The Athletic Hockey Show - Colorado Avalanche are overwhelming the Tampa Bay Lightning, John Tortorella takes over as Philadelphia Flyers head coach, the Dallas Stars reportedly hire Pete DeBoer, and more

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

First, Hailey and guest cohosts Julian McKenzie and Sean Gentille discuss the Colorado Avalanche jumping out to a 2-0 Stanley Cup Final series lead over the Tampa Bay Lightning, including a monstrous 7-0 Game 2 win, the Avs’ defensive brilliance so far, Cale Makar as a top-5 talent, Jon Cooper getting last change with the series shifting to Tampa Bay, and much more.Then, The Athletic’s Charlie O’Connor joins the show to talk about the Philadelphia Flyers hiring John Tortorella as head coach, the team’s bad salary cap situation, how Carter Hart could benefit from a more structured team defense under Torts, Ryan Ellis’ injury status, Johnny Gaudreau Gritty, and much more.Plus, to close things out, the group discusses Pete DeBoer reportedly signing a 4-year deal to coach the Dallas Stars, how his questionable track record handling goaltenders could impact the development of Jake Oettinger, why the Stars are in a perpetual “win now” mode, and more.And, right now, you can get a 6 month subscription to The Athletic for just $1 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's up everybody? Welcome to another edition of the athletic hockey show. It is Monday, June 20th. I'm Haley Salvean. No Ian Mendez today. So we've brought in Julian McKenzie. Say hello, Julian. Hello, everybody. Good to be here. Yeah, you got to actually say something. Don't just wave. Okay. Everyone listening and not watching on Zoom. I don't have anything good to say. I don't know. I'm just happy to hang out on the Monday show. and, you know, do some fun stuff. That's great. I love the passion. This is really great.

And we have Sean Gentilly here as well. Say hello. I'm just going to wink at the camera. That translates well to an audio music. Oh, yeah. See, that was what Julian was doing. He was trying to recapture the magic of his cute little gesture towards Dom that we all saw on Twitter a couple weeks ago. It was a little, like, if it was a Disney movie, there'd be that little, like, glink.

in his eye, you know, like the little shimmer. Very glad to be here today. Happy to be in the third chair. I'm psyched to just sit back and let you guys care of the discussion. Unlike on Tuesday when I have to drag that freeloader Custance around like a back of pucks. What does he even do here? Nothing. What's his job?

Craig's a nice human being. He doesn't deserve that at all. See, that's the thing. That's where he gets you. Julian. He's good at, he's very. really, really good at making people think that he is nice. Man, his cutthroat.

Yeah. Damn, I haven't been at this company long enough. He's got his own podcast just to make fun of me. Whoa. It's true. He's always leading the train. The Tuesday show was created to hate on me and Ian Mendez. That's disrespectful.

It's mainly. I listened to the first episode. They just read reviews. They just read bad reviews of the Monday show for 10 minutes. It was a long time ago. Any number of things could happen in the last 15 years. That's disrespectful. Yeah, look at us now.

This is growth. That's great. Anyways, thanks everyone for listening to another edition of the Monday show. It sounds like I'm wrapping up the show already. Yes, right. Let's go home. That's it, everyone. We're done.

You know what? I've decided I don't want to do this today anymore. All apologies to our scheduled guest, Matt Damon. We've run out of time. Yeah, we were actually going to have Braden point on. That's the reason why he was not skating today in Tampa Bay because he's in the Zoom waiting room, but we're just going to tell him to go back on the ice because we're done for the day. But no, we've got a good show plan for you guys.

Charlie O'Connor is going to be joining us. Obviously, there's lots going on in Philadelphia. They just hired John Tortorella officially after a couple weeks of everyone wondering if that's going to happen. We'll get into it a little bit more with Charlie when he comes on. But first, let's just talk about the Stanley Cup final because last week we were talking about how this is just the series we wanted. We've got so much skill on both sides. Look at the matchups up and down the lineups.

It's going to be so great. Avalanche up 2-0 after a very big blowout win on Saturday night. Is this what we were expecting from this series? I think I'm on record somewhere. It was in a text of somebody. I'm going to dig this up because I need to actually back this up. But at the start of the... I know everybody was psyched about the matchup, as we should have been.

It's, you know, current dynasty versus potential future dynasty. The storylines there were rich. But at the jump, I was kind of worried that this was going to happen. I was like, oh, this might be... It feels like it could end up being, you know, abs in five. Now, at the same time, like, was anybody expecting a football score in game two? I don't know about that. No, I wasn't, you know, I think on paper, Colorado is the better team.

But I think Julian and I talked about this before we got on too. I think you can acknowledge how good Colorado is relative to literally anyone else in the league right now. Like this is the league's best team. I think we've all discussed that at varying points of the season. Maybe sometimes Florida was in that conversation, but they didn't make it very far in the postseason. Like Colorado is the best team in the league. And they're showing why they're so deep.

When they're clicking, they're so hard to contain. I've never seen Tampa Bay overwhelmed in the way that they were on Saturday night in the 7-0-0 loss. And I think you can acknowledge that Colorado is just the better team. Like it can be that simple. Like we don't need to galaxy brain this. Like Tampa Bay looks bad because they are not the best team in this series for the first time in probably a while,

except for maybe that Leaf series that they squeaked out of and overtime out of Game 7. But it's just, we don't want to also write off Tampa Bay at the same time. So it's just like Colorado's so good, so good, so good, but like the Lightning are still the Lightning. And they haven't lost a playoff series since 2019. I don't know how many times I've said it in the last couple months is like I will bet against Tampa Bay Lightning when they finally lose a series.

So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like, who's the genius? that did you heard that learn from? Is it me? No, I have my own thoughts. I wrote that. You're ripping me off again. This is what happens.

Whatever. Okay, go back and listen to literally everything Sean Gentileas said about the Calgary Flames, and it's probably been written by me. And everyone's like, wow. I don't know what you're talking about. The Tuesday boys know so much about the Calgary Flames. It's so great. Wow, Sean's really got a deep breadth of knowledge about Elias Lindholm.

Oh, baby. I'm just enjoying sitting back and just listening to all of this. I just want to say something, though, because unless there's another series I'm missing, this is the fourth time all playoffs. We've looked at a series from like a distance, and we're just like, man, I'm really excited about this series. It's going to deliver. It's going to give us so much.

And this is the fourth time we've been let down. Minnesota St. Louis, I hyped the hell out of that series. I was so excited for that series. St. Louis and 6, and almost every game was a blowout. The Battle of Alberta, we're like, this is what we wanted. We wanted this series so much. Nope. It just ended up being like five games.

Oh, man. Wait a second. Wait a second. Imagine having to cover that series, the Battle of Alberta. What a bummer that would be. Imagine you can stop having to deal with that dud. I looked like I got hit by a truck in the press box in game one. There was like 10 goals in the first 30 minutes of the game.

And I was just sitting there like this raggedy little nothing. Just like, oh, what's happening? Anyways, we'll continue. And then Colorado Edmonton, we were hyped about that series too. And then it ended up being a sweep for Colorado. And now we're watching the Stanley Cup final. the series are like, these are the two best teams. This is going to be a great series.

Colorado and seven, Tampa and six. This might be over by Wednesday. I don't think it will be, but we have a lot of people talking that way. Never believe in anything. That is the big takeaway from this year's playoffs. Never hype up anything. I think what we're learning and what the Tampa Bay Lightning are learning are that the Colorado Avalanche are a different beast.

We're not talking about the Rangers anymore. you know, they're not getting away with what they got away with it over the course of, you know, this postseason. And I think example A is Vasilevsky. You know, I was kidding about never betting against the lightning. That's not an original thought. I don't have that. I don't have that mark get cornered. But like the reason that people feel that way, the reason Haley feels that way and me and you and anybody else is because of Veselowski.

Like you can say that if Tampa is not clicking, that dude is not. the eraser. He's the equalizer. They can get away with playing bad games and mixing with all their great ones over the last however many years. You know that if you have that dude, you can get away with not being that good under most circumstances.

And that is not the dude that we've seen show. Like as great as he was against Florida, as great as he was whenever the flip switched against Trump switch, the switch flipped against Toronto. He's had problems. And it's an extension of the regular

season. He was average. He was 9-16 in the regular season. He's had a bunch of duds in the playoffs. And does that mean that Andre Vasselowski himself is average? No. Does that take anything away from the last eight years of hockey that we've seen from him? No. What it does mean is that is that the erasers gone. And that this dude is capable of having nights like on Saturday night or in game one or whatever happens tonight. He is capable of duds in a way that. He is capable of duds in a way that. that we haven't seen from him before. So I think he's gotten away with it over the course of the playoffs. He got away with it against New York.

He was awful in those first year games. Awful. And you can get away with it when you're playing the Rangers, as brutal of a five-on-five team. You can't get away with that against the Colorado Avalanche. That's how you lose seven-nothing, is you get bad Andrea Vasilevsky against the team that's as impressive of a five-on-five force as we've seen.

Well, you also just let Colorado cook in the offenses zone for as long as they want. Tampa could not clear the zone. There was a couple of times where they only cleared the zone if somebody bobbled the puck and it went out by accident. And then the abs were just right back in. They are so quick in transition too that even and they're better in their own zone than Tampa has shown in this series too because Tampa would finally get into the offensive zone. A play would get broken up. And then, you know, whoever insert name here has a odd man rush the other way and they're shooting, you know, high glove on Vasselowski all night. They're picking their spots. They're picking their corners. It's not just the stat line that was

concerning for Andre Vasselowski. Obviously, letting in seven goals is bad. But there was some moments where he just looked lost in his net. Like he wasn't like getting to his posts. He was slow on a glove save. He wasn't getting over. He didn't even know where the puck was sometimes. And those are the things that just signal fatigue almost with a goalie. It's always hard to analyze goaltenders because it's such a unique position and there's such rare breeds of people. But those are things that you look at. And it's just like, man, this guy, I mean, he, Saturday was his 100th playoff game.

And his 80 second start of the year. He's doing tired, he's doing tired goalie stuff, right? Where he's dip in his shoulder and all that. Yeah. And having, I don't have the finished stats in front of me, but having, what was it, like, 60 something shot attempts against you in all situations, 10 high danger chances in all situations, that is not a recipe for success with a tired goaltender. And we talked about this with Joe Smith last week, Ian and I, when we had him on and we asked, like, is he to get tired eventually? Like this is, he's played over 225 hockey games in the last three seasons. Like, and everyone just kind of keeps asking like, when is it going to fall off?

And we might be seeing that. Maybe it's already happened. What happens if you make a mistake against the New York Rangers? Like, they're not a strong five, you, they counterattack. You get a, you get a chance against and that's it. What happens if you make a mistake against the Colorado Avalanche is like, sustain zone time. It's, you know, 90s, there's, and there, you know, Tampa's clear as were awful and all

that sort of stuff. You can get away with mistakes against, against worst teams, right? But, but if. You get Nathan McKinnon. Yeah, right. You get, you get, you get, you get, Kail McCard running, running wheel routes, you know, in the zone for, for 70 seconds. That's not, that's not what happens against New York.

It's not what happens against Tampa. That's not what happens against other. team. So now their mistakes are just getting feasted on. And it is. It's in such a way that it, that it preys on whether it's, like, whether it's skaters that have played a lot of hockey or whether it's the gold tender. Like, it's a, that's a lot to endure whenever you know that your mistakes are going to lead to that much to stay in zone time. I'm glad Haley mentioned, uh, how good Colorado's been defensively, because I don't think that's been hyped up enough. Like, Colorado is not allowing a lot of shots. Whenever they allow a shot from wherever, from, from,

Tampa, they pretty much immediately get the puck back and they're sending it the other way and they're getting their offensive chances. I forget who I was talking to. I think it was a off another podcast that was doing. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you were doing another podcast? Yeah, I do like 20. So my co-host for that show, I just showed him like a heat map of what Tampa's like shots were like in game two. And it's like, you know, like on a heat map when you're. really like feeling it. You know, you see the different colors. It's like green, then it goes to like red or whatever because of the high volume of shots for Tampa. It's just like these green dots in like a line and not even like, oh, you know, like above the face off circles.

Yeah. Blue line dots. And they're just these, yeah, like they're not getting a lot of pressure and they're not getting a lot of shots in. It is not a good time for Tampa. This one play I keep thinking of in that game two game, the Darren Helm play. the Darren Helm goal. So before that happens, like Ross Colton is in the offensive zone.

He finds a way to get the puck. He's trying to, like, turn around. He's trying to put the puck on net. And it goes off an avalanche player skate, and then it goes up, and then Darren Helm goes. If you do like a freeze frame of when Colton's trying to put the puck on net, there's like four avalanche defenders in front of the net. Like, there's been a lot of that and denied zone entries.

And again, to my ultimate point, like, I don't think enough people accounted for the fact that Colorado's defense would be that good. I think we all expected Tampa would be the team that would stifle Colorado offensively. I don't think anyone or as many people accounted for Colorado doing the same thing to Tampa this soon and this effectively through these two games. And if they can't find a way to solve that Tampa in game three, the series is, I don't want to say it's over. It is not going to look good for the Tampa Bay Lightning if they can't solve it. Yeah, and I mean, they're doing such a good job as you so greatly described with the heat maps and all the different colors. You're not seeing anything in between the circles.

Like Colorado is keeping them to the perimeter at such a high rate every time they enter the offensive zone. And that's where most goals are scored in the playoffs, unless you're Kail Makar and you're scoring shorthanded in the slot because you're one of the best players in the world at this. point. Are we at that point? We're fine saying that with Kail McCar. That wasn't a weird thing to say. He is one of the best players in the world. He's a top five player. Undisputed. He's a top five player. Yeah, he's like 23. I've had multiple, I've had multiple people, my, my cousin being one of them, like Penguins fans, but not NHL at large fans, not catching a lot of, you know, 10 p.m. Eastern starts when it's, you know, as versus stars in February or whatever. But they're just like, holy crap, who is this guy?

My cousin was literally like, who's, like, who's eight? It's just like, was like, who is this guy? I'm like, okay. Eastern bias isn't a thing. I'm the last person. I'm the last person ever say that because it is, it is absolutely a thing. People like to sleep. What are you going to do?

Can I say this about kale though? I, no, wait, I have a thing to say. Go ahead. I stayed up incredibly late watching that new young adult. show on crime video. I think I slept for three hours. I finished the whole thing. Anyways.

I watched Who Frame Roger Rabbit last night. Big day. Anyways, no, Julian had something to say. Sorry. Wait a second. Whatever. I was watching The Simpsons. I just wanted to say with Caleb Carr,

I've been saying this at different points of the playoffs. Just because I know you two are really great hockey minds. I just want to know if I'm on base here. One of us is. I think, I think. Not me. I think Kail Makar is the closest thing the NHL has to like an NBA point guard. 100%.

And the fact that like with his handles, the way he's able to maneuver through up and down the playing surface, just like there's, I forget which game. I think it was in the playoffs against the Preds where he's like coming up the ice and he literally does like a head fake and like makes his way up. Kail McCar is literally like the closest thing we have to like watching Kyrie Irving. Like on the floor, but I don't have to worry about Kail McCar telling me he's not going to play because of a vaccine mandate or or throw sage somewhere or the earth is flat. As far as I know and look, I don't know Kail McCar's a business. Look, just chill. But I think watching. He's a hockey player.

You never know. I think watching Kail McCar is one of the best things we could do like watching just hockey generally. And it is not a do. You mentioned him being one of the best players in the world. That's not a dispute. It might look weird when it comes time for the Norris Trophy and Roman Yosi wins. And we're all like, oh my God, wait, why did Roman Yosi win instead of Kail McCar? Because Roman Yose had a really good year.

But don't worry. Kail McCar will get his. He's going to get so many. And I think that's one of the reasons why some people may have voted for Roman Yosey over Kail Makar is like, when's the next time we're going to see a season like this from someone like Roman Yose. Let's give it to him now because, Kale McCar is going to do this next year, in the year after, and the year after, and he's just

going to win how many Norse trophies? And, like, Roman Yossi had an excellent season. Like, he was the MVP of that team. But I just think Kail McCar is incredible. He is absolutely worth the price of admission. And I feel like Devon Taves doesn't always get enough credit. I'm sure he does in the Colorado market, but he is an excellent defender. And that is a very good con.

He's only making like $4.1 million. And there was a point in time when we were talking about, well, should Devon Taves be on my Norris ballot too? And we're talking about both of them just getting like dropped into the Team Canada lineup as like the first pair on Team Canada at the Olympics. May that tournament rest in peace for NHLers. But like those were the conversations we were having. That's a pretty solid way. It's a pretty solid way to spend two second round picks on Devon. is, right? That's well, that's well spent.

Absolutely. That's good. I mean, the, these two teams in the cup final is almost like a tour to force and in good pro scouting and drafting and developing. It's pro scouting. And cat management. And cat management. Like, go down the list and they're doing it all.

And incorporating data analysis into the decisions you make and into how those are communicated to the players. Like this is, this is the first, I saw someone frame it this way where it was like, you know, the first one to, the first franchise to really get it. And then we got the next wave of people who've taken it,

taking it to the next level. You know, I'm going to shout out, honestly, Josh Manson. He's been really good. I think he's been part of, right? I mean, like, he's one of, you know, you look at whether it's Cogliano, whether it's obviously Lekinan. I mean, the trade deadline guys have paid off in a big way.

But Manson, I think, is the one that they needed. more than anybody. They needed one more guy in that top five, especially, especially now it's paying off big because they're playing even tougher minutes because of what happened to Sam Gerard. But, you know, Josh Manson, he's on for, he's on for, you know, 33 attempts for 18 against, which is good even for the avalanche, you know, X Gold Beast. He's up, he's up over 75. He's doing what he needs to do, and I think he added an element. He's a pretty well-rounded player, and he's looked more like the guy who we saw early in the early in his time with the ducks. So yeah, I mean, whatever.

What else can we say? I mean, the abs are awesome, which means they're going to go out and lose, you know, whatever. 5-2 and Vassel-Efts he's going to have 46 saves the night. Then we've got to blow this up and start over. So let's just get more into that. I mean, a couple of updates from Morning Skate. These will probably be out there for a while once this episode does drop. But from Peter, no, Codry, Berkovsky, or Landisog on the Ice for Morning Skate.

I believe the last update on Berkowski that he was being evaluated, but he would travel. It's probably a day-to-day situation, I want to say, was the last update we got from Peter. And then in Tampa, there was no Braden Point or Andre Vasilevsky on the ice. Vasilevsky's probably just taking the option. And Braden Point is a game time decision for game three. Is there anything we think is going to happen tonight? I'll let you guys go first and then I want to hook it back to this Down Goes Brown story about what happens after 7-0 losses in the Stanley Cup final.

I just feel that for Tampa, I feel normally we look at these games and we say like, man, this player has to be the X factor. They need to be the key to win. and maybe that could fall on Andre Vasilevsky. John Cooper is the X factor for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Because I can't imagine being in a situation where you're in a Stanley Cup final. You have the best goalie in the world. You have a top three defensive in the world.

You have some of the best forwards, one of the best forward cores, if not the best forward core, at least in your conference or at least around the league, at least one of the top forward cores you can have. And it is doing, like, it's not effective. Like, imagine that scenario at all. John Cooper has to put together a game plan that takes the puck. away from Colorado imposes themselves physically, I guess, or you have to find a way to just be super defensive and ensure that you're blocking shots and you're trying to keep a clean sheet for

Andre Vasselowski. And the biggest thing, the biggest way that's going to happen is John Cooper and his coaching staff putting together some kind of set of tactics to kind of help out Tampa in that regard. That's what has to happen. And he was trying. We saw a bunch of different line combinations. They came out in the second period. was it was a Sirelli point in Dutrov.

He just started loading it up. He started mixing things up. We didn't see Corey Perry for a while in the second period after he took, I guess it was the offsetting minors, him and Darcy Kemper, but we didn't see Corey Perry for a while. So I don't know. I think John Cooper is obviously a great coach, and we'll see what having last change does for him.

Cooper with last change is always pretty good. And I remember talking to, Darrell Sutter about this too. And not every coach is like this, but Sutter is someone who's like, it's not always but the line matching. It's about making sure that your top defenseman's out against great forward groups.

But at the same time, once Darrell started line matching, Michael Backlin against Connor McDavid, Connor McDavid wasn't as effective. But it's why we won't talk about that anymore. I obviously don't know anything about coaching compared to these guys, but I'll be curious to see what John Cooper does. I think we'll see a lot of Anthony Sorrelli

against. That's the problem with Colorado is it's like, well, you can try to get them to neutralize McKinnon, but then who comes next? Yeah, so especially if Burakowski doesn't play, then the depth works a little bit differently. And maybe that's when you see Cooper throw the Sorrelli line out there against McKinnon.

It's just like, yo, go with God. Like, we're going to, whatever happens here, like, so be it. We need to find a way to score goals. And that's when, but then you're like, is there, is there going to be no point? What does, what does that mean for this DM Coast line? It really, it's a, I think you need to always need to be careful to overthink like matchup stuff on days before, on days of games.

Could you start looking at who's potentially in and who's out and whatever, especially when you're talking about a venue change? But this is one of those times where I think it is actually super interesting because you have two coaches who are both really into matching lines. That's not a given. and it's in Tampa. Like, like, we've changed, we've changed spots from, from Denver to Tampa. So it is, it is going to be super interesting. When you think about the guys that are involved, when you think about the arena change, and when you think about, you know, potentially the lineup changes from, from two to three.

It's going to be interesting, but. Do you guys buy into the altitude stuff? I feel like players have played through it enough where they should be used to it. And I feel, I don't know. Like, I know they mentioned almost every time, every sport, whenever it's in Denver. but like I feel like if you've been there enough, you should be able to get acclimatized to it, but I don't know.

Unless you have like a health, a health condition that the cause, like whether it's asthma or I, I mean, going way back here, but Ryan Clark who played for the Steelers. That's the exact exact. He has,

he has the sickle cell trait. So there was a game where he was just like, he, he came out of it and was obviously super sick. I think made an ER trip. And that was it. Like he was a, I'm not going to play there again.

That's obviously less of a factor in the NHL. You're not going to have a ton of guys with the sickle salt trade, probably on hockey rosters. But it is, it's one of those things where I think that's media driven more than anything, right? And it's also a normal person driven. Like if any of the three of us go, if any of the three of us go to Denver, on day one or day two, we're going to be like, whoa, all right, this feels different. But we're also not.

but we're also not elite athletes, right? Like, it's less of an issue for them. All right. So before we move on to talk to Charlie O'Connor, just the Down Goes Brown story. Essentially, he had this great piece come out just looking at what happens historically in the playoffs after blowouts.

And he went through each time we've seen this happen. The last time there was a big blowout in the playoffs was, I mean, other than looking at some of these Battle of Alberta games, those weren't really blowouts. So those were just like, oh, God, there's 16 goals in this game. The last big one that he mentioned was the 7-3 win by the Bruins over St. Louis in 2019 in game three. We know that St. Louis won that series. They won the Stanley Cup that year.

But that was the last time we can say, like, someone put up a seven, or not put up a seven, but blew out a team in the Stanley Cup playoffs here. But what we kind of ended up learning from this whole exercise was Saturday night, was one for the history books. It was the fourth time in Stanley Cup final history that a team had lost by seven or more. And in each of the other three cases in 91, 96, in 2011, the team that won the big blowout went on to win the series.

And he said, in fact, the team on the losing end only went on to win one more game combined with five losses after losing by seven in the Stanley Cup final. So the outlook's not great after a game. like that. You can look at the blues for inspiration. Obviously, they ended up winning that series after losing that game to the Bruins 7 to 2, but we'll see what happens with this one. We're running tight on time for Charlie, so everyone will be right back with Charlie O'Connor from the Flyers Beach. All right, everyone, we are back with my voice just cracked a little bit.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I heard that. This is fine. Leave it in. I don't care. It's fine. We're going to have to have a talk on some other changes that are going to be happening here over the next little bit. Oh, please. That is so gross. 13 year old boy. I'm just nervous. Okay. That's enough.

I was just nervous because Charlie's here. Charlie O'Connor covers the Philadelphia Flyers. He had another big week in Philadelphia. I feel like as we were talking about this before he came on, I feel like every time we bring Charlie on. It's like, so let's dive in. to whatever just happened with the Flyers. So Charlie, thanks for joining us to get into it all. Yeah, it's awesome to be on the show.

Thanks, everyone. Sorry about my voice. Somebody else asked the first question I need to recover. So the fact that John Tororella is now head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers, do you think he's a good fit for this roster and where the Flyers are just kind of generally at right now? So it's a really interesting question because there's making. a disconnect between where I think the Flyers are at and where the Flyers think the Flyers think

the Flyers are at. And I think that John Tortorella is a really good head coach hire for where the Flyers believe they're at and what they believe their plan should be. Now, where I think they're at, he might not be the best. He's tired. But if you go back to January when we spoke with Chuck Fletcher and Dave Scott, who essentially is the owner, he's the chairman and C.E. CEO of Comcast Spectacore, the entity that owns the flyers. And the messaging we got from both of those men was that the flyers are not going to rebuild. They're not going to blow it up. They're not going to strip it down to the studs.

They're going to aggressively retool. That was the messaging we got in January. Now, granted, then you had another three months of truly hard hockey that led the flyers to finish with a fourth worst record in hockey. We spoke with Chuck Fletcher after the season. He pulled it back a little bit. He basically said, we're going to try to back. balance the future with the present. He compared the expected offseason to the 2019 offseason when the Flyers hired

Elaine Vino, traded for Matt Niskinan, signed Kevin Hayes, traded for Justin Braun. So they made moves, but they didn't necessarily, you know, completely empty the cupboard, which was kind of the implication we got with the aggressive retool messaging in January. That said, both of those interviews strongly imply that the Flyers are not going to rebuild. They are not looking at this as we are going to. going to take the next two to three years to restructure our roster and build with draft picks and try to get the kind of high end town that they clearly need through the draft. They're going to try to improve quickly.

Now, it's completely understandable why John Tortorella would be a very attractive hire given the fact that they do not believe that they need to rebuild. They want to turn this around quickly because you're not going to hire John Tortorella if you think it's going to take three years for you to be a relevant team again. You're hiring John Tortorella because you think next year he can improve the team significantly, probably not enough to be a cup contender, but at least enough to be at least in the mix for a playoff spot. And then from there, you can get better and better. That's kind of where they're at. They think next year is a transition year where they'll improve and get back to relevancy.

And then they can use that as a springboard to get, you know, hopefully in the next two, three years to become a legitimate contender. Now, where I stand is I don't think they have the roster that can do that, regardless of. coach unless they can somehow figure out a way to add one or two big pieces, whether that's through the draft or whether that's through free agency or trades. Now, maybe they can do it. Maybe they have a way where they can fit everybody under the cap and they can not totally decimate their depth while trading for a couple star players. Maybe they can pull it off. I'm just very skeptical. But according to what they have articulated as their plan, Turdarello makes a lot of sense because Tourdorella in his opening press conference basically sold the idea that

he wants to change the team's mentality. He wants to get them to work harder. He wants to get them to work smarter. And he wants to bring the flyers back to playing the way they played when they were the Philadelphia Flyers. You were scared to go in the Wells Fargo Center because they were a tough team. They were tough to play against. And that's the kind of stuff that the people that run the flyers were absolutely going to love because it's music to their ears. It's music to their ears. My thing is that I think the flyers are further away than the flyers believe they are. But according to the flyers plan, if you're judging this based on their execution of their stated plan, this hire makes a lot of sense.

Whether their stated plan is a good one is where I take Umbrage. Well, I think it's so interesting. And I always go back to this because I'm in Calgary and I cover the flames. Like when they brought in Darrell Sutter was he gets the best out of his players. And this is the coach that we need for this group. And we saw that work really well. But we're talking about Daryl Sutter, taking Matthew Kachuk and having him have a 42 goal, 105 point season, Johnny Goddrow having a 115 point season, Lyslin, home 40 goals,

Jacob Markshams, and net. John Tortorella is similar in the sense that he is hard to play for, but he gets the best out of his players. He's a results base like win now kind of coach, but the flyers don't exactly have the personnel to say like, oh yeah, we have a 115 point player that's just a little bit untapped. Tortorella is going to get it out of them? Like, is there anyone on that team that you can see having that kind of turnaround?

I think there's some players who are untapped, but is there anyone that's going to get that level that's going to have them, you know, win their division next year? I'm very skeptical. I mean, I'm a big, big Sean Couturee fan. he obviously missed a significant portion of last year with a back injury that eventually he had to get surgery. I'm fairly optimistic that he's going to come back his old self. And as I said, big Sean Gatorre guy.

But Sean Gatorier, the hard truth is that he's not a dynamic player. He's a really, really good two-way center. But he's not the best player on a cup content. He's just not. And I say this as someone who has defended Sean Gatorre for years. I think when he's healthy, he's a yearly Selkie true. candidate. I think he's great. But he's not the kind of guy that you stick on a power play and everybody's scared that he's going to burn you. That's just not Sean Gerturier. So there's a ceiling to what he can

provide. I would say the one guy on the team that I do believe does have star level potential. Now, whether he gets there is another story. But I do think Carter Hart could be one of the better goalies in hockey. I don't know if he gets there, but I think he has that ability. I think he's been hurt the last couple years by just how structureless the team has been, especially last year, I think he played a lot better than his numbers might have made him look. And Tortorello, I believe, will help it, you know, because he will reinstitute structure into that team. But if we're talking about the skaters, you know, they put a lot of faith in the guys like Travis Kineckney and Ivan Proveroff, thinking that they were going to be the next kind of the next generation of impact guys. And for a

brief period of time, it looked they were going to reach that spot. You know, Ivan Proverov had a great 2019, 2020 season alongside Matt Niskenen. Travis Keneckney was nearly a point per game guy that season. It looked like they were taking that leap. The last two years, they've stagnated and regressed. And now they just look like nice players. They look like good players. They're players that any team would want to have in the middle of their lineup.

But are they the guys that can be at the top of a lineup of a really good team? I'm skeptical. And then you have the other young. guys they have like Joel Farabee, nice player. Really, really solid winger probably will top out as a really good second line winger. But you can't have a team just full of a bunch of second liners. And your best player is Sean Couturee, who is a is a one C, yes, but he's not an elite one C. He's not, you know, on the level of the top guys. So I'm with you. You know, you look at Calgary and I'm sure that's something they're thinking. You know, Calgary, they got the right coach.

And then they had a great regular season and look like one of the better teams in hockey. But Calgary had Johnny Gujarot, Calgary had, you know, Matthew Guchuk, Calgary had those guys. I'm not convinced aside from maybe Carter Hart, and again, not a guarantee, but maybe, aside from him, I don't see the Flyers having those pieces yet. So it just comes down to whether they can get them and it's not going to be easy to get them. Yeah, I mean, connect me and available. Just kidding.

There might be. I mean, that was sort of where I was going. I mean, connect me and Farabee are guys who you look at them. you're like, oh, yeah, John Torella can drag those guys to the fifth, like, the second wild card in the, in the Eastern Conference. I don't know if that's necessarily where they want to be, obviously. But a big question, a big reason for that is, is, it's the Capspace question, right? Like, how much of, how much of a role does that play in their thinking where you said they've kind of softened since the aggressive retool line and all that? Like, have they looked at that roster and just said, like, are.

Seriously, and just been like, all right, next year is going to be tough because if we want to do an aggressive retool, we need cap space. And the way that they go about finding it, like, if you just glance at it, you're like, I don't see where the space for improvement is going to come. So, I mean, I know you look at that stuff really closely. Like, if they want to get better, they're going to have to, they're going to have to create space. How would they create space based on what they have right now? It's a fascinating question. And it's something that the people I've talked to in the organization, they know. They know that they're not facing a particularly great cap situation.

There are guys that honestly probably can't be moved. You know, Kevin Hayes had three surgeries in the span of 12 months. Probably doesn't have really any trade value. And he's got no trade protection. So it's not even going to be easy to move if you decided to. Ryan Ellis, who knows what's up with him at this point? He played four games last year and they're still trying to figure out if he'll be able to come back. Like those are big contracts that probably are unmovable.

Sean Gatorre just signed a big deal. I don't think they want to move him. But even if they did, he's got a no movement clause kicking in on July 13th when the calendar year changes. So then he becomes legitimately unmovable if he doesn't want to leave. The one guy who if they really want to clear space, I do think they could find a way to jettison James Van Riems like $7 million. Now, they might have to pay with a top draft pick. to get someone to take that on. But I do think if they, you know,

we beat around the bush a little bit last question, but if they found out that Johnny Gujarro was going to sign a deal with the flyers, if they can clear the cap space, I think they could move James Van Reams, like to get some of that space if they absolutely had to. But it's not like teams are banging down the door trying to get James Van Reams like. You're going to probably have to attach a giraffe pick or a prospect for him. And when you're a team that finished with the fourth worst record,

in hockey, do you really want to be giving up top draft picks to move out cap space? It's so fascinating. When I did the story, like four, five places he could go if it's not Calgary, there was one comment from a Flyers fan that was really smart and it was just like, this is probably the worst possible time to be trying to get Johnny Goddrow to come home because attendance is at an all-time low. fourth last in the league last year. Team doesn't look great.

Like sure, even if you get Johnny Godreau, who's he going to play with? What does the rest of the lineup look like? Like even if they can make some moves this summer, this team's still not going to be great. Like I don't think just adding Johnny Godro solves all your problems, especially when you're looking at it with a long-term outlook the way that you are. What's it going to cost to try to do the necessary moves around to get a guy like that in.

What are you doing for the long-term future of the team right now? It's a really good point. And the thing, too, that you have to remember with the kind of contract that he's going to require, you know, if, you know, maybe he gives the flyers a bit of a hometown discount if he really wants to come home. But, you know, he's still getting probably $10 million a year. And the way these contracts work is that you sign a guy to a $7 million or a seven-year deal. You assume that the first half of the...

of the deal, he's providing value. And the second half of the deal, when he's into his mid-30s, he's probably not a $10 million year player anymore. So the only way those deals make sense is if you're contending in the years when he's providing value. And can the flyers really be sure that even if they got Johnny Gujarro, that they will be a legitimate contender in the first two, three, four years of that deal? I don't think so.

Now, he certainly would help them sell tickets. Like, the business side of the organization would love it. if they got Johnny because hometown kid comes home. He's a legitimate star player. You sell him, you sell torts. Then you've got the makings of a pitch that you can call up former season ticket holders and try to get them to come back. So they would love it. Now, whether it's the right move from a roster construction standpoint, that's another question entirely. And it very well might not be. But again, if you're going with this idea of we're trying to compete now, we're trying to turn it around quickly, the flyers very clearly need high-end talent.

So again, getting Johnny Gujarro, if he hits the market and if he's willing to sign with the flyers, it's kind of like the torts hire, where it makes sense based on their stated plan. It's just a matter whether the state of plan actually is a good one. I love the JBR question because it's just one of those examples where every team has, maybe not quite on the scale of paying JBR's $7 or $7 million or whatever he's getting.

But everyone thinks that they can dump these guys on the coyotes or whoever. They're like, oh, yeah, fine. We'll just throw in a sweetener and send them to Arizona Island. And that'll be the end of it. Like, whether it's Sean Monaghan, like, every team has somebody. Or they're like, yeah, we'll just, like, some team will just want to pick and take, and take the cap space. It's, it's just so hard to see them, to see them clearing up, clearing up the space

necessary to make a, to make a run at that dude. But his salary is like $5 million. Oh, I know. So there's a 2 million difference in the salary versus the captain. The coyotes are going to be a cap team. That's what like, who knows how much real money it's going to be, but they're taking everybody's bad players. They're solving problems for everybody, clearly.

Well, they've said that they're open for a business in that regard, aren't they? JVR did lead the Flyers and goals, Flyers leading goals score. So you're selling the Flyers' top goal. score. Every team has a leading goal score. Well, it's not like we're talking about Sean Monaghan who has two offseason hip surgeries. He's only scored 18 goals and like 50 points in his last 115 games over the last two seasons. This is not like a, I mean, look, it's not a good contract for an aging player.

But this isn't like Nick Ritchie or Sean Monaghan or Milan Luchech we're talking about here. there is a little bit of something that they can sell to the coyotes with James Van Rheemstike. I just want to see the shell game that leads to it. Like if they're like, all right, we got to clear $10 million because Johnny in some universe where Joe's like, I'm going there. You have five million in space right now. It's crazy. And they have guys that got to resign. I mean, Charlie, Charlie, you wrote it right after the aggressive retool thing.

I remember. You're like, I don't like, where's this coming from? Like, they got to. Yeah. Where are you paying for this retool? It's like step one, step one is clear cap space. Like step two is profit. Yeah.

Don't, don't ask about step one. Let's not worry about how we actually. Skip all the steps. I actually, I made that exact analogy on our Broad Street Hockey Radio podcast this week about how it just seems like it's, you know, yeah, we're going to hire a good coach and get the high-end talent and then profit.

Everything will be fine. Everything's going to be great. I don't know. How do you do the middle of the middle. A little chart. Why don't more teams just do that? It's so easy. You just get a good coach and get good players.

Everybody should do that. It's that simple. We put our heads together for a three-step plan. Charlie, I have one other question I want to ask you. Julian's still here. Sorry. I know. I know.

So this has been great for my voice. I don't have to dominate conversation to talk all the time. I'm actually grateful for this. There's one thing about this tournament hiring that I am very, very intrigued about. And I think it's the most important thing more than how he deals with players, more than perception.

I just want to know how long it takes before he gets annoyed of gritty. Because John Tororella being in Philly and having gritty around, I feel there's like a social media, like all these possibilities with him. And I just totally see John Torterle be like, to hell with this,

don't put me in no damn video with that gritty man, please. What if he, what would happen if he's silly, string John Tortorella. I can guess. Oh, my. That'll happen. That's going to happen. Dude, it would be nuts.

I have a feeling, I mean, and it's possible. One thing about this that I'm very much looking forward to is that regardless of how this works, it's going to be really entertaining to cover. So I'm looking forward to this purely from a journalism standpoint that either it's going to, the flyers are going to get a lot better and Tortoralla is going to be a lot of fun because he's going to be, you know, the showman who is always saying the things that make it very easy to write stories, or it's going to be a total disaster, and that will also be fun in its own sort of way. But I kind of have a feeling that him and Gritty, like, he strikes me as the kind of guy where

at least in the beginning, he's going to be putting together videos where they're, you know, like a mock fighting and stuff like that. I just, I get the sense that he's going to play along with it for quite a while. And maybe if the whole thing goes off the rails and the team is just awful, then he'll start refusing because Get away from me, Gritty. Yeah, no more fun in games. You know what you do? You just get a bunch of these in the can now.

Like Torch for the last three days should have just been shooting gritty contents. You can just get all this out of the way. You can have like you can roll it out over the course of the season whenever they've lost 11 of 13 or whatever. Do you think that if you're the person in the gritty costume,

Do you like introduce yourself as like a human person to John Torrella or do you just like stay and gritty and not let him know who you are? I'm Dan. Have you met gritty Charlie? I have not met gritty the human, but I know who gritty the human is. Wow. That sounds like a big expose. Oh, okay. We need the bigger.

I mean, okay, Julian's asking about the gritty torch relationship. That's fine. It's an important question to ask, Sean. No, what I'm excited for is the Charlie O'Connor John Tortorella relationship. Because we're going to watch that play out right in front of us, baby, and it is fun. I am optimistic. I think being torts are going to get along. Honestly, I do.

I've heard. What's so funny? He's going to be fine. You guys are being mean. Is this what you did when Darrell got hired at all? I think it's nice. It's just that, you know, if you get to a point where there's like a fun. One back and forth, fun.

A back and forth between Charlie and John, we're going to go back to this episode and be like, oh, we're going to get along just fine. It is going to happen. I hope they make the playoffs just so you get a taste of playoff torts. Because that is a different beast, my boy. Like, it's going to be fun. Who has the better sound clips with media? Is it Tortorella or is it Darrell?

Oh, I think torts. There was a run that torts was on from like, we'll say like 2007 until he was done with the Rangers where it was just like it was it was unparalleled honestly. For as for as consistently funny and dry as Sutter can be, torts like early early 2010's torts is unbeatable. Torts toward Larry Brooks. He would get looked like he got beat up at a bus stop somewhere. Like I don't think anyone, Sutter, Sutter's on his best day. Can't touch like a very prickly John Tortorella. John Torrella was sitting in ESPN studios talking about like, oh, I don't know if

Connor McDavid, the way that he plays is going to be suitable for the playoffs. And we ate that shit up. Daryl Sutter on his best day, can't touch quotables from John Tororella. I'm sorry. I don't know. Did you see the thing about when someone asked about the cushion of like, how do you feel about like the cushion of going up to nothing in the series? Or no, it was like in the regular season.

How do you feel about the cushion you have in the Pacific? He's like, well, the thing about cushions is if you take the feathers out, you don't have a cushion anymore. What are he answered that way? And that was like, if you keep losing, you don't have your cushion anymore. And that's the same thing. If you take your feathers out of a pillow, then what do you have? You just have a sheet. That's a fortune cookie line.

It is. That's a hyacu. Anyways, what was the question? I don't know. Something about Gritty. My favorite Gritty event was when Gritty got, it was like a lawsuit about him like apparently pushing a kid. But the funny part about the lawsuit is that in all of the stories about the lawsuit, it wasn't that they were suing the person in the Gritty costume. They were suing Gritty.

The entity. It was always presented as like Gritty is getting sued. Like you do realize Gritty isn't actually real. Like we are we are aware of this like to imagine to imagine like pulling like pulling court files on it. It's like the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against Gritty. That's great. The people of Pennsylvania against. V versus Gritty.

Oh God. Was the kid okay? What happened? Yeah. Yeah. I think it kind of petered out. But it was just one. It was truly wild that everyone there was somehow this like unspoken belief that we had to just continue

to acknowledge that gritty is actually real. And it's like, has the entire world just committed to this bit? Is that where we're at now? Yeah. I feel. You guys are afraid of monster. Yeah. I feel really bad.

I remember when the Keynes mascot was like taking it on the teeth for the sign thing. The pig? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the pig. And I think it was someone was like, you don't know the person in the mascot. They're actually really nice. And I was like, we can't do that. You don't know the person in the pig costume like I do.

It's like, you're right. It was a dumb tweet. You're right. I don't know the person inside the pig costume in Carolina. You're right. Anyways. One time I wore a falcon costume in high school. Did anyone hear that?

Yeah, we did. I was waiting for the next part. When I was in high school, no one said anything. Did I cut out? When I was in high school, our mascot was Freddie the Falcon. He was a big red bird, and I wore the costume for a pep rally before a basketball game. And I did a cartwheel and I ripped my pants. There you go.

And I had... Luckily, I was going to my own basketball game, so I just wore my basketball shorts for the rest of the day. And that was the start of your mascot and career, and that is what... I am gritty. You are gritty. Actually. I'm actually in Philadelphia. And I can't wait to meet John.

So excited. All right. I've got one more serious question for Charlie. What is going on with Ryan Ellis? That's a fascinating question. So the Ryan Ellis situation is a very, very convoluted one that I believe now actually has a degree of clarity. But when I say degree of clarity, I certainly don't mean full clarity. So he obviously played four games this season.

The Flyers and Ryan Ellis's camp were both very hush-hush throughout the year about the nature of the injury. I had heard lots of different things throughout the course of the year, mostly that it was related to his core. But I had heard maybe four different explanations as to what it was. And as it turned out, they probably were all true because they truly did not know exactly what the problem was. They eventually, you know, he disappeared for a while. He wasn't really hanging out at the Flyers facility anymore. He was going around to other doctors. He just kind of disappeared.

Well, then on Exit interview day, the day after Game 82, he came back and in kind of a surprise, we got to talk to him on the record for the first time, probably since like December, November of 2020 or 2021, I believe. And he was open about you. He was open about the fact that there was serious, you know, questions about what exactly the problem was. They were having trouble diagnosing it. They eventually determined that it was a, he called it a multi-layered pelvic issue, which, you know what? Honestly, you don't have to go into more detail than that buddy.

But anyway, he's not going to undergo surgery. And basically, they believe that they now have him on a treatment plan that doesn't involve surgery that will have him ready for camp next season. That said, as much as much confidence as was expressed by Ellis and by Chuck Fletcher at the end of the season. And it was. I think this is as confident as they've been that they can address this problem. There very clearly isn't full confidence because in Chuck Fletcher's final interview of

the year, he's obviously had more since the hiring of Torts, but the one that was right after the season, I directly asked him if he's going into the off season. operating under the assumption that Ryan Ellis will be ready for game one. And in turn, are you going into the offseason figuring that you really don't need to address the defense beyond maybe signing a third pair of defenseman to fill it out? Because they have, you know, Proveroff Ellis, Travis Sandheim, Rastas Ristelian, and then Cam York, all they really need is one more guy if everyone slots in where they assume. But if Ryan Ellis isn't a sure thing, then you maybe want to get somebody to play with Ivan Proveroff

because Rastorosalainen isn't good enough to play. top pair. We learned that in Buffalo. And Fletcher's answer was fascinating. And it was, well, the way Ellis's treatment plan is set up, we're going to have a really good idea of how well he's responding to it by the end of June, early July, which is right around the time we're going to have to make decisions on what we're doing in the offseason anyway. So it kind of works out. That's not a lot of confidence. That's kind of like we're going to wait and see if this works, which tells me they don't know if it's going to work. And it's scary because he's there at least a top hair defensive form, if not their best defenseman, if he could stay healthy. And they still don't know if this

is going to work. So it's, it's a concern for a team that wants to turn this around quick. Provarov. Provarov. Is he, does Proverrov stay put? Also a very interesting question. I think that he's out there. I believe that that he is available. I don't think they are necessarily desperate to move him, but there's been some, you know, he definitely clashed with some players in the locker room, you know, over the course of last season. He obviously kind of blew up on the media a little bit at the end of the year. He feels like he hasn't been given enough support in terms of partner over the last couple years, which is true. You know, after the Madaniskin in retirement,

they really didn't replace him in 2020, 2021. Then they tried to replace him with Ryan Ellis in the 2021 offseason. They got four games out of them. So Proverov has kind of been stuck carrying around players like Justin Braun, who are perfectly solid players, but certainly not top pair of right-hand shooting defensemen. And it's a situation where I could see it going either way. I don't think it's a guarantee that Proveroff gets moved. I don't even think it's necessarily over 50%.

but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, especially in some sort of hockey trade. You know, I don't think is the situation where they're just going to sell him. But if they could find a move that, you know, addresses some other need on the team, maybe you cross your fingers that Travis Sannheim isn't just a good number three.

That maybe he could be a top pair left-handed shooting defenseman. I'll just want to say this. Oh, with Ivan Brourov. If I'm a G-O-Rov, if I'm a, I love, I love the way he plays. He's like a dynamic, like a dynamic, if I'm a general manager and I know,

Ivan Proverov is available. I am picking up the phone and I'm taking him. I will gladly take him off your hands if you do not want him. I just want that said. Yeah, and I don't think it's that the Flyers don't want it. I just think there has been conversation if a change of scenery could be best for everyone. Yeah, I think so. Dude, thank you so much for hanging out with us and taking up all of nonsense with Gritty,

but also giving us a really great picture of what the Philadelphia Flyers may look like or how they envisioned this whole John Torrella thing. Thank you so much for hanging out with us, man. Absolutely. Always a pleasure to be on the show. Well, that got off the rails with Charlie. I don't know why I brought up the Freddie the Falcon thing. Because it's funny.

There's no. It was a good story. It's funny. Who cares? I'm just, you're like, what was you doing in high school? I was on the basketball team. We were going to our own game. There was a men's game.

and my coach had the falcon costume out and I said, hey, can I have that for a second? And I thought it'd be really funny to just put it on, okay? It was very funny. And then I ripped my jeans. I didn't rip the falcon pants. I've ripped my pants.

Whatever. So I didn't. You lived a telltale, at least. You know what? And it was really funny. Nobody knew that it was me in there. It was great. I just ran around.

I did a couple cartwheels. You guys don't even understand. I understand. Everybody loved it. I put on the suit. It's so freeing. I put on the suit and everyone cheered. I put on one pet leg at a time. Oh, yeah.

And you get the big shoes. That was the most interesting part is like the feet. You're the full thing. Does this mean you're going to transition to being Stars mascot Victor E. Green? Who did I call him when I was in Dallas? I thought he was yuppie. I got them very confused. Whoa, wow.

I was walking through Dallas and there was a big inflatable Victor E. Green. I was like, hey, is that yuppie? People were like, no. That's the Montreal mascot. Wait, Victor E. Green. Let me just look up what he looks like. He's a big guy with a green thing. As someone who has grown up with Yupy for pretty much all of my life.

I don't have an explanation for it. It's fine. I just messed up. That is very off. It's fine. It's very off. He's green. Don't tell,

don't tell Laz's daughter. She's going to put me in that next edition of Mascot-Hund Games. I don't know what our thoughts on. Victor E. Green night. But Pete DeBore, I wonder if Pete DeBore is going to have any, like, issues with Victor E. Green. Oh, the transition.

Ooh. He looks like he's going to see a lot of green with, it looks as if he's going to get like a deal done, like four years. I forget, like four mill? I'm trying to get that actual details from Pierre LeBron. Just in from Pierre LeBren. Do, do, do.

Four-year deal worth north of $4 million a season, Pierre says. So that's great. It's great that Dallas went out and got the guy who screwed up the goalie situation in Vegas to handle the development of Jake Ottinger. It's fun. A player who, he was, that was the best goaltending performance we've seen in the playoffs in a long time. He was like the star of the first round.

He almost stole that series. For Dallas. You saw him. My God. You saw a lot of Jake Gondger. He was incredible. And the conversation after they lost was, yeah, you know, Dallas lost in the first round, but like look at what we just saw from this guy and what he's going to become.

And then they hire a coach who did what exactly to Mark Andre Fleury and Robin Leonard? He botched it, I would say, over the course of two years. Jake Ottinger is, and not just for the Dallas stars, his development is vitally important for USA hockey, which is my, which is my main concern here. We need, we need elite, we do. We need elite Jake Ottinger for the next four years, eight years, you know, 12 years. So y'all could lose in like the quarters or something? Like, is that what this is about?

Who? For the finals? Jake Ottinger. American carry price. What? That's what he is. What? Let's, oh, arre, monsieur.

Stop, those account. is this American carry price? That's right. That's right. Let's calm down. All right. Let's chill. Let's just keep this on Pete DeBere. This is, yeah. Let's just talk about Pete DeBore. All right. Like, like, you.

Pete DeBore. All right. We don't need to. Have some tea. Have some water. I'm going to take a sip. I need to calm down. Jake DeBore, or Jake DeBore, Pete DeBore is the perfect Dallas Stars coach in a way. Like, if you throw the Otting your stuff out the window, he makes perfect sense for the Dallas Stars. team is in win now mode always because the ownership group there at tom got guardi all of them they they know that if that team stinks people are going to forget about them and that is

why they're a cap team that's why they're always in on big names that's why they're not talking that's why they weren't talking about a rebuild last year after you know all the all the the bizarre few seasons you know they've had i get it you go out you go out and hire you know a coach with some recent bonafides who almost got it done with Vegas and you say like all right let's just let's run it back we're bringing back for valski we're bringing back to it we're bringing back the robertson hints you know see what happens if they can fill that roster out past hasten and on and on and on like he's a win now coach for for a win now team but i just i can't when you look at how ottinger emerged as like the is the future of that franchise like that was that was star making stuff we

saw from him and it looks sustainable i think it Haley, we talked about this. That was the thing about Ottinger against Calgary. This wasn't, this didn't feel like smoking mirrors. This felt like the emergence of a, of a guy. You kept saying he's not going to be able to do this next game. You know, I went into Game 7 being like this, Jake Ottinger's not being able to. There's no way.

He's, he's young. It's his first playoffs. There's no way. And then he just makes. So if he's a, if he's a capital G guy moving forward as a goaltender, not just for the stars, but league-wide, I'm not sure Pete DeBoer is the dude you want to shepherd him along just because of what happened over the course of several years in Vegas.

This wasn't like one mishandling, one-mishandled series or one instance of him making a mistake. This was a protracted, slow-motion mess that was completely of his own design over the last two or three years. And that's the dude that's getting the keys to Jake Ottinger for the next, however. I think we had this discussion, Sean, on one of the podcasts. Remember when Robin Leonard, it was like all this stuff was happening like Robin Leonard's out and then people are like, well, should the Vegas Golden Knights try to

reacquire Mark Andre Fleury at the deadline? Should they go out and trade it? It's like Robin Leonard was never the problem, Mark Andre Fleury. Pete DeBore is still the coach of the Vegas Golden Knights. He is not going back there. Like that was a thing. That was out. there.

Like, this is not, we're not pulling something out of the hat here. Like, this was like, what is, what is happening here? I mean, Julian, like, who is, who is the Alan Walsh sword that was, there was, there was in the Photoshop. The sword symbolized one dude in particular, right? It was, like, it was, it was directed at our board. That cut through Barcaudt-Ondry Flurry, man. I forgot about that.

It was, it was tough, man. I, I just wonder, though, because you bring up that cold-tending situation, Jake Andre and Dallas, it looks like he's going to be like the dude. I think they're going to go back to Anton Houdobin. Yeah, I'm just kidding. That's the old, but this is the thing, like, that's why I think, hopefully for his sake, he'll have learned from everything, and it'll be a lot easier because he knows, okay, Jake Odinger is the guy, and they need to ensure that he could somehow fulfill Sean's

wet dream that he could be Carrie Price one day. Like, I don't know. Like, do we see a situation where, like, Pete DeBore is going to be like, nah, man, we got to stifle his development so we can get Anton Houdobin. some more games. Like, I don't see that happening. At least with the Flurry,

like, we're talking about, we're talking about Flurry and Lennar, which was two years ago. That wasn't even like a development problem. That doesn't, that doesn't account for what happened this past season with, with Lennar.

Like, like, that whole situation was, was botched again. He pissed off goal. I don't even understand what happened. It doesn't, it doesn't matter what happened.

Like the fact, like the upshot is that that, is that he's pissed off two consecutive starting goaltenders and botched goalie situations for two consecutive. two consecutive years. And you knew that he was going to be done. It was like, someone's going to go this summer. It's either going to be Robin Leonard or it's going to be Pete DeBoer.

And we're like, and it's going to be Pete DeBoer. Like when that whole situation happened, we knew it. And this is another part that we can talk about this too. This is the fourth. This will be his fifth team. He's been fired four times since 2009. And all summer, we've just seen teams go back. back to the well with guys who were fired, you know, months ago.

Bruce Cassie is a good coach. We talked about the soft mic. John Tortorella has won. I just... He's a cup winner. John Torterlla is the last coach as of right now to have been the Tampa Bay Lightning in the playoff series. What?

That's true. Yep. He is the last actor. Oh, true. Columbus, right, right. I was like, wait a second. What are you talking about? Yeah, I mean, this is nothing new.

Like, every time people get, you know, mock surprise that NHL teams are getting retread. This is just the thing that we do now. I think it's funny that DeBoard didn't end up on the Panthers, which would have been like the ultimate in NHL coach retread, right? Yeah, since it works so well in 2007 or whatever. I almost forgot. The Joel is the only place that did that. Uh-uh, no. I almost forgot that Pete DeBoer coached the Sharks.

And I watched him get his lunch eaten by Mike Sullivan in 2016 as coach of the San Jose Sharks. That was, I mean, I was not a series. That was like, well, hanged was got back. That was an ass kicking. They did exactly what they wanted to do. They played, the matchups were exactly what they wanted him to be. I mean, Pete DeBore has won a lot of games. Like, he's found some, he's found some success.

But that was a moment where I was like, oh, I don't, let's, I've looked, I've looked at the bore a little sideways, a little sideways since then. He's a win now guy. He's obviously got a lot of, you know, he's got some, he's got some trophies hanging on, whatever, some, some pelts hanging on the wall. That's a, that's fine. But I don't know, man. Is that, is that the best, is that the best we can do?

Peltz. Peltz. Peltz. Animal skins. Furs. That's disgusting. Ew. People, people hunt.

Okay. Anyways, final point, I think, in the, This is unfortunate because we're running out of time because we've been talking forever. But I just think that Dallas conversation is so interesting because that's going to be a fascinating team. And I wonder how Pete DeBoer takes them along because you look at this team and they have some of the hardest stuff figured out. Mero Heiskenen is excellent. Yes. Jason Robertson.

Even Joe Pavelsky is so great. They're top line. Rupa hints. You've got you've got top line players. you've got an elite goaltender, someone who looks like they can continue to be an elite goaltender, got a number one defenseman. They've got the hardest stuff done already. Now what else can they do around it and what can the coach do with the players that he has?

Like I just think Dallas is so fascinating. It's really- The John Klingberg situation, just as seems as if he's going to be gone, they're going to let him go. And are they in on Jeff Petrie? Like, how are they going to, I guess that's a whole other thing for Jim Nill to solve. But if there's one man, if there's one GM, we can count on. to be active, it is Jim Nill. And that is 100%

like we talked about at the top of this with a mindset that leads to them hiring Pete Tabor. For better or worse, that team is going all out every single year. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. They're paying a lot of guys, a lot of money

to be second line players. They're always fascinating. Jim Nill is going to do something wild. Even though Pete DeBore is like the least inspired move of all, that's fine. Now it's time to actually go into roster construction and that's where that's where he's a wild boy let's go just you see just call him a wild boy jim nil wild boy what do you call the dallas stars he calls them the rambling boys of chaos

they're the funnest i love them i remember before the first round of the playoffs i was looking at the stars this fly won't leave me alone oh my god are you okay no what i just remember looking at the stars and it was like they lost like 30 games this year And they had a really good playoff run. They would go on stretches where it was like, oh my God. Or you're like, oh, my God. Their games were, their games were 56 minutes of nothing. And then it was like, oh, yeah, there were four minutes a game where Robertson and Hinson and Povellsky would just cook.

They're wild. I want more Dallas stars. I want them to add pieces and do this again because I really, really enjoyed watching them. I don't know if it was completely sincerely. Yeah. You never know. This is going to be great. They'll soon be this offseason.

There's going to be a lot, I think. There's some big names on the board. Doing a good job. Lots of stuff happening with so many different teams. Like lots of just like really consequential off seasons for a lot of teams. I think it's going to be good. And we'll talk about it all here on the Athletic Hockey Show. Thanks everyone for listening.

There we go. Peace.