The Athletic Hockey Show - Avalanche eliminated in stunning sweep

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

The Vegas Golden Knights punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup final, sweeping the President Trophy winning Colorado Avalanche. Sean and Sean dig into how the Avs season ended in such a disappointing fashion and if the Habs or Hurricanes match up better vs the Golden Knights. The guys look ahead to game 4 between Carolina and Montreal and stick tap Evgeni Malkin returning to the Penguins for another season.Host: Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoeExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff DometWatch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowJoin our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VTm9VjkFSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. What up, what up? It's the Athletic Hockey Show for May 27th, 2026. Sean Jantilly here with Sean McIndoo. Buddy, we are Frankliss today. Frankie Carrado is on assignment for TSN. He's in Colonna. He's doing the Memorial Cup.

I appreciate the gimmick that he's leaning into on the broadcast here. We saw him, let's see, today is Wednesday. On Monday, I believe he was in a kayak. He was, yeah. On Tuesday, he was in a Zamboni. This is, he's doing pregame hits. The kid is a true multi-dimensional media superstar. It's like I said in the group chat.

He got called out on being a terrible driver by someone who will remain nameless. Shall remain nameless. and has apparently decided to prove them wrong by piloting every possible vehicle. The problem, and I hope Frank knows this, is like when you start this strong, expectations get set. That is my concern. Like when you go kayak and Zamboni in back-to-back days, what is he going to fall? Like, what do you do? Like, is he going to be driving a school bus today?

That would be all right. Are you allowed to be doing trenchant analysis of junior hockey when you're driving, you know, a fire truck or whatever, whatever the next move is in Kelowna? It's going to be the school bus. It's going to be when the camera pans back to the terrified children that that's really good to nail it. I mean, there's kids on the bus. Oh, oh, man. Yeah, I don't know, man. This guy better be in an airplane by the end of this is all I'm saying.

A tank? I don't know. Tank would be one of one of the three tanks that we have in Canada gets. guys have those? He's literally, I mean, Frank, that's more of an us thing. Yeah,

let's, let's just say we're trying to get some these days. But yeah, we'd have, we'd have actual Frank the tank. Uh, this is, do you ever feel like he has more fun when he's not,

I do with us? Yeah, I was, I'm glad you said that because he's, again, Coxed Simponies. He's talking about rating, rating the Delta pantry,

which we've discussed on this podcast with, with, with O-Dag. Yes, like, this is, I'm it's FOMO

I don't know what I'm feeling right here I feel some degree of resentment to what's going on there Yeah It's time All right We have a Western Conference champion And we're still going to

We'll talk about them in a minute We're also going to talk about The Montreal Canadians What they have to do Even the Eastern Conference final Kind of pretty important game for Tonight here at the Bell Center Between them and the Hurricanes

And I know I'm going to talk of Gany Malkin at the end of the show But first, McIndoo, Golden Knights sweeping out the Colorado Avalanche. They're in the Sealing Cup final for the third time in franchise history. 75 playoff wins. Not bad for a team that's existed for nine years. Also, just to underscore how crazy this was for Vegas, they're the first cup final team with under 40 wins in an 80 game season since the 2002 hurricanes. It's been a while.

they're a 95 point team in the regular season, which would not have put them in the playoffs in the east, just to contextualize what we've witnessed. The Washington Capitals fans have got to be beside themselves. They finished ahead of the Western Conference champions in the regular season and didn't lose a single playoff game. So to me, that's a successful season. There is a point in the Caps history there at Honda,

banner for that. Ted Leontas would have next to the Washington Mystics attendance banner. There would have been more points than the Western Conference champions undefeated in the playoffs in a year in which they didn't qualify. But they've progressed beyond that. So again, just shout out to everyone in November and December as we all try to convince ourselves that game 32 of the NHL regular season really matters. The Vegas Golden Knights, the loser point merchants, the pillow fight winners. I'm seeing that quote brought up a lot again. Every pillow fight has a winner.

Yep. And look, all that aside, I don't think anybody coming into the playoffs looked at the Golden Knights and went, oh, this is a bad team. We looked at them all year saying, when are they going to get goals? going because they can't they can't be this bad. They're not a 92 point team or whatever they were on pace for for most of the season. They're not, they've got more. They've got that higher gear. And I mean, the timing has been ideal.

This is how you do it. Now, the side of this that I don't buy that I've seen a little bit of, not a ton, is people going like, well, this is just a veteran team. They played it cool during the season. and then they knew that they had the gear. They knew they could step on the get. This team was going to miss the playoffs with like a couple of games left in the season. So if they did this on purpose, they were really playing with fire because we almost had total disaster.

But right now, I mean, the team they remind me of a lot right now is the Florida Panthers from a couple of years ago. not the year they won the cup. The year, ironically, they lost to Vegas. But that was the year. Remember, they had won the president's trophy the year before. They go out, they trade for Matthew Chuk, they hire Paul Maurice, and then the last night of the season, they're going to miss the playoffs. And then it all comes together and they beat Boston and they go on the roll. And you're sitting there going, ah, these guys are geniuses.

We knew it all along. And yet you're still looking at it going, man, they were this close to disaster. So maybe the regular season does matter. You just don't know where. The last week matters. November is going to be a business lock. Also, like, they're getting goaltending. That was always such a huge problem for them.

Like, they're an 879 goaltending team in the regular season. And a lot of that was Carter Hart as well. But, you know, I look at that as one of their, that, to me, at the start of the playoffs. And this is a team, by the way, that I picked to win the Stanley Cup. in October. I am on a record. Right. And yeah.

And then I watched them for four months or five months or six months and was like, oh, never mind. Like this isn't going to work because they don't, they don't have goal tending. You know, the power play was whatever. Like, you know, they're firing their coach with a game. Mitch Martin chugging along at under a point of game, that bum. Yeah. That, yeah, I have a feeling he's going to come up shortly.

Yeah, he doesn't have to. We can, we can skip it. We can see if that. But I think that does underscore, it brings up the goaltending question. And I saw a really interesting piece from Tango Tiger. It was just a graph this morning on goaltending, plotting, you know, regular season save percentage versus postseason save percentage for all the various goaltenders in the playoffs this year. There is no relation between those two. If anything, there's a negative relation, right?

So this is just pure coin flip stuff. this is the stuff we try to hide from as people who are paid to watch hockey and analyze it and write about it and talk about it. I think the ugly secret, and you and I have talked about this plenty of times, is that nobody understands goaltending, basically. And that's what matters. And you can say, like, okay, I don't like Team X's goaltending situation coming into the playoffs because of past performance or whatever. Guy X is not playing well right now. So, you know, they're behind the eight ball. It, like, very truly statistically does not matter this season.

So you might as well flip a coin or go with your gut or just be like, yeah, whatever. I think, I think Carter Hart's going to be good or Freddie Anderson's going to be good for reasons that I can't quite explain. And then, you know, you have as much a chance of being right about that is wrong. And that's really tough. That is, that makes, to some degree, that makes analysis that we do in things we see. say in things we write about. If you understand the volatility of the most important position in the sport, like I know that always, when I'm making predictions, I'm like, well, you know, goaltending could just blow all this up. And I think to some extent, we're going to credit

Vegas for the way they've played, you know, shortly. But I think they're the biggest, you know, clearest example of that. If you get bad goaltending, you are going to struggle. and if you get good goaltending, you're going to have a chance. And it's tough to know when you're getting it, right? And I think they're putting that principle, you know, in action pretty clearly here. It's, you're right. Goaltending feels very random. I understand that it's not entirely.

And if Jesse Granger was here, I'm sure he would be explaining to us how Carter Hart changed the angle of his head by two degrees. and that's why the numbers are better. And look, there's truth to that. But you're right. This is something I've struggled with in hockey for a long time. And goaltending is a big piece of it, but it's not the only piece. It's like you don't want to read too far down that scroll of knowledge of how much randomness there is in this sport. Because at a certain point, it doesn't make it more fun to realize how much of this is.

if not random is is decided by such tiny margins that it, from practical standpoint, it is random, right? I mean, there's no way that anybody at the start of this playoffs was like, okay, I know that right now we all say if Vegas doesn't have a goalie and Colorado has two goalies, but I think a month from now, Carter Hart's going to be on fire and both of Colorado's guys are going to be iffy to the point. where they won't trust them. So that's why I think it's going to be Vegas in four in the Western finals. Nobody, nobody, nobody said that. Nobody would have said anything like that. But what you would have said is if you were the sort of person who's both paying attention and also not very fun, you know, you would have been like, Sean, who's your Stanley Cup pick?

Who's going to meet in the finals? You know, 16 teams about to embark. You just go, I have the two. teams at the hottest goalie. Yeah. That'll be it. And that sucks to some extent, but also like, I don't. It's something, it's something I struggle with.

Like, you try to. Because goaltending, like, goaltending is part of, the goalie is part of the team. And I hate when we like, you know, when we go the other way and we act like it's not, we go, ah, you know, PDO this or that. And it's like, well, yeah, they got, they have, you know, if, when the Winnipeg Jets win the president's trophy, because they have the best goalie in the league. That's part of the team. They went out and got that guy.

They drafted him. They developed him. Now he's in the lineup every night. He's part of the team. But it's, you know, yeah, it'd be like if the NFL, if every year in the, in the playoffs, two quarterbacks just got super high. And it could be any of them. And it could be one through 16 and it doesn't matter.

You could be sitting there going, oh, this team's win. And suddenly J.J. McCarthy throws for 500 yards every playoff game. And we all just. go, yeah, well, that'll happen sometimes. It's like there's some degree of nihilism that gets brought into it because you're like, okay, we just need to accept that all this, all the work you do and as much as you think you might know, the only thing you can be certain of is that it can all get thrown out the door by golden genetic performances.

Yeah, exactly. And, and I mean, look, there is absolutely an alternate universe not very different from this one where we're having the same conversation about Connor Ingram. and what a genius Stan Bowman is. And oh my gosh, by the way, speaking of how smart Stan Bowman was, what an idiot Kelly McCriman was thinking he could pick some goalie off the scrap heap who hadn't played in a year and a half and that was going to solve the problem. Boy, what dummies they are in Vegas.

It's, yeah, it's interesting to a point because a little bit of randomness and anything that, you know, we want the unexpected to happen. but when it starts getting too random it becomes a bummer. So I'll tell you what, let's let's talk about other than the gold dating. Let's talk about all the other good things that they did. Because there were a lot. This was a fantastic

effort top to bottom up and down the line. Mark Stone. What a player. Let's start with him. The dude comes in and we knew that he was going to be an X factor, right? Because I think you and I talked about it pretty extensively. Just still, one of the absolute best two-way players in the league. Like he was around the top 20 in goals per 60 this past season.

He's there with dry sidle. He's there with McDavid. Like this is a remarkably productive player still. And he also is one of the most impactful two-way forwards in the league. Right. So you have this elite offensive production when he's in the lineup. You have this incredible level of defensive impact that he brings to. And I thought that him being out of the lineup,

we knew that he was going to be out of it for some amount of time. one game, two, game, three, like whatever it turned out to be. I thought him not playing was going to be the death knell for the, for the, uh, Vegas golden nights. It wasn't. We saw them handle business when, when he was out. And then he comes back, scores goal, scores goals in consecutive games, huge one to open up game four.

It was, it was within five minutes of puck drop, which is just a completely deflating thing. If you're the Colorado avalanche, you have this, you know, your seasons. truly on the line, regardless of whether you think they could come back from 3-0 or not. And then the old injured guy comes out and sticks a shiv and you, you know, four minutes, 45 seconds into the game. That's just demoralizing for that, for Colorado. And it's a testament to how good Mark Stone is.

And I feel like it does get lost to some degree because the dude only plays 60 games every regular season. We know he's going to be dealing with injuries. We know there's going to be an out-of-sight, out of mind element to him. He is unbelievable. And I think that is a huge part of why we're talking here. It's May 27th, and Vegas just booted Colorado in four games.

Yep. Absolutely. I mean, he is, I don't think you could call him underrated. No. He's properly rated. And he's, he is properly rated as a player, but I think his impact maybe gets underrated, just because, as you say, like, he, at this point in his career, you know what you're getting and what you're not getting.

What you're not getting is 80 games. Right. And you're not getting four full rounds of the playoffs. No. You're getting 60 in the regular season. Yeah. And then he's going to miss some time during the playoffs. Yeah.

And look, I mean, this is going to be a big part not to get ahead of ourselves on the Stanley Cup final where we don't even know half the equation yet. But does Mark Stone last seven games in the Stanley Cup final? Is he in and out of the lineup? I mean, that is, this is a crucially important piece, but when he's there and healthy enough to contribute, he's fantastic. And he's, he's fantastic in a way that, yeah, he's never going to win the Art Ross. He's never going to win the Hart Trophy probably. He looks like he might never win that selfie because he's not going to put together the full season that people need.

But when he's out there. And I mean, just didn't you see like, on that, on the breakaway play, like you see the puck go up and you see. see, oh, there's a golden knight right there. He's going to catch the puck, and he's going to put it down. And then he goes, oh, it's Mark Stone. Okay. I think I know how this is going to end because some people just have it in the playoffs. No, man, he's got, he's got the juice.

And he always does their, like that, that little, that little touch pass that he had in the, in game. Dude, it's incredible. All right. On the, on the Colorado into things, I, I don't want to hand, Vegas knew how to beat them, right? trap, trap, trap, trap some more, clog up the neutral zone. They gave up some degree of zone time, but what you stopped was the transition game that Colorado really uses to kill people. So credit to them there.

But on the other end of things, man, I mean, like we can't get past the McKinnon-McCarr of it all, right? Like their two best players were in various states of disrepair by the end of it. They also didn't have Valerie Nechuskin last night, which is important. Sean, I'm wondering, what's the percentage breakdown here for you? Like how much credit are you given to Vegas and then how much, how much blame are you giving to injuries for Colorado when you try to sift through this in terms of what went wrong?

Like I'm struggling with this question because my instinct is to say 50-50. My instinct is to say 50% Vegas playing an extraordinary series and 50% the fact that two of the very best players in the world were nowhere near 100% for, for the games that they even did play. And the reason I'm struggling is I don't want to take credit away from Vegas. Like I say, they just up and down the list, go down the checklist of everything they needed to do. They did it all. So I don't want to seem like I'm taking anything away from them.

I guess what I would say is as a hockey fan, I feel cheated that Vegas played as well as they did. and we didn't get to see how that would measure up against the real Colorado avalanche. We got to see Vegas at their top strength up against a pretty seriously diminished version of the abs. Yeah. And I feel cheated because it's absolutely possible that this version of the Vegas Golden Knights would have beaten absolutely anyone you put in front of them, including a healthy, fully functional Colorado team. just didn't get to see it. And, and look,

it's not, it's not sour grapes. It's not, you know, it's not whatever, making excuses to point to the fact that Colorado, A, ran into a hot golly and B,

got absolutely decimated by injuries. And, and I think that's important because, look, if you're Vegas, if you're a Vegas fan, you don't care. Too bad.

So sad. That's fine. Nobody, nobody's saying you need to apologize for, for winning that series. But if you're Colorado and you've got to make some evaluations going forward, that you absolutely do have to cut through the hockey BS of you make your own luck and all this stuff and say, here's what were actual flaws that

were exposed. And here was us just wasn't our year. Yeah, that's the challenge is not being overreactive, but also recognizing that this is a pretty profoundly talented team that has made made early exits, you know, consistently over the last. They scored seven goals in four games, you know what I mean? Like, this is not, there's not a ton to hang your hat on when it comes to the results there. And it's not, and it's not just because of McKinnon in McCar. Like, you don't, you don't injury your way.

Like, I don't care how good those guys are. Like seven, seven goals in four games just isn't going to happen. It's not going to work. It's not. But, I mean, again, like, if this was, if this was the Oilers and McDavid and Drysidal were both beaten up and out of the lineup and missing, you know, nobody would would sit there and go, hmm, I wonder what the Oilers problem was. And look, Colorado's a better team than Edmonton. They've got more of that depth. And it's disappointing in a way that some of that depth didn't stand up and really, really be counted.

But there aren't very many teams ever in the history of the NHL where you can take their two best players and basically drop them down 50% effectiveness and they still win a series against a really good team playing really well. I think the issue is that it looked like they knew that they were cooked without those guys at full strength. There needs to be some level of belief that gets instilled the rest of the dudes in the lineup. up that like whether you have kill micard 50% or zero percent or 80 whatever it is you know the other guys need to

i i just you just it just i didn't get the sense that that happened that's a really bad series from marty natures too like that like he was he was the guy like he's the guy who's wearing he's wearing the dog color you know when all of a sudden done there um he's the guy you need to step up and i know that i i i know there's people who are absolutely sick of the the long shadow being cast by the Miko Ranton decision over this playoffs. It's relevant. It is. I mean, that was your guy.

That was your third elite player. There was a decision made to move on. And part of that decision was thinking that Marty Natchez could replace a big chunk of that. And during the regular season, he did. And during the playoffs. End of story. He did not. Roll credits.

Yeah. Land of Scott. 34, McCann's going to be 31, Brock Nelson, 35, Cadre you're going to be 36. All their best players are on the wrong side of 30 outside of McCar, basically. And I suppose NACIS. So I think that's what the post-mortem is here. Like, is this, that is like this standard issue question for the discussion surrounding the Colorado Avalanche right now.

I was like, did we watch their cup window slam last night? Like, like, did it close? and it didn't it didn't because as long as you have mckinan and mccarr in the mix in a pretty astute front office like you assume they're going to figure something out but these chances are not unlimited like it can sometimes the end can come quickly and they know that it's even like once you'll win it it it's really hard to make it back if it weren't hard for them they would have done it already right so i i think there needs to be you know some kind of of balance between saying like look when you have those two guys at the top of the lineup i don't care if mccann's going to be 31 years old like you you should have a chance but you also need to acknowledge that there's something missing with the mix in in everything that goes that goes below those two because you know what we saw in the series was not was not good enough um we need to bring up Mitch mornham man i'm sorry i'm sorry i know i know you don't feel like congratulations

I know you're not talking about it. Consmite trophy winner. It's already been decided. The voters, all, everyone who votes on it has already, already written the article apparently. I can think of one guy who has. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure when me and Wachinsky were eaten in Raleigh last week,

he was he was drafting his Mitch wins. Consmite story. And just calling up everybody for his story. Disgusting. It's disgusting behavior. Like any, any rabbit. at least Homer like I care what some blogger thinks. Did I click on that link?

Did I click on that link and do a Control F Mac and do? Yes. You might. Yes, I did. You might. Yeah. And you know what? Hey, tough break for Pavlorev who's scoring all these crucial goals and actually

is the most valuable forward so far on the Vegas Golden Knights. But sorry, kid. Get a narrative. Did Greg cut that out of the, from you? I really enjoy how all the fans in media who spend the entire season complaining that everything's about the Maple Leafs, watching Mitch Martyr get two points in a game, and immediately turning to every Leaf fan and being like, what do you think? How does this affect you? Yeah, man. I watched that game with Myrtle yesterday, right? Someone who's been around Mitch Martin more than anybody. and we're sitting at the bar and they show Marner on the sports net camera and he goes to talk, he's talking to Sean McKenzie.

And I just kind of like, I looked at James and I was like, well, what do you think? I'll say this. When it comes to Mitch Marner, he, and part of the reason why as a Leafs fan, this doesn't bother me as much as people seem to want it to bother me. is that first of all, as I said, in Wishes article, this was never happening in Toronto. Nobody in Toronto who watched Mitch Martyr is kicking themselves going, oh, if we had just kept them for one more year, this was the year 10 was the year he was going to explode. No, it wasn't. If he was in Toronto, I mean, first of all, they missed playoffs by a mile this year, but even if they were in the playoffs, we'd be having the same Mitch Martyr conversation. Like, it wasn't going to happen in Toronto.

And the other thing is, he chose to leave. he had his eye on the door all of last year. He had made his mind up that he wanted out. This wasn't the Leafs going, we're getting rid of this because this guy's a bum and he can't win in the playoffs. And then he's proven everyone wrong. I mean, if anything, he's proven everyone right, including himself, who said, I got to get out of here and go somewhere where I've got a chance. And he picked a great spot. He picked a great team.

He has fit in well. He had his ups and downs during the regular season. and he's been fantastic in the playoffs so far. He's done exactly what everyone in Toronto was waiting for him to do that he never did with the Leafs. And so, okay, good, good for him. But it wasn't going to happen in Toronto. And I will say that the one part that has been very funny was his quote about, you know, what was different in Vegas?

And he's like, ah, man, they just, they stay calm. Nobody panics here. Nobody starts. And it's like, dude, I don't know if you know this, but those nine playoff runs in Toronto, those were televised. We could see those. We saw how you react. Not them. Not everyone around you.

You. We saw you crying in the penalty box. Yeah, they're not throwing your gloves around. Like, that was you, dude. Like, we all saw that. Nobody here has tantrums on the bench whenever stuff doesn't go all during the close season. It's pretty cool. I wonder who he's talking.

He's probably talking about. John Tavar. Note it tantrum hever. John Tavares. Like, dude, I'm sorry Willie Nealander yelled at you one time in playoff run number eight or nine or whatever it was. We've lost track. But it's, yeah, that was very funny. But anyways, yes, he's, he's going to win the Con Smyth at this point. And congratulations to him. And I can't wait for all your hilarious tweets about it, everybody, that you've got queued up. You should tag him on it, actually. Tag at Down Goes Brown on all socials for your Mitch Warner wins the context. I'll give you a rating, but I'm sure they're all going to be eights and nines and tens out of ten. Absolutely. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to talk about the two teams, the only two remaining roadblocks that can stop. The speed bumps.

The speed bumps on the way to Mitch Marner, Kahn Smythe winner, stick around. All right, we're back. McIndoo. We got a game four in Montreal tonight. Had to shine to even the Eastern Conference finals at two, take things back to Raleigh in a decent spot. I think there are two bits of concern here in play, one for each team. The concern for Keynes, the canes have to be still. They're not scoring more than three goals a game.

It's happened twice and 11 playoff games, both times they scored four. It hasn't happened against Montreal. there's a world in which no matter how much volume and how much quality they manage, they get a couple bad bounces in both directions. Maybe Freddie allows in a squeaker or a questionable one. Did not think you look great in game three. And then all of a sudden, we're going back to Raleigh-2-2, and the shape of the series differs significantly.

I think the concern on the HAB side is a lot more pressing and a lot more possible, and that's that the house of cards falls down, right? You credit them for capitalizing on those chances. The Suzuki line's been good on balance over the course of the series. They haven't gotten much of anything from anybody else. There just don't seem to be. There haven't been enough shots there. Marty St. Louis said as much over the last couple of days,

they had 12 in game two. They had 13 in game three. Both of those games went to overtime, which is crazy. So I don't know that the chances are there, period, for them to win. certainly three times in four games. So which just adds to the importance here, right? If they want to have a chance, they have to win tonight because we know, you know, based on the way the first three games the series went, that they're just not going to spend a ton of time in the offensive zone.

Certainly not enough to win three games out of four against this team. So I think that adds to the importance of this. Like, it's stupid to call, you know, a game four in a series that's two one crucial because, of course, it is, but I think because of the way those two teams have played along the way to the two-one result, you know, I think, I think it makes even more important. Yeah, this is, I mean, you're not beating this Carolina team three times out of four, getting 13 shots a night or three times out of five. Like, it's, and, and this is, I'm, I'm more scared as a Montreal fan right now than a

Carolina fan. You're a Montreal fan? That's even. Mm-hmm. Got them. Got them. Jeff, delete that. Don't put, don't put on the internet.

If I was a Montreal fan, which I'm not, but if I was, I'd be more worried. And it's not just that they're down two games to one. I mean, that's obviously part of it too. But this series right now is,

this is a Carolina series that we're seeing play out. They are just strangling the Montreal Canadians. And we talked in the first segment about goal-tending, and which goalie gets hot. Montreal's got the hot goalie. Yes, they do. The hurricanes are getting goalied, but they're still pushing through it,

and they're still winning games. And yeah, it's in overtime and one bounce here and there. But even that, like usually, when you have overtime in the playoffs, you sit there and you go, man, if that bounce had gone this way or that way, we get a totally different result. And it almost doesn't feel that way in game three

because Montreal never got near the net in overtime. I mean, Nick Suzuki had the one chance early on. And other than that, it was just Carolina waiting to see who was going to be the hero because Montreal wasn't generating anything. And that's what scares you. Like, it's great to have the hot goalie. But when you have the hot goalie and you still aren't winning, that gets real scary. And, you know, I'm at the point where, and I think most people are, you kind of throw game one out. You burn the tapes on that one.

That was, we all said Carolina Hurricanes have not played a hockey game since the late 80s. They're going to be rusty. And it was. It was the Rust game and Montreal blew their doors off and they banked the win, which is what they needed to do. Hey, full credit to them. But as far as my analysis going forward, I don't. Yeah, the version of the Carolina Hurricanes that we got in the first 12 minutes of that game. disappeared. Like we haven't

seen it since. I don't, I think it's fair to say that we're not going to get that version of a, of that team again. I know that you can always, any series, season, game, anything, you can always say, well, if you take away their worst part, they're pretty good. But here, there was a very clear obvious explanation.

And it's such a small part and there was such a, such an obvious explanation. Like, it seemed almost too, like, I think people almost psyched themselves out after game one where you're like, well, you know, It can't just because it's so clearly because of Russ. It can't, that just can't be the, that can't be the answer.

It's an easy answer actually is. McIndoo's razor is what that logical principle is called. And I mean, the other thing that would make me nervous if I was a Montreal fan here is we, we had the conversation going into this series about the two first lines. Yeah. and how both of these teams were really being carried by the other lines. In Carolina's case, straight up by the second line. And in Montreal's case, it wasn't quite as obvious, but it was, you know, we all knew the numbers with Suzuki and Caulfield, especially.

At five on five, they weren't getting it done. And it was sort of like, all right, which line wakes up first? And the Suzuki line's been better, as he said. but the fact that it's Svetchenikov who gets the OT winner It's huge Makes me kind of wonder All right is this And it wasn't like they had a dominant game

It wasn't like he scored the sort of goal But he got the goal And you know He gets the goal or maybe Sebastian Al gets the goal And we're not sure who scored it And they're arguing about it Great those are the two guys you need To do something

Because I was watching game three Especially with with out just being like, where, what is this guy? Where is the elite player here that, you know, where is the first line player? And maybe that is what jumpstarts them. And if it, if that's what it comes down to, I mean, if it's, if we're going to have the shots be 30 to 15 every night and Carolina's so-called stars are finally going to start playing like it, this series is done unless, I mean, it's, The goaltending isn't going to do it. We need Dominic Hasick late 90s level goaltending, and even that might not be enough.

So if you're Montreal, you've got to get the big guys going. You've got to keep getting the goaltending, and you've got to find a way to get shots. And no, we don't mean just you skate over the blue line and you fire a weak wrist shot from 60 feet out. But, I mean, get some real chances going because the percentages, you can try to play the percentages to an extent. and the gaps the gaps too much it's it's too much when you have to win three of uh five and certainly if you have to win three in a row it's it's it's not going to happen yeah i'm going to be watching the a ho line pretty closely and i think that was the that felt like the final puzzle piece that needed to fall in for carolina to you know really we certainly took them

seriously as a cup contender before this but that was the thing that wasn't going right that line was controlling play and like getting chances and whatever like i don't i don't think game three was quite as good as they made it out to be but man if if those guys if any of the three of those guys starts the cashing on chances that's a ho that's feschenkov that's seths jervis you know then whether it's tonight's whether it's the rest of the series whether it's a cup final i think in a lot of ways like look out like because stuff could be stuff could get ugly but that's been the question for them. That's always been the question for them. It was the question for him last year. Is Fetnikov and Ajo and whatever? Are those guys going to have enough juice to get it done when they

need to get it done? And I think game three was an example of that happening. Like the trick for Carolina has been that they've insulated those guys better. Like it doesn't just, it doesn't just land on those, on those two or three guys. You have the second line to carry them through the first two rounds. You have Nikolai Eelers playing on a checking line with Jordan Stahl and Jordan Martinuk. And that's kind of crazy to watch, honestly. And it is incredibly effective hockey that they're playing out there. That's a huge issue for Montreal. They have no answer for the Stalin period. They don't know who to like nothing has worked in terms of trying to find a matchup for that group. So that's that's going to be interesting. But man, I do think so much of this,

not just this series, but whatever comes next for Carolina is going to be dictated by what Aho and Svetchnakov and Jarvis do. So I think if you're watching this game for this series, if you're maybe watching for the next one, whatever, like pay attention to what those guys are doing because it's because it's important, important stuff. Let's take a break. We're going to come back and then we're, you know what?

Actually, no, that's not true. I skip something here. I was in the press box. So it was tough, you know, you never really, you certainly get a different there's a lot of things that are different when you're watching a game in a press box officiating is definitely one of them because you get swayed by the crowd you don't have access to the same replay that you know that you do when you're watching a game on TV so macadu I need to know um was the officiating as bad as it seems like people in the stands and elsewhere and on the internet uh won us to believe it was

in that game. I don't have a sense. It felt like it was bad on both sides. I felt like it was a poorly called game and both teams were screwed in one way. I didn't think it was awful during regulation. Yeah. There were the two very obvious missed calls in overtime.

The trip on Lane Hudson and then the too many men. You mean the trip and the embellishment on Lane Hudson? It would have caused four and four hockey for a little bit? Maybe. Maybe, although, I mean, that's... I think they did him in favor there. They may be. They may be, but the point is, I understand as a Montreal fan why you would be...

Yeah, because you are a Montreal fan. And the... Stop it. And, you know, hey, you're looking there going, if they're not going to call anything, then I guess maybe you do have to embellish and you get into all this nonsense. Look, referees don't call penalties in overtime, okay? they just don't. The only penalties they call are the ones they have to call,

which is puck over glass for some godforsaken reason. That's the one thing you can't do in overtime. You want to break your stick over someone's head, go ahead. This is year 15 of hearing the McIndoo playoff puck over. If you shoot the puck over the glass and it goes over there, okay? Like I'm talking if it goes that way. Now if it goes there, that's fine. That's totally okay.

But if it goes there, that's a penalty and your team's going to lose the playoffs on a power play goal. And the other one that's supposed to be obvious, is too many men, but they had let the Hudson penalty go. So, I mean, I didn't, as a neutral fan, I did not feel like that was a game decided by the officiating. I didn't love the officiating, but I felt like it balanced out. And now, I mean, it could have gone the other way,

because I mean, Hudson gets tripped and the puck just kind of slides off. And if a Carolina player picks that up and scores, oh my goodness, We're still cleaning up downtown Montreal probably because we might have gotten a really late play. I'd penalty call on that one too. Like, oh, it might have to, right? Because, I mean, we all know it. We all say it that, you know, the officials don't want to decide the game, but sometimes not making the call is deciding the game.

At the end of the day, I didn't feel like coming out of that game that the officiating was the conversation. But it was, it wasn't great. But welcome to the playoffs, man. And again, I don't, I'm not here to defend the referees, but all these fans who say they want the rulebook just called the same way in the playoffs that they call it in game one of the season and call it the same in overtime as you would call it the first shift. No, you don't. You do not.

You would hate it. You do hate it. I've seen it happen. And I've seen, you know, when it happens to your team, suddenly all that, I just want consistency. We saw it happen with the hurricanes. In that flyer series, that was the refs calling it tight and calling it by the rulebook, and it was unwatchable at points. So be careful.

Yeah. This has not been an officiating series so far. We'll see. We've got a ways to go. Yeah, because one team had one registered shot after the second intermission or whatever it was. It's tough to blame the refs when that's going on. The refs weren't out there blocking shots. Yeah, maybe one or two.

You never know. A couple. Take a break. We're going to come back and tell you what we learned. All right, McIndoo, I would like to tell you something that I've learned. What have we learned, Sean? I learned that the Pittsburgh Penguins learned that it served zero functional purpose to let Evgeny Malk and walk away.

And there was some open question as to whether that was something they understood. He's a franchise icon. He's still a really effective player. And he just signed a one-year $5.5 million contract for next season. There was no reason for them not to do this, Sean. and I'm going to read some texts that I sent in a group of largely Pittsburgh Penguins fans yesterday because there is some degree of like, you know, should they have done it? Should they assign him for two? Like there's a weird amount of litigation that's going on in that fan base over this.

No reason not to do it. If he stinks, they'll stink. So that's good news for them. If he's good, that'll be fun for you guys. And his presence won't stop them from doing a single thing. he was a more, this is the crucial part, and this is something that I don't think people know. If Gennie Malkin was a more productive player than Sidney Crosby last season, Penguins won his minutes dramatically. He averaged exactly as many five on five points per 60 minutes as Crosby did. If you include the power play, he had him beat decisively there. They generated more goals and chances with him on the ice than they did with Cid.

They allowed fewer. So, you know, maybe he hits the cliff next year. I'm not, I don't think that in two years, you know, we're going to be having it. I certainly think that Crosby's situated to play longer than, than Malkin is. The durability is a question. He's got the knee injuries and blah, blah, blah. He missed time last season. That's all, that's all understood.

But I think it, I think we need to underline just how good he was and just how good they were with, with him on the ice last year. And if you're in this mode where you have Sydney Crosby and Eric Carlson and whoever else still on the team, you're clearly too good to tank, you know, and you're not going to add the third best prospect in the draft next year. You might as well lean in a little bit. Like, enjoy it. Hope those, hope the dubus can improve the roster elsewhere. And avoid going out on terrible terms with the third best player in the history of your franchise, because that's what it would have been. So I think that's, I think that's a fine move by Pittsburgh. I think there are, there are three reasons why you move on from a player.

like this in this situation. Number one is that he's not good anymore. That's clearly not the case. This isn't Chris Latang, which is a different problem to solve with a couple of years left on his deal. But Malkin's still good. So it's not that. Reason number two is because you're planning to tank and you're worried that somebody's too good for that. They're not going to do that. That's not where they're at. The third reason, which is the interesting one, is because you just feel like at a certain point you have to rip off the band-a. And you have to to stir the new era. And we saw that in Chicago where they basically made the decision. We're moving on from Patrick Kane and Jonathan Tapes. And they, not even so much trading

Kane at the deadline the first time, but there was some talk. Would he come back? And, and Kyle Davidson basically said, no, we're not even going to entertain that. This is a new era. We're not trying to do the transition thing, et cetera, et cetera. That is where I think on its own, maybe you make the case that it's time to move on if you're Pittsburgh, except you've got Sidney Crosby, and you're not doing that with him. So there's no point ripping the Band-Aid halfway off. That just hurts, and then you still have a Band-Aid.

There's nothing, and there's also nothing under the Band-Aid. Like, there's no point in doing it, right? He's not blocking anybody. Having his contract on the books for next year isn't going to stop them from doing anything, and I think that's the crucial thing, because it's clear, it's clear based on the way Dubus has moved, not just currently, but over the last couple years, that the primary goal there is trying to get better by adding players who were like, you know, 25, 26, you hope, whatever.

There's very obvious names on the market there that you can imagine them going after. Having malking around doesn't stop you from doing any of that. There's not some kind of, there's not some kind of stud prospect that, that's playing, that's getting blocked from a top six spot. Like, whatever. And even the fact that, you know, I'll admit the dollar value was higher than maybe I thought it would be. But it's heavily bonus-laden. And the bonuses, a lot of them are tied to team success, making the playoffs, going deep in the playoffs.

So if all the bonuses hit, oh, boy, what a terrible problem to have. We just won the Stanley Cup. I guess our salary cap for the year after is is tighter than we thought. And even if it's because it's 35 plus, the bonuses kick over to next year if you need them to. I don't know, two years from now, I don't see the penguins necessarily being flush up against the cap because they've got so much talent. And if they do, again, nice problem to have. Totally. And there is, there is way more value than people want to think in just letting a franchise icon finish his career.

Absolutely. That's it. I don't, you know, I don't think, if Gany Malcolm playing for the Kings next year is like a Jerry Rice as a Seahawk level of sad, because he's still a good player. But let him, let him play his whole career. There's something to that and, you know, Crosby's going to play his whole career in Pittsburgh. LaTang might, because I don't know how you get out of that. So go ahead. Yeah. And, you know, is this, this is Kyle, in the trade market dirty because now we know that Eric Carlson's not going to be a part of it or whatever. Like that's, that's what this signifies, right? Is that like, you know, maybe,

maybe Ricard Raquel and Brian Rust and Carlson and these, these older guys, they stick on this team. Like, he's in a tough spot. I agree. But I think there is absolutely tons of, tons of value and, you know, making sure that that dude finishes his career in a, in a, in a penguin uniform. Because it was pretty clear that he wasn't going to. If they, if they, if they. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, Look, at some point a year ago, if you had said, oh, you know, they're going to sign them. You go, well, what are they doing? Wow, they still think they can win. All right, well, prove it.

Go out there and make the playoffs if you guys are real. Well, they did. They did exactly. They made the playoffs. They had home ice in the playoffs. What else? They've earned it. They kind of made the dubious decision for it.

And if it doesn't work, then, you know, then you rip the bandad off. And then you say, okay, we tried to do this, you know, half measure. and you trade everybody except Crosby and you and you stink for a year, whatever. You trade Crosby, absolutely. You trade Crosby, too. That may believe soon. Mm-hmm.

What if you learned, Sean? I learned that there are people in Colorado who think this is all Jared Bedner's fault and that they think he's on the hot seat. Because he played Pye Gowl for 15 minutes on Monday night. That is. I mean, he was that, look, I mean, if you're playing poker during the playoffs,

I mean, that's just tampering with Sonny meta. You're just trying to get Sonny's attention there to get him to perk up. No, he's playing, he's playing Pai Gow. You can put down 20 minutes and just hang out for an hour and do it. It cares. Leave alone. Fake poker for fake poker players.

I knew you're, I got you. I'm shocked at that. I mean, we talked the whole segment about injuries and gold dating and all that. I don't know what he was supposed to do. I don't know how spoiled you have to be. as a fan base, as an organization, whatever, to look at this and go, it's a coaching problem. So I was shocked at that, and, you know, who knows?

I mean, there's weird rumors about Chris McFarland and what's going on in Colorado. So I guess we'll see, but that doesn't make any sense to me. I will say this. The other thing I learned from John Tortorella's press conference, where he had that little parting shot about Lee Gerard, in Gerrador. So John Tortorale,

stick up for his fellow coaches. Interesting. Interesting timing. Not a no comment on that one. So when it's the media and the fans, then John Torterella is very brave and he's willing to stand up for his coaches. But when it's his own team, screwing over Bruce Cassidy, no comment. I got nothing to say. Hey, part of the playoffs, it's about picking your spots. And John Turtorella knows how to pick his spots. And he picked, he picked his spot on this one and he's he's back in good standing with the coaches association. Interesting. Except for Bruce Cassidy.

Interesting. Also, we got, he referred himself as a guidance counselor last night. We got, we got nice, we got nice guy towards yesterday. He wasn't sprinting for the airport in Long Beach or whatever, whatever. No, he was the nice guidance counselor instead of the mean vice principal. So that's good. We'll see how long it lasts. That's pretty good.

five more games Sean what's your post today I don't have one up today what the hell dude dude I'll give you a peek behind the curtain and hopefully this doesn't this doesn't end up retroactively budding me I I filed a post last night

and I expected to wake up this morning find out it had gone out and it didn't now I think it probably just got either overlooked or you know there was a series ended last night things get busy I understand I'm a little bit concerned I'm a little bit concerned. This post, I might have finally crossed the line

and written something that was so stupid that the editors are like, no, we're not putting this on the site. And I don't even want to say what it was, but it's, I'll tell you off. Great, okay, I was going to say. You can wait until, maybe it'll go out later today, maybe it'll go out Thursday, or maybe you will never see it or me ever again because I finally, I have.

have that doubt. About a few times a year, I write something and I'm like, this is, maybe this should stay in the inside voice. And, uh, and then I hit send and it goes out and, and whatever happens, happens. This one, they, I didn't, uh, I didn't even get the little checkmark in Slack. Like, I just got nothing. I got, I got no sold completely on this one. Yeah, you, like, you checked it, you checked to make sure that it actually, that the message actually went through. You're like, oh, maybe, maybe they don't know it's there. I just put that one in my graphs or something. I don't No, no, it's there. And it's just awkwardly, awkwardly trying to make eye contact.

And the editors are just head down pretending it didn't happen. So we'll see how that goes. But you guys might be in for a treat tomorrow or might be in for a new host next week. I can't wait. That's such a great reason to end the show. Thank you, Sean McIndoo. Thank you, fun folks for watching. And listening to this edition of The Athletic Cocky show,

Eastern Conference Final Game for tonight in Montreal. all enjoy that. Haley and I got you covered tomorrow. We'll talk to you real soon.