just felt like the responsibility and the it was something i had to carry all the time 24 7 and uh that's that's the way i was and that was me. And that was the – I didn't want to fake it. I didn't want to be faking some stuff that, you know, would kind of be obvious. I just – listen, like I am who I am. Yeah. At that time, it was the best probably – it was a great balance between me and Bergie, right?

Like Patrice is just a uh unbelievable leader unbelievable human being person you know outgoing uh but it was it was great for me to have him because he was the what i wasn't right and and and we were and i said it we were co-captains like it was not that i was the guy and everybody else like i i i welcome to have guys on the leadership group. And we had probably five, six guys making decisions together. Because I shared the leadership because I wanted to have guys input, right? I included Sean Thornton, Mark Reckie, Ferentz. I put guys in because that was great.

I couldn't make calls or write calls all the time. And it's always better to have, you know, other guys saying to me, like, hey, why don't we try this? Yeah, fuck right. Like, that's great. Like, I enjoy that, you know. And, you know, Patrice was such a, you know, tremendous, you know, my wingman for 14 years.

We've got to get to 2011, of course. During that run, you know, you guys were down 0-2 to Montreal, go to seven games, then down two to Vancouver. Were there any moments of doubt whether you personally or the guys in the room, maybe not talking about it, but it was kind of a little hairy there. Yeah, and after the Vancouver 0-2, was there something you said? Was there something anyone said to really get this thing going again

back in Boston? The biggest help for us was to have Mark Reckie and Sean Thornton with us because they won it. And I believe Mark Reckie was in the same position with Carolina being down 0-2. Don't know against who, but... Was it Edmonton? It would have been Edmonton, yeah.

Might have been. And he said guys like i i've been there like we okay like just just he spoke probably the most which was awesome to have because none of us been been there and and again we were like just going off that philadelphia yeah and he was like here we go again like no way this is happening again and and and he was such a calm factor for us and just build the confidence back up to us um so all the credit and kudos go to to those two guys because they really handle it well for us to kind of like stay calm we're gonna go to montreal we're gonna take first game and we're gonna break it down to first period second period third period first period first shift second shift third shift and that's how

we broke it down literally shift by the shift we couldn't believe it it was just like just these short goals and one at a time and we we tied the series and obviously then ended up winning game seven. But to have, again, experienced guys who's been there, who won, and just to keep that group and that team steady and not panicking. Were you the type of guy who would get nervous before games? And if not, were you nervous before that game seven? Yes. I always got nervous before the games, if not were you nervous before that game seven yes i i always got nervous before the games but not nervous scared but nervous just just excited nervous right and the

only game i was not nervous when my first nhl game going back to 1997 i i i don't know why maybe just so excited i was just like okay like what what i have to lose like yeah detroit red rings uh stanley cup Oh, here we go. Federov, Lindstrom, Larionov. Minus four. Oh, okay. No, actually, I've been plus two that game. Oh, okay.

Suck on that. I've never been plus two. You're not talking about yourself. He has a game sheet at home. I have a game sheet. I play, like, less than 10 minutes. But we won, actually. 3-1, that game.

But, yeah, since then, every game game i got some butterflies i was like nervous like i was just like uh you know just serious i was just very serious and always kind of ready for the game and and uh because you know i'm facing the best players in the world that's my task like that line that player it was just i never felt comfortable enough to be going into the game like oh this is gonna be easy because as soon as you start doing that you're done you like minus three in first period like you're just not but but you one of the things i was interesting and i pass this on to younger players is that you take it all as a business so when he played against marion hosa or michael hanzus he'd run him and i remember saying to you after games, I'd be like,

why are you running Michael or why are you running hosts? Like, you're not friends with him anymore? He goes, Matt, Matt, this is a business. No friends out there. And I'm like, keep hitting because we have arm breaks. Let's keep the points going. Yeah, they keep those stats now, buddy. And then he would literally come.

This was in Ottawa. I got to tell us. He comes out. He goes, they keep those stats now, buddy. Yeah, literally, you come to Susan, and he goes, in Ottawa? I got to tell us. He comes out, he goes, they missed three hits. Can you talk to somebody about this? You missed three hits. I'm like, oh, my God, the ARP case. We're out the window. No, you need to be in Madison Square Garden.

They just hand out hits there. For me, I was like, they missed a few shifts. Back just quickly to the cup year. Was the hit on Horton, was that a – I remember being at the game. It was right in front of where I was sitting and seeing your boy laying down like that. Was that kind of a big rallying cry for you guys? Yeah, definitely. I think that – I believe that was probably most intense and probably most watched.

That was crazy. One of the most watched Stanley Cup finals because there was so much stuff happening. But definitely one of the most favorite guys in the locker room and probably one of the better guys we had. He's scoring the OT. He's got game winning against Tampa,

game winning against Montreal. So there's a guy who's making like difference and being blowed out like that. And so definitely it gave us the extra motivation because it was just like, you hate to see your teammate laying down and being out like that. And especially after, I hate like that.

After the celebration on the ice in Vancouver, you guys all go in the locker room. I might have been in there too, but all of a sudden. He was not good. You were there? Oh, yeah. I was in there. Yeah, you poured beer.

I'm a guy like a boss. He was the creepy dude in the corner. Well, what was crazy was there was a riot going on a mile down the street, and you're having this great celebration. I remember one of the team officials came in and said to everybody, we got to get out of here. There a riot down the street the plane's waiting that that must have been pretty crazy for you guys to like have to screw kind of quick because there was a riot going on yeah we were first thinking somebody's joking right like okay like

what what do you mean there's right like okay there's probably upset fans this and that but then they said no there's actually like uh cars on fire uh uh the streets being shut down the the store's being broken uh you know literally there's you know lack of control of the you know i guess the police all that stuff so uh they eventually said okay we gotta leave and then when it's coming from our guys from pr guys like literally like we have to leave the city so the families had to um uh get on the bus go to the airplane and you know we were you know getting undressed you know and then quickly you're moving again the same direction so yeah it was crazy like then we watched it obviously news and what was happening happening. It was quite surprising that this would actually be part of the, you know, it was kind of sad to see.

Yeah, you're like, we got 150 grand to spend in Foxwoods. We got to get the hell out of here. Yeah. Was that your credit card, Z, that they put it on? I don't know whose credit card. Yeah, I mean, we landed in Boston. And besides two guys, all of us were obviously first time. So we didn't know what to do.

And obviously, as a captain, we went to the airport, people waiting. It was great to see parking in front of the garden, the crowd there. And then they're like, okay. And I'm having the cup. I'm like, what am I doing with it? I was like, yeah, take it. So they have a car service for me. So I get in the car and this car's

following me and i'll see helicopter then i live on the water right so there's a boats coming and parking in front of the boat's coming in front of uh my apartment and i'm like this is this is something right the neighbors come in everybody's like trying to take pictures and so we obviously nobody slept but uh then you go to ts and so andy uh fans you know we had probably 10 guys living in north end we all gathered uh our kids our families and when we went on the building on the rooftop and we took some beautiful pictures of uh of uh that morning beautiful sunny day and and uh with the background of the city and then uh a sunny day and and uh with the background of the city and then uh we took the cup in a baby stroller because it was heavier to carry through the whole north end and he brought like a baby

stroller like he put a cup there and we just uh we took a ts and we were we took a different uh restaurants and bars and so we had fun with it yeah it was it was nice ah i hate to go there but the 2013 cup versus chicago you guys banged up your battle, and Game 7 looks like it might happen. How did it just kind of slip away so quickly? Honestly, that felt like a one-punch knockout. We were all thinking, okay, we got this. Okay, just finish the game, control it, defend the lead. Boom, one, boom, two, boom, over.

We were shocked. We were shocked. We were shocked. Like, we were in locker room. We didn't know what happened. It just happened so quickly. And, yeah, literally, everybody. And talking to Hossa after, he's like, we were all thinking, like, okay, game seven.

Like, you know, we're going to go back to Chicago. We're going to play game seven. And we played really well in Chicago. And when that happened, we were all stunned. R.A. says if he was coach, you would have called the timeout after the first one to regroup things. Yeah, when they tied it.

Honestly, I can't even tell you what happened because until today, I didn't watch the game. Blocked it out. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. Good way to end the interview, R.A. But I can tell you, we were all sitting there just stunned laughter. Nobody said a word.

It was just like... And we kind of pretty much knew that with the salary cap, the business side, that was the last time we had that team together. It would be movements. It would be different things would be happening. So, and it did. And, yeah. So that was sad to see kind of a knowing kind of in the back of your mind that, okay, this

is the, this is the this is it for this group right i i just gotta ask too about you know 19 obviously too but you break your jaw and everyone's like holy shit what's gonna happen now was there anything that was gonna stop you from playing that game i mean you're back out there you had the face shield on but was there a chance they were gonna say like no you can't play do you remember how that all went down in the room after the game it happened or the next game when you came back? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I tried to come back the same game, but that. They're like Z. No, it's no. So, yeah, we stayed overnight in St. Louis. St. Louis. And I didn't sleep a bit. It was just like.

The pain. Bleeding, pain. Just kind of waiting and waiting for the morning to come. And finally got on the plane, went right from the plane to hospital, had my surgery done. So, woke up from my surgery and I'm actually feeling pretty good. So, I'm like, okay, like, it's pretty, like, not bad. So, you know, Don Sweeney came to see me. Cam Neely came to see me.

Like, how do you feel? How do you feel? I'm like, I'm feeling good. Like, I think I'm going to try to play. They're looking see me like how you feel how you feel i'm feeling good like i think i'm gonna try to play they're looking at me like whatever he's still like you're high still yeah he's still probably under the uh influences of the whatever morphine and and um but i'm like actually feeling pretty good and they know so now i'm talking to doctors and they all giving me the you know the the cautious of of what can happen right and like well okay i'm willing to take it and i want to go out there and then so i went for skate for a morning skate and i actually felt good i'm like okay i'm feeling good and then it comes you know

the lunch comes and i'm like oh am i gonna eat lunch so so actually there's a blender and i'm trying to get as much in me as possible, but it's tough. It's tough to kind of like refuel after. But I just felt like it was the right thing to do and I wanted to go out there and just help the team. Was the pain management for you just basically sucking it up? You weren't getting shot up or taking any? No, I took because I had multiple other things.

I didn't know. At that time, I didn't know. I had broken elbow. I had multiple other things. I didn't know. Which at that time, I didn't know. I had broken elbow. I had torn groin. I had the jaw. So I was under the painkillers. But that obviously, I only could take so much that would be healthy. So you still felt obviously the pain every time you got hit, the vibration.

And the Bruins didn't put any pressure on you to play. No, they were actually telling me, look, just take an extra day. We don't need you right now. Even we do need you, but health is more important. They were very, very good and respectful and all that. It was more me that I said, whatever waiver I have to sign, I'll sign. I just want to go and play.

Well, this has been, I mean, this is, I know we've went long, but this is just like the lessons that so many people listening are going to learn, man. Your story is incredible. What you've achieved is incredible.

I mean, fuck, listen to you. You're motivating me to be a better person. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing everything, Z. And thank you, Matt. Appreciate it. Happy to be here better person. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing everything, Z. And thank you, Matt.

Appreciate it. Happy to be here. Yeah, Cater as well. And we wish you the best in your retired life. No, thank you, guys. It's been a lot of fun. And like I said, I listen to your podcast. It's a great show.

And wishing you all the best and Happy New Year to your listeners and to you guys. And thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Our hot takes to McDavid's getting traded. Oh, yeah. Before we go any further, I want to talk to you guys about skip the dishes. Don't watch the game shorthanded.

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Earn points on every order and use your points to get more of what you love, free food. Whatever you're in the mood for, it's always a win for the home team with Skip. And if you're going to pregame, do it right. Order your favorite Skip order in time for puck drop and eat your face off. Did somebody say Skip? Man, huge thanks to Big Z for coming on with us. Like Whit said earlier, just an unbelievable interview.

Just a terrific guy, too. It's like the gentle giant everyone calls him. He's just such a perfect human being. And, of course, Matt Cade for making the thing happen. So hopefully everybody enjoyed that. Meanwhile, back to the NHL. Some tough scene in Raleigh the other night, Thursday night. Max Pacioretty, who just got back on the lineup about five games prior

after rehabilitating his Achilles after surgery. Well, the poor guy tore it again. You could see it was a non-contact injury, which is typically the worst kind. He skated off. He's a 34-year-old guy. I mean, this may be the end. You hate to say that, but just an awful scene that we hate to see in this league.

Awful. Anytime you see somebody, and this is like Robbie Fabry comes to mind, and it's like to see somebody come back and work so hard and then to have the same exact injury happen again, it just makes me sick to my stomach because it's like all you've done is grind and battle and mentally get through the rehab of like a pretty brutal injury. And like, if it's one thing, if something else happens, but to have the thing happen again, not only in your mind, are you thinking like, oh my God, I have to go through that again.

You just have to think like, is this, am I, am I fucked? Like, it's, it's not like I hurt my shoulder or hurt my knee. It's like, this is the same exact thing. What am I going to do? I would never count him out and think that this would be the end of his career. Just right now, you feel so bad for a guy and you feel bad for a team in which is buzzing, looking like another, another year of being a Stanley cup contender to add this guy in who gets three goals in four games. You're like, this is the perfect addition. Brenda more set a guy who could score goals, exactly what we need. And boom, he's gone for the same fucking thing that happened before. You just feel for him and you feel for that whole team.

And it just, it was a shitty thing to see. And you said it like those non-contact injuries. That's when you know stuff's bad. And to just see him grabbing like where his Achilles is behind his leg is just horrible. Fuck now. Now what do they do? Right. You got to imagine that that money's going to go on long-term IR.

So maybe they can make a move, but fuck to get a guy that can impact your lineup like that. And, and, and the way that he scored goals continuously year over year. Uh, yeah. Heart goes out to a man.

That's fucking nasty. And those Achilles injuries, man, like the pop and just everything you have to go through and the mental grind, as you touched on, it's fucking hell, man. It sucks. It's, you have to go through and the mental grind, as you touched on. It's fucking hell, man. It sucks.

It's a shitty thing. And that's a team you want to see. You like seeing different teams in the mix. That was a guy that was going to put them over the edge to potentially make a run. So let's hope they can fill that void and he can get back to playing at a healthy state sooner rather than later. Yeah, I definitely want to wish him the best. Let's see.

During Thursday's Tampa Bay-Edmonton game, they announced the rest of the All-Stars for the All-Star game weekend. The Atlantics, they added Austin Matthews, David Pasternak, Andre Vasilevsky, Metropolitan. Those are three surprises. Yeah. The Metro added Ilya Sorokin, Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, the Central, Connor Hellebuck, Miko Ranthony, Nathan McKinnon.

On the Pacific, Leon Dreisaitl, Stuart Skinner, and Bo Horvat. Skinner may be a bit of a surprise. The Oilers, Avalanche, and Rangers each had three players going, while the host team, the Panthers, only have one in Matthew Kachuk. Carolina fans were pretty pissed off. Like you said, Biz, we don't really care about the snubs. I think that's more for the fans and stuff. But the team was funny.

They actually, the Carolina Hurricanes retweeted the NHL, said delete your account. And like the Preds tweeted, oh, interesting. So it's kind of funny to see teams chirping the actual NHL account about their players not getting picked. Like Matt Natchez, I think, was the big one with that. The Carolina fans were pissed at. But they also

unveiled the jerseys, too, where they combined sort of the retro-reverse thing with the conference names, which we hadn't seen since the late 90s. And it basically goes off the shirt that Florida's first All-Star game was way back in 94. Did you like those jerseys? You're a fan of bringing them back? I kind of did.

The little pink in – I think it's the pink in both. One of them I saw is pretty cool. And I remember those were the jerseys that were worn at the All-Star game I was at when Ray Bork scored the winner in Boston, one of my favorite memories with my dad, skills competition the night before, and then going to the game the next day. Those jerseys were sweet, and I think these look a little cooler,

maybe a little more current, and it should be a fun weekend. I mean, we could be sitting here three years from now and there's no All-Star game. I'm sick and tired of talking about the snubs. If you're doing fan voting, the fan base is not it's not a snub that's how it's all being operated they should fucking mix in some interesting they should add the power slap to get get the one of the skills comp or the phone booth fights from russia you've seen those oh those are nuts well so is the power slap some guys don't know how to do it where it's not doing any damage.

And the other guys are just coiling and getting them busy with the fucking right at the bottom of the palm where it's probably worse than a punch. Oh, I actually I don't know. Biz was asked. Biz was asked to possibly be the host of the power slap show. I asked to go try out. I was asked to go to vegas to try out to be the the who's uh who's like a bruce buffer buffer is that the guy who announces all the boxers and you have he does the intros yeah you would have been great at that oh yeah welcome to the ring

i turned it down obviously with the busy schedule and i was like i don't know if i kind of want to be associated to this because it's going to be guys getting knocked out and it's going to be a bloody scene by the end of it. But what do you guys make of it so far? I've only seen the clips like online of just 300 pounders

just wailing away on each other. It looks like maybe the least fun thing I could ever imagine being a part of is catching like an absolute wind up slap to the face the one guy was standing in there and half his face was was swollen probably out about two to three inches past where it should normally be the whole side of his face you could barely can we switch to lefty yeah fuck so it's pretty dangerous so that's why that's why i didn't want to be a part of it

i don't support violence yeah it's not not I'm going to put on my DV office show. I can't listen to what I'm into. I'd rather watch Milf Island than Power Slap competition. Have you heard about this new game show? I saw some stuff. Is it Milf Manor? Yeah, Milf Island was the fake show, I think, about 30 Rock. He has got Milf Manor on TLC, I think is the name of this one.

Oh, okay. So maybe I got a mixed up. But the plot twist is I don't like not to sound like an asshole, but there's only a few of them. They're decent. They're like pretty old. But I guess that they got their sons. And that's probably why. So all the women's sons were the guys who showed up to the island. So you're competing against other guys to crush their moms, as opposed to your mom getting crushed.

How, how fucking pathetic does your family have to be to sign up for that? Now? It also makes more sense as to why it was maybe difficult getting as many attractive girls as they they'd imagined originally. Cause you got to get the mother, daughter, the,

the, the son, mother combo. You're like Teresa. How was my son's hog? Oh, great Lisa. It was awesome. You're like, Teresa, how was my son's hog? Oh, great, Lisa. It was awesome.

You trained him well. He lasted like an extra four minutes in bed. Well, yeah, that hog did come out of me. I birthed him. What a fucked up group of people. Seriously, talk about scraping the fucking barrel once again for reality shit. Fucking. Oh, it's

just getting worse, worse and worse. It is brutal. You do what you do on the bottom. He's so good and doggy. Yeah, I know his dad was too. I wonder if there's going to be an incest show at some point. Oh, yeah. That's already on like Alabama Public TV. Oh, fuck. I mean,

it's a tough segue and it's not something to laugh about, but other crazy shit. How about the Robin Leonard news? Oh my goodness. It's like NHL's version of the Tiger King and I feel so bad for the guy. Fuck. All right, do you want to tee us up? Yeah, kind of a crazy story. Robin Leonard,

the Vegas goalie who's on the IR right now, he had invested in a snake farm. I'm sorry, first go back. He filed for bankruptcy bankruptcy protection against whatever assets, but he invested in a snake farm in I'm sorry, first go back. He filed for bankruptcy protection against whatever assets, but he invested in a snake farm in Missouri a couple years back for $1.2 million, right? Well, the guy he was buying it off of got killed by his wife and a boyfriend or something. And basically, it kind of threw the snakes in a disarray.

They started reproducing without anybody babysitting them, thus devaluing the fucking value of all the snakes. They were all pythons and anacondas. So he had to file for bankruptcy and all this information came out. But just a wild, wild story biz. I mean, when you read about murder, anacondas, ball pythons and a hockey player, it's like ad libs of what kind of trash story you can put together. Yeah, I read the one article and my jaw dropped. You read the headline. You're like, OK, there's no way it's this crazy. And then you read it and you're like, oh my God. And then your heart sinks because Robin's been very vocal about the things that he's been through and the through personal stuff, go through more of this type of stuff. So I don't know.

I just hope he gets back on his feet. I hope that he makes an awesome comeback and all this gets resolved. And I don't know, maybe they can make a, make a funny show about it one day. Yeah, that was, that was tough to read. Knowing him a little bit. You know, you never wish that to happen to any athlete. And I saw like in, in some of the lawsuits are all of them. I believe his dad is involved.

So I don't know if, you know, that's his father that's making certain decisions. You know, you know, the horrific story of Jack Johnson and what his parents did to him. And you hope it wasn't a case of that. But fuck, man, people just, 20 years old. There's so many people that have no guidance in terms of what to that's two million and then you're paying you know all the different people in your life to do things accountants all these things it's like it's just you got to be smart with what you have and you got to realize it has to last forever so you never want to see something like this happen i i feel bad it's a bad there's been a couple cases, right? Now, over the last couple years, Evander Kane, now Robin Leonard, you probably shouldn't be taking out hard money loans if you're playing in the National Hockey League. I would strongly suggest against that. If it's for the short term and you know that the capital's coming in

and you can get that paid off right away, but guys, they just fucking crush you on interest and their interest can fluctuate. And it's a very, very messy game. So if it, for anyone out there and getting a bunch of money and you're a younger guy, make sure you're consulting the right people. Well, that's one of the things Biz and I were talking about this down Florida and this whole NIL thing in colleges now. And I mean, you hear stories, there's top recruits, they're signing 10, 15 million dollar NIL deals. You're like, all right, is anyone telling these kids what to be doing with this money? Because if you think you've heard some horrifying bankruptcy stories from athletes before, talk to me in five, 10 years when this NIL things really become a thing.

And you see 19 year old football players at Ohio State or wherever, and they're getting $10, $15 million, and all of a sudden, they don't have anything left, and they're not necessarily going to the NFL. It's like, there needs to be... I hope there's programs within the NCAA. The NCAA has run so well too. I'm sure it's being set up correctly. I think that you need to be teaching these guys how to invest, what to do. The whole problem being that you can't force anyone to do stuff with their money so i mean let's hope people are being smart and understanding that that this money is not going to be coming in forever and if you play a long career and then you look back and you don't have anything that just makes me sick all right moving right along here congrats to ryan miller he had his number 30 retired by the buffalo savings the other night one

of the best american goalies ever want to send a congrats to him. Speaking of people being donkeys, man, how about Shannon Schaap the other night at the NBA game? Oh, my gosh. I mean, he's probably a guest of the team. He was sitting on the court. Now, mouthing off to these guys, I mean, he's got to be in his 50s, talking shit to the players on the court,

then saying you don't want the smoke. He had an argument with one of the guy's fathers, like just kind of a donkey show the whole thing. Yeah, I don't even know. So he I can know one of the guy's father's like just a kind of a donkey show. The whole thing. Yeah, I don't even know. So he was yelling at John Moran, correct. And then I think he was separated from John Moran's father. It's like he's the host of the bigger sports hot take shows. Right.

I mean, him and him and Skip Bayless, they're always going back and forth together. And like, why are you I don't I don't even know the backstory. Did it come out of like what happened or was it just all Shannon? He was sticking up for LeBron because LeBron was was not getting the respect he deserved from the younger guys on the Grizzlies, right? The Grizzlies, Utah Grizzlies. I believe it was from Dylan Brooks, I believe, on the Grizzlies. So they were and you could see LeBron talking back to him.

He's like, you basically need to respect me. I think that LeBron is treated differently where in the latter part of MJ's career, there was nobody who would have said a fucking word to him. They were shaking his hand. They were fucking cleaning his sneakers off before the tip-off for crying out loud. Or maybe because of the times

and maybe the way LeBron handles himself, that some of the other players in the league chirp them and that's what was going on and Shannon Sharp being his buddy who was sitting courtside started getting in the mix with him where it's like buddy just sit down and enjoy the game like they're like could you imagine could you imagine in hockey

some fucking celebrity sitting on the glass getting in getting into it with a couple players because they're you know they're chirping at each other in front of the net at the scrum come on shannon sharp is a fucking house though i think he would dummy any of these guys yeah his chest is yeah he's he's a double d breast size i tell you yeah he had a statement basically apologizing but he also in the apology was saying well the guy should have been saying things to me that dylan brooks i think his name was so it's like yeah come on dude you're a fucking grown-ass man like don't you should be talking

shit and if it was anybody else they would have probably got tossed out lebron probably would have tossed out if he was talking shit well that's the thing that lebron had his back and it was like you've gotten people tossed for doing the exact same thing exactly way less i think yeah definitely way less so i saw like one of those instagram reels you're talking about jordan i don't know if it was the first time Jordan played Kobe, but it was one of the first times. And Jordan won and played way better. And he said to Kobe, you can wear them.

You can wear my shoes, but you'll never fill them. And I guess like Kobe's teammates telling the story and they played him again two weeks later. Kobe didn't talk to a person for two weeks, like furious dialed in. And then like when they played again, Kobe dropped 50 on him. Oh, fucking A. That's a story. Gee, I know we got a couple notes before we go here. Well, first off, thanks to

everybody down in Orlando on the East Coast League. They had the Pink Whitney night the other night. Oh, those were sick. They missed me in the costume. They also have some new Pink Whitney merch. I think Whit mentioned at the beginning of the show, the Pink Whitney Ski Club merch is now on sale. We got new Big Deal Brewing merch on sale, winter hats, tons of new stuff.

Barstoolsports.com slash Shicklets to check it all out. I wonder if I'll get a winter hat at some point. Maybe if I keep asking. Gee, we got a video coming too, a Big Deal Brewing making of video as well, dropping this week. Yes, on Wednesday this week, the making of Big Deal Brewing. Biz doing all his taste tests, going up to the factory at Labatt.

Basically, every step of the way we've been filming. So we're going to start to release that. That will come out on Wednesday. And have a terrific week, everybody. I'll see you next time.