The Athletic Hockey Show - A roundtable discussion on Eugene Melnyk, Wild fans Venmo Ryan Hartman, and digging into the loser point

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

In a roundtable discussion moderated by Sean Gentille and Craig Custance, Katie Strang, Ian Mendes, and Dan Robson discuss their piece on Senators owner Eugene Melnyk that was released on Thursday morning. Then, Ian and Sean McIndoe discuss Ryan Hartman of the Minnesota Wild getting fined for giving Evander Kane the finger, and Wild fans sending him money via Venmo. They dig into Sean's piece discussing the NHL's loser/bonus point, and wrap it all up with mailbag questions and octopus talk with "This Week in Hockey History". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back, everybody, to your Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. As always, it's Ian Mendez and Sean McAdoo. Down Goes Brown with you for the next hour or so. Coming up, we're going to have a little bit of fun with that, you know, Ryan Hartman, Van Der Kaine situation and fans paying the fine there. Sean had a really interesting piece about, is it a loser point? Is it a bonus point? How do we tackle that?

We're going to hit on that. We've got some great mailbag questions, too, from, from, from listeners, including a fun Chris Kreider related question we got on Twitter that I want to tackle. So we got all of that, a little this week in hockey history, and all of that is coming up.

But I'll tell you what, Sean, I want to open up this pod this week. Myself, Katie Strang and Dan Robson had a piece that landed on Thursday morning on the athletic. Kind of, I guess the best way to describe it is a very

comprehensive, exhaustive deep dive into the ownership tenure of Eugene Malnick at the helm of the Ottawa Senators. I think that's the best way to describe it. It is a look at his 19-year reign. It's got some good parts. It's got some bad parts. It's got some stuff in between. And obviously for me, and we're going to throw to something interesting here in a second

because Katie, Dan and I had a chance to have a roundtable discussion. And we're going to allow our listeners to hear that. but I want to ask you for your takeaway, like when you read it on Thursday morning, because I'm genuinely curious to know what people think about this reporting, about this story. Like, are there some elements that jumped out at you? Are there things that surprised you? Or what was your sort of takeaway from that reporting? Yeah.

I mean, I guess I would start by saying that it's a fantastic story. And all three of you should be proud of it. And I highly recommend that anyone listening to this who hasn't seen the story already take the time to go and and give it a read. It's, it is, as you say, it's very comprehensive and well-reported piece on a guy in Eugene Melnick who was, he was a complicated person, like a lot of us. And he was a flawed person, like all of us. And it is certainly not a piece that focuses only on the bad side, which I suspect is maybe what some people were looking for, and it's not that. It's, there is, you can certainly sense as a reader the strong effort that you guys are making to be, to be balanced here. And it certainly under the circumstances, with his.

recent passing, that's appropriate. But I think what really struck me reading it was that it didn't end up being, for me, necessarily exactly the story that I thought I was going to read. When I sat down to read this, I thought, okay, we're going to get some dirt here on what happened behind the scenes. What happened with the players? What happened with Alfredson and Carlson? What happened with his interactions with other players and that sort of thing? And certainly there's, there are, elements of that in the story. There are some absolutely bonkers anecdotes of him addressing players and from people who were in the room that are pretty stunning. But coming away from it, what really stuck with me was that this really isn't the story of the Ottawa Senators players

or even the story of the people in the front office that we know. This ends up being the story of people whose names we don't know and whose faces we wouldn't know. But the employees, the people who work under Eugene Melnick, the people who work for this organization and what they were subjected to and what that environment was like. And some of the stories about, you know, late-night emails, you know, a woman being called the C-word. his reactions to some of the Black Lives Matters stuff in 2020,

his reactions to the team putting out inclusive messaging about the LGBT community. And not just his views on that, but how that affected the people who were behind that messaging or the people who were pushing for a different message. And what was it like to work here? you're at this, at this company under this person. And it's, you know, it's, it's not Eugene Melnick's story. It's their story.

It's, and it's a story that needed to be told and that, you know, that these people want it to hear told. And, you know, frankly, as much as I'm certainly sympathetic, the situation with Eugene Melnick, with him passing, it's an awful time for his family and what have you. that circumstances doesn't erase the stories of these people. It doesn't change the fact that they live through what they live through. And it doesn't change the need for some accountability in the senator's organization for what happened and how it was handled. And what does the path look like going forward?

And frankly, I don't believe as a not a senator's fan, but as an Ottawa hockey fan who wants to see this organization thrive and do well. and for this community, I don't think it is served by pretending that the book is now closed on the Eugene Melnick era and we all just go forward and don't talk about it. I really feel like, you know, I came out of it with the sympathy and a better understanding of what it was like to be around this guy, what it was like to work for this team, and with renewed hope that it will get better based on the fact that we can talk about it and that we can describe what was actually going on that none of us were hearing about those days. You know, and so in the interest of accountability and transparency, I'm going to let our listeners

in on a little roundtable discussion. So again, in full disclosure, pull back the curtains, just based on timing of this podcast, we didn't know if it was going to work for Dan and Katie to jump onto this podcast. So we decided a couple of days ago that we would do a roundtable. And we had Craig Custins and Sean Gentile, kind of be the moderator, so to speak, of this roundtable. So what you're going to hear now for the next approximately 30 minutes and change. It's a roundtable discussion, Craig Custin's and Sean Gentile, again playing the role of kind of moderators. And then it's myself, Ian Mendez, Katie Strang, and Dan Robson. And we're going to explain our rationale for telling this

story when we did some of the obstacles and barriers we had in trying to report this in in in in previous weeks and months and we're going to hopefully give you some answers for why we did what we did and and when we did it um and we're okay to take some criticism i want everyone to know that it's okay to um to criticize us we're here to take the criticism we're not here to scurry away from it or anything like that. We're just simply here to explain why we did what we did. And again, have a listen. This is a roundtable conversation with the reporters who put together that story on Eugene

Melnick. Welcome back. We are now joined by three writers who have spent months at a minimum, I would say, on a story, maybe possibly years on a story that dropped today at the Athletic on Eugene Melnick, an investigative report that covers the life of probably one of the most complicated owners among the NHL's roster of owners. Ian Mendez, Dan Robson, and Katie String. First of all, thank you all for doing this.

And what an incredible job you all did on this story. Yeah, listen, appreciate it. First of all, I love being on the Tuesday pod. This is great for me. Yes. Congratulations. This is, yeah, this is the highlight of my week. I would say, though, you know what, for me, and you mentioned Craig that, look, this

has been a story that's been in the work probably for a long time for a lot of people. I couldn't have got this done without the support of Katie and Dan and their tireless work. Like, this was truly, and I'll let them speak to this. This required three reporters. I don't know of many stories that had so many tentacles that would require multiple reporters and three reporters, but this, as I think a lot of our listeners, hopefully if they read this story would understand it was such a layered story. It required three of us.

I mean, it did. And first of all, if you haven't read it, hit pause on this. Go read it. Give yourself the context and just the, you know, appreciation for the detail. These are, it's almost impossible to do stories like this on people who are guarded, who are litigious, who are, there's so many obstacles and barriers that go into this. And I'm looking at the three of you now and the different skill sets you each bring to the table as reporters and writers. And it really, you're right, Ian, it almost took, it did.

It took the three, like everything you all have to get it to the finish line. And so I do want to start there, Ian. I mean, you understood, I remember talking to you even before you were here. Just you understood the necessity to tell the story, I would say, to Senators fans who, who, who, you, who, you know, who struggled at times with what to think of the owner of the team. And also just your desire to do it. And so let's start there. Like when did that kind of hit you?

You're like, hey, this is something the fans want and really deserve to hear. You know what? I think for me, like the seed was probably first planted all the way back in like 2017, 2018, when you would start to hear stories about, you know, I'm hearing people aren't getting paid properly. or I'm hearing that there are issues internally. And it's a tough one, right? I think, especially as a beat reporter, right? Because what do we pride ourselves on?

It's access to the team, right? And so it's very hard to try and do those types of stories as a daily beat reporter because it's predicated on access and your access will be restricted or dialed back. And so it probably, and I think if you talk to a lot of people in the Ottawa media, they would have said the same thing. probably four or five years ago, you could start to see this forming as a significant story. But obviously, I think things certainly accelerated in the last 12 months, 13 months, where I think it became evident to us.

And Katie and Dan can speak to this, that there was a story here, that this wasn't just conjecture, that there was something concrete and tangible here that needed to be told to this market. Yeah. I'm going to move to Dan here and ask this question. So what Dan does so remarkably well is, as a reporter, is he digs into a story, earns, you know, the trust of people. And what was that process like for you in this kind of coming in cold?

And I don't want to make any assumptions. I don't know how much connection you had to Eugene Melnick or anybody in his life. But what was that process like for you in reporting the story? Well, at the start, I had zero connection. actually at all. I had sort of been, you know, reporting about sports and hockey specifically for some time and had heard, not as acutely as Ian had being so close to the team, but I'd obviously heard about sort of some of the things going on the organization. And, you know, I had interest sort of just as a journalist I'm looking into it a little bit. The process for me was, it was very interesting. I mean, I was able to get to know a few people closely in particular. One of the, I get to think key characters in the story is Sirhay, a close friend of Malnix who, he met through Malik's work in Ukraine and they became close friends, almost like a father-son relationship. And I've been speaking to him for quite a long time.

And I think the challenge with something like that is you're talking to somebody who does deeply love a man. He has a connection to him. But as we go through in the story, there was also a period of rejection and sort of seeing some of the ups and downs of of Eugene's personality that I think get played out. We saw another reporting and this was a very intimate look inside of that. And so being able to speak with Sierra Hay and sort of reflect exactly what he felt, I mean, I think it was also important to establish the love that he does still have for this man, especially after he's passed away and is reflected on it.

I think that, you know, relationships can be complicated and I think it was important in a story like this to in some way reflect that. Yeah. And then Katie, this was a long reporting process. A lot of phone calls, a lot of documents. And then it's already complicated. And then Eugene Melnick dies. And it changes the tenor of the story. It changes a lot.

What did it change from your mind and how you had to approach to this story? in some ways it changed a lot and in some ways it changed nothing so and when I say the latter I mean this from the very beginning we sought out to do something very simple which was simply to tell the truth and you know it actually was for us more I mean it became more than just like telling and reporting the truth it became like we had to excavate the truth I mean not how many layers of fear and paranoia that we had to really wade through to get at the truth. And along the way, you know, it became very apparent to us early on that there was a lot of complexity to this story, that the truth was going to be messy and complicated and at times

unpleasant and unpalatable. But in the conversations that we had after he passed, we sort of went back to the original goal and objective, which is to tell the truth. And so that despite all those things that our reporting became, both when he was alive and in his death, we were not going to abandon our mission, like our goal, simply because it became very hard. And that was really important to us. And, you know, we had a lot of, like, conversations in the immediate aftermath. And, you know, one thing that Dan said that really, like, you know, resonated with me in particular

was, you know, we want to write a clear-eyed account of this man's legacy. And so in that way, there was a bit of a recalibration. So I think when we were, you know, the majority of the time we were reporting, and we were pretty close to the finish line when he did pass, We wanted, I mean, we were examining his sort of active imprint on the organization in a way that was like very real and ever present and ongoing. And so we did have to recalibrate to some degree for it to no longer sort of, I mean, not be so much as an active ongoing imprint and how does this get dealt with.

But, you know, an overarching look on his legacy. But, you know, I'm like, I'm so, like Ian has said, like, we were so lucky to have each other in, like, you know, bouncing off of each other really difficult subject matter. But, like, I'm proud that we, like, really steeled ourselves and stayed true to the original goal. And, you know, I'm sure that there will be some level, like, mixed reaction to that. but I think, you know, sometimes in this sport, like it feels like telling the truth is a very radical act. And I'm glad and I'm proud that we did that. Yeah.

And listen, if I can just piggyback off that for a second, Craig and Sean, you know, one of the things that I also thought was really important was after Eugene passed away, I went back, and I'm sure Katie and Dan did too. I went back to a number of sources who helped us along the way. And I gave it a few days and I said, how do you feel if we still report this story? Because it's their, and this is what's really important. It's their story.

It's not our story, right? And it's somebody else's story. And it's a huge responsibility and a privilege when somebody shares with you sensitive and personal information. And when something as seismic as Eugene Malnick passing away occurs, I think it behooves you to go back to them and make sure, are you okay? And I got to tell you, unequivocally, every single person I went back to, players, coaches, management, staff members, whoever, they all said, I hope you're still pursuing this

story. The truth needs to be told. And I think what's really important, and I know we're going to take, we'll take some criticism from some people who say, how dare you disrespect a person who's passed away. I think our response to that is simply, hey, listen, the truth doesn't have an expiration date, does it? The truth doesn't have an expiration date. And we set out, as Katie said, to tell the truth. We feel like at the end of the day, all we have to do is be able to look ourselves in the mirror and be proud of ourselves and journalistically feel like we had integrity. And I think all three of us feel that we can do that.

And, you know, the other thing is like someone, you know, an employee said this to me once, and it stuck with me. The person said, this organization is sick. And it starts from the top down. And, you know, what the person meant was like that sort of the nexus of the dysfunction could be traced all the way back to ownership in that, you know, Eugene Melnick's sort of behavior and conduct set a tone for what was acceptable and what was not within the organization. But that is very rarely like just isolated to one person.

I mean, that had a very sort of like insidious effect in terms of permeating. all aspects of the organization. So while, you know, that, you know, he obviously is, you know, not going to have a role in the organization from this point forward, I do think there was still a concern that like there are some things that have become so deeply entrenched and have been some sort of like inextricable that there's concern that this will continue to fester if there's, truth is not told if there isn't some level of like accountability or reflection or you know when there's a sickness when there's an illness like the first thing to do before you remedy that is to diagnose it

and so you know i think for us it was really important for the people who provided us that gift of trust to have their experiences reflected in the story their realities reflected in the story, their truth reflected in the story. Because to be like sort of seen and heard and understood is a really like important thing for people. And every single person that talked to us, they took a risk by doing so. And they were not animated by having an axe to grind or being disgruntled. Whenever you report like a workplace dysfunction story, and those are really difficult ones to report. By far the most animating, um, animating force is when you love an institution and you like have, you know, sort of an affinity for an institution or a team or an organization that you

want to keep like that there's a sanctity that. You want to keep that pure. You want to preserve that love. And often that like you don't want other people to endure what you had to go through. And so all those things, none of those things changed when he passed. And so that's what I think really galvanized our resolve to see this thing through. Dan, you mentioned Sirhay as, you know, a really important part of the story. And to me, almost captures the complexities of Eugene Melnick, right? Like, you see the relationship form out of good to begin. And then, And there's, you know, it turns sideways and there's almost conspiracy theory. Like some of the things that we saw publicly you saw in this personal relationship.

And then it doesn't, you know, then it almost kind of redeems itself. It was really, it was this interesting character arc almost. And I'm just curious in getting to know him, what did you learn about Eugene Melnick? You know, it was a fascinating experience because I was obviously following the reporting that Katie and Ian were doing and just, they were just, I mean, incredibly in-depth, relentless reporting. And we were getting, a picture was emerging,

I guess, of the organization as Katie was just sort of talking about. And I, in speaking with Sirhay, and we spoke for a while before he was, you know, willing to actually speak with me on the record and be part of the story, I could see these sort of threads bearing out in a personal relationship that weren't dissimilar

to almost how Eugene appeared to be treating the organization and people within the organization. you kind of hear the stories of being supportive of someone and gaining the trust and then completely rejecting them the minute that it seemed like they were against him in some capacity. And seeing it with Sirhay, it was, I just think it was very pronounced in that particular relationship because it was rooted in a in a friendly loving relationship. It had been, it began out of a place of, you know, altruism and genuine desire to help. him and to bring him, you know, he'd grown up in the foster system in Ukraine and he came to

Barbados and lived in Barbados and was there for a time and had, you know, shared dinners with him and had, you know, went to Bert's Bar, the bar who we used to watch the senators with him and throw his family around and just had a real affinity for him. Eugene gave him his dog, Stevie, you just sent me a photo of his dog yesterday. Actually, he still has him with him. And there's this sort of, you know, connection. But then when it turns, it turns quickly and abruptly in it and almost completely. And it was, you know, as we laid out in the story, it was, it wasn't, he wasn't willing to allow Syria any sort of engagement in his life unless the disagreement, which was over and alleged that for $12,000 that had gone on between them

until he'd admitted some sort of fault, even though, you know, Syria swore he had not had any sort of, any sort of, any sort of, part in that. And so I think seeing how quickly things fell apart. I think it shone a sort of a very introspective look inside of how Eugene sometimes create had dealt with his relationships. And I think that when you can extrapolate that through all the other great reporting in the story to see how the senators almost in a way that the fan base, everyone involved sort of had that connection to it, especially for the beginning. You know, the story starts with this glorious moment when when Eugene joins the team in the Eagles concert plays and this is the beginning, this new beginning for a franchise that was in danger.

And he was sort of the savior coming in to fix it all. And so I think that we saw some of those complicated feelings after he died as well. And, you know, people trying to talk about, you know, the man and to pay respect, which he deserved, absolutely. But also to, as Katie mentioned, sort of having a clear-eyed look at the complexity of how that played out. The involvement with Sirhay was, I mean, you don't want to say perfect because you don't want to frame story elements that way. but that was Eugene Melnick in miniature, right? Where he's, it's, it starts out, or has that close personal relationship is, you know, father figure and all that. And then it derails.

There's paranoia and there's, and there's money that's involved and there's, and there's weird claims. And then the end result is, in the end result is complicated. You know, I thought, you know, I go back to something you wrote. immediately after he died. And you said you weren't sure whether he was a good person who did bad things or a bad person who does good things. And I think that's such a, it's an honest and I think, you know, an honest way to sum up a difficult, a difficult relationship or a difficult man. But I mean, do you have, do you have, do you have an answer for that now? Have you gotten a better idea of how to treat his legacy and treat him as a man in full?

No, I haven't. And I think that's what's so fascinating about this is that I still think it'll take a long time for us to absorb this man's legacy. And I think you're right. The relationship with Sirhay is the great illustration of that because here's a man. You can't say that he's not caring because at the very end he tried to or he did. he sent him money to get his family out of Ukraine. Like, you don't do that unless you have some goodness in you, right? But at the same time, that goodness seems to be offset by some, you know, very toxic traits that that seem to create this very – look, here's what I think about Eugene Melnick.

I think he's the last in the line – if you think of great, colorful, controversial, singular owners of sports teams, Steinbrenner, Ballard, March, Shot, Charlie. Finley with the A's back in the day. Like, Eugene is almost a throwback to that. And I don't know how often you will see that again in professional sports. The singular owner who runs his kingdom in a very unique way and has all sorts of, you know, larger than life personalities. I don't know that we're going to see this again. And to me, he remains a very fascinating character that I think we'll probably be

studying for years beyond, you know, our reporting here. When did you know that this was, I mean, obviously it was always going to be a story. We've covered and been around Eugene Melnick and the senators for a year. I mean, this is something that people have tried and failed many times it do. But when did it crystallize that Eugene Melnick was not just that this, that it elevated beyond just honestly weird rich guy behavior? that this was that this was systematic and and something worth delving into, you know, to the level, to the level that you guys, that you guys worked on it. Because, I mean, because it is.

We'd seen the forensics investigation and then talking about Matt Cook. And there was always these, you know, there were those threads that alluded, I think, to something like the story that you, that you guys laid out. but but it was also from the outside it was like well that's just that's just that's just that's that's just that's this he's he's the he's this singular crazy you know uh one of you know last of a dying breed uh NHL owner so when did when did it you know like I said when did it crystallize that this is that this was a huge story in there and that there was something systematic and that there were power structures and and all that all that stuff that makes this a good story and a story worth

telling in a way that is not just hey, Here's Eugene Melnick. He's, you know, the wild man who won't the Ottawa Seminers. You know, I'm actually interested to hear Katie and Dan's answer on this, and I'm not trying to punt on the question. I just think I'm so involved in it and I'm so immersed in it and I cover it. It's sometimes really refreshing to get an outsider's perspective of, hey, when did you realize that this was a story worth per second? So again, both of you have done over the course of your careers fascinating deep dives, personal, you know, features on people. So I'm curious, when was that moment for both of you, that you're like, wow, this is a fascinating story that goes, as Sean said, beyond just the scope of a normal owner. For me, I think that was pretty apparent, like, almost as soon as we started making calls.

And I think the reason why was the fear was so evident. You know, as we wrote in our story, like people were scared to put his name in writing. people were terrified to talk to us. But it was interesting. Like even the people that did not want to talk to us and said, hey, like, I'd love to talk to you, but I'm scared shitless about getting sued, which was a very legitimate concern because he's highly litigious. Or they'd say, you know, I signed an NDA, so I can't breach that contractual binding language or what have you. But it almost felt like every single person, even if they were terrified, we always got like a bit of a like, hey, I'd love to help, but I can't. But like, keep going down this road. Like, this is the right, you need to do this. Like, I wish I could help you. And maybe there's a time where I can. But this story needs to be done. But I can't risk X, Y, and Z to do so. You know, I don't, when this story took us a long time. I always, like, refer to big investigations like a pregnancy. And this one, like, definitely reached the fourth trimester.

And a big part of that were like sort of the institutional barriers, like the litigiousness, the NDAs, like the fear, the paranoia. And we'll be honest, like there are people that are still scared. I mean, this is like pretty wild, but there are people still scared to talk about him even after he has died. And I suspect that, you know, in the coming days and weeks, there will people who probably read and I don't. identify their experiences within the story who might feel emboldened or more comfortable to talk about what they experienced as well. But it was immediately apparent what we were up against. Whenever you write a story about like extreme like toxicity, cultural dysfunction, there are like both sort of external internal forces that work to like thwart and stymie your reporting. And that was

immediately evident in this pursuit. Absolutely. And I just want to commend the work of Katie and Ian in this. And I just every time I speak with them, they did have had conversations and were working. When I said Relentless, quite constantly, this story hasn't sort of been on the backburner at all. It's been, it's been very much at the forefront of our efforts and both of them did such an incredible job, just going back to sources and trying to speak with them again and talk to them. I know the conversations I had to echo what Katie was just saying, I've written a lot of difficult stories, but I, as soon as I call and say, you know, this is what I'm writing about, just the, there's almost

this pause of like a chill, like a fear. And I think the first time I, I can think of one conversation where that was the first time I thought, okay, we've got to keep going here. Like this, this isn't just sort of like, oh, there's nothing to see here. There's clearly something to look into more deeply here. I think, and specifically for me, the, when the documents for the the internal workplace review came out and we were reading through that. And I think it was just an incredible, you know, look at underscoring everything that we had looked at in the past and been talking about. It sort of said, okay, here it is.

Here's a review. They had this information. We've known about this for some time. We know that at the heart of this, as it states in the review, there's Eugene Melnick at the top of it. And when that came out in terms of looking through it, I thought, okay, like, this is just sort of in the flesh here is everything that we knew to be true. How much of the reporting, and I think I know what the answer is going to be, but how much of the reporting that made it into the story was done before he died? 95%.

Nice. I was right. That was my guess. Sweet. I win. I win. Good job. Thanks, ma'am. And like, we've had to, it, it, it. Okay, so when you start on like an investigation like this and you start like maybe your initial month or two of calls, there like a picture kind of starts to form. And what you have is you have on one poll what you know. And then on the other poll is what you can report to the degree of specificity that you really will preserve the integrity of the journalism. Right. And so your goal to get to the finish line is to move those polls so that they like meet. right so that you can basically get out, you know, the essential stuff of what you know.

And like, you know, there were, with our goal being like we wanted to tell the most complete, thorough, comprehensive, like narrative arc of his legacy, there were things that we felt were not just like germane, but essential to the story to be able to tell it right. And there's like that, it's like that, um, theatrical or literary philosophy called like Chekhov's gun, which is like, you know, in a play, when you introduce a gun to the audience, you have to use that gun by the end of the play, right? And there were certain things that we learned about in the reporting process that once we knew we're out there and existed, we, we we knew that we had like sort of a journalistic duty to fight tooth and nail for to include.

You know, that's part of what took a very long time. And I'm like, I'm really happy that we did. You know, sometimes patience can be really tough in a story like this. But the more patient and dogged you can be, the more complete and nuanced and, you know, compelling. story you can write. To me, the checkoff's gun almost was some of those emails that, you know, that you were able to include. And Katie, I'll ask you this.

If you're a millionaire athlete and you're scared to speak out about somebody, which, I mean, that's, that senators' players were. And I don't know if scared. We're just reluctant or didn't want to. if you're just a regular employee of a hockey organization, there's a lot on the line when you speak out or share documents. And I think I learned as much about Eugene Melnick reading some of that

than any other portion of the story. What did you learn about what it was like to work for Eugene Melnick at that level, as an employee of the senators and not in Daniel Alfredson or whatever. Well, I mean, I think you learn a lot about someone by the way they speak and treat people who either they view as subordinate to them or people that, you know, cannot provide them with certain advantages or leverage or have you. So I think, you know, whenever you're sort of examining a power imbalance, the way someone

speaks and treats someone, I think is really important. And in that way that those emails were really revealing. And, you know, sometimes like sports reporting, it's treated like the sandbox, right? Like, we're all just kind of playing around having fun. But the reality is like some of us. Don't name any names here. Workplace dysfunction stories are so hard to report. because they're like they're not really like a segment of your life like they really like seep into every part of your life so what I hope people understand is that when you like when you work in a toxic abusive shitty environment when you have like a tyrant as a boss like it doesn't just affect your work it affects your relationships it like disrupts your home life it impacts your

physical and emotional and mental health. Like, I mean, we talked to people that were in therapy that were like, you know, I mean, people suffered. And we thought like that that really needed to be known. So that people, one, don't continue to suffer. But, you know, this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. And I think in hockey over the past like year or so, I think there's been a bit of a reckoning about, you know, stuff that people speak up about in what's, you know, I think

there's some reconciling of what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior. And I think it's pretty clear that his was beyond the pale. All right. We're up against that. We're our 30-minute window that we had kind of carved out for this. But Ian, we started with you. We'll let you wrap up. Now that the story is out there, now that you're done with it, look, like, it's an emotional time. I know, you know, talking to you guys, there's not a lot of sleep being had. It's stressful. What are the emotions that, that you kind of felt through this process and now that you're, now that's out there? Yeah.

You know what? And it's funny because, you know, I think for, for a lot of us, and Katie can probably speak to this, too, for months. This story kind of became this urban myth amongst Ottawa offense. When's the Katie Strang story? Because when you, and that's a function of when you speak to so many people, they speak to people, they speak to. And so now people know that, hey, listen, the athletics working on something. So I think like my biggest emotion is relief personally. But I hope that it's also mixed in with a little optimism here, that we can get to better days.

And look, I'll put this into terms that Gentilly can understand. Okay? Because Gentile, he likes to speak slowly, my friend. He likes his movie references. And I'm going to go Lion King with you guys here. Okay. So if you remember at the end of Lion King when scar and you look at the way that that, it was scorched earth, it was damaged, there was a couple of hyenas hanging around them.

Well, guess what? my hope is that the kingdom can return to where it was when Mufasa was running this thing. And maybe Daniel Alpherson was Mufasa who got thrown off the cliff. I don't know. But that's how I feel. I feel like we're at that point at the end of the Lion King when SCAR exits stage left. And now we've got this opportunity for this great new beginning in Ottawa where people can look forward to an organization that is responsible. that runs with integrity

and hopefully runs with some accountability and transparency. And that's really what I'm hoping for here is that I'm hoping to walk away from this with optimism more than anything else. Sean, do you want to respond to him explaining things to you in cartoons? Yeah, I would just like to say that we're going to spend the entire third segment of the show assigning Lion King characters to everybody

throughout the history of the Senator's franchise. I need to figure out who Danny Heatley is. It might be Zazu, but two kids. I don't know. Probably. Well, Ian, Dan, Katie, thanks for joining us. Thanks for taking us through this story. Complex, hard, you know, impressive in its scope and recording.

Great job, as always. And, yeah, thanks for doing this. Thanks, thanks for having us. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you guys. All right. So listen, I hope everybody enjoyed or at least appreciated that conversation, the roundtable conversation about that piece that we dropped.

And listen, I'm sure that there will be more questions and we'll be certainly willing to answer those in the days and weeks ahead. All right, lots of other things to get to, though, in the hockey world that don't have anything to do with that. And, you know, the first thing I want to get to, though, is the Ryan Hartman fine, Sean, for giving the finger to a Vander Cain. And I love this movement, the Venmo movement, of wild fans stepping up to pay Ryan Hartman.

And I, you know, it's fascinating to me. Like, how did we feel about that fine, by the way, to Ryan Hartman for the middle finger to a VanderKey. Yeah, it's a fine. I mean, the, the NHL should absolutely find a player for making an obscene gesture in the middle of a game in front of, you know, 18,000 fans and however many people are watching on TV.

It's perfectly appropriate. it. And it's, you know, I don't, I won't claim to know Ryan Hartman's finances inside and out, but I think even if he had been forced to cover it on his own, he probably would have been okay. And now he doesn't even have to do that because the fans jumped up. But no, I mean, of course it should be a fine. It was a small one, as we all know, that's all the league can do with these guys. So, yeah, no, it was, it was a perfectly appropriate thing to find a guy for. Yeah, listen. And, and, and to me, like, the Evander Kane, like, his ex jumping in and dropping in $200 into that, uh, go fund me type of thing was unbelievable. Like, and, like, it's, like,

I always think about that line from a couple of years ago, remember the NHL, no soap opera is just hockey? And any time something like this comes up, I'm like, this feels like it's out of a soap opera that advantage of James X. Doesn't it feel like ever since they sent that tweet that, uh, that it's been nothing but constant soap operas ever since. Like, I don't know what monkey paw they accidentally triggered when they put that out. But holy smokes, it never ends now. Yeah. So anyway, and I know that Mike Russo is going to be connecting with Hartman at some point on Thursday.

So I would encourage our listeners to check out whatever Mike Russo has on Friday in regards to Hartman and the fine. I think it's going to be something pretty fun. So I want to talk about something that you put in the athletic this week because this has been a crusade of yours for a while. And it's funny because it's, in some ways it feels like, oh, man, we've had this debate before, whatever. And then you read the comment section and you're like, this is clearly a point that people aren't tired of talking about,

if that makes sense. Like even though we've talked about the point system and loser points, there's still an appetite for that conversation and for everything to kind of be recalibrated. 400 comments and counting. Exactly. It was 380 or something when I looked, whenever I looked at it, I'm like,

man, this is north of 350 comments. What I want to know from you is, and it's hard to get a consensus from 400 some odd comments, but were there some takeaways from people? And again, the article was just, again, talking about, is this a bonus point? Is it a loser point? And where we're at with three-point games of the NHL?

Yeah. And this comes from something where, look, If anyone has been following me over, you know, the course of my writing career, I've been banging this drum for a long time. I hate the loser point. And I call it a loser point. I've called it that going back to the Grantland days. We're talking, I mean, it's close to a decade at this point where I have been, in my view, simply pointing out that the emperor has no close, that this system does not do what the NHL says it does. Whenever you push them on it, they say, well, it makes the playoff race is closer.

doesn't. And it doesn't, if you even think about it for even a few seconds, because everybody in the league is getting loser points. It would be like saying, we have a problem with income inequality, so we're going to give everybody $100. That doesn't fix the gap. And the playoff races don't get any closer because you give every single team loser points. And you know, you might think that while the bad teams get more, and it doesn't really work that way. There's a small uptake for the worst teams, but it's not anywhere what you think it was. And I wrote about this a couple years ago where I broke down the numbers and said, look, this isn't doing what the league says it's going to do. And whenever I say that, I always do have people who come to me and say, wait a second,

though, you're calling it a loser point, but it's not. It's a bonus point. And I say, no, no, it's a loser point. You get two points for a win in the NHL. That's how it's always been for over 100 years. What is new in these three-point games is that the losing team gets a point. Therefore, it's a loser point. And other people say to me, well, no, no, that's not the case, though, because we used to have ties in the NHL. And when you had ties, each team got one point. And all we're seeing now is they've basically brought that concept back. We have regulation ties. When you're playing five-on-five hockey, if the game is tied after regulation, each team gets a point. And then you get into these weird kind of skills gimmicky competition things, like three-on-three overtime, like the

shootout, and those are fun maybe, but they're not real hockey. And so those aren't real wins, but it's a bonus point. You get a bonus point for winning that, but it's a bonus point. The points, the two points that we're used to is a regulation tie. And I will be honest, for a while, I looked at that and I was like, that's a semantic argument. I mean, really, who even cares? Bonus point, loser point. The system's broken. But the more I thought about it, and the reason that I ended up writing this piece was I realized that how you view it is actually, very, very important, because for as long as we're stuck with this system, which it appears we're going to be in the near, for at least the near to medium future, because the league has

demonstrated no desire to change it, whether you think it's a loser point or a bonus point, really actually changes your view of the standings and of these teams. If you look at a team that's got, you know, let's say they've got 15 loser points and you're going, man, this team stinks. They, you know, their record might be, they've got 30 wins. They've got 30 wins. they've got 20 losses and 15 loser points. Well, they're over 500, but no, they're not. They're losing more games than they're winning. This team stinks.

They're getting propped up by a loser point. Somebody else might look at it and go, wait a second. They're three and 15 in overtime in the shootout. That's a good team in five on five, but they're getting screwed over because they're having bad luck when we get to flipping coins in overtime in the shootout, which we know doesn't really do a lot to demonstrate a team's actual true talent and skill to us. So if it's a bonus point, you look at that team and go,

that team is underrated, that team is better than we think. If it's a loser point, you look at the team and say, that team is way worse than we think. It really does matter. Now, to answer your question, did I get to a consensus on whether it's a loser point or a bonus point? No, not at all. It seems like it's a pretty even split, at least based on the comments. Did I get to a consensus on what the system should be? No, absolutely not.

And this is a big part of the problem is even the people who say, yeah, the system needs to change. We all have our own ideas of what it should be. Everybody splits off into their little smaller camps, and we don't achieve enough of a consensus to really push the NHL on changing this. Here's the one consensus that I did see. I met, as I said, over 400 comments and counting, and it continues to go up. Every time I hit refresh, there's more and more people.

And I have waited into the comments, and I've tried to read every single one. I'm not sure if I got them all. Maybe I missed a few, and I apologize if I did. but I have at very least read as many of the comments as I can. And without exaggeration, I have not seen one single comment from somebody saying, actually, I like the current system. I have not seen one single person jump in and go, wait a second, you're attacking the system.

No, the system is good. The system works. I like the system. This is, you know, I'm in favor of it. And I can tell you virtually anything else that I ever say, because I spend a lot of time looking at the league and thinking about it going, how could things be better? and I will very often jump in and say,

I think this should be, you know what, I don't like the puck over glass penalty. That should be treated like icing. I say that immediately. I have people jump it and go, no, no, it's fine. I like this rule. It's a good rule. And, okay, that's great.

I mean, they're allowed to argue. I can say, they should make the nets bigger. We should increase scoring and people will jump in and go, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Keep the net's the same size. I really like the status quo. There is not one person out there that I can find who seems to think that the current system

is good. Who seems to think that the way we're doing it right now is the right way to do it. And that is remarkably rare, certainly in the hockey world, I would imagine in the sports world that you can offer an opinion and say something is broken and nobody is willing to stand up and say the status quo is a good thing. And I think that should be in a league that really cared about how it was perceived and what its fans slash customers thought of it, that sort of thing would be deeply be concerning to the NHL. I'm not convinced that it is to them. I'm not convinced that they care at all. It seems to me that the 32 GMs who vote on this stuff are happy about it. And why wouldn't they be? It's artificially inflating their records. They're the only ones who benefit from it,

but they're the only ones who vote on it. So I think we're stuck with it. But that's what really jumped out at me. Because you can't say anything about the NHL without everybody splitting it and saying, yes, I'm in favor. No, I'm not. And then they start yelling at each other. there's nobody in the 400 strong comments here saying, I actually like the current system and we should leave it as is. Yeah. And again, that speaks volumes. Like not even just one NHL employee that's, that's, you know, lurking on our site in the comment section. Not even, not even they could jump in and pretend that I like the three points.

Apparently not. Yeah. Nobody is sitting there. And look, it's, there are different reasons why people don't like it. But I really feel like, Like I said earlier, it's an emperor has no closed situation. When this, when we first introduced the loser point in 1999, there actually was a reason behind it, which is that there were a lot of ties. There was a perception that sudden death overtime had become this boring five minutes slog because teams were just playing for the time. Teams got to overtime.

They said, we've got a point. Let's not blow it by going for two. And so it was a very, what should have been an exciting part of the game ended up being very dull. So I will give the league, I will give them that credit that they were fixing what was perceived as a legitimate problem in 1999. But then 2004, the shootout comes along. We don't have ties anymore. So we don't need this system anymore.

And yet they keep it in place. They've tried to tell us it makes the playoff races closer. They will point out that the playoff races are closer and they are. That's not because of the loser point. That's because we have a salary cap. We have this error of parity. I mean, that isn't because of the standing system. So, you know, there really is no good reason to have this anymore other than that it makes 25 out of 32 teams be over 500 every year.

It makes all these GMs look better than they are. They can go to their owners and say, hey, I've gave you a winning team. They can go to the media and say, you know, we have a winning record. They can go to the fans and say, hey, come watch us. We're over 500. Even though they lost 10 more games than they won, that's the only benefit. And that doesn't benefit fans in any way. And I feel like every fan, by now, it's been long enough that you've had the situation where, you know, yeah, maybe it makes sense in theory to say, if we give points for losing, then, hey, even if my team loses games, we're still staying in the race.

But by now, you've had the situation where your team is trailing a race and you're looking at the standings going, hey, we won three games this week and we didn't gain any ground because the other teams ahead of us are getting these points for losing. and we've all had the experience of watching two teams that your team is chasing, play each other, and you're just sitting there watching the game going, I know this game's going to overtime. They're going to play for overtime. It's going to be a three-point game. We're going to lose ground on both of these teams. This stinks. And, you know, to me, that's the real problem with the current system is, you know, yes, does it look dumb that we give points for losing?

Yes, of course it does. Is it confusing that some games are worth more than others and you don't know until the game's over how many points it was worth? Yes, of course. That is very dumb. But the real problem is, in the third period, what should be excited, it's a tie game, third period. This should be really exciting stuff. Instead, we get two teams just kind of batting the puck back and forth playing for a tie. And people have looked at the numbers and they see that.

The scoring rates plummet, the closer you get to overtime. Of course they do. You've given an incentive to teams to get to overtime. And so while overtime itself is a lot of fun and exciting, the third period stink now, because we've incentivized teams to play for the tie. I've said, I wrote a piece a couple years ago where I said, look, if you actually want to make the playoff races closer, what you need

to do is only give loser points to teams that are not currently in a playoff spot. That would actually do what the NHL says they want to do. That would make the races closer. If you were out of the race, you could get extra points. If you were, you wouldn't. It would put a little bit extra win

behind the sales of the bad teams. But nobody wants that. And the reason nobody wants it is because the part that we've sort of skipped over when we talk about this is, we say, well, it makes the playoff race is closer. Well, closer than what? What's the second half of that sentence? The second half of that sentence is it makes the playoff race is closer than they should be. And when you say it like that, suddenly everyone goes, well, the league shouldn't be doing that. You don't put your thumb on the scale and try to make the races closer. They should be as close or it's not close as they deserve to be based on how the teams are playing and who's winning and losing. And that's it. So even the rationale the league offers, when you really think about it, isn't something that we should be wanting to see and supporting. But again, it just feels like fans are so beaten down by this and so beaten down by immediately then arguing, okay, well, it should be a 3-2-1 system. No, no, we should just go back to ties.

No, no, we should have the shootout, but it's two points for a win, zero for a loss. And it just ends up being this total mess of opinions. And it creates this perception that there's all this argument and nobody can agree. So we might as well keep the status quo. And it masks the fact that based on what I'm seeing, an overwhelming majority of hockey fans do not like the status. status quo. And I'll tell you, a lot of them really don't like it and really get fired up when you talk about it. I get fired up. You can hear that. The fact that I've just monopolized the last five minutes, I get fired up about this topic. And man, I will tell you at some point in our

lifetime, the league is going to change this system. And we are then going to look back almost immediately and go, what the hell were we thinking for however many decades we had this? And why are the standings all screwed up for decades and nobody did anything about it? Okay, real quick, before we open up our mailbag. We actually do, I'm going to jump ahead, sneak ahead with a mailbag question because it relates to this. And the reason why I want to bring this up because it's, it's about the loser point, bonus point. This is from Keith, who sent us an email. And Keith's idea, I'll just give you a real quick version, is basically what if the NHL for these extra points, they took something out of what

Keith says is what they do in rugby, in rugby union, which is based on the score, you allocate the extra point. So Keith's idea is what if the NHL decides to give out a bonus point if you score a certain number of goals in a game, maybe it's three, maybe it's four, whatever it is, is there merit to that? And that could kind of kill two birds with one stone. We want to kill, you know, the idea of the illusion point, but also we want to create some offense.

Like, is there any traction to Keith's idea? Yeah, I will tell you. right now. I mean, is there traction? I can't ever see anything like this being instituted. But I have made this point somewhat tongue and cheek in the past, but I've said, hey, if we're going to do bonus points, let's make it that if you get a bonus point, not for getting to overtime, you get a bonus point for scoring five goals in a game. That's it, whether you win or lose. And if it's six to five, then, okay, we'll give bonus points to both teams, I guess. I don't know how we'll work it, but we'll, we will give, if we're going to

just create points out of nowhere that don't come from anywhere is just the league sending the bonus point ferry over to wave its wand over the game and sprinkle some extra point dust down. Let's do it for scoring more goals instead of getting to overtime. Now, is that a dumb idea? Yeah, you know, it might be. Are most fans listening to this going, oh, I hate that idea? Probably. But at least that would be a bonus point that would incentivize offense.

it would incentivize being aggressive, it would incentivize being creative and going out there and trying to score goals as opposed to what we have now, which is a system that incentivizes the exact opposite. It incentivizes play it safe, be conservative, get to overtime, don't, you know,

we're only five minutes away from this extra point appearing out of nowhere. We're two minutes away. Don't do something crazy and have a defenseman pinch or have a forward, take a chance. And we've all seen that. Like we've, we've all seen the last 30 seconds of a game

where it's just one team with the puck behind their nets standing there and the other team making no effort to go get them. And you're sitting there going, what is this? Well, this is two teams playing for the point. You know, I would love to see a system where we didn't have bonus points. You knew when you bought your ticket and you walked into the game, you knew exactly how many points the game was worth. But I will tell you this system that's, you know, being proposed of,

hey, let's give out points for goals. It would be ridiculous, but it would not be worse than what we have right now. All right. We kind of jumped ahead and did one mailbag question because it pertained to what we were talking about. But we do want to remind you that you can send us your questions and we'll open up our mailbag at any time, The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. The athletic hockey show at gmail. You can also leave us a voicemail at 845-4-45-845-845-845.

By the way, I should have pointed this out earlier, because we ended up airing that roundtable discussion earlier, we're not going to have Jesse Granger this week. So no Granger things, just due to the length of the show. But we do have the mailbag here. Yeah, can I just say, by the way, I am in favor of having the Tuesday guys host half the show for me. I don't mind that at all. If we want to make that a new policy and have Craig and Sean just come in and do the middle half hour, I'm all good with that. Yeah, it's, you know what, it's something we should think about, right? Like, just have them, we trick them into doing half of our show.

Listen, we just had to do this little roundtable and then next thing you know, we're just going to air it on Thursday. I like it. I like it. I'm all in. I'm all in. All right. I got an interesting, you and I got tweeted at on Thursday with a pretty interesting question. This was something that was not on my radar.

I don't know if it was on yours because you are the master of like kind of the weird, quirky, stats. But Kevin Lagowski tweeted at us and said, hey, I'm noticing that Chris Kreider has 25 power play goals. He leads the league. The Arizona Coyotes as a team have 25. The Flyers and Cracken aren't that far ahead. Has anybody

outscored an entire team on the power play in a single season? Do you know that this was the case with Criter and the coyotes? No, I had not seen that. I will be honest, when I saw that stat, it didn't shock me, given where the coyotes are at, but I did not know that, no. No. And I didn't know the answer to the question either, so I'm curious to hear.

Yeah. So I actually did a little bit of digging on Thursday morning. I said, you know, this is a great question. It's a really cool stat. So I went through and now I, now granted, I only, and you tell me if this is wrong, but I had to kind of go through the seasons. But I went from 1994 until now, because I figured in the 80s with the amount of goals teams were scoring the power play. There's no way any single guy outscored a team, right?

Yeah. Not no. And I mean, yeah, no, it couldn't be. Because, I mean, what is the record for power play goals? It's like in the 30s, I think. Yeah, Lemieux had a 37 goal power play season. I feel like Dave Anderchuk held the record at some point. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't some insane amount. Yeah. So I looked it up. Now, so there's a little bit of caveat here because it actually happened last year, oddly enough.

But now that, I think, is a function of a 56 game season more than anything. Leon Dreissel, Joe Pavelski, and T.J. O'Shee, last season all scored more power play goals than the Anaheim ducks. Remember, Anaheim had a historically bad. Historically terrible. 11 power play goals all season. So I thought, okay, that's kind of, I don't want to use the shortened seasons because I feel like that's not as impressive as doing it over the full 82 game run.

So now I started to. Fake season. as some would say. Yeah, exactly. So I looked it up. It hasn't happened, but it almost happened just a few years ago. 2013, 2014. The Florida Panthers in the entire season scored 27 power play goals.

Alex Ovechkin scored 24. So I think that's the closest we've ever gotten. OV-24 power play goals. Panthers 27. Okay. Yeah. So there you go. So we have a chance.

to see some history here. Now, here's my question. If Chris Kreider does beat the Arizona coyotes in power play goals, like if he scores, let's say, let's say their tie going in the last game of the season, he scores a late power play goal. If he smirks or scores that goal in a skillful way, do the coyotes like get on a plane to go beat him up or is it like next year? How does it, can we check with Tyson Nash and find out what the,

what is the protocol on that? You know what? I'm going to, my recommend, Chris cried just stay stone faced and just keep shoveling in pucks in the crease and hopefully we won't have to find out. Oh my God. I never even thought that. That's gold. Be careful, Chris.

But you know what? I think like for me, like I love this type of stat. Like I had no idea that this was even on the radar. You know, like that, that, I like, but I wonder like probably I would imagine, and now I've got to look this up. I would imagine there might, there would be seasons where guys would score more shorthanded goals than another team, right?

Like that feels plausible. Yeah, that does. Yeah, I can see that. But not the power. That'll be the next thing. No. Yeah. Yep.

Get the intern on it. Yeah. Down goes Brown internship program. Okay. I'll sneak one more in here from Dan. Dan writes into us again via email, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. The University of Michigan hockey team has had a handful of players

signed with their respect. effective draft teams. Brendan Beeson was drafted by Vegas with the current cap situation. He could in theory, could Vegas in theory trade Bison's, sorry, Brendan Breson. Could they trade Brandon Breeson's rights away before he signs and then that would make him eligible to play on a new team for the rest of the season slash postseason? I don't think Vegas would do this. I just don't know how this would all work. That comes in from Dan. Yeah.

I mean, but first of all, my advice would be to check with his dad first because he, you don't want to mess with Pat. Pat might know the rules. Pat may have a little bit more information on this. I don't believe so. It is,

there's sort of two levels to this question. There is the question of can you make a trade after the deadline? This is something that comes up periodically. where fans will say, you know, okay, well, when does the trade deadline end? Like, when does that get lifted? And the reality is there really isn't a trade deadline. You could make a trade the day after the deadline, the week after the month after. There is nothing stopping any NHL team from making any trades that it wants to make,

except that anybody that you trade after the trade deadline cannot play for the rest of the season. Now, that is, and this is another area where there's confusion. Because a lot of people think it's that they can't play in the playoffs. That's not the case. And Jesse had a piece on this and how it could affect the Golden Knights a month or two ago leading up to the deadline. And he explained it very well. If an NHL player gets traded and any point after the deadline, they are done for the rest of the year. They can't trade.

So if Genni Dadaunov got traded today in order to clear cap room, he's done for the year. Now, that doesn't mean you can't – you could trade, for example. You can make trades involving minor leaguers. That happens not often, but every now and then. You can make a trade involving an injured guy. If somebody was hurt and shut down for the season, you could do that. Or two teams that were just Arizona and Montreal could say, you know what, let's just hook up on a trade.

Who cares? Their seasons are over. We don't need these guys. Let's jump the gun and get ahead of the offseason and make a trade. They could absolutely do that. Nothing stopping them other than you can't play for the rest of the year. What Dan may be asking here is, is there anything in, the fact that somebody hasn't signed yet and that you're trading their rights instead of trading

them. I don't know the answer to that, but I can't imagine that that would be treated any differently. If you are traded after the deadline, you can't play for the remainder of the year. Now, they could absolutely trade them. They could get assets and make a deal that made sense for the future. But as far as trading him to some other team that could then use him, I don't believe so unless there is some very weird loophole involving college players. And again, if anyone knows that to be the case, especially Pat Brees on, feel free to let us know. Yeah. All right.

Let's wrap up the show as we always do with a little this week in hockey history. Take you back to a couple of dates. April 13th. I want to go back on April 13th, April 15th, April 15th, 1952. And a tradition starts at the old Olympia in Detroit where it was a couple of brothers, the Cusimano brothers. I think it was their names. Cousy Manno Brothers.

They bring an octopus into the arena and chuck it onto the ice, symbolizing eight wins you need to get this down the cup back of the day, it starts tradition. I was looking this up. And this is an unofficial record. Do you know the record for the most octopus? Octopi. Octopi.

Octopi. Yeah. I was going to say octopuses. I'm like, that's not right. Octopi. I was a little too eager to correct your grammar on that one. I'm still fired up on the loser point stuff. Sorry.

Yeah. Seriously. Okay. According to, and again, the source is Wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth. What's the most number of Octopi thrown onto the ice before a Red Wings playoff game? Like, what's your guess here? For a single game. Yeah.

For a single game. I'm going to say, and it is a guess, I have no idea. I'm going to say a half dozen. I'm going to say six. Okay. In a 1995 game. game fans through 36. Oh my goodness. On the ice at the same time. It looks like 36. That is, that's a lot more than I would have

imagined. And that feels like too many. I'm going to go and say that's too many. I love this tradition. I think it's fantastic. That 36 seems like a little bit too many. Like now here's my question. Did like, did poor Al Sabatka have to go and pick up every single one of them and twirl them around because that was always my favorite part of the, you know, you'd see the, you'd see the octopus in the ice, you'd go, oh, who's got to deal with that? And then this guy would come out, grab it, uh, and start swinging it around and like the octopus juice or whatever, it'd be spraying fan. Nobody cared. It was, uh, it was fantastic, uh, but, uh, I don't know. I mean, I feel like poor Al's arms. He's, the dude's still got to drive the Zamboni. Like,

he can't tire him out before the, before the games even started. 36 is, uh, too many. I think Al needs an intern if they're going to if they're going to go that crazy on it. No, but remember did Al and the Red Wings just parted ways, right? Like within the last two weeks? Oh, no, did they really? Okay, no, I haven't. I didn't know that at all. I know that they had told him the, the NHL at some point had told him he had to like stop

swinging it around and making a production out of it, which because again, the NHL has an entire department that's job is to figure out what is fun and interesting. and get rid of it. But no, I didn't know that he may have part of ways. So this is from March 30th, from both the free press in Detroit, Detroit News. Al Sabatka, longtime Zamboni driver and Red Wings fan favorite, has been terminated by the organization. Wow.

Multiple sources confirmed. I hope that means fired, but, you know, it sounds ominous, but wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and then the other thing, yeah, you're right. Remember, like the ridiculousness of the NHL, and I think it was the Stanley Cup against, because I feel like I was there.

It was the playoffs in one of those years where Detroit ended up playing Pittsburgh, so either 08 or 09. And Al had to go into the Zamboni entrance to do it. Like you said, he couldn't do it on the ice, but he took it to the, the Champoni entrance. I'm actually surprised that this story didn't land on my radar if he's part of ways.

And we, according to these articles that I'm kind of Googling as we talk, we don't know why. So we'll withhold any judgment. But wow. I mean, that's, it's again, like the fact that going back to 10 years ago, whatever it was that the league said, no, you can't do this anymore. It was, you know, that was where some of the magic died. And have they won a Stanley Cup since? No.

There you go. No, they did in 2008. So the only question would be. Well, that's because it was still like had the, you know, there was still some of the splatterings were making their way through the arena. They haven't won the cup. Yeah, it's the squid curse. So is, it was Al J.

Sabatka, like, can you, let me ask you this question. Can you name, like, you knew his name, right? Like, you weren't like, wow, you knew his name. Is there any other random arena worker in the league where you, like, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. The organist in Anaheim is. Well, let's just say I know the name of one other Zamboni driver. But, no, you're right. There's not a lot. I mean, I know, I could tell you the, I could tell you some of the leaf guys. you know, Jimmy Holstrom at the Oregon, of course, and good old Banana Joe between the penalty boxes was a Maple Leaf Gardens legend. But beyond that, no, I don't know. I feel like every fan base probably has, you know, maybe one or two guys where they go, oh, no, no, this guy's the local legend. But, yeah, Al-Sabatka, it kind of, it jumped from local legend to more of a league-wide thing.

Okay, one other this week in hockey history. April the 16th, 2003, Ed Belfour makes seven. 72 saves in an overtime playoff loss for Toronto against Philly. And I need you to tell me what you remember most about Ed Belfour's 72 save performance in Stanley Cup playoffs. You know what? When I saw that that you'd included that, I, you know, honestly, what really strikes me is how little I remember about that 2003 series. It is, it is kind of strange that that was the one year in the past. win year, Pac-win era from 99 to 2004 where the Leaves didn't even get out of the first round,

back when that was considered, you know, it was just assumed, of course, you're going to get out of the first round, what kind of team can't win at least one playoff round. I don't really remember that all that well. Like, it was Mark Recky scored the winner. I can't really picture it. I can't really picture like what happened in the game. I remember a couple things about that series. I do remember there were a few overtime games.

I remember that the Leafs won a game six to extend the series. And it was like Travis Green scoring the goal. And I remember that because it was with all the star power on those teams, it was unusual that a guy like that would get the goal. I couldn't describe the goal to you. And remember, I'm a guy who I could tell you everything about the 93 Leaves playoff. No problem. So this isn't just like my memory failing or something like that.

all I really remember about that series is then going into game seven in Philadelphia and the Leafs just getting absolutely crushed. And it was like Brian McCabe had the nightmare game with giveaways and everything. But other than that, that is a very weird kind of like blind spot in my memory of that era of Leaves history. And by the way, if anyone is out there like screaming at me like, hey, it's, you know, Jeremy Roanick put them out of the playoffs or Darcy Tucker hit Sammy Cappen. And that was 2004. That's the stuff that, you know, that we tend to remember was, I guess the other thing I would wonder is it was the Roman Chechmanic year where he dropped the glove and gave up the goal that way. I'd want to know maybe that was 2003.

Wait, which was the Robert, did you mention that now? Did you, the Robert Reichel penalty shot here? Oh, yeah. Was that against Philly? Yeah. That was against Philly? That was against, I feel like that was against Philly. And was that against, you know what? That's a real good question.

Don't know the answer to that. This is a great game to play with Leafs fans. Was it 03 or 04? And you just give random moments against Philly. And like what's weird is I feel like you and I, even though Otto and Toronto met four times 2001, you know, O2 and 04, if somebody gave you a moment from one of those,

we would know, we would probably even know the game number. I feel like we would. Like, that's the thing. Like, it's not like, you know, like I know people are listening to this going like, yeah, dude, it was 20 years ago. Why would you remember it? Because I remember all this other stuff. It's just that one thing.

I'm looking at it now. Roman Chechmanichmannic wasn't on the flyers in 2004. So the Chechmanic Glove goal would have been 2003. And I'm looking. I don't think, oh, Robert Reichel was on the, was on the leaves back then. So that's still a question. you know, the Robert Reichel infamous penalty shot that did not go very well for him. 2003, 2003, I just, I had to Google it, but 2003, it looks like was the penalty shot, or was it,

did you know Robert Reichel scored the Roman Chich Manick goal? What? Yeah, he was the guy. This is why I'm getting confused. I love how this podcast always starts off struggling. And it just ends with us googling stuff at each other 20 years. Robert Reichel was the guy who scored the glove goal on Roma Chichmannic, where Chichmannic dropped his glove and then gave up the goal.

So this is what's confusing me. I'm sitting here typing Robert Reichel flyers in. But no, it was 2003 because it was Chechmanic stopped him on the penalty shot as well. And just, man, I tell you, there's one. thing about Leaf fans, we remember penalty. If you are unsuccessful on a penalty shot or a shootout, because Robert Reichel never lived that down. And Jason Allison never lived down the slow walk against the senators, right?

When he came into a little too slowly. Whereas now we see players do that all the time. We go, what a brilliant strategy. But he came in a little too slow. And that was it for the rest of his Leaf's career. Jason Allison was a underrated great player for a lot of years of the NHL. But he's just like slow penalty shot guy to Leaf fans. So, yeah, we have long memories apparently about everything other than that 2003 playoff series against the Flyers.

Yeah. And wait, Jason Allison's penalty shot was against Ottawa? It was the shootout. I think it was, wasn't that the very first? The original shootout? Yeah, I think that might have been the first one. Man. Yep.

Okay. Okay. Well, listen, this is a good place to lead. Which just makes it even funnier, right? Because the lead fans, like the shootout is brand new. That was the first shootout in the history of the league. And like Jason Allison's the second shoot. And we're like, we've seen enough.

We can judge. Yeah, we know. We're not going to like this. Yeah. Oh, man. That's awesome. All right, listen, we'll leave it there. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this latest edition of The Athletic Hockey Show.

We'll get you again next Thursday. I'm sure Jesse Grange will be back in the saddle for that one. In the meantime, you can email us any questions that you have to the athletic hockey show. Atchemail.com, you can also leave us a voicemail 8454-4-8459. Not a subscriber with us. You can join us at theathetic.com slash hockey show. Get an annual subscription for a dollar a month for your first six months. You can also subscribe to the Athletic Audio plus on Apple Podcasts.

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