The Athletic Hockey Show - 'Bruce, there it is' chant breaks out in Seattle, new All-Star Skills competitions announced, Ray Bourque cracks Top 10 of NHL99

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

First, Ian and Sean follow up on some important NFL business, before discussing the "Bruce, there it is" chant breaking out at the Kraken-Canucks game at Climate Pledge Arena. Next, breaking down DGB's piece building a roster for the 25-26 season, the NHL announces new games for the All-Star Game's skills competition, and Ray Bourque cracks the Top 10 in The Athletic's NHL99. To wrap up, we now know who Avs fans have to thank for the Stanley Cup win in the mailbag, and a look back with "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM: [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshowSubscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGo to https://www.chime.com/nhlshow to sign up for a Chime Credit Builder Visa Credit Card today! Thanks to Chime for supporting the show.Sign up today at stitchfix.com/hockey to get $20 off your first purchase! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Welcome back to a Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Medes-Shon-McCandu with you. For the next, I don't know, we'll call it an hour or so. We've got a lot to get to. By the way, Jesse Granger and Little Granger things presented by BetMGM. Not going to be a part of the show today. Jesse is in New York, living his best life, covering the Golden Night.

so he's unavailable covering some morning skates. But man, we got a lot to get to, including the Canucks. We keep thinking they hit rock bottom, but maybe they reached a son to a new low on Wednesday night. We'll talk about Sean's 2025, 2025, 26, team building exercise, some new All-Star game events, NHL 99, mailbag, lots of things to get to. Just a couple of 49ers fans talking a couple of 49ers fans. Die-hard 49ers fans.

You're looking sharp, man. the new Twitter avatar and everything, you're looking good. I'm going to tell you, this stupid Twitter avatar, and look, can I get at least some credit? Like, I switch that avatar within 40 seconds of the game ending. It might have been quicker than that. Like, I think it was the final gun you, you had it up there. I thought there was going to be some arm twisting. Like, I would have, I would have stalled as long as possible, but I, I've, full credit to you.

It's almost as if you had it ready to go, like, well in advance. as if you let me guess when you saw Zeke line up at center was that when you just went and hit the button on the switch? Yeah, we're not even going to talk about that. Anyway, for the people who don't, maybe you didn't tune in last week or you've forgotten,

but basically I'm a diehard Dallas fan. Sean's a huge 49ist fan. We said, look, whoever's team loses that divisional playoff game in the NFL is going to change their Twitter avatar to the other team's logo. So I did that right away after the game. But can we just peel back the curtain a little bit and just, I'd love to share, I don't,

I don't know if I have it on me here. Yeah, I do have my phone with me. You texted me at half time of that game and went full reverse jinxie with, okay, here's the text at 8.17 p.m., which I believe was at halftime, Sean texts me and says, I don't feel good about this game at all. Which is, I feel like you, do you just have that text loaded in your, I mean, honestly, I don't feel good about anything at all ever. So it wasn't, I wasn't really revealing information.

And I was trying, I was, you know, I was trying to give you a little bit of a boost, a little bit of hope, right? Like, you know, I'm a pessimist by nature, certainly when it comes to sports, a lifetime of being a Leafs fan, will do that to you. So, no, I just give you, I try to get a read on where you were at. And I think you, like, immediately shot me down that, uh, yeah, it wasn't going to go so well. for the Cowboys. And you were right. Once again, you were right in your analysis. Yeah. So, listen, so I switch my avatar this week to a 49th avatar. The amount of, like, I've actually stopped, I've, I've dialed back my tweets because I'm like, every time I tweet, my mentions are filled with, with, whoa, what happened or who's that? Like, anyway, but you know what

the most annoying thing is this week? I've got Eagles fans in my mentions being like, you're going down this week, man. They think I'm a 49ers fan. I love it. I love it. This is, this is, you're chaos. Oh, I'm so excited.

I'm so happy for you. I mean, wouldn't, don't we all have random Philadelphia sports fans yelling at us for no good reason? I mean, I feel like that's just, that's just a typical party.

That's just a regular. So yeah, welcome to the bandwagon, man. It's, it's got to be exciting for you, you know, and what did we say? We said,

we said 12 months. right, was the amount of time, I think. No, we said one week. In fact, now, I don't know, what's the deal? Can I get rid of it before kickoff or do I have to wait through the NFC championship game? I feel like one week. I feel like, yeah, you've got to keep it on there throughout the game and live tweet

the game as well. Yeah, exactly. No. Anyway, so as we're recording this, I'm wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat. Not that there's a video component to this, but I'm wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat in some vain attempt to sort of try to cancel out by 49ers avatar. But whatever. Not going to happen.

No. It's, yeah, listen, it's, like I've said to you many times, being a Dallas Cowboys fan is the closest experience I can have to be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Because it's just the,

the extended kind of frustration in the playoffs and the disappointment and the large fan base and, you know, all the, all the stuff that goes with the Dallas Cowboys fan. And I think a lot of it kind of goes with being a Toronto Maple East fan, which leads me to this. Did you get a chance to watch the Harold Ballard documentary that was done by Jason Priestley and on CBC last week? I did not.

And I'm kind of ticked off of myself for for missing it because I've heard from a few people that it was quite well done and quite, I guess, enlightening for a lot of people who made. either don't know Harold Ballard or maybe know of him because you know Leaf fans like me who are always complaining about Harold Ballard and you're sort of like, oh, gee, I mean, doesn't every fan base of a losing team hate the owners? Was he really that different? And if you saw the documentary, apparently, hopefully you came away with an appreciation for the fact that for once us Leaf fans are not just overhyping and overselling something. This guy really was solidly in the running.

I would say for worst sports owner of all time. Yeah, and look, it's a short list and you want to put like Marge shot on there or Charlie Finley who used to own the Oakland days or, you know, look, Dan Snyder is probably on. There's certainly a Mount Rush. Blackhawks fans would throw the Wirtz. Wards family.

Ottawa fans would throw Eugene Melnick in there. Like there's certainly no shortage of potential, you know, candidates to get on the Mount Rushmore. What I will say for our audience, listeners in Canada that are listening to us, and this includes you, obviously, Sean, is you can watch this documentary. You just have to download the CBC gem app onto your TV or your phone, and you can watch it at any time. So I highly encourage it if you're a younger fan, like Sean said, if you're a younger hockey

fan, I think you're going to be really shocked by some of the, like kind of the, like kind of the zaniness, the craziness. And I think if you're old enough... It's cartoonish, almost. Yeah. It's some of, some of... He's almost cartoonishly evil in some ways. He's legitimately evil in some other ways, but there are, you know, some of the stuff where

you're just, like in, if it happened in this era, you'd say that he was trolling. You know, like, that concept didn't really exist back in the 70s and 80s. You were just being a jerk, but like, you know, today it's done and you pretend you're doing it ironically and it somehow gets to another level, but, you know, shutting off. the water fountains and putting the wrong colored names on the back of the jerseys and all of this stuff. He was he was a character and for for once I don't mean that as a compliment. No. And so look, if you're going to watch this, I think if you're a younger sports fan, you're going to really like just be shocked by it. And if you're, you know, kind of like Sean and

I, you're like, we're in our 40s and, you know, that was kind of our youth was growing up in kind of our earliest memories of hockey were the Harold Ballard Leafs. And we probably at the time didn't quite, like we knew that this was kind of this cantankerous, weird, eccentric old man, but now with the benefit of hindsight and, you know, you can just watch it. You'll, you'll really appreciate it. Anyway, so for anybody listening in Canada, you can download that CBC gem app, watch it anytime you want, and it's, it's certainly interesting. Now, Vancouver fans would probably raise their hands right in the here and the now. As we sit here and talk in January of 2023.

Vancouver fans would probably say, you know, we feel like our owner, Francisco Aquilini, is on the list of the, you know, kind of most hated owners in the NHL in the here and the now. And we've had so many of these kind of rock bottom moments for the Canucks this season. I want to ask you about this one that played out last night, in, of all places, climate pledge arena, Sean, in Seattle. Look at the Seattle fans dropping in. Nice work.

work. Yeah, let's talk this out. So if people didn't see this or didn't hear this, Vancouver plays in Seattle Wednesday night and it's a beat down, the crack and take them down 6-1. Late in the game, while the score is 6-1, you hear the chant of Bruce, there it is. That's the old Bruce Boudreau song that they would serenade the old Vancouver coach with. Bruce, there it is. And they started saying that at Climate Pledge. Here's my question. Was that Cracken fans trolling the Canucks? Or were there enough Vancouver fans

as a short drive two and a half hours down the I-5? Were those enough Canucks fans in the building kind of just venting their frustration with their own team? Like take me through. Who was yelling Bruce? There it is last night. I mean, you say it's a short drive, two and a half hours. Are there really a lot of Canuck fans

that are driving two and a half hours to go say Vancouver? Like right now, like, hey, guys, we got a, boy, we wouldn't want to miss this. Maybe, you know, Rick Tock is second game. We're in the Christmas window. Don't sleep on people buying Christmas gifts for, like, the friends and family. And today, next month, a month from now, we're going to go down in Seattle for the Canucks game. It's possible. I won't rule it out.

And I guess we, you know, we'll see this. We'll see as they go on the road later this week. I think New Jersey is the next game up. Maybe we'll see if this continues because, you know, it's been kind of fascinating because there's two theories about this chant. The first theory is that it was, again, trolling. This is, this was Seattle fans making fun of Vancouver and Vancouver fans in the coaching situation. And the other theory is that it was more of a, like a tribute. This is, this is almost like a protest chant.

This is Seattle fans saying we also watch the whole Bruce Brudrow story unfold, and we didn't like how he was treated. And we're going to, you know, and there's some overlap there, right? I mean, because you're kind of, it would be a chance for the fans to sort of say, hey, we're going to, we're going to throw this cheer up for this popular coach that you guys just got rid of in the most screwed up way possible. And that it all reflects so badly on your organization. Like, that's the fun interpretation. You know, trolling's great.

you know, a good, good organized fan versus fan rivalry is nice. But I'm more curious to see that. And I'm curious to see what happens now looking ahead in New Jersey on the next road game because Jersey fans have already, you know, they've acquitted themselves pretty well on the chanting front this year, right? They had to fire Lindy. And then the sorry Lindy, right? This is, and, you know, we know that, hey, we know that Jersey fans can chant. And Gary Bettman knows it too because he got, you know, he got it with both barrels from them.

years ago back in the day. So, you know, let's see. Let's see if this becomes a thing that, you know, imagine if Vancouver is going around the rest of the season and everywhere they go, people are chanting for Bruce Boudreau. I mean, they've got, they're doing the, it's, they've got Columbus at home tomorrow, and then it's after the All-Star breaks.

We got a little time for this to dissipate, but then it's, it's New Jersey, both the New York teams in Detroit. Let's see. Maybe by then we've all moved on and to the next thing. but yeah, it was, it's interesting. And I'll tell you, it's good news for the Canucks and their players and the coaching staff that we're talking about that and not how terrible they looked.

Did you see Rick Talk it after the game? No, I didn't see Rick talking. Just in his postgame comments, like he already looked like he's really regretting things. Like he was just sort of, there was one clip where they asked him like, what happened. And he just, he was speechless, literally. He just didn't have anything to say and made some comments also about, you know, hey, I was warned coming in here that this team can't do two good games in a row. Of course, they'd won the first game under Rick Tocket over Chicago, so it barely counts. And he also called his team soft, which is a tough card to play, two games in.

You know, I think Rick Tocket can probably get away with that where some other coaches couldn't because, you know, we saw his playing career. and he certainly wasn't a soft player. So he knows what he's talking about. But yeah, for him to get out there and say, I hate to call my team soft, but that was a soft performance. It's a little bit rough. I wonder, you know, maybe it's,

if you're a Vancouver fan, maybe you're saying, yeah, this team needs some tough love. This team needed to hear it straight. So maybe that's the upside of it. But it was, the honeymoon already seems to be over. Between Rick Tock and his team,

if not the fan base. man yeah i mean two games in he's already pining for the the tn tn t panel again uh wondering what he's done but like we we knew this was going to be a messy situation uh in vancouver it wasn't going to be like talk it comes in like budro kind of did that last year though right he came in and he turned it around right away and well and they sort of set it up right i mean yeah part of part of why budro was left a twist in the wind i mean not for the two months but for the last week was they had Colorado, Edmonton, Tampa, Carolina. They were going to probably lose all those games,

and they did with the exception of a shootout win against the hurricanes. And then you've got Chicago, Seattle, Columbus coming up. That's at least two very winnable games. You want to get the guy off to a good streak before the All-Star break. But this was going to be a tough one, and it looked really tough. It's not often that you lose 6 to 1 in the score, maybe even flattery a little bit, but that might have been the case last night. Vancouver fans or whatever,

they were yelling Bruce, there it is, and the fans were yelling Bruce, there it is, inside Seattle's rank yesterday. Can I ask this? And you're obviously watch every Leafs game or most Leafs games home and road and you're paying attention to this team. When, and I've never heard this chant in Ottawa

where you think it might happen, even I know there's a lot of Leafs fans that come to games, but there's just a lot of Ottawa fans. Like, why is it that, when the Leafs go on the road, we never hear like a 67 chant. Like 67.

And I'll tell you why. Because remember when the Rangers were going through that long stretch before they won in 1994, and I know a lot of it started with the Islanders, but sometimes they would go on the road and teams would chant 1940. And just kind of a reminder. Am I wrong on this?

There's nobody chant 67 at the Maple Leafs? I've heard it. It doesn't happen. It certainly isn't a thing the way the 1940 Chan was. I mean, that was something where if you were, you know, if you're an Islanders fan, you're going to the Ranger game, you know, you're saving up the lung power because you know you're going to be hitting them with that. It doesn't seem to be that way for the leaves.

And I think you hit on the reason, which is the rivalry games where you would expect it, places like Ottawa, Montreal, even Vancouver, half the building is leaf fans. So, you know, you can start it, but they, you know, know, they'll come back after you. Not to mention that, I mean, who's going to chant 60? Canucks fan? I mean, they haven't won a cup since 1970. Senators don't have any Stanley Cups.

I guess that the Habs could hit them with it. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, to, uh, to, to really get a go. well and half the time they seem to take over the building. Maybe there's just there's just not enough of the hometown fans to really get it going without getting drowned out. Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah, when they come to Ottawa and I know when they go to Western Canada, it feels like the building is at least, if not 40, 50 percent full, sometimes even a little bit more.

So yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's why. And you're right, too. Like, I mean, I guess I could, okay, I'm going to throw out a team here. And you tell me if they would, like, I'm just going to throw out a couple teams. you tell me if they would have the green light to chant 67 when the leafs roll into town. Okay? Yeah. I'm going to start with this. Calgary.

Yeah, I mean, they've only got the one, but, you know, they've got the one in 89, much more recent. I feel like that would be okay. I don't know that Calgary wants to be dabbling in the, like, Stanley Cup trash talk. But, yeah, I mean, they've got one more in my lifetime. So, I mean, it's kind of a pale green light. Okay. Yeah, it's like one of those greens that turns to a yellow and you decide to go through. Exactly. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Edmonton. Yeah, I mean, I think Edmonton could get away. As bad as it's been for the last 30 years now in Edmonton, they, I mean, they've got five of those banners hanging there. I do feel like you could get there. Again, you're getting a little into, you know, well, we're going to chant at you for, you know, your lack of success over the years when, when you've had a third. year dry spell. It gets a little dicey, but nobody ever said that a good fan chant had to be

completely logical. Okay. The Islanders have been great over the years. Their fans are passionate. We've seen them yell at John Tavares. Could Islanders fans get away with chanting 67? Again, a lot of the same logic even longer than with the Oilers. This one to me, I don't want to hear a 1967 chant from Islander fans because they've got something more recent to hang there. They've got the Tavares thing. We've, you know, we've, we've seen them going, going over that. That, to me, is, is, is more of a, more of a thing that, uh, that is deserving of their eye, you know, a little bit more modern. I, I just feel like, if you're, put it this way, you're going to chant 1967 at the Leafs, you need to have seen a Stanley Cup in your lifetime. So, you know, even,

even the kids in Eminton and the Islander fans are, you know, getting into shaky territory. Um, but, uh, You know, just like before the Rangers won their copper, before the Blackhawks got there, is like, I wouldn't have been chanting at them about their drought. Like, oh, you know, hey, 1940, we won 27 years after that. Yeah, but you weren't around for it. So it's, you know, it's either yes in your lifetime or no. Okay. So that's why I'm not.

Hit me with the next one. Okay. The last one here. This is the super gray area because they won multiple Stanley Cups, Philadelphia Flyers. Oh, geez. I mean, you're going back to the, we're in the mid-seventh. 70s now. So I, were you, like, I wasn't alive for either.

I wasn't born when the Flyers. No, I wouldn't have been. No, I wouldn't have been. So, uh, I, I, you got to be older than us. You got to be pretty much. That's going back so far. And there's so much history. There's so much history between the two teams.

I mean, I, I, I don't know that that you're talking about a team that has now. I mean, they're, they're coming up on 50 years, right? I mean, they're good, they're not that far away. Uh, the Flyers from hitting a 50 year drought. Now, I know you could say, well, they've been to the final. finals six times or whatever it is since then and lost every time, whereas the Leaves haven't even been that far.

But still, I don't know that the chant really works for them. Boston Bruins could get away with it. The Bruins are the one that I feel like it's a slam-down break. Because there you've got, even the, you know, even the kids in the crowd have maybe been around for that Stanley Cup. I feel like that one works okay. Yeah, that's the, I mean, Boston fans can, they, in any point, thank you, Kessel. that one works too.

You had an interesting exercise that you did this week with the athletic, which was, and you did this a few years ago, but you basically said, I'm going to play pretend general manager. I'm going to build a team for the 25, 26 season. So down the road, basically three years from now. And the kind of caveat to this is you're going to build a roster, you're going to fit it under what we project to be the salary cap of about,

what, what, 92 million for that season. I went with, that was what Elliot Freibon had reported. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're going to only take contracts that are running through that season. So, like, you can't take, for example, I'm going to use an Ottawa guy, like Jake Sanderson, for example, is on an entry-level deal, well, you don't know what that next deal is going to be. Or like a Connor Bidard.

You're like, oh, I'll take Conner Barrett. Well, no, like, you could only use guys whose contracts run through 25, 26, and And on the surface, you would think, okay, well, this could be easy. Like, I'm going to easily put together a team. You're telling me I could pick anybody in the league and kind of cherry pick a roster. Like, this is going to be easy. But then when I looked at your roster at the end of it, and I'll let you explain kind of how you came through this, I'm like, okay, that's a good team.

But it's not like a, I don't know that that's a definite lock it in. They're winning the Stanley Cup, right? It's a lot tougher than it sounds. Yes. And again, like, you know, I'm only using contracts three years in the future. So I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to project the future a little bit. There's more contracts than you would think. I mean, there's something like close to 200 guys in the league who are signed through three years from now.

But the problem is an awful lot of them you don't want. Like they're just total non-starters. You're not going anywhere near that contract. And you wouldn't go near it today. And then a lot of them, maybe you take it today, but three years from now, you know, when someone's going to be on the wrong side of 30, you're not interested then. So you don't get any of those nice entry-level deals. You don't get any of those nice bargain short veteran contracts like the Patrice

Bergeron or something like that. And you don't get any of the contracts that we look at today as being discounted deals like Nathan McKinnon, David Pastornack. Those are all expiring this year. So they're long gone. Yeah. It's tough. And then you're trying to fit it under a $92 million cap.

If I got to sit down and say, make an All-Star roster out of the guys who were assigned three years from now, I could still do it. You know, there's players that you would definitely take. But I blow past the salary cap. And it is, it's interesting because it does give you a sense of how tough it is to get these teams under the cap. Obviously, the fact that I don't have any entry-level deals at all, whereas most NHL teams have at least a couple of them makes it, in a sense, even tougher. But I get to pick anybody I want. So you would think you'd be able to come up with pretty close to an All-Star team. and it just doesn't work out that way.

You just can't fit guys under the cap, partly because there are so few guys that would be considered bargains. I mean, every team has a couple of guys that make a million bucks or two million bucks against the cap. And even if they're, you know, even if that's what they deserve,

they're not necessarily stark players, but you need a few guys like that to make room for your big tickets. And there's a handful of guys, but there's not many. I mean, nobody's signing a five, your contract that pays them a million bucks a year. That just doesn't, that doesn't happen. If you're, generally speaking, if you're a player at that range of the cap hit, you're getting a

short-term deal and you don't get a long-term deal unless it's big, big money. So it's something I did four years ago, projecting ahead to the 21-22 season. And then last year, I looked at it and said, okay, how did I do? And I think I did okay. But I wanted another crack at it. You know, it's still, it's still tough. Yeah. I like, I mean, I'm looking at you gold.

I'm thinking, wow, you must have. All right. Now you're going to, okay. All right. Let me hear.

What's, I thought, I'll be honest. I thought, okay, you're going to put Vasilevsky in there, right?

Because he signed through that, that season. Yeah. But, but when you start to build the team, you think, ah,

man, I, you know what? I'm like, I can see why you didn't go with him. But like, yeah, he's, he's, he's signed, but he signed at 9.5 million, I believe. And, and he's going to be, you know, this is three years down the road.

He's going to be, I mean, what is he? He's in his late 20s now. So I think he'll be on the wrong side of 30 by, by then, which for a goaltender, not the end of the world. But it's, it's tough. You know, you look around the NHL today. You don't see a lot of teams building with 10 plus million dollars in goal that are having success with it. So, you know, I ended up going a little bit cheaper, which meant, you know,

no Vasilevsky, no Kerry Price, obviously, Sergei Brabowski didn't even, didn't even think about. I guess what I could have done is gone Vasilevsky and then gone as cheap as possible on a backup. That would have been my other option. But that still would have caught the cheapest goalie that was available was two million bucks. So that's, you know, that's 11.5 million on goaltending if you go Vasilevsky. It's tough. That comes out of all the other spots that are even tougher to fill. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, look, it's a fun exercise. I know the comment section is filled with people saying, I would, you know, plug in this guy for that guy, whatever. And it's a fun exercise. But it really, I was shocked. I'll be honest. I thought, when I saw the article, I thought, man, this guy's just going to put together, like this elite roster.

What's the point of this? And then you kind of get down to the bottom. And you see your rush, like, yeah, it's a good team. Don't get me wrong. It's a good team. I'm like, man, I don't know. And I'll tell you, here's my only thing is if you're going to sit there and say, all right, I'm, you know, I could do this better than Sean could.

Maybe you could. You know, every time I do something like this, there are people who sit down and they go through the same exercise. And a lot of times, they'll come up with something and go, and I'll sit there and go, yeah, you know what? That did look better. And I've already had a few people say, well, you know, if you bring in this guy, that'll save you a couple of bucks here

and you can put that to this. All I'm saying is if you're going to do it, you got to do the whole thing. Don't just get started. And once you've got two lines and your top pair and you're starting goal, he go, well, this is easy. And then be done with it.

You know, Sean's an idiot. How come he didn't have all these guys on there? You got to do the whole thing, especially when you get down to that fourth line and you've got no money left to spend. And there's just everybody on the list makes $3 million plus that suddenly that you're looking for.

for. There's just no way to do. You can't do, for example, what the Toronto Maple Leafs have done for years with their big four up front and just have a very, very cheap bottom six, right? You just get guys, you get Jason Spetsa playing for the minimum, you get guys brought in on PTOs and everything and hope you find bargains. It's not how it works. Can't do it with this. There just aren't any of those bargains out there. So just, you know, all I'm saying is don't come up with a top six that's all-stars and then roll your eyes and wonder why I wasn't able to figure out to do that too. Yeah, exactly. Look, you talk about All-Stars. We got a hit on this. So earlier this week, so the NHL All-Star game, of course, will take place next weekend, not this

weekend, next weekend, in Sunrise, Florida. And the league announced today that the skills competition is going to have a very distinct Florida field to it, Sean. And I'm just going to walk the listeners through. I'll tell you what, there's three, we're going to have the usual, you know, fastest skater, hardest shot, you know, all that accuracy shooting. We're going to have all that, okay? But there's three new events that are being added. And I need you to help me kind of wrap my head around this a little bit. And again, this is the All-Star game.

We're not trying to take this too seriously. And I like it. We sometimes criticize this league for not going outside the box. And they go outside the box. We're like, I can't believe how stupid this is. So look, I know at all, okay? But I'm going to start with this event. And I'm going to actually give, I'm going to use the official NHL, like, wording here on this,

as I describe this to the listeners, okay? The first event that you're going to see next weekend, or one of the events you're going to see that you've never seen before, it's called the Enterprise NHL Discover Slapshot. See, I'm even given the corporate names. I'm giving them their full do. The Enterprise NHL Discover Splash Shot. here's what it is. Competition takes place on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.

The ocean spray, breeze, and sand add to the challenge of this exceptional skills event. There will be eight shooters, four teams pairing off players. It's a single elimination tournament with a head-to-head player competition where players are required to hit all the targets before attempting to dunk their, opponents and the player that dunks their opponent first win. So I get, this is like basically a dunk tank, right? That's what it sounds like. A dunk, so you're firing pucks out into the ocean, hitting targets. Here's my question. Are they being dunked into the ocean or just dunked into a traditional dunk tank? Because I'm thinking if you're at the ocean, wouldn't you just go ocean?

That's a good question. I assume dunk tank. I mean, this is, this is all we need. is, you know, Austin Matthews lost at sea because the NHO one got clever on a dunk tank thing. I mean, yeah, it's, it's, you would think, you would think that you just dunk them in the ocean, put them way up high at the top of some water slide or something and, and fire them on down. Okay, we should cautionary tale.

The last time a league held a skills event for the All-Star game on sand, Was the NFL about 20 years ago, remember, remember New England Patriots running back Robert Edwards? Took part in a, they thought, wouldn't it be fun if the rookies played a game on the sand, Robert Edwards blows out his ACL, right? Yep, that's right. It was never the same.

So just cautionary tale for sand. You think it's sand, ocean spray, breeze, and sand is how they're describing it. Yeah. It's a little cautionary tale. Heads to the challenge. Are they going to make them wear like full uniform? and skates out there, that would be fun, right? Like, they got to really embrace the absurdity of it all.

Oh, like being in the, like, what will they be wearing in the dunk tank? I want to see the guy in the dunk tank wearing like full uniform and skates. Oh, man, I never even thought of that. Throw a goalie in there. Oh, man. Well, no, the goalies have their own thing. Okay? Yeah.

You know what's going to be rough is when they go, they aim for the dunk tank target and like, the puck just like ticks off of it. And then we got to do an eight-minute replay review to find a. out that that's going to be. But you got to get it right, Ian. Ian, you got to get it right. Do you feel like what are the percent chances that for this event, Gary Bettman's going to be there, like kind of with like a blue dress shirt that's like

kind of rolled up sleeves, you know, kind of try to look relaxed like yacht casual watching this whole thing? Right? Yeah. It's, he should. Yeah. I want to see it. Sunglasses.

Right now, what's Gary? He's going to be there. So what's he wearing? What's Gary wearing? Have we ever seen Gary Batman not wearing a suit? Other than that very first press conference where they put him in the giant jersey that was three sizes too big and the ridiculous baseball cap. I feel like the moment he got off stage on that, he was like never again. Never again.

So now I'm picturing like, you know, like a half dozen dudes like wearing like the beach shirts and holding the drinks and everything. and then like Gary Bettman just sitting between them, still wearing like the full formal suit. Nope. He's not wearing, look, he's not going to wear a suit. He's going to wear, I think, maybe he goes golf shirt. Think? Maybe he goes golf shirt, right?

I'm now intrigued by maybe by that a little bit more than the, than the actual. Yeah, I'm telling you, I'm going to be paying a tag. Have you, side note, have you ever seen NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wear anything other than that like kind of quarter zip up sweater? Yeah, that's, that's his thing. That's his good. I respect.

We've all got the favorite sweater to go to. Now, here's my question. How much would we have to pass a hat to collect to get Gary Bettman into the dunk tank? Oh, into the dunk tank? And like, imagine, I mean, well, hey, we have a problem getting players to go to the All-Star weekend. I'm just saying, you tell him Gary Bettman's going to be in the dunk tank. And suddenly, Ovechkin's like, you know what, my shoulder is okay. I think I'm going to go this way.

I mean, the lineup for that event. I mean, that might be the, I mean, you'd have X players trying to get in. Oh, my God. Chris Chalios has sneaked in. Who's that pushing to the front of the line of the Alan Walsh? What are you doing here? Oh, interesting. Hmm, okay.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, you know what? Yeah, this, the guy who set up the dunk tank, he was, I don't know, he was a guy named Rob Goodnow and he said it was, he said it was fine. He said it should be safe. I don't know why the water's boiling, but we're told that's okay. Oh, man.

There's a joke in there, too, about Batman not believing in tanking that we could cut There is. There absolutely is. You know what that's... Work that in the tank. That's it. That's why he's not going to do it because he doesn't believe in tanks. I don't believe in tanks at all. He's out. But you'd be like, Gary, it's right in front of you. Like, we can all see it. And he's like, I don't see it. No, I don't see it.

I don't think any of it. In fact, I have a survey here that says it doesn't exist. Yeah, that's right. Okay, two other events that you're going to see in addition to this dunk tank. We introduce our listeners to the Chipotle NHL pitch. Pitchin puck. I had to be careful about how I said that. The NHL pitch and puck. Okay. So, again, I'm going to just read off the official list,

press release, using a combination of hockey and golf shots. Six NHL All-Stars will play a par four featuring an island green. Lowest score wins the competition. The player who successfully sinks the puck slash ball in the whole. whole with the fewer shots will be declared the winner. Now, help me out here. What is this puck slash ball? Yeah. Like, what does that mean? That's what I want to know. Like, do they actually, they make it sound like there's something going to, like, hybrid. Like, is this happy Gilmore? Is that what this is? I'm assuming that they're going to like golf the, the ball onto the green and then

make like a shot from there. Is that? Or do you do it the other way? Are you shooting the puck onto the green and then? And then putting? Well, you can't, you can't, they're like, whoever successfully sinks the puck or ball into the hole,

you can't put a puck into a golf hole, like easily, can you? Like, I don't. That's true. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's got to be, you know, it's got to be specially designed larger hole or something. I don't know. Do you think they've reached out to Adam Sandler to come and happy Gilmore this thing?

Yeah. Find out to get Bob Barker out here. And let's reenact it. Yeah. I mean, this sounds cool. And yet as a hockey fan, I'm like, this is going to be a disaster. Like I'm assuming all of these are going to be pre-taped like it was last year. I remember in Vegas, they were shooting the cards,

and we weren't supposed to notice that it was like nighttime for the skills competition, and then it was like daylight whenever they cut outside the arena. But they should do it that way because you need some editing. You need to cut this together because even last year, them shooting the cards was like filled with awkward banter and long pauses. I can only imagine if it had been live. So this, I like the concept. I'm giving credit for the creativity. but the MVP is going to be the editors who have to take this and cut it down into something

that looks interesting. Okay. Last thing is the Discover NHL Tendi tandem, Tendi tandem, meaning the goal tendons. All right. So here's how it works. Eight NHL All-Star goalies will take part in this. One goalie from each division will be designated the shooting goalie, and one of them is the in-the-net goalie.

The shooting goalie from a division will take a shot from a designated mark. Three points will be earned if the shot goes in the hole. Two points if it hits the net on target. No shot if you miss completely. And then the in the net goalie will face the players depending on some shot. Anyway, we're going to be looking at goalie shooting here. Right. Now, which I don't know.

Again, I like the creativity. I like that there's kind of like a price of. right vibe here where it's there's kind of the two sections and you're earning how many shots you get at the you know on the other side uh boy we're just full of the bob barker references here yeah yeah pretty much uh here's here's the thing though here's here's the flaw with this concept that i don't think it's going to be able to recover from is that when you hear 10 d tandem eight goalies work in tandem, one shooting and the other in net.

Do you not immediately think that we're getting a 2v2 all goalie tournament? In my mind, yes. Yes. And once you find out it's not that, I feel like the rest of it, once you feel like they're just shooting it, once you find out they're shooting at targets and no, I want to see 2V2, I want to see Stuart Skinner and Logan

Thompson out there, like, you know, one in goal, one or even, you know, two of them, two of them, two of them go. I'd even let them like two on two and then put a player in that with no padding or anything. Like, let's see how they like it. You tell me these guys wouldn't love to wind up and fire a few at some players. Like, you know, what's the downside of that? Okay, catastrophic injury. Yes, absolutely.

But other than that, the entertainment value would be off the charts. And I just, every time I hear this concept, I'm thinking 2V2 goalies and full pads tournament, yes, I'm in 100%. And then when it's not that, I just, I can't. I can't revive my sense of excitement. Yeah. No, I hear you. But do you think that there would ever be,

like, would you watch, okay, if they wanted to get goalies in and shooting, would you rather that there, would there be a shooting competition from their own, own net?

You have to shoot 200 feet down the other net, but get it into like, you know, maybe there'd be certain holes at the, like, would that be? They did that, I did? They did?

I seem to remember Mike Smith. Like, just, uh, it just, dunking with, like he, he was able to hit the, uh, the little target. And that's, that's cool. No, but I want to see a goalie, go the length of the ice and, you know, put a move on, uh,

it would have to be a player because you can't score on a goalie as a goal because you, you're just not, you don't have enough, but against somebody who wasn't in pads. Yeah. I mean, let them, uh, let them do. And then, you know, it'd be fun, right? Because you, you know, Austin Matthews goes out to stand in the net. And then the Goleys could all get together and say, no, no, his shoulder pads are too big. We got to reduce those. Let's all, let's measure them. And, you know, all the stuff, they could send a goalie to go, like, stand right in his crease and get in his way, all the things that goalies can't stand.

And then Austin Matthews, as soon as they came in on him, would just, like, accidentally bumped the net off and be like, oh, what a shame. Oh. I think you could have a lot of fun with this. Again, other than the fact that there would be, like, shredded ACLs all over the ice. Other than, I'm willing to risk it. let's do it. Okay.

Final Price is Right reference of this podcast, I promise. No promises. Unless there's a Plinko reference later. But when you were a kid and you were sick and you missed a day of school, were you watching the prices right? Yeah. Yeah. What is the weirdest thing is that, and again, we're in our 40s.

Like we kind of grew up 80s into the 90s. There's three TV channels and they all had the prices right off. Yeah. I feel like every kid who was sick between like 90s, 1885 and 1995 that missed school was like, I feel like 80% of the ratings of the prices right was just sick kids from elementary school or high school. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't even know why they made a new episode every day. They could have just made six episodes and just rerun them at different times. And your odds are that you, you know, you weren't, you weren't,

you weren't going to run into the same one twice. Yeah. And the weird thing is that I'd be yelling at like, at like the price of baking soda. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, you had no idea. You just like, you know, they'd come out and be like, all right, here's, you know, here's some corn starch and you'd be like, $40. I don't know. I have absolutely no clue. Exactly. You know, let's just let's, I just want to see the little yodeling guy go up the mountain. Oh, yeah.

We got to, you know, we should be using that as a background sound next time we have some, some segments of the yodling, yodeling guy. Okay. Last thing I want to hit on before we open up the mailbag, we're getting down to, you. the top 10 in the NHL 99 series. And of course, I think this is the point. Look, there's been debate throughout. This is where I think you're starting to really see some people say, like, oh, this guy shouldn't be top 10, this guy is top 10.

Your piece this week had the first guy in the top 10, the guy that comes in at number 10 at Raymond Bork. And really cool article, if you haven't read it, Sean decided to go with basically, here's Ray, of course, for the majority of his career, wore number 77. Sean's like, here's 77 reasons why. Ray Bork belongs in the top 10.

Hey, at some point when you were putting that article together, where you're like, damn it, why weren't you like number 44? Dude, like I said in the piece, if he hadn't taken off that number seven jersey and gave it to Phil Esposito, I would have been done. This would have been 400 words.

I would have had a whole afternoon, a couple of them off. Yeah, unfortunately, this is why they're, they asked me, Do you want to do the McDavid one? Nope. Nope. This is already,

this is already too much. Exactly. So look, I think it's interesting because there's a great, look, no one's going to debate, Bobby Oars number one,

all time, and it's not a contest on defense. I really don't think it's, right? I don't think it is. But I do know that there's some, there's some crazy Red Wing fans out there who will. Because I say, you know,

what I think you're getting to is, I made the case where I said, I think Ray Bork is number two of all time. I've got nothing against Nick Lidstrom. I love Nick Listern. He's a fantastic player. I see the argument for him. But I think Ray Bork, number two, defensemen of all time. And I've got Red Wing fans coming at me going, well, we're assuming that you mean that

Lidstrom's number one. And it's like, guys, Nick Lidstrom was fantastic. But let's, I don't know. Let's have the conversation, at least. That's my only point. I'm not even saying definitively, hey, plant the flag. Ray Bork was better than Nick Lidstrom, and if you don't, you don't agree with me, you're wrong. I'm not doing that.

What I am doing is I'm making the case, and I'm saying at some point, it feels like we decided this was settled. That you have Oar number one and Lidstrom's number two, and that if there's any debate, it's over, should Lidstrum even go past Bobby Oar as number one? and I'm just holding up Ray Bork going just about everything that Nick Litzram ever did. Ray Bork did it too. And, you know, yeah, Littsum had more championships on a far better team, had a few more Norrises. You know, you look at the different awards

and how the voting went. It sort of breaks out, you know, you can make the case for both of them. But Ray Bork's numbers off the charts, even given the era he's in. And I don't, I feel like there's a whole generation of fans who maybe missed Ray Bork in his prime or maybe missed him entirely

that have been hearing about how great Nicholas Littstrom is, and he is. You know, nothing you've heard about Nicholasstrom's greatness has been wrong, but they're sort of missing out on the fact that there was another guy not that far before him who did pretty much all of the same things and in some cases did him better. So, like, I think where I come down, look, I say, Orr's number one. I don't think there's any argument to be had. And I hate that. I hate that you would have a thing where you would say there's no argument.

There's no argument. Bobby Orr's the greatest defense. I really don't think there is. Who's ever played the game? Yeah. And completely so great that he completely changed the position. The only argument you could make to me against Bobby Orr is just, hey, injury short in the career. And, you know, he, but even that what he was able to do in 10 years surpasses in my mind anything that pretty much anyone else did. Because the entire game is unrecognizable now because of because Bobby Orr showed up and changed how it was played.

Right. And so to me, the debate on who is, if you're going to have a debate with people over who's number two, which I think is that's where the debate begins. I think I think Bork's in the conversation. I think Lydstrom's in the conversation. I think Denny Potvin's in the conversation. And, you know, there's going to be some people who say Paul Coffey and it's tough because, you know, coffee, I think he was, I think he was, I think he's probably the best skater out of them all. But it felt like. Paul Coffey might be the best skater ever in any position. Yeah. He is right up there as best offensive defenseman other than Bobby Orr. And he is better defensively than he gets credit for. The knock on him is always, well, he was just a fourth forward. He couldn't play defense. Yeah, he could.

You know, much like, you know, an Eric Carlson today or something like, there's people who go overboard on the defensive side of thing. So I got a lot of time for Paul Coffey. not enough to put him ahead of a Lidstrom report but he was real good. Yeah, anyway. And like I said, Denny Potvin,

I ended up writing the piece on Denny for NHL 99. And I think when you look at the totality of his career and you see that he captained for Stanley Cup in a row, 19 playoff series in a row, 100 points as a defenseman in the season, played a real mean, physical, nasty style, multiple Norris trophies. And I think, you know,

where Denny had the disadvantage was like, he was like, came right in or shadow, right? And it was kind of like, okay, now you're up. And hey, it was going to be impossible to fill those shoes or, you know, following those footsteps. But I think, however, like, and I hate what happens with these debates is you end up tearing down Bork or Lidstrom or pot vent or coffee. And I don't think any of them, if you want to come in with any of those,

guys and say that guy deserves to be number two, I will listen to that argument all day. And I think that there's validity to all of those arguments. And I think that to me is the best debate going, is who's the second best defenseman of all time? Because I think it's a great debate. And now it is. And it's a fun one. And it's a tough one.

I'll tell you, this is not an easy thing. It's not. The other thing I want to sneak in real quick, Dan Robson, did a great piece on Patrick Waugh. Yeah. Being number 11 all time. And I, like, the comments on that story were twofold. Number one.

And Dan Robson is, I believe, the best feature writer in sports. And that's not meant to disrespect anybody else. Dan just has a way with words. So the comments that came in were twofold. One was, holy smokes, Dan Robson's an unbelievable writer. And two, how the hell is Patrick Gua not the number one goal of all time because people can now kind of read the writing on the wall. They see that Dominic Haschik hasn't been named on this list. So he's to come. Where do you fall on Patrick Waugh,

four-time Stanley Cup winner, all of the accolades, all of that stuff? A, not being top 10 all time, but B, maybe more importantly, not being listed as the number one goaltender of all time. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, not being top 10, I mean, Patrick Waugh sounds like a guy should be a top 10 all time. We keep saying all time. This is of modern history. This is 67 and after. He feels like he should be in the top 10. But then, okay, which of the guys that are in the top 10 are you taking out? You know, I mean, you've seen borks there. Everyone can figure out who the nine players to come are. Which one of those guys do you take out for Patrick? While, there's some arguments. You know, there's, there's, you know, some guys, but it's easier. A lot of times with something

like this, the way people react to it is they don't, they don't make their own list. They sit down and they go like, they just put people in tears and go like who, you know, who feels like they should be in the top 10? And yeah, next thing you know, you got 15 guys on that list. And you're going, you idiots, how could these guys all not be in the top 10? Well, we've only got 10 spots and you've got more names than that that feel like they deserve it. The debate between Juan Hassick, and, you know, you can throw Broder in there too.

I know Devils fans would consider it a three-way race. It's always a tough one. I mean, Waugh did it longer. Waugh had the, you know, he had the cups. And look, I've pushed back on the idea of using. cups as a measuring stick for players. I made that case in the Marcel Dion piece. But

for a starting goaltender, I'm willing to give it a little bit more weight maybe and the fact that Waugh wasn't just on cup winning teams, but single-handedly almost in some of those cases, certainly the two with the Habs, felt like

he was the main reason that they won those Stanley Cups. Hasick at his peak, I've never seen anyone dominate like he did. and never seen anyone put up the numbers. And again, we talked last week, I think, about era adjusted stats. And you could look at Hassan, go, well, where his number's really that good because he played in the dead puck era,

adjust them for era. And he still comes out miles ahead of everyone else. I mean, he's out there putting up numbers that are far beyond any of his peers at the time, wins two MVP's, which almost unheard of for goaltenders in the modern era. You know, if I've got one game to win, I probably want Pete Dominic Hasick as my goalie. I don't think anyone has ever been better. But if I have one career, I might be tempted to flip over to Patrick Waugh because Hasick, you know, he started late in the NHL, was really a non-factor for the first couple of years,

was a very good goaltender for his age, you know, later in his career. But, you know, he really had that maybe 10-year window where he was truly, truly, dominant whereas Wah had more than that. So it kind of comes to, what do you want? Do you want the peak or do you want the full career? It's a tough debate. It's a fun one. And one of the things that Dan covered in that great piece on Patrick Waugh was his impact

on the game. We talked about how Bob Yorre changed the whole game. Patrick Waugh kind of did too. And he doesn't really get a lot of credit for that. And I thought it was great that Dan brought it up. Like the butterfly style, you know, if you've ever watched highlights of Danny Poffin and the Islanders in the early 80s, you know, going up against Gretzky, the Oilers and you're going like, what looks weird about this?

And I can't quite, and you realize it's the goalies. The goalies are all playing this totally different style than what we're used to today. They're playing the stand-up style and, you know, the couple variations of it. And you go, well, what change to that? Why does everybody play differently now? I mean, Patrick Waugh didn't invent this stuff, but he is the reason that everybody, like, I mean, imagine coming into a sport, playing a different style. and by the time you leave the sport,

everybody from little kids getting on the ice for the very first time up to all your peers in the league are all playing the style that you brought in. It's pretty remarkable. Thankfully, Dominic Hazzig did not have that effect because imagine if we had 32 goals out there just flopping around on their back and all that sort of stuff.

That would be something. Torn adductor muscles and all that stuff. Yeah, Hachik, he was atypical. And I think that's what, he was almost a circus freak. And I say that in a positive way, like in the most endearing way. Like he was so flexible and just, it was almost like you, you can't believe what you're seeing. And I think the debate between these two, it's almost like, and again, you know, I always try and turn this

into an NFL podcast. But, you know, there'd be a lot of people who say, he's a 49ers fan that you are. That's right. You know, Emmett Smith is the greatest running back of all time. And sure, if you look at it statistically, absolutely. He might be the best of all time. But some people tell you, man, give me peak Barry Sanders, right? Like, like, Barry in his prime. And, like, so it's the same debate. Like, would you rather have one guy's career or would you rather have one guy at his absolute peak? And I think, again, I don't want this to turn into something where you're slag and wah or you're slag and hosha.

Because there's really, there's no wrong answer. You're going to probably end up, spoiler alert, whoever you pick to win to play your game seven, your fictitious game seven, you're probably going to win with that guy as your goalie. But it's, it's truly remarkable to see. some of the comments here as as we get into the top 10, right? Because it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a great debate. But I think as we get closer to and the final list kind of gets put out, I think that's when people are going to really step back in February and say like, man, that guy was too high or that guy was too low. And it's going to be a lot of fun. And that's, yeah, that's, that's part of it. It's part of why we do this and it's interesting.

And once people see the whole list, I think that'll be when you can really get them, pick it apart. And, you know, that'll be interesting to watch. Let's open up the mailbag, shall we? You can hit us up at the athletic hockey show. At gmail.com, you can leave us a voicemail too at 845-4-45-845-845-4-459. All right. let's open up some emails here.

Last week I was talking about, hey, I went out to watch a Dallas Cowboys playoff game in a bar. Never done that before. They won. And by the way, I didn't go out to, maybe this is why they lost. Wait a second. I went to a friend's house.

After all of that, you didn't go back? I didn't. I didn't. I went to a friend's house. I left my house. I went to a friend's house who was a huge Cowboys fan. Should have changed. And we watched the game together.

So anyway, maybe this is on me. But how about this one? We got a couple of emails coming in here. Emily in Colorado. Yeah, I know exactly. Emily and Colorado writes, I love the show. I know this is a little bit too late to save Ian and his Dallas Cowboys, but I did want to tell you about my playoff watching superstition this past season.

I'm a diehard Colorado Avalanche fan. So too is my best friend. So we watch the games together whenever we can. Early in the second round, we watched the game at her house, got so distracted by the game that we burnt the hell out of part of the dinner we were making. The Aves won that game and given the whole Colorado can't get out a round two narrative that was floating around, we figured we had to stick with it. So we decided we had to keep watching Aves games at her house, make Mexican food every time, and burn part of it. I'm not saying that we're responsible for the Aves Cup last season, but I'll say this.

They lost every game where we tried mixing it up and going out to a watch party and they lost the game where we're. we made Mexican food, but forgot to burn it. That comes in from Emily in Colorado. Emily, Emily, I'm going to set you straight right here. You are absolutely responsible for them winning this Stanley Cup. 100%. I mean, based on what you just described, I mean, if you have, if you've got a superstition that works some of the time or most of the time, I mean, you've got to break it out.

But if it works all of the time, that's on you. Emily should have her name on the cup. I mean, this is, this clearly, the burnt Mexican food was, uh, the, key. I'm wondering, like, what do you, like, okay, so, like, and you decided that you had to burn part, like, what are you burning every, like, are you burning, like, the refried beans? Like, I don't want my meat, like, if you're putting steak or chicken, don't burn that, right? Let you burn. No, I mean, I feel like this is probably, burn a, we might need more information here, but I feel it's like, it's like one, one of the nacho chips gets left in the, in the

oven sort of thing. Okay. It's, it's a little, little, a little symbolic sacrifice. Symbolic sacrifice, yes, but I want to know. Like, you're not eating the burned part, right, Emily? Didn't she say anything about eating? Yeah. It's a sacrificial thing. I would hope so. I tell you, if she was eating burnt Mexican food every playoff game,

then absolutely needs her name on the cup. And there may need to be a banner ceremony as well. Yeah, if you're exactly. If you're eating it 100%. 100%. Okay, one more email, kind of along these same lines. Andrew in Toronto writes into the podcast. I was listening to the most recent Thursday show. I too, not really the type of guy that goes out to watch a game in a bar,

but as a lease fan, the risk of having to sit in public with my inevitable disappointment just seems like a bad idea in 2013. I sat in my room, didn't move or speak for 30 minutes after the Leafs lost that game 7 against Boston. But I did have one great experience watching a game in a bar back in 2010. During the Winter Olympics, I was living overseas. in England. Within eight-hour time difference, I found myself having to wake up in the middle of the night to watch most of Team Canada's games. But the gold medal game, that was on a Sunday at 8 o'clock p.m. local time. So me and a few other Canadians, we met up at the Maple Leaf Pub in London.

And this time, at this time, I was feeling pretty homesick. So to be around so many Canadians watching this game was awesome. I still remember the anxiety before overtime. The eruption when Sid scored was amazing. hands down the best sports viewing experience of my life, a life in P.S. Sean, I too have never seen Titanic or Avatar. That's from Andrew in Toronto.

There's more of us than you would think, Andrew. The Titanic. There's a lot of that. I mean, apologies to James Cameron, but yeah, it's not, it's, there's more of us in a new thing. Man, I'm torn on this story because that, to watch a team Canada game in, you know,

especially with all these fellow Canadians in another country, that sounds phenomenal. But it sounds phenomenal because they won. He says it was the best supporting experience, you know, watching Crosby scored the goal. But, oh, if that had gone the other way, I don't know.

That would have been a rough one. I don't know if I would have the guts to go watch an Olympic gold medal game out there. But then, you know, in England, boy, you might have to. But you're at a Canadian bar, right? Like you're surrounded by. Exactly. You're surrounded.

You'd feel like home. Maybe I would. Maybe you'd be able to get me, drag me out there. Although I probably would have left before overtime. You know, after, remember the Americans scored like a minute left to tie it up, I'd that's, I would have been, I would have packed it up. You'd have been out. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I guess, you know what? Like, watching a game overseas. When you're not tempted at this friend's house at some point as the game wasn't going well to get over to that bar from the week before? Like, that thought must have entered your mind. at some point, right? It did. Okay.

I know. I know. No, exactly. This one, this one's on me. Let me sneak one more email in. This one is from Adam. Ian and Sean, long-time listener, first-time caller, shall we say?

Amidst another terrible season for the Blue Jackets, rookie Carill Marchinko has 10 goals and no assists. Has there ever been a player to finish a season with double-digit goals and no assists? I feel like at some point, you'd get a phantom secondary helper just by being on the ice. That's from Adam. Yep. And yes, I'm looking at the list right now.

He would be, Marchenko would set the record if we're talking at the modern era. According to hockey reference, there are five guys, including Marchenko, who have had double-digit goals with no assists. Can I guess on these guys? You can. I'd be pretty impressed. Okay, I'm going to go punch broadbent. Correct. I'm going to go Normie Himes.

I'm going to go. And I'm going to go, give me John McKinnon with the 26-27 Pittsburgh team. Am I right? You got it. You got them in the wrong order, so I'm only giving you half mark. Yeah. Anyway, I looked it up as well. So that's the 1920s and, you know, a couple things going on there.

Mainly, though, just they don't record assists the same way. as we did, they're not always, you know, marked in the record. So, um, you know, the closest, uh, in, in recent times, Eric Nystrom, seven goals, no assist, 2015, 16 predators, as well as Dan Quinn for the 93, 94 senators. So, uh, yeah, we're in a little bit of chartered territory. Dan Quinn, with the senators, 93, 94. But the, but that must have been a split season for Dan Quinn. Like, he must have played somewhere else.

No, he played just 13 games for the Ottawa Senators 93-94. So I'm not, I'm checking to see if he was in the minors or if it was maybe an injury situation. I'm not sure. It doesn't look like he, oh, he played in Switzerland. Okay, so there you go. So he looks like he spent most of his season overseas. And then either I can't tell if he came back or if he left at some point as a lot of people, I'm sure, wanted to do on that senator's team. Yeah, he only joined the senators in mid-March and played for a month,

scored seven goals, recorded no assists, and that was it for his Ottawa senator's career. He was on to the Kings the next year. There you go. All right, let us wrap up this edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. Like, we always do it on Thursday with a little this week in hockey history. So we're going to rip through some things that happened this week years ago. Let's start with this, January 25th, 1986.

Paul Coffey, who was just chatting about. about earlier in the pot. Paul Coffey sets an NHL record for the longest point streak ever by a defenseman. Do you know offhand, Sean, how many games that was? No, obviously, I was going to ask you. Yeah. Let me think. All right. What's your guess? I'm going to say, well, I'm thinking it's the 1980s, so it's going to be higher than you would say, is it 20 games?

Okay, that's a good, it's a good guess because I had no idea what the record is for a defenseman. 28 games. Paul Coffey had a point in 28 straight games. Okay, that's, yeah, that's, that's really impressive and yet maybe not completely shocking because as we said, Paul Coff, he was a fantastic player and certainly that Oilers team scored a ton of goals on those stand-up goalies who hadn't learned how to play from Patrick Wyatt. Yeah. Do you feel like that's unbreakable might be too strong over a word, but like that feels

hard that that's going to be caught, right? Like 28 games. It's hard to even think of a forward getting the 28 games, right? Look at how much attention Mitch Marner got for getting into the. the 20s this year as a forward. So imagine a defenseman doing it. I mean, I know, look, Eric Carlson's doing stuff from the blue line this year that nobody thought we'd see

a defenseman do anytime soon, but I can't imagine a defenseman getting a 2080 in an era where we're lucky if we get six goals a game. January 25th, 2014, we're nine years removed from this. We're almost 10 years removed from this. And I believe you were there. Dodgers Stadium hosts an outdoor game. Anaheim, Anaheim blanks the Kings 3-0. What do you remember from that?

It was fantastic. It was so much fun. I have so many great memories of those that day, including getting stranded at Dodger Stadium by a cab driver who it let me out. And I had to hop a fence in the outfield to get in. I got to stand next to Vince Scully without realizing it. I got to watch Kiss play. I got to watch the marching band come out and Wayne Gretzky and all of that.

It was fantastic. It was a complete success. I know a lot of us were skeptical. Like, oh, you're going to do an outdoor game in California. They pulled it off beautifully. The whole event was amazing. I'm a huge baseball fan. I never been to Dodger Stadium.

So I had, you know, a chance to go out and do that. I remember my number one memory of that was being there in the stands and everything was going on. And I was texting with my wife. And I remember at one point I texted it or something along the lines of like, hey, if I ever, if I get to do this for a living for a while and I ever become one of those guys who gets like so cynical that I don't realize how much fun this is, like please slap me in the head because this is amazing. And it really was just like an absolute A plus of an event and full credit to the NHL, but especially the Kings and, you know, L.A. and the fans out there. It was, it was amazing.

Yeah. Listen, you mentioned Wayne Gretzky. By the way, we'd be remiss if we didn't say, Happy birthday to Wayne Gretzky today, as we record this episode on Thursday, the great one turns 62. So happy birthday to Wayne Gretzky today, born on this date in 1961 in Brantford. One more, though. Let me sneak one more in here. We're going to January 26, 1975, where Gila Fleur scored four goals in a game of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Reason why I bring this up, trivia time for you, Sean.

How many four goal games did Gila Fleur have during the course? of his NHL career. Hmm. Okay. Yeah, 70s, lots of scoring back then. Gila Fleur's

phenomenal player on a phenomenal team. I'm going to say he had five four-goal games. Five four-goal games. Would you believe that this was Gila Fleur's only four-gole game ever in the NHL? I'm surprised by that.

I do find that hard to believe, yeah. Yes. I would have figured Gila Fleur would have had five, six, whatever, four-goal games. Yeah, looked up NHL.com. So Gila Flore had the only four-gold game of his career on this date, 1975 over Pittsburgh.

Especially in that era where, you know, not only did you have great players, great teams, high scoring, there were some terrible teams. Like there were, I mean, he's out there playing the scouts and the golden seals and the capitals and teams like that. Wow. Yeah, I am very surprised that he only had one. Yeah. All right.

So listen, we'll leave it there. We're going to tee up a couple of episodes coming up next week. The Tuesday boys, Custins and Gentilly, are going to have Ryan Miller, who was just honored by the Buffalo Sabres this month. Ryan Miller is going to drop by the Tuesday edition of the podcast. That does it for this Thursday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. Of course, we'll be back with you next week, and I'm sure we'll have a lot to tackle after those two shows.

I want to thank everybody for listening to this latest edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. You can always email us any questions that you have at the Athletic Hockey Show. show at gmail.com or as I said, love to hear your voice. You can leave us a voicemail. At 8454-4-459, right now you can get a one-year subscription to the Athletic for $2 a month when you visit the athletic.com slash hockey show.