The Athletic Hockey Show - Arizona Coyotes will play at Mullett Arena, NHL 23's cover features Sarah Nurse and Trevor Zegras, and the World Cup of Hockey returns February 2024

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

After willing the Nazem Kadri news into existence last week, Ian and Sean wonder if they can influence more news to happen this episode. We'll see. Then, they discuss the Coyotes playing at Mullett Arena, and learn something about the origin of the word "mullet". Next, as the NHL media tour makes a stop in Paris, talk about the return of the World Cup of Hockey in February 2024, and their interest in the tournament's return.Then, Sarah Nurse and Trevor Zegras were announced to be on the cover of NHL 23, and Zegras' jersey number change in Anaheim. In the mailbag, they respond to a listener's voicemail, and discuss the direction of the New York Islanders after losing out on the Kadri sweepstakes, dive down a OT goal rabbit hole, and much more.Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are back. It is a Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show here. Ian Mendez, Sean McIndoo with you here at the end of August. We know there's not a ton of things to talk about that might be newsworthy, but there's lots of fun things we can sink our teeth into in this episode of the podcast. We'll talk about, you know, Bill Daley has spoken to the media this week out in the NHL, NHL-HLPA European tour. A little bit of news coming out of that.

the NHL 23 EA sports cover athletes have been unveiled. A little bit of history there. I got a great question from a listener on voicemail about the New York Islanders, some other fun questions. And you know what? Actually, Sean, maybe that's what we'll start is the Islanders. Because if I'm not mistaken last week, we opened the podcast and you took a pretty healthy run, and Lou Lamarillo for being secretive maybe about Nazim Cadry.

Now, I'm going to offer you the opportunity. Do you feel the need that you need to apologize to Lou Lamarillo for anything you said last week? All right. So, first of all, I will accept the thank yous from everyone in the hockey world for conjuring up news out of nowhere. Because there was nothing going on a week ago when we did the show. I spent 10 minutes talking about Nazim Kadri. And before we could even get that podcast into the ears of the public, he had already signed with a completely different team. So, yeah, I, do I owe an apology to Lou Lamarillo?

I don't think I do, because the Islanders are still doing the stuff that I was referring to, the not announcing contracts. I mean, they did just this week. They did out of nowhere, like, announced three extensions that apparently, according to some, had already. have been done for a while. So I, you know, I don't feel like I was off base on that, even though, yeah, I mean, most of my, my frustration was focused around the potential that they, that they had Nazim Cadbury. But I always said potential. I wasn't looking to break any news. I feel like I put a lot of, you know, a lot of maybes and ifs and all that sort of thing into the statement. So I, I don't think I owe an apology. I probably should apologize anyways just because it's Lou and I don't want to wake up with, uh, you know, horse's head in my, in my bed or whatever, but I'm, I feel like I'm okay. So, look, last week, we, we do the podcast and we even said, we even prefaced it by saying, you know, as soon as we are done recording and we go to drop this episode, Nazim Cadreys going to sign, which he did. He signed with Calgary. Now I want to know, you know, what else

do we want to wheel into existence? This week, like, what are we looking for here? I was, I mean, you know, the thing that I'm really mad about, is, boy, what if Igor Shisterkin gets traded to the Leafs? Oh, I'd be so mad if that were to happen out of nowhere. I don't think this one's going to work. No, it doesn't feel the authenticity. Everyone's authenticity meter is, yeah. Yeah, maybe the vibe isn't quite working.

We'll work on that. I don't know. There's got to be. Is there anyone left? Are there any? Yeah, you know what? For Ottawa fans, I feel like I want to Will Jacob Chikrin to Ottawa. just for Senators fans.

Yeah. Because Cadre was like the last, it felt like, and we were like, we were almost dumbfounded that Cadry was available on the market as in the middle of August. But he was like the last big piece.

Like I guess you can look at Jake Chikrin and say he's a little bit of like he's a dominole, but he's got three years left on his deal. Yeah, and I've said before, I don't think, you know, I really feel like that was a,

uh, a semi bluff by, you know, that, if you play poker, you know, that, you know,

there's, there's the all out bluff. And then there's the semi-bluff where you go, you know, I don't really want anyone to bite on this. But if somebody did, I'd be okay with it. And that is always what I felt the coyotes were doing. They're putting the guy's name out there making it sound like they got to trade them. They don't have to trade them. They're happy to keep him.

But if that should happen to cause a phone call to come in and, you know, somebody gets serious, then you do it. But I wasn't surprised he can get moved at the deadline. Here's a guy that maybe we need to summon. Have we all forgotten about J.T. Miller out in Vancouver? Like, didn't it feel like that had to happen? Or at least that it was, you know, a significant decision that Vancouver had to make. Not that they had to trade him or even that they had to extend it, but that they had to plan a flag and say, this is what we're doing.

And the fact that we're almost at the end of August and they haven't, you know, maybe I've missed it, but I don't feel like there's any clarity on that coming out of Vancouver. No. You know what? You're right. Like J.T. Miller was absolutely a name that was at the top of the trade boards in the summer and then it just kind of went all silent there. You're right. You know what? We talked about the coyotes and you said that maybe they just want to float his name out there and kind of, you know, on Jacob Chikrin. I feel like we need to talk about this because this came out either late Wednesday or early Thursday. And I don't know that enough attention has been paid to this.

The coyotes, of course, are going to be playing at the home of the Arizona State University, right? They're playing at the arena, which is a capacity of 5,000 people. Did you hear what the new arena name is going to be? Yeah, I did. I was very excited. I feel like we need to pass this along to the listener. So why don't you, Sean, why don't you tell the listeners, the Arizona Coyote is going to be playing at Arizona States arena this season, and it is, it's got a new name. What's the name? Yeah, and it's,

we should say it's named after, it's like a donor, I think. It's a, yeah, it's a long-time supporters of the, of the program and, and of schools, the athletic program, the Sun Devils program. So they didn't choose this like on their own. They weren't just like, ah, this would be, this was, this was based on donors, but it's, it's going to be called Mullet Arena. This is not a change. joke. Like the arena. A hockey arena is going to be named. Mollett Arena. Like, hey, did they, and this is a serious question. Is it though? No, there is a serious question. Okay. Do you think that, you know, because obviously when you're involved with, with athletics programs at the, at the college university high level,

like these are very important decisions when you name something after somebody. Yes. And I'm sure that there was some checks and balances. Do you think at any point somebody raised their hand in a boardroom setting and said, just hang on here, gang. Yeah. Do we need to think about Mollett Arena that there's going to be some jokes? Are we all good with this? Like, do you think it was actually brought up?

I feel like it maybe was like an off-the-record conversation. I, you know, maybe it's not there in like the notes. But maybe this is something where, you know, it's over lunch. Somebody goes, hey, mullet arena, we, we good with that. But I, yeah, it's, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's a strange thing. Now, we, did we have this conversation before where we were talking about the origin of the word mullet? I have not had this conversation. And that the, like, when is your first memory of talking about a mullet?

You're going to laugh at this because it's not even hockey related. It's Billy Ray Cyrus. Yeah. Okay. Like, whatever year, what was that? What was that song? Was it achy, achy,

breaky heart, right? Was that Billy Ray Cyrus? Yep. So for the younger listeners, this is Miley's dad. And I feel like that was the first time that, like, like I had always heard it referred to as hockey hair before.

Yes. And then in and around Billy Ray Cyrus, I feel like that's when the, term mullet came and then Yer Mariyager was kind of around that same time. And then am I wrong on that? Or like, when did you hear the term mullet? So this is the thing is, you know, I can remember making fun of the hairstyle for a long time and that it was something that did not actually have a name until the, uh, the, uh, the, the beach. Beastie Boys started using it in a song in the mid-90s.

1994 apparently is when this haircut got its name. So here's the thing. But I thought it was Billy Ray. Is that the right time? Is that around? I feel like that was a little bit earlier, but I'm not. Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

So apparently, you know, I'm looking at here on the American hip hop group, the Beastie Boys, who used Mullet and Mullet Head as epithets in their 1994 song, mullethead combining it with a description of the haircut. Now, we definitely made fun of the haircut before that. I definitely remember, you know, like Yarmory Jagger at the 1990 draft, like that was a mullet. But nobody was saying mullet back then. Hockey hair, I think, was, you know, what we would have said.

And maybe, you know, with Billy Ray, you might have made fun of it. But it's one of those weird things because you're just like, as, you know, people of our age, like, oh, we had that term as a kid. Like, there's no way that wasn't something that we were saying. And apparently, until the Beastie Boys in the mid-90s, that was not a thing, which was probably good times for this particular donor family. It all started to go downhill when that album came out. Man, now I feel so lame because you drop a Beastie Boys reference. I'm like, I believe it was Billy Ray Cyrus.

Yes, I know. It gives you a sense of where we're coming pop culture-wise. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, so for fans who are wondering, because I think before it was called the Heela River Arena is where the coyotes used to play, they're out of there and into Mullet Arena. So, yeah, insert, insert joke there. But like, maybe at some point, like, and we'll get to this later because we had, we ended the show last week on a little bit of a hair themed about redheaded athletes. That's true. Got a lot of feedback on that. We got more feedback. People. not happy at guys that were left off the list. Of the red-headed team. Now, here's a question I have for you,

because a bunch of people tweeted at me, and I think you as well, and said, how is Larry Robinson not on your list of best red-headed players? And I'm in my mind, I don't picture Larry Robinson's redhead. Am I wrong on this? I mean, I think you are wrong,

because you look up pictures of them, And, you know, in the 70s, he, yeah, I would say he was a redhead, but he's not, he wasn't like the bright redhead. He wasn't like Lanny McDonald level redhead. And then the other problem with him is even at the end of his playing career with Montreal and certainly in L.A. And then when he becomes a coach, like he had gone gray by then. So I think, you know, that maybe wipes it out a little bit. But yeah, no, I mean, he would, there's like different levels of redheaded athlete, right? Like there's, you know, there's the guys that you're like, yeah, okay, yeah, I could see it.

And then there's guys who you're like, holy smokes, look at, look at that guy. The one that people were mad at me about was Freddie Anderson. They're like, you know, why, you've already turned your back on Freddie Anderson, former people leave starter. And yeah, you know, that's, I, I can see it on that one. I should have, I should have had Freddie in mind. Yeah, I guess in my mind, I use carrot top as like my, like that is my. Well, geez, talk about, I mean, that's like. that's like saying, you know, in my mind, I use Merrill Lemieux as like my, my first, first line forward.

So, you know, anyone who isn't there. The other one that, and, you know, you being a Vancouver guy sort of, I don't think we mentioned the Cedines. No, I know, there were quite a few people. Yeah. Quite a few people. And, you know, people in Vancouver are very, they're very chill about two Eastern guys forgetting the cities. They were, they were absolutely fine with that. There was no.

Yeah. They, sorry. I mean, if you wanted us to pay attention to the Cedines, you shouldn't have played your games in the middle of the night. I don't know what to tell you. You know, I also, let me just read a, you know what, let me just read a couple of emails we got, some feedback we got from our listeners last week about, you know,

we were making up the all-time red-headed team. Josh is like, I love off-season hockey podcast because debating what color a hair, what hair color a player has is peak entertainment. Gord from Calgary wrote in and said my all-time starting lineup of red-headed you got to include

Red Kelly and Red Berenson I don't have an extensive database of hockey players hair color in my mind but I'm pretty sure the only way you can get the nickname Red is if you have red hair and that right there's no other way

unless you're like one of those people that while you're working out like your face gets really red yeah there I mean there's a lot of reds out there. I'm looking at pictures of, I'm looking at pictures of Red Barents. I'm not sure, but Red Kelly definitely was. Ray Kelly at the,

the, but that's a name that's been just completely phased out. Red. Right? That's, it has a nickname even. Yeah, as it used to be a very common

hockey name. I'm looking down, Red Kelly, Red Berenston. I'm looking, I'm trying to find the most, yeah, there's a Red Horner. Red Dutton was even important. figure. I can't find anyone who was a recent

red. Red. We've got to get this back, man. What's going on? Somebody, okay, let's do, we have the opportunity. We talked about how hockey nicknames are bad. There's got to be, it's got to be somebody youngish. You know, pick somebody, some fan base out there, pick some redheaded kid and that's, it's red. You know, I dropped the ball on this. Earlier today, I had a chance, I spent some time with Claude Giroux, who is a redhead. Yeah. Right? And I'm thinking, I should have, I could have been, I have the opportunity.

I could just start referring to him as Red Juru. And. See, I feel like he's, but he's 34 now. The ship has sailed on that one, I feel a little bit. It's got to be like a new guy that you just, you know, some fan base out there. I'm just saying, it doesn't even have to be now, but training camp's about to open. You're going to have that moment where they're like, and here's, you know, he's the odd draft pick who's making a run at making the team. And you're going to see the guy, you're going to be like, I didn't know that kid.

That guy's got to be red. Just do it. You don't have to ask permission. This is the problem with nicknames. We keep asking the players what their nicknames are. It's not their job. It's our job as fans and media to come up with these nicknames. Let's just pick somebody.

Yeah. And by the way, Ted has also written to us and said September 23rd is Ginger Appreciation Day on the calendar. I suggest you guys drop the article that. day. So we did say, you know, at some point, maybe you drop, maybe that's the day to do it. September 23rd, the greatest redheads. September 23rd. Put that in your down goes round. All right. Yeah, September 23rd. Put that in your down goes around. Well, now I got to look and see if there's any redhead players who were born on September 23rd. Well, then that's the all time. That's our guy right there. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, but that's, that might take a little more research. The intern might need to get on that. Yeah. Again, that. internship program is stalled. Yes. We're still working on that one. Sorry. We're trying to get that one going. You know, we're getting the start of the season.

One of the signs that you know that the season is on around the corner, the NHL, the NHLPA, they kind of do a media tour. European players are doing theirs in Paris this week. I think the North American guys are going to be in Vegas next week, I believe, at some point. And so Bill Daly, Deputy Commission National Hockey League was over there. And I think one of the interesting things that Bill Daly came up with, Sean, is the idea that we can go ahead and pretty much lock it in. World Cup of

hockey is coming back in February of 2024. And once again, they are going to block off of basically a two and a half week window in February of 2024 to hold the tournament. So for the first time, ever, what used to be called the Canada Cup and then it became the World Cup, it's going to be played in season, not in September, not before the season. It's, you know, they're hoping this is going to be a regular thing. I mean, how long will it take for you to get right back? Like, are you going to be right back into the World Cup of hockey in 2020?

I think so. I'm going to take a couple of goes to get it right or what. I like the World Cup. I, you know, I grew up loving the Canada Cup. Now, that was before top players were going to the Olympics. But, yeah, I mean, the idea of a best-on-best tournament, I've always enjoyed them. And yeah, I mean, the last, it's taken a bit of a downturn since the Olympics. It's now the number two tournament, but that's if we're going to the Olympics.

We haven't been in the Olympics in a couple of times. So there is room, certainly for best-on-best tournaments. I, you don't want to overdo it. But I always felt like an Olympics every four years and a World Cup in between, that sounds about right to me. It works for soccer. It's, you know, if anything, you know, we need it, we need more of them just to establish the consistency.

You know, this thing where they just sort of happen or they don't and they let us know, you know, I would like to get into an every four years, you know, when you know it's coming. and you know I'm I'm used to it being in September the way the Canada Cup and the previous World Cups were. If they want to move it to the season, that's fine. I mean, I do find it interesting that the NHL was kicking and screaming about the Olympics because they had to shut down the season. And suddenly when the money's going into their pockets, it does seem like it's a big problem anymore. But you know what? I'd like to see it. And I'm in on it.

And, you know, it's always a little bit tricky, you know, what countries are going in? How do you do qualifying, you know, for which teams do you even have qualifying for? You know, obviously, 2016, they got creative with Team Europe and Team North America. I wasn't, I certainly wasn't a fan of the concept. You know, in practice, having the Young Gun team was pretty cool. But I'd rather not see that stick around. but, you know, figure it out and let's go. Let's get some good, let's get some good actual true best-on-best hockey going.

Like, I don't, I have said before, I don't care about the world championships. I really don't, because that's not best-on-best. That's whoever didn't make the playoffs. You know, I don't, full respect to whoever's out there competing for the Spangler Cup or whatever. But I don't care. I care about best-on-best. And on the men's side, that is Olympics. when the NHL goes and it's World Cup and I'd love to see more of them.

Do you have any concern if, I'll use you, look, you're a Leafs fan. I'll use the Leafs fan. I'll use the Leafs as an example that this tournament's being played in February, which is, you know, probably just before the trade deadline and just before the kind of stretch drive of the Stanley Cup playoffs. And let's say we get to February 2024 and the Leafs are still in their window to contend. and, you know, Mitch Martin is playing for Team Canada. And as much you want to see Mitch Marner score a big goal and help Canada win a championship of the World Cup,

he's putting his body on the line for something that has nothing to do with the Leafs. Like, does that pop, like, does that come into play? I mean, it's the same thing with the Olympics, I guess, but it is. And obviously, you know, the Dominic Hasick thing with the senators is the classic example. You flip that one around real quick on me.

Yeah. But, I mean, that's the one, right? 2006. That theoretically could have cost the senators a Stanley Cup. And there have been others like John Tavares with the Islanders got hurt one year, I remember. And he was Steve Eisenman in 2002. He was pretty banged up when they won in Salt Lake. Like he won that Stanley Cup that spring, I think on one leg in 2002.

Yeah. So, right? But, you know, my answer is, look, obviously if Mitch Marner blows out an ACL playing for Canada, that yes, I'll be upset as a Leafs fan, but it's, you know, the risk is the same, more or less for all the contenders. You know, it's not like, you know, all the Leafs are sending all their players and, you know, Tampa's not. And, you know, everyone at Tampa is just sitting at home resting up. Or, you know, if there was some sort of scenario like that, then, yeah, maybe. But it's the same for all the teams.

Look, we're marketing the game. We're building new fans. We're creating moments for the existing fans. injuries are unfortunately part of hockey. You hate to see it happen, and it would suck to have it happen to your favorite team, but it's not a reason not to do it. You just hope that good luck is with us

and that everyone's kept as safe as possible. Yeah, the NHL and NHLPA, like I said, they've got these kind of media tours going on, and this is kind of the time of year where they're starting to promote the upcoming season. The gang at EA Sports, One of the things that we're always interested in is who's going to be the cover athlete for EA sports video game. NHL 23 is going to have a pair of athletes on the cover.

And for the first time ever, we're going to get a women's hockey player there. Sarah Nurse is alongside Trevor Zegris on the cover of EA Sports NHL 23. This feels like a big moment, right, where they're giving a significant platform to a women's hockey, women's hockey player that you know you don't often see this type of marketing being done and I think obviously it feels like a great step in the right direction. Yeah, it's it's nice to see and it's you know, it is marketing, but that's that's good. We want to market and we want to market the product. And when I say the product, I'm talking not just a video game, but also the sport in general to to a wider audience. So I don't mind them getting a little bit creative and you know,

there's no rules written in stone that oh, it has to be one player and it must be an NHL and then blah, blah, blah. No, I mean, the fact that you've got, you know, a women's star and you've got a younger marketable player from a southern market, you know, sure, we did Austin Matthews last year. I know a lot of people were saying, you know, do you go back to Conner McDavid? Is this, Kyle McCarr, is he the next guy that you want to market as a star? you know, that'd be cool too. But look, we know. I've seen people saying like, well, it's only hockey fans are playing a hockey video game. So why are you trying to market beyond? That's just not true. I mean, how many fans out there, their first link into hockey was playing the old NHO video games or, you know, like I really started getting into the NFL after I started playing the heck out of Madden. There's lots of fans for whom that's like, that's the entry point into becoming a fan.

So yeah, I mean, if he can attract a few people, look, I'm not, I've got no skin in the game as far as how many copies of the game they sell. I don't know if that's, you know, that's not my job to care about that. But I don't mind seeing some new faces on the marketing that gets done by the league and in this case by its partners. Trevor Ziegress, I mentioned also on the cover of NHL 23. He was in the news cycle this week for change. his number. Ziegress goes from 46

in his rookie year to 11. Like 46 always felt like that's a training camp number, right? 100%. 100%. Yeah. So he moves to number 11. I love this little promotion that the ducks are doing. Okay? So the ducks are actually going to and Jamie Drysdale is changing his number

as well from his rookie season. And they're going to do a meet and greet. So Ziegers and Drysdale are going to do a meet and greet with Ducks fans at their team store with their new jerseys. And I love this, okay? And basically fans owning a Zegris number 46 jersey will receive 46% off the New Jersey if they want to purchase the new jersey of Zegris. They'll get 46% off.

So if you have a Zegris 46 jersey and you're a Dux fan, you're like, damn, I bought this guy's jersey, he's switching it. They're like, it's okay. you can change or you can upgrade, update, whatever, you get 46% off. Listen, I appreciate that. That's good. I do. I like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, though. I feel like there have been teams that have done like a free swap in this situation. Haven't they? Where, you know, they come and say, hey, if you've got the old number, just come on in and we'll give you a new one or we'll swap out the number or whatever. So I, but, yeah, 46. That's not bad. That's right, because you're right. Forty-six is a lousy number.

That's not a... When I did my infamous article on guys who scored a number of goals that match their jersey, that was the problem. Nobody, no real star has a number in the 40s or the 50s. Like, that just isn't done. You have a low number or you have a high number, but you got pick one. So, yeah, I guess kudos to Trevor Zegra's for making it. But that'll be a fun event.

The one other thing that you didn't mention is, also that same day, the Arizona Coyotes are going to be holding an event just outside the store where they're going to watch for people coming out and anyone who's smiling or looking like they're having a good time, they're going to beat you up. So just be aware of that. No smirking.

Don't look like you're enjoying or entertained or anything because there will be like Jay Beagle and friends will be out there and they're looking to jump you. See, I thought there was a mullet joke coming. Now I get it though. Now I get it. There could have been. There could have been.

I didn't know if you're going to go down to Toronto Rock because, remember, Torts went off on Zegra's past season two, right? I could have done that, too. I may have to update my Arizona Coyotes material. Yeah, we spent more time on the Coyotes this week than we ever have. Don't complain. I mean, come on, man, don't say it. We never talk about Arizona Coyotes.

Yeah. You know, one team that we don't spend a ton of time on, and they've got a huge passionate fan base, the New York Islanders, and we did talk about them last week. And I want to listen to a voicemail because Pat from Long Island, We're going to play this voicemail. Reminder, you can leave us a voicemail at 845-4-459. You can leave us an email at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com.

Pat from Long Island is a little bit, I don't know what the word, not despondent, but certainly feeling a little bit frustrated that they missed out on Nazim Cadry, doesn't seem quite sold on Lou Lamarillo. Have a listen. Here's Pat from Long Island with a question about the islanders. Now that Nazim Kadri has signed with Calgary, what does the horizon look like for the New York Islanders? Not that Cadry was the move we needed,

but I just feel like we're treading water a little bit, and I wonder if Lou LaMerello has kind of served his purpose on the island, and I wonder, you know, what is there even to do at this point? Because we just have trouble bringing in talent. We need a winger to play with Barzell. We have assets that we can move, but we're in this weird place right now where, like, our core is aging and a lot of people don't want to come to the island. So what do the islanders do now that I just go off the table? All right.

So it's amazing to me, right? Like, on some level, like, Lou Lamarillo constructed an Islander's team that went to back-to-back Eastern Conference finals. They miss out of the playoffs by one year. And now everyone's like, wow, they were only there because of Barry Trots. is a dinosaur, Lou's out of touch. He's not doing anything. Boy, there's a lot of anger there towards Lou Lamarillo for basically Islanders fans feeling like he just sat on his hands

all summer. I mean, yeah, Pat's like, hey, what's next for the Islanders? And I, boy, I'm having a hard time coming up with an answer that would be satisfactory because as we talked about earlier, like there's nobody really, like what, are they going to trade for J.T. Miller? Oh, maybe, but there's nobody out there that, yeah, maybe that's what we're going to into existence. But yeah, I mean, what do you tell Islanders fans right now? Yeah, it's, it is tough. I mean, we remarked on it last week. We were looking over Dom's front office confidence ratings that the Islanders had really plummeted down that list. And that was even

before the Cadre news. So it's, it's been tough. And yeah, I think a lot of the shine is off. Now, I don't know. I mean, I'd say this. And I don't know that this helps or makes it worse for Islander fans. I don't think signing Nazim Cadbury would have significantly moved the needle for me on what I'm expecting from the Islanders this year. And part of that's because it's just, you know, the roster, it's an older roster. They're not capped out. They had the money to go and spend, but, you know, they certainly don't have as much flexibility as you would like a team coming off that sort of record. I guess the two things you could point to, if you're looking for Optimum, of the Islanders is one is the coaching change.

You know, we have lots of teams make a coaching change and they get at least a short-term boost out of it. And Lane Lamber has been waiting a long time. Maybe he's going to be one of those guys who steps in and really rework things. The fact that he's replacing a guy in Barry Trots that I consider one of if not the best coaches in the league makes that a tougher ask for sure. But, you know, maybe. That is the, you know, when you look at it,

team that was this bad last year and you look at the roster being the same, you're looking for anything that changed, and that's the big change is behind the bench. The other piece of it would be that I think there's at least an argument to be made that you look at these Islanders, they were really, really good for the last two years, Stanley Cup contenders for two, three years, really. And then last year, it was a disaster. But I think you could argue that last year is one of those years that maybe you just write off a lot of it. They started with that big 13 game road trip while they were waiting for the arena.

Came in by the time they got to the new arena that like they were already well out of the playoffs. Just never seemed to get going. Head injuries, head COVID issues like a lot of teams did. You can't hold that up as something that was unique to the islanders. But I do feel like you could look at this and say this was a good team for a long enough time that we should be at least willing to consider the fact that last year was just one of those years where everything went wrong and you kind of burn the tapes and say we move forward

and we expect that we're going to be a lot more like the two years ago team than the one year ago team get the whole year at the new arena all that all that stuff um i guess that's where i find the optimism if i'm an islanders fan looking for it um because you're you're certainly not finding it on any roster changes because they're just really haven't been any. You know, it's interesting because you mentioned that the Islanders had, and they did. They were a very good team under Barry Trots. As I mentioned, they got the back-to-back conference finals. Really, we were within a goal of getting to the Cup final two years ago.

They missed the playoffs last year by a healthy margin. You know, they had 80, whatever, 84 points and the cutoff was 100. if you were looking at all the teams that missed the playoffs in the East last year. So I'll give you the list of teams that missed the playoffs in the East last year. The Islanders, the Blue Jackets, the Sabres, Red Wings, Senators, Devils, Flyers and Habs. Of those teams, you get to pick one that you're like, you know what, I think this team is going to take that leap up and maybe they pull down, you know, Boston or Washington or who, you think might be vulnerable.

Are the Islanders still at the head of that pack? Or has another team taken over that you're like, I have a better feeling that this team is going to make the playoffs in the East and not the others. I mean, the Islanders feel like such an unsexy pick. Because you're picking a team that was a legit contender last year. It's so much more fun to pick a team like Ottawa or Detroit or Jersey and say, this is the year they make the big leap. And then you look real smart if you're right.

And if you're wrong, everyone forgets about it. Whereas if you're, you pick the Islanders, even if they make it, everyone goes, yeah, way to go. You pick the final four team from the year before. I do think it might be the Islanders, though. Like the pathback feels a lot more doable in the Metro than the Atlantic, doesn't it? I mean, it feels like the Atlantic has three spots locked in. And we were kind of ready to maybe downgrade the brood. but I feel like now the Burjurons back

and with David Carachie back, you're starting to feel like, okay, you know, the broods should be all right. In the metro, you've got those two teams, Pittsburgh and Washington, the older teams, we've been waiting for the drop-off and you kind of feel like it's going to be sudden.

Like, I feel like maybe that's the path, and you can have crossover walk cards in that, I know. So, you know, there's hope maybe there for the Ottawa's in Detroit's too. But I do feel like it's not hard for me to envision a season where we're 40 games into the year, the islanders are humming along at a 100-point pace, and we all go, oh, right, this is a pretty good team when everything isn't going wrong the way it was last year. Now, are Blue Jackets fans yelling at their Bluetooth speaker right now, like, hey, we finished, whatever, they finished, I think, 10th in the conference last year. So they weren't as low as, you know, Ottawa and

Detroit and Jersey and Buffalo and all that. And now they added arguably the biggest free agent on the market. it. Mm-hmm. Should Jackets fans have any playoff aspirations? My answer would be you were 20 points out of the playoffs

and Johnny Grudeau doesn't give you 20 points, I don't think. Now, we've seen teams make leaps like that. And in fact,

it feels like most years there's at least one or two teams that we, you know, we say, well, they're a few years away and then they make the big leap.

Could it be Columbus? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, could they leapfrog the Islanders who they were three points back of last year? Yeah, I mean, there's certainly, you know, if you're a Blue Jackets fan, you want to yell at me, I think that's, that's what you're yelling, right? Is, you know, how are we not better than the Islanders heading into, into next year in the projections? And yeah, I mean, it could be. But yeah, I'm really curious to see what happens with the coaching change with the Islanders. I really, feel like that could be that could be the that could be the move that that sets them back on track or it could end up being a disaster you know we've seen guys wait a long time to get their their shot at the n hl and then it just doesn't work for them and some of those guys have been hired by lula murella so uh you know lose lose got a very varied and interesting career but some of that career includes some pretty bad coaching decisions and you know you nobody no islander fan wants to hear the name John McLean

get mentioned right now. So we'll work around that. But I'm fascinated to see where it goes. And, you know, Columbus yeah, I mean, I probably am selling them a little bit shorter than I should be. You know, I got another project for the Down Goes

Brown intern. How many times in the salary cap, and I think salary cap is the best way to do it because it's kind of for the most part you're comparing apples to apples. How many years have we have the same eight teams from a conference qualify for the playoffs the following year. Like that discrepancy between the eighth place team last year, which was Washington at 100 points,

and the ninth place team with the Islanders was, you know, as big of a gap as we've seen, like there was a clear gap. Like it was a significant gap. It wasn't like the West where, you know, Vegas and Vancouver and these teams were kind of, they were kind of pushing. There was no race. There was no race in the east. And I remember right.

I wrote a piece in like, disqualify. last year. Yeah, it was lock it in. It was over. It was over by Christmas. Yeah. So I wonder, has there ever been a season in the cap era where the same eight teams have made the playoffs in the same conference in back and back years? I don't think there has been.

And there certainly haven't been many. Yeah. And, you know, it's, yeah, I mean, it feels like you look at those teams and you just go like, where is the change coming? How is one of these teams going to, going to slip? down that far. And yet, like, doesn't it feel like

it has to happen? Like, we're, we're going to get to the end of the next season and we're going to be like, yeah, okay.

And, you know, but that is what makes it tough is a lot of those teams that I'm talking about, you know, I know everyone, Ottawa had the summer appear and Detroit,

everybody loves it. Those teams were 30 points out of the playoffs. Like, man, to make up 30 points is an enormous gap. but somebody will probably do it and it'll probably be some team whose goalie just goes on a year-long heater and everything goes right and, you know, we have seen it happen over and over again most years. It's just a question of finding it because you make that pick and then you're the smart one.

But like New Jersey's 40 points out of a playoff spot, I just don't see how they make all that ground up, even with all the young talent. that they've got, but it's got to be somewhere. Yeah. Remember last year, though, like, nobody would have ever thought in a million years Vegas was missing the playoffs, right? They felt as close to a lock as you would get. I'll say this. I'll say this. I've done the last two years, I've done a contest beginning the season where I say, give me five teams that are definitely going to make the playoffs, give me five teams that are definitely going to miss. And when I started that two years ago, I remember thinking, like, the team that's going to miss playoffs, that that'll be what trips people up because there's always somebody, some team that is, everyone thinks it's going to be terrible that makes the big jump.

And it hasn't really happened in the last two years. Last year, Vegas missing the playoffs took out a huge number of people. Like, it was like 80 or 90% of the entries had Vegas. But there hasn't been something similar on as far as the teams that missed the playoffs. Like two years ago, everybody just picked the seven teams that didn't make it into the bubble and they were all bad again. And last year, the one that was close last year was Anaheim because everybody thought Anaheim was going to be awful. And remember, they were leading the Pacific halfway through the season and then they collapsed. So that was the closest to having a team do it.

But it's been two years since we've really seen a team come out of nowhere. Maybe that means we're due or maybe that means something's changed. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it'll be interesting to see. But certainly there's going to be a huge gap for somebody to overcome. and I'm sure as our caller, Pat from Long Island is hoping that it's the islanders that can do that.

Listen, let's answer a few more questions here to kind of round out the podcast because we got a whole bunch of them here. Okay, this one's from Jay. Actually, Jay's got a couple of questions here. Jay says, look, I'm going to ask you a couple of off-season questions here about Canada. Let me start with this. I just visited Quebec, Montreal, and Ottawa, all great cities. and my wife and I had a great time. However, I found it odd that you guys use the metric system on certain things,

i.e. driving. But when people describe how tall they are or how much they weigh, they're back to using the American system. Why is that? I'll tell you, Jay. Nobody in Canada knows how tall they are in meters. I have no clue. And you see that sometimes.

I don't be like, this guy's 1.73 meters. And you're like, I have no idea. that's tall or short. Like kilograms, I can do it. I can do the math in my head because it's a little more straightforward. But yeah, no,

it's, but you know what? I'll give you what I think is the answer to this. It's sports. It's we get, we have so much overlap with American sports that that's where we, that's where you hear height and weight the most is, is through sports.

And so that's where the. overlap comes in, you know, you're talking to America and they'll be like, okay, this is 20 miles away. And you're like, whatever, I don't need to know that. But if they're like, oh, yeah, the guy who just, this quarterback is only six foot two, okay, you know what that means right away. So I feel like certainly myself growing up, that's the only time I ever care about height and weight, really, was when you're looking down the roster. And that's, you know, that's the one crucial measurement that we kind of kept from, uh, from our, our American imperial friends. Yeah. What's weird is that we use for temperature outside, we use Celsius.

Like, you know, 35 degrees Celsius. You know, it's close to whatever, close to 95 Fahrenheit. But with our ovens, we use Fahrenheit. Nobody in Canada has, I don't think, does anybody in Canada have an oven that is with Celsius? I don't think so. It's weird, right? Like, we all went, oh, set the oven to 450 or 400 Fahrenheit. Because that's, again, that's the recipe book, right? You need that for the, Yeah, or then and then you get, you know, however many teaspoons or whatever you're supposed to put into the recipe and then then you're completely. Yeah. I do find, like, I spend way too much time Googling like milliliters to ounces or whatever and having to figure that out because I can't, you do go back and forth on that. But yeah, I never thought of that with the oven, man.

That's okay. That's going to ruin my afternoon. It's a ruin your day. Okay, so Jay also has a hockey-related question for us, saying, how come the Winnipeg Jets are in the business of retiring jersey numbers of players who used to play for the coyotes? They should be raising Kovalchukes number 17 to the rafters. I mean, what's next?

Are the avalanche going to raise Lanny McDonald's number nine to the rafters in the Rockies? Yeah. The Jets have not retired any. thrasher. No, and so, yeah, and I think I think that's what he meant. Yeah, he's looking, you know,

retiring former. Why are the Jets retiring former? The Coyotes have retired former Jets, but people who, you know, like Howard Chuck, right? Well, it's weird, okay? It's, it's been weird because what happened is when the original jets moved to Arizona,

they initially honored those retired numbers because the Jets had some retired numbers. And then they, I think shifted them. They basically, unretired them and started treating them as honored numbers and some of them got used and some of them didn't. But I don't believe

the coyotes officially have retired you know like they had Bobby Hull was a guy that had a number at one point retired by the Arizona Coyotes. You know, he never played for them, briefly played for Winnipeg. And I think it ends up in a place where like Dale Howardchuk's number

is not retired by either franchise right now, although Winnipeg is going to do it. I've always said when it comes to this stuff, people know me, they know my stance. The Jets are the Jets. The Jets should be honoring, if they're going to retire guys, they should be retiring guys who played in Winnipeg with the original Jets. Dale Hauerchuk's number absolutely should be hanging from the rafters of the NHL team in Winnipeg.

I don't think Arizona's under any obligation to honor those guys. I don't think certainly the modern Jets are under any obligation to be honoring Thrasher's guys And I feel the same way about the record book. It's ridiculous to me if, you know, if you're like, who's, you know, who's the greatest goal scoring winger in Jets history? And you go, ah, T. Mussolani. And somebody goes, well, actually, T. Mussolani is number one for the coyotes. It's Ilya Kovych is number one for the Jets. And you're like, shut up.

That's not how any, no fan thinks like that, man. There's nobody. So don't worry about Kovilchuk. But yes, they should get those old original jets, get those numbers up there. because the Jets are the Jets, as far as the fan, the way fans think about it is. You know, it's funny that you bring this up. So in Ottawa, they have, the number eight is retired in honor of Frank Finnegan, who played with the original iteration of the senators way back in the early 20th century.

Okay. But the number is retired from the current senators that have been around for 30 years. Why I bring this up is it was funny. I went to visit Jake Sanderson in North Dakota last. season and Jake first round pick for Ottawa and I kind of at the end of our chat I give him a throwaway question. I'm like hey what what jersey number are you going to wear in Ottawa? And he says to me, oh, I've already got to picked out. It's going to be eight. He says, I love it because nobody's wearing eight right now. I'm like, oh, Jake. You have to be the bearer of bad news on

the news. You should, you know that you should have looked at his face. It was like that Ralph Wiggum. Oh, you can pinpoint the moment. You can pinpoint the moment his heart breaks. It was that. And he was like, oh, no. Like, it shows you that, like, you know. Because his dad wore eight mostly, right? Like, Jeff, yeah, Jeff wore eight or 80, right? I think 80 for a while.

And then Jake contemplated wearing 80. Anyway, it's, it was funny just to see his face when I'm like, ah, actually you can't wear eight. Anyway, so that. Boy, that's, that's a tough one. Yeah, that is. I did feel like I had some power. It's the first time my life, I actually told an. HL player, like, you can't wear that number.

Yeah. You don't have to get to say no to an individual player. Just shoot him down. Try again. Got a couple other questions here. Patrick writes in. Had a random thought for you guys on an August night. I want to know

maybe who holds the record for scoring the most overtime playoff goals with the most number of teams. I looked it up and Doug Gilmore and Marty Havlet have scored overtime goals with three different franchises. That's the most I could think of, is there anybody else who has scored overtime goals for three different teams,

or maybe somebody who scored an overtime goal with four teams? Can you help me out? It's keeping me up at night. That's from Patrick. Well, Patrick, that's what we're here for. So I looked it up. You said you looked it up, okay. Because I was going to.

I did. I looked it up. Yeah, no, no, I looked at up. And again, let's give a tip of the hat to our friends at Stadhead within the hockey reference of Rola. I could not do it without those guys. We can't do these kinds of, you know, get to the bottom of these things without their unbelievable search tool. So I looked up overtime playoff goals.

I had to go through the entire, I think there's been almost a thousand all-time Stanley Cup playoff overtime goals. So I had to put them all in a list and then sort alphabetically so then I could see when a guy would show. You can't do it by date, right? Because if you do it by date, you know, Dino Cicerelli did one in 1983, then he did. did it in a 19th and you're like, wait. So, so Patrick, I can tell you,

I think you got it right. I think Doug Gilmore, who had overtime goals with St. Louis, Calgary in Toronto, and Marty Halflet, who had overtime goals with Ottawa,

Chicago, in San Jose, are the only players to ever get an overtime goal with three different teams. I could not find anybody who fit the criteria of four, and I couldn't even find

another guy who did it with three teams. Now, I'll give you, Sean, I'm going to give you some guys who did it with two, teams that I, like I thought, okay, well, maybe these guys could have been in the running. You do that. And then I think there's another three team guy.

Oh, okay. Well, no, who's the three team guy that you're thinking of? I think Glenn Anderson did it because Glenn Anderson, you know what? Had a goal, he had an overtime goal for the Leafs against the Kings, game five. And then he had a goal for the Blues against the Leafs. You're right. You know what? You know what?

Okay. He must have had them for Edmond. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. You're right. So it was, you know what? You're right.

Glenn Anderson. It's in reverse alphabetical order. Oh, no. Here's the problem for me. Glenn Anderson came up with Josh Anderson. And anyway, it all melded together. You're right. Glenn Anderson scored a overtime goal with St. Louis against Toronto,

with Toronto against L.A., and then three overtime goals with Edmonton. So you're right. So Glenn Anderson, Marty Havlet, Doug Gilmore. There you go. All right. So who are the guy? Because let me throw some names at you because here are the guys that I would have

I would have been checking. Yeah. So you're looking at, obviously, Joe Nguendike would come to mind? Joe Nguendike, yeah, only had overtime goals, I believe, with Dallas. Okay. Claude Lemieux would be...

Claude Lemieux, I want you to guess the two teams Claude Lemieux scored playoff overtime goals. Montreal and New Jersey. Surprisingly, Montreal and Colorado. He didn't get one with New Jersey. Okay, yeah, that was. would, all right, that would surprise me.

The other guy that I would be thinking is Martangelo, went on that incredible stretch where he was, he was Mr. O.T. Yeah. And so he did it with Calgary and Carolina, but never with, you know, Edmonton or Vancouver, you know, all the other places that he went. Some other guys that I thought might have been in the running, like Brett Hull. He did it with Dallas and St. Louis, but not, you know, Calgary. or Detroit.

I thought Marion Hosa. I was like, oh, Marion Hosa. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, he played so many playoff games. That's a great one. And he was with Ottawa and Detroit

and Chicago and Pittsburgh. And nope, he only did it with Chicago and Pittsburgh. Even Wayne Gretzke, I thought for a second, well, you know, Wayne at the end there had a pretty lengthy playoff run

with the Rangers, but he just did it with L.A. and Edmonton. Dino Cicorelli was Washington, Minnesota. You know, so Ron Francis, even, I thought even we could sneak Hartford in there. there with Carolina, but no, he was just Carolina, Pittsburgh.

So yeah, anyway, that was a great question. So yeah, Glenn Anderson, Marty Havlett, Doug Gilmore. And I looked at, I just looked at it at Cory Perry close, but he did it with, he did it with Anaheim and Dallas, but not Tampa this year, not Montreal last year. And you figured there's lots of guys that you would thought to think, okay, well, they'd have a great chance to potentially do it. But yeah, from what I could gather there, and you're right, yeah, good catch on Glenn Anderson because he was right at the very end of the reverse alphabetical list,

so it was easy to look them up. And, yeah, remarkable to see that that nobody has ever scored a playoff overtime goal for four teams. And you would think it's going to be awfully hard to do that, right? Like, just with, it feels like there's less player movement than there was in the 80s and 90s. You know? Yeah, I'm kind of looking at the guys that are active or, you know, I mean. Corey Perry had his shot at it, but other than that, you just don't see guys move around as much.

Yeah, I don't see a lot of guys that, but you never know. Somebody will come along and potentially surprises. Let's wrap up here with a couple of things. We talked about, we had a question from a listener last week asking, is there a name for a hat trick when you score an even strength, power play, and a short-handed goal? What do we settle on, the Petri Screecos? I think it's, yeah, the Petrick, yeah. Yeah.

Kevin says, taking the cue from baseball, how come nobody is called a shorty power play and even strength goal hat trick, a cycle hat trick? Yeah. That's not bad. Doesn't a cycle need four? I mean, it shouldn't. There's not, but it's more than baseball.

Yeah, you need four, but. It feels like it would need, like we'd want the four in there. But, I mean, it's not bad. It's definitely not bad. And then one other thing, Adam from Pittsburgh has written into the podcast, and we talked about the night, Mario Lemieux scored five goals in five different ways, right? Empty net, penalty shot, even strength, power play, and Shorty. And Adam says, just listened to the podcast last week about scoring different goals in different ways.

I really enjoyed Sean's point that a player can score five goals in fewer than five ways. And so I thought I would bring the light the fact that this almost happened for Sidney Crosby in 2010. He scored three goals in four different ways. He had an even-strength goal, a power play goal, and then finished it off with a short-handed empty netter. The crazy part, Sid also had a penalty shot in that game and missed. So if we assumed he scored on that penalty shot

and the rest of the game played out the same way, maybe it wouldn't have, maybe it would have. But Sid would have actually pulled off the feet of scoring five different ways on four goals. And as far as I know, I think that's the closest anybody's come to pulling it off. P.S. Sean, as a Penguins fan, one way you can get back into my good graces is if you openly admit that the Kevin Stevens guarantee against Boston in 1991 is far superior to Mark Messier's guarantee in 1994. Far superior. That's tough. But you know what? I consider that. I mean, I'm going to have to go back and read up on the Kevin Stevens.

guarantee. But if I remember right, I think that was didn't, weren't they down in the series? Too nothing, I think right? Yeah, and he didn't just say like, we're going to win the next game. He said we're going to win four straight and win the series.

And then they did. As opposed to Messier who just said, we'll be back for game seven. Didn't even guarantee they'd win the series. He just guaranteed one game. So yeah, that's that's not a bad you know, that's not a bad one. That's, I'd have to think more about it.

And you know what? The other thing I got to look up is what did Kevin Stevens do in that series. I got it here. You do, okay. Well, that's what I want to hear. So Kevin Stevens, yeah, we were right. They were down two nothing in that. I feel like, did Vladimir Ruzichka score like a, 92?

91, I believe. Okay. Did Vladimir Rizchka, like, scored a big overtime goal? Like, I think he put them up two nothing for the Bruins. And it felt like it was, okay, so here's the quote. from Kevin Stevens after losing game two it was a heartbreaker

but when we get home we will beat them I'll say it now we will beat them okay so I don't know how we feel like is that him just saying we're going to tie up the series of two apiece whatever the rest of the series

oh boy Kevin in game five of that series Kevin Stevens had two goals and five points. Oh, boy. In game five. He finished the series with six goals and ten points.

Hmm. That's not bad. The problem is Messi scored a hat trick in the third period. Yeah, but one of them was an empty netter. One of them was an empty netter. And it was like a 170 foot empty netter. So. But weren't they down two nothing in that game?

Okay, listen to this quote, though. Here's according to the piece that we have on our site, this, the Kevin Stevens quote apparently Kevin Stevens said this is after they lose that second game Kevin Steven says repeatedly we're going to win four straight write it we're going to win for straight so he actually called

I mean it's a much more impressive prediction let's put aside guarantee maybe that's a more impressive prediction I mean saying how we're going to win a game is fine but saying that you're going to beat the penguin I don't see that where's this quote I'm seeing him, we're confident we can beat them, we will beat them. I'll say it right now, we'll beat them.

I don't see him. He said, you're going to win a four straight. Are you on the, the athletic version? All right. I'm not. No. This is, this is a problem. The guy, the athletic writer is not on the athlete. Do you not have a subscription? Is that the problem? Exactly. All right. I just send it to you in the, in the chat. You click on that and you, and, and do a Control F for four straight and it's down you gotta go a couple of times, but Steven's then saw some of the Pittsburgh reporters who weren't initially

involved in the gathering, called them over and repeated the same words to them. Oh, wow. Sweating through his white dress shirt in the heat of the locker room, Stevens said repeatedly, we're going to win four straight, write it, we're going to win four straight.

See, adding the sweating through the dress shirt, was he sweating because he was like, I'm nervous to be making this. Don't. Man, Kevin, he was such a great player. He was such a wrecking ball. That year, he was so good. And so, like, yeah, I'm looking at this.

So he makes the guarantee. Next game, he comes out. He scores the first goal, sets up the second. They go on to win. Game four, they win again. They're up two nothing. Boston comes back, makes it two one. He scores the insurance goal at the end to put it away.

game five yeah like you said five points the five point game and that's game that's game five that's where they go back to boston right because it's one thing to win the two at home but then they go back to boston and just absolutely pump them and he has the game of the game of the series he has eight points so in the three games after he makes the guarantee he has eight points you know what that's this is i i'll at the very least say that needs to be higher up the list of guarantees. Absolutely. You know what? Because they won the cup that year and that was their

first cup. Remember Pittsburgh for a long time. They were the, you know, the Leafs or whoever and that they just couldn't get a good regular season sometimes, but they couldn't get over the hump in the playoffs. 100%. Um, yeah. You know what? That's, uh, Adam from Pittsburgh. You have open, you, you,

you know what? I'm intrigued. You know, you've educated us. You know, you've educated us. Yeah. I appreciate that. Like, you would think that the two of us who were as big a hockey fans as you would find in the 90s would be more well-versed than the Kevin Stevens guarantee. And we're clearly not.

Yeah. No, it's, and it should get more attention. Because, God, we all know the Mark Messier guarantee. That has been hammered over our heads for going on 30 years now. This, this, this, Mark Messier guarantee. Boy, this, you put these two side by side. This, this one's looking pretty good. Yeah.

Okay. And one more, let me, real quick, let me wrap up with one more. email from a listener because last week we talked about short-handed goals and how some players in the 80s had higher short-handed goal totals than we would have ever thought, including, I mean, Bernie Nichols had what, did I say 28 short-handed goals? It was something like that, whatever. It was a very high number like that. Sure.

Okay. And we were shocked that Bernie Nichols, who was really known as a very offensive-oriented player, would have been on the ice, killing penalties, and then let alone scoring 28 short-handed goals. Mitchell says, look, I just want to write in to say, I'm so tired. of everybody acting surprised when they find out Bernie Nichols was a good hockey player. Everybody writes him off as a random 70 goal score, but guess what? Take away that quote-unquote random 70-goal 150-point season,

his numbers still look like this. 1,048 games played, 400 goals, 1059 points. That's right, still over a point per game, over 1,000 points, better than guys like Brian Bellows, Rick Tocket, Steve Larmer, Bobby Smith, all from the same era, all who get more respect than Bernie Nichols. And don't say his numbers are because of Gretzky, because he was not even a line made of Gretzky that season. So was I surprised that he was good at scoring shorthanded goals?

Of course not, because Bernie Nichols was really freaking good. Love everything that you guys do, except when you're disrespecting Bernie Nichols. That's your Mitchell. Here come to Bernie bros. Yeah. They are. Yeah, all right.

You know, yeah, point. I concede the. points, man. And I'm not, I think you can respect and admire Bernie Nichols' career and his production and still, I wouldn't say the 70 goal 150 point year was random, but still be shocked at the discrepancy between that and the rest of his production. But yeah, Bernie Nichols was a real good player. And again, to say it, he didn't play on Gretzky's line that year because they were both

centers. They played on the power play together, but it wasn't like Wayne Gretzky was. just bouncing, passes off of Bernie Nichols skate into the net over and over. He earned those goals. Yeah, exactly. I know, he gets, it's funny. Like, he gets painted with the brush of, I can't believe this guy got the 70 goals, but like, you know, it's a remarkable, remarkable accomplishment, 70 goals.

It was, and also his other great achievement was, he was, traded from the devils to the... This is the dad joke of all dad jokes. It is. Well, it's the second best, but he was traded from the Oilers to New Jersey for Zadano Cigar, and one of the writers, I'm assuming in New York, said, it's nice to know in this day and age that you can still get a cigar for a Nichols. That's good.

That's right up there with the Taco Bell trade. I mean, that is, those are the two that are really stand out. And those are great because it's pre-Twitter. Like, imagine whoever dropped these. cigar for a nickels joke. They did that. They had to like send that in to their editor.

Yeah. Yeah. And they had to go, yeah. Hey, real quick, we're going to wrap up the show. This week in hockey history, real quick. Because this is a remarkable story that we probably don't spend enough time talking about. But this week in hockey history, August 24th, 1980, Peter Stasney and his brother Anton defected at a hockey tournament in Austria.

So they're playing for what was then called Czechoslovakia, play for the national team. and basically the owner of the Quebec Nordiques, Marcelo Boo, and their team's director of player personnel, Gilles Léges, arranged for the brothers to escape to Vienna after the game. And they arranged for Peter Stassie's wife to get to Montreal, and like it was some real cloak and dagger stuff.

But, boy, like, it's one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the NHL. that the Quebec Nordiques engineered a defection of two-star players in Peter Stastling, Anton Sassany, this week in 1980. Almost impossible for a, like, a modern fan to

think through and understand what, you know, guys like this, the Alexander McGilney situation, a decade later, was, you know, was very similar. Just, real, like you said, cloak and dagger, this is spy movie stuff. I mean, this was, this was no joke.

This wasn't just a, you know, case of walking, you know, walking across the street to the embassy and saying, you know, I want to go here now or buying a plane ticket. This was, you know, this, if you got caught, there were, there, there were real consequences. And even when you did make the decision to leave, you knew that, you know, family that was left behind was potentially at risk of, of consequences. It was pretty amazing stuff that, that went on back then. Yeah. No, remarkable. And I would encourage, there's some great kind of little documentaries or little articles you can read on that. It's just a phenomenal story of what the Stastany Brothers did this week back in 1980.

All right, we're going to leave it there. You know what? I feel like I learned, like, I feel like I learned something this week. I feel like I learned something about the Kevin Stevens guarantee, the legend. Yeah, yeah. I feel better now. And the history of the mullets, like, you know, You're Billy Ray Cirrus, you know, the fandom.

You know, we always say on this spot, we want to laugh a little bit, we want to learn a little bit. And that's, that's been a good day. Yeah, there you go. We'll leave it there. All right. I want to thank everybody for joining. I don't think we made anyone laugh this one. No, nobody laughed.

Exactly. You learned a few things. Only the two of us learn some things and nobody laughed. That's it. That's it. One for two. Not bad. That's all.

All right. We'll leave it there. We'll talk to you again down the road. We're going to take a next week off. But we'll be back first week of September. There's going to be so many great storylines for us to tackle. Between now and then, drop us any questions at The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail. Or you can be like Pat from Long Island, leave us a voicemail at 845-4-45.

8459. I promise, even though during that Kevin Stevens thing, it looked like I wasn't an athletic subscriber. I am. But if you're not, you can join us at theathletic.com slash hockey show. Get an annual subscription for a dollar a month. For the first six months, you can also subscribe to the Athletic Audio Plus. on Apple Podcasts, you'll get all more bonus content from the network. Start with a 30-day free trial,

and then after that, it's just 99 cents a month.